SNAFU: Resurrection

by Dirk Patton

  For the second time in an hour he said a prayer for a comrade, this one silent.

  Jacob’s voice rose in panic. “The fuck is that, Sarge?”

  Jacobs was pointing his M-16 at an old man standing in the bush twenty yards off who was staring at them… and smiling. Quinn let out a shriek and began firing, the bullets going nowhere near the old man.

  Sarge raised his M-16 and fired.

  Jacobs also opened up, and when he saw the leaves to the left of the old man take hits, he adjusted his aim and pulled the trigger. It jammed.

  Sarge kept firing wildly at the old man, who simply turned and disappeared into the bush.

  “The fuck…” said Quinn. “We need to get the fuck out of here and now.” He started to put on his pack in anticipation of fleeing.

  “He’s right, Sarge. This isn’t what we signed up for. This shit is crazy.”

  “Stow that shit, both of you,” growled Sarge.

  “This has gotten too fucked up. Lopez is slowing us down. He’s dead already. Let’s just leave him and get to the LZ!” Quinn was practically screaming.

  Sarge raised his M16 again, this time pointing it at Quinn. “I will shoot the first swinging dick that walks away from us.”

  Strayer looked down at Lopez, who was white-eyed with terror. “Lopez, you okay? You hit?”

  “The flame! You all saw the flame, right? It came back. It came back for me. It was talking to me. Sarge’s bullets just passed through the flame.”

  Sarge stormed over to Lopez. “Stow that shit. It was just some old VC. This shitty country has a million of them, and they all look alike.”

  He turned to Jacobs. “What happened to your fucking weapon?”

  Jacobs was examining the M-16. “Failure to extract, Sarge.”

  “Clean out the goddamn thing, Jacobs. That kinda cherry mistake gets people killed.” He turned to the others, seething. “Lopez, calm the fuck down. Strayer, calm Lopez the fuck down and stop eye-fucking me. Quinn, with me.”

  They quickly moved towards where the old man had stood.

  Strayer watched them disappear into the scrub, then turned to help Lopez to his feet, who was holding his medallion and praying. Strayer turned to his back to get the first aid kit, and when he turned back, he was greeted by a pillar of fire standing next to a whimpering Lopez.

  Strayer scrambled back like a crab. Heat radiated off the pillar in shimmering waves. Lopez started screaming. Small flames dropped off the pillar around him, and their form shifted and morphed into naked children. The large flame solidified and became the man from the cave.

  “Ba Thuy gave your friend the gift of noi,” he said.

  Someone was screaming. Strayer realized it was him.

  Lopez screamed too.

  Jacobs had been cleaning his M-16, and the screaming snapped his focus to Lopez and Strayer, and he stumbled away from the fire.

  The old man looked at the children who had surrounded Lopez then turned to Strayer and smiled. “They want your friend to know what napalm feels like.”

  The flame children struck like vipers, reaching out and grabbing Lopez. The smell of burning flesh hit the air as white-hot flames engulfed the man. Lopez writhed and shrieked as the flame consumed him, calling for help until his blackened body collapsed in a heap. Strayer dry retched, and crab walked farther back to get away from the heat and smell.

  “Jacobs, Reverend, get the fuck down!” Sarge’s yell rang out as he burst from the bush and began firing. Bullets passed through the flame children, who seemed to gutter out like candles, leaving only wisps of smoke in their wake. Quinn opened up with Mamacita, and the old man looked at them as if they were mosquitoes. He smiled, turned, and walked back into the bush.

  “What in the name of fuck was that?” panted Quinn.

  “Con Hoa,” Stayer said, and promptly bent over, retching. He realized he had the stench of burned Lopez in his nostrils and retched again. His body felt like it was underwater, and he sat awkwardly on the ground. Nothing in his training prepared him for this.

  “Bullshit,” bellowed Sarge. “There were some drugs in that cave or something. The spooks use that sort of shit! No such thing as ghosts or goddesses. Somebody is fucking with us.”

  “Yeah. Ghosts and goddesses,” said Strayer simply.

  “You’ve gone dinky dau, Strayer. You’re in shock. Stand up, Corporal.”

  “Could be,” Strayer answered, pushing to his feet. “But Holquist died in six inches of water and Lopez was just set on fire by children who turned into flames. There are more things in heaven and earth, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know, Strayer! I’m not in heaven or earth. I’m in the ’Nam, same as you. And this situation has seriously gone south.”

  “He was speaking English,” said Jacobs. “I could understand him.”

  “I think he was in our heads. I’m not sure he’s fully real,” said Strayer.

  “Stow that shit. Jacobs, get me an ETA on the evac. We’re close to the extraction point, I intend for all of us to reach it. Whether the VC have some new weapons, China is testing new mind control drugs or the goddamn ghost of Christmas past wants to make a bonfire of us all, we are getting the fuck out of here. Gather up your stuff. Sorry for Lopez, but we can move faster now.”

  “How do you fight that, Sarge? How do you fucking fight that?” Quinn was coming apart. Tears ran down Jacobs’ face. Sawyer knew panic and shock were stripping their training and professionalism. He didn’t care. They needed to get as far from this shit as they could.

  Sarge grabbed them each in turn and pushed them away from Lopez’s still smoking remains and down the all-but invisible trail.

  “Enough of this bullshit, we’re burning daylight.” Then, as if recognizing the poor choice of words, he pushed ahead of the group and set out south again.

  “I’m taking point. You don’t want to be left behind, then don’t get left behind,” he called back.

  Strayer thought Sarge night just be coming apart, too.

  The four of them moved at a quick clip through the bush. Fear is a great motivator. It was still two hours until sun up, but the birds wouldn’t wait if they missed their rendezvous. Strayer puffed heavily with the exertion. He saw the old man behind every tree, the children under every bush. He could hear the others’ breathing hard as well. He said a quick prayer, thanking the Lord for being forgiving, because the jungle was not.

  “Sarge, quick break?” asked Jacobs.

  “Keep moving!”

  “I need to piss!”

  Sarge gave him the eye but relented. “Thirty seconds. Everybody relieve yourself. We’ve got to keep on.” He looked back from where they came, searching for the old man who stalked them.

  Strayer relived himself on a tree and turned to Quinn just as he was bending over and moving his face towards the small pool of urine on the ground.

  “Quinn! What are you doing?” Strayer grabbed him and pulled him back. Quinn’s eyes had gone white like a blind man’s and he resisted Strayer with all his might, struggling towards the piss rapidly soaking into the loam.

  “Sarge! Help!”

  Sarge and Jacobs rushed over and grabbed a hold of Quinn too. He strained under their efforts. Finally, something in him seemed to break. He stopped struggling, and they all fell backwards away from the puddle. Quinn’s eyes returned to normal but grew wide. Strayer tuned his head to see what Quinn was looking at.

  The old man watched them, a menacing grin on his face. “If you do not want noi, the Con Noa can have you, too.”

  Sarge picked up his M16, but the man was gone. Instead, a low mist swirled out of the jungle and began to coalesce into a grayish black smoke. Its tendrils began to wrap around Quinn.

  “What the fuck is happening?” he screamed and his skin began to smoke and bubble. The others backed away as his body burst into flames. Strayer could hear children laughing as Quinn screamed, his skin melting from his body.

  The men didn’t wait. All three began runnin
g south, all sense of coherence gone, branches whipping at them as they fled. It was every man for himself. Fifteen minutes later, Sarge collapsed by trailside to catch his breath.

  Strayer made sure there was no water nearby then turned on Sawyer, grabbing him by the pack strap. “Sarge, you shot him in the cave! We’ve shot him several times since. Quinn emptied Mamacita into him an hour ago, and he’s still showing up. Time to face facts. He’s not human. He might not have been human in the cave.”

  All three were breathing heavy. Their hands and faces dripped blood from cuts and scratches. Strayer used a handkerchief to wipe the blood from a cut under his right eye.

  “So what do you propose, Reverend?”

  “Run. Fast. He doesn’t want us here. We don’t want to be here. Maybe if we can get to the evac point, we climb in the bird at first light, head south and then be done with this place.”

  “We’ve been moving!”

  “We move faster. Leave anything we don’t need. Drop these packs. Who cares if Charlie gets ahold of The Gun? We’re being mauled out here. Three of us left. Worse comes to worst, I can think of one other thing.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to be saying a prayer for the dead the whole time we’re running. Even if the old man isn’t human, the kids are supposedly ghosts. So let’s lay them to rest.”

  “We run, you pray. That’s your fucking plan?”

  “Got a better one?”

  Sarge grimaced. “No. Jacobs. Drop your pack. Take only weapons, ammo and the necessaries. We’re gonna double-time it to extraction point.”

  Jacobs looked ill. He took off his pack and stared at it as if he had never seen it before.

  “Di di mau. Let’s get moving.”

  They set off, running for their lives.

  Strayer lost track as they ran, but he assumed Sarge knew the route. Didn’t matter at this point. The important destination was far away. Maybe the farther they got from where the little ghosts had died the safer they would be. Nothing was certain, though. He kept smelling smoke and hearing voices, but nothing materialized. They seemed to be following a trail south. The path snaked up and down and the sky started changing from black to blue, signaling dawn.

  They’d arrived at the top of a hill, and Strayer estimated they were less than half an hour from the LZ. They quickened their pace even more, loping downhill along the trail. As they reached the bottom Sarge halted suddenly.

  The old man stood before them, blocking their path..

  Jacobs fumbled with his weapon. He pointed it at the old man and fired.

  The old man sighed in response, like a disappointed teacher dealing with an inept student. “You do not know this land. You do not know what spirits walk here. You have angered them, and you must pay a price.”

  The day was growing brighter. Strayer heard engines in the distance. The huey had to be on the way. They just needed to get past the old man. Before Strayer could move, however, the old man smiled and pointed to the sky.

  Strayer suddenly realized the smoke they had been smelling for hours was from the cave. The cave they had fragged hours earlier. The one where the old man had been killed. Somehow they had run in one big circle right back to the cave. And now the old man started to giggle as Strayer fell to his knees in despair.

  The engine he heard wasn’t a helicopter.

  It was a jet. An angel of death.

  Jacobs turned to Sarge. “Snake and nape!” He turned to run back the way they had come, but the trail was blocked by dozens of burnt children and adults.

  “The Con Hoa have come to see what napalm can do to Americans,” said the old man.

  Sarge pulled the trigger on his M16, only to find his had jammed as well.

  “You have failed to extract,” said the old man, his smile growing ever wider.

  Sarge pulled out his K-Bar, snarling. “Come on, witch doctor! You don’t scare me.” He threw himself towards the old man, stabbing him over and over. The old man simply smiled and wrapped his arms around the soldier. Sarge began to smoke as the old man became a pillar of fire.

  The jet grew closer, the roar of its engine singing across the valley.

  Strayer climbed to his feet and began moving as fast as he could down the hill, shouting a Buddhist prayer for the dead as he ran. He asked that the burned dead of Khe Sanh and all of Vietnam be released from their suffering, and that they be reborn in Buddha’s paradise. The Con Hoa stood and watched him run past, making no move to stop him. He threw himself hard down the side of the mountain, sliding through the bush until he heard the jet pass over him with a loud shriek. The world lit up brighter than the sun, and then everything went black.

  When he finally woke he heard voices. Voices speaking English.

  “This one’s still alive.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Let’s move out.”

  A bird, rising with him in it. A bed. Sheets. Doctors. Nurses. Pain. Sleep.

  A week later the colonel came to the hospital in Saigon.

  “They tell me you’re going to make it. They also say you’re looking at a long and painful recovery. Lot of burns. Sorry to be the one to tell you, but you’re the only one that made it out. The rest of your lurp was KIA. Brave of you boys to call a strike on your own position during a firefight. I assume there was something on that hill that needed to be blown up good?”

  Strayer could only nod. Once.

  “So no more boogey men and monsters? I can tell the troops that the good Padre blew them up?”

  Strayer looked around the room. He heard panicked breathing and realized it was him. Summoning all his strength he nodded a second time but could not make eye contact with the colonel.

  “If you blew them up, then all I have to say is a-fucking-men. Hope you have a fast recovery, son.”

  The colonel walked away, but Strayer didn’t know what, if anything, had been accomplished. He was heading home a broken man, and his friends were now all dead.

  That night as he slept, an orderly came to remove his bedpan and replace it. Strayer stirred. It was the old man, smiling down at him.

  “You prayed for them, yes?” he asked in Vietnamese. “Asked the Buddha to give the Con Hoa peace?”

  Strayer nodded. It hurt to do so.

  “You have the compassion of a Buddha. You pray for your enemies, for their souls.”

  Another nod.

  The old man looked at the table next to Strayer’s bed. “You are a man of faith?”

  Strayer nodded.

  “A shame the Americans insist on making more con hoa. You were almost one yourself.”

  The old man placed his hand on Strayer’s bandaged hand. The burns on Strayer’s arms and hands were so bad they had been wrapped up completely in gauze. He’d never use his hands again.

  “The con hoa let you live. That is good.” The old man stopped smiling.

  “But you did not propitiate everyone. Ba Thuy is still angered at what you do. You did not pray to her. No matter how devout to your god, Ba Thuy cares little for your faith. She gives you the gift of noi.”

  With that, he smiled again and turned to smoke, which slowly dissipated until only the memory remained.

  Despite his bandaged hands, despite the burns on his body, despite the tight bedding and heat of the day, Strayer worked patiently, diligently.

  He placed the bedpan on the pillow next to him. In more agony than he had ever known, he turned his body over slowly. Even at the end he could not have said why, he only knew he would know no peace until he lowered his head into the liquid and give himself to Ba Thuy.

  Strayer heard screaming. Could not tell if it was the nurses or his own, but knew he would not have to hear it for long.

  Hunter

  Steve Lewis

  Sector Eleven, Alpha Company barracks

  The barracks was dark and still, with only the slow flicker of lights to show it wasn’t as empty and deserted as the shattered buildings around it. It had been built to house 140 troops.
Now it had just three.

  Sergeant Jason Barnes lay in his cradle, power cables plugged into his cybernetic implants. He hated them, but he needed them to stay in the fight. With everything else gone, the fight was all he had left.

  Across the barracks were the only two other men left from the original company – Gibbs and Williams – both heavily cyborged and jacked into their recharging cradles. They had both been good soldiers, but nothing special. They had survived where better men had died. That gave them the one quality that couldn’t be trained – luck. Given the way the war was going, it was the only thing that was going to get any of them out of it alive.

  The comms unit next to Barnes’ cradle flickered to life, snapping him to full consciousness.

  “Hunter One, this is Command. We have alien activity in your sector. Standby for data.”

  “This is Hunter One,” Barnes replied. “What you got for me, Piper?”

  Corporal Narelle Piper and Barnes were old friends and had dated when they were both corporals together. It had ended when he’d been promoted to Sergeant. When the aliens invaded, Barnes was one of the first to undergo cybernetic rebuilding, having lost almost everything in that first crazy day when the alien portals had opened. Hundreds of thousands of crazed monsters had spilled out across the planet, ripping people apart. Barnes was one of the lucky ones to survive long enough to make it to the medical labs.

  Their relationship now strictly professional over the radio network.

  “Multiple portal signatures, at least three major clusters,” Piper replied. “Data suggests two opening within minutes of each other, the third with a delay of fifteen minutes or so. Best bet, this is a synchronised attack. They’re coming, and they mean business.”

  Barnes scanned the data on the screen beside him. Three clusters all right. At least five portals on each, with a few minor portals scattered around the three cluster points. He hit the alert button on his console, lighting up the barracks.