* * *
There was one of them right in front of the Jeep, out of the goddamn blue. Burtoni swerved, fighting the machine for control and then they were slamming to a stop, almost rolling, settling back to the rocky dirt with a jaw-slamming bounce. Burtoni felt the steering wheel stomp on his chest and he gasped for air. The Jeep died, leaving them in the dark.
“Move out!”
Burtoni grabbed his rifle and stumbled out of the Jeep, looking everywhere, holding on to one of the MASH’s metal instrument trays. There were two, three of the things closing in. One of them hopped closer to the sarge, fixing its lifeless attention to him like a moth fixed to a light. It was a young ROK with a big dent in one side of its head. The eye on that side had bulged out, giving it an almost comically lopsided look.
“Head for the buildings!” West said, falling back. Cakes ignored him, aiming his M1 at the creature’s legs. He opened up and put all eight rounds of Springfield through the thing’s knees, the Garand’s clip ejecting with an audible ping.
The gangshi hopped forward on its broken, shredded legs, shorter by a foot and a half but still holding its arms out, leering up at the sarge with that bulging eye. It was almost close enough to the sarge to touch him.
“Catch!” the kid yelled, and swung one of the surgical trays at Cakes.
Cakes caught the tray and pivoted with it, smashing the gangshi in the face, knocking it backwards.
“No, use it like a mirror!” Burtoni screamed. He held up his own tray, shook it. “Like a mirror!”
Cakes didn’t seem to hear, banging the tray into the creature’s face again and again. Another of the things moved in. Cakes gave up on the tray, dropping it, taking a Willie Pete out of his shoulder bag. The Sarge waved them all back.
“Fire in the hole!” Cakes yelled.
Burtoni stumbled backwards, yeah, burn that mother, he thought—
—and then his thoughts were strange, running together, and Lee was shouting and dancing around, something was wrong.
Burtoni turned and there was a middle-aged man with a bad haircut and a bullet hole in one temple in front of him, staring at him, its peeling white fingers brushing against the front of his shirt.
“No,” Burtoni breathed, unable to believe it, unable to move or think anymore because the thing was pulling him away, stealing him from the world and it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t goddamn fair, he should have bugged out when he had the chance.
* * *
“No, no, no!” West screamed. The monster had Burtoni and it was already too late, the kid’s long, wolfish face was collapsing inward, his quick eyes rolling back in his head. In a few seconds he was a husk on the ground.
Cakes pulled a pin, threw, pulled another one. The world exploded in a fountain of bitter white and West shielded his eyes, his heart torn up. The ganghsi burned, hopped and melted, collapsing silently as the fire ate their rotten skin.
“The buildings, chogie!” he shouted, ducking away from the brilliant light, running for Lee. He never should have let the kid come, he wasn’t thinking straight.
Cakes ran with him and they caught up to Lee, flanked him, heading for the hooches. Behind them, the phosphorous hissed and muttered. Dim figures flitted through the trees, flickered through plumes of white smoke and the dull orange of burning fat. More of them were coming.
They reached the first raised shack and ran past it, West pointing them north, there was a clearing past another of the small buildings – and there were people in the clearing, ten, a dozen of them, men, sitting around a fire. They wore homespun robes of dull brown. Behind them was a tall, narrow building, presumably the temple.
West looked back and saw more of the creatures hopping after them. They’d be dead ducks in the time it took for one of the things to do its impossible jump. No time for recon or diplomatic talks.
“Back us up, Cakes,” West said. It was all he had time to say as they ran into the clearing, chased by the gangshi. West moved in front of Lee and stopped at one of the sitting men. He pointed his revolver at the man’s head.
The man was older, his face lined and careworn. He stared into the fire. All of them just stared into the fire, completely ignoring West, not moving an inch.
“Lee! Tell them to stop these things or I kill this one!”
Lee shouted at them, his voice harsh, threatening. The men didn’t look away from the fire, but one of them spoke briefly. A man about West’s age, sitting on the other side of the fire. His voice was a monotone.
Lee blinked at West. “He says go ahead. He says they are already home.”
“Sarge!” Cakes’ voice was an urgent stage whisper. West turned and saw that a half dozen of the gangshi had gathered behind them, at the outermost edge of the fire’s flickering light. They clumped together, dead and stinking, their arms outstretched… but they didn’t come any closer. Couldn’t, maybe.
West looked helplessly at the circle of men, still aiming at the older man’s head. He didn’t want to shoot the guy, didn’t want to kill anyone, only wanted them to stop whatever it was they were doing.
“Ask them why,” he said. “Why are they doing this?”
Lee asked, and another of the men spoke, not looking away from the fire. Lee translated as the man droned, his voice steady and toneless, firelight dancing in his blank eyes.
“In every war for a thousand years people have died here, victims of needless slaughter. Innocents, monks and priests, healers, men who have refused to take up arms. The stones are washed in their blood. They called the Master, who speaks for them now. He is their channel. They cry for the killing to stop.”
West shook his head. “So… you sent out dead men to kill more people?”
Lee spoke for him, and another man took up the narrative. “The Master tell us that when everyone has gone home, the wars will end. There will be no more bloodshed, here or anywhere.”
West stared at the circle of motionless men, unable to believe what he was hearing. “That’s what you believe? That what you’re doing here will stop war, forever? That we’re all just going to change?”
The men didn’t answer when Lee stopped speaking, staring into the fire, but one, two of them shifted, breaking their perfect stillness. West looked back. The gathering gangshi edged closer, as though the circle of protection cast by the firelight had shrunk. Cakes held up one of the grenades, looking to West for a signal.
“You don’t understand,” another of the men said finally. “You don’t belong here. You should go home.”
“Jesus please-us, are these gooks numb in the head?” Cakes muttered.
“Have you been out there?” West asked, not realizing how angry he was until he heard it in his voice. “Have you seen what you’ve done?”
He jabbed a finger at the gangshi, still edging closer. There were three more of them, their dead faces staring, their arms reaching. More of the sitting priests shifted. He could see that their concentration was breaking. One of them stole an uneasy glance at the dead.
“You made monsters out of your own people,” West said. “You called up their sad sacks of bones and turned them into killers.”
More of the priests were looking now. The firelight flickered, painting the dead faces in strange light. One of the gangshi hopped forward a tiny step and two of the priests were suddenly on their feet, backing towards the narrow temple building.
One of the sitting men snapped at them, his voice urgent, but neither responded, still backing away. He repeated his command, added something in a rising shout.
“He tells them return to the circle,” Lee said. “Return or we are all lost!”
One of the sitting priests pushed up on his knees. From under his loose shirt, he pulled a small hammered blade, held it up. “Naneun nae insaeng ui maseuteo leul boho!”
Before he’d finished speaking a second man was doing the same, a third, their words overlapping, two more knives held up.
Lee was pale. “I protect the master with my life.”
“Oh, shit,” West said, as all three of the men cut their own throats and fell, blood spurting out into the ground. One of them hadn’t cut deep or far enough and was pumping a narrow stream of blood across a few of his fellow priests. He flopped around on the ground, spraying like a fountain. Blood hissed into the fire.
Most of the priests were on their feet and many held knives but they didn’t seem to know what they wanted to do, whether to join their suicidal brothers or run for it. West looked back and saw the gangshi hopping forward, entering the clearing. Whatever the priests had been doing to keep the dead men at bay, they weren’t doing it anymore.
* * *
“Here they come!” Cakes shouted, and threw the M15. Lee saw it hit one of the gangshi in the chest and turned away, saw his own shadow black on the ground against the sudden brilliance of hissing white light.
“Move, move!” The sergeant shouted, pushing Lee towards the temple. Lee ran. Three of the priests ran with him. He saw a knife on the ground and scooped it up, pushing past one of the priests who’d frozen, who hadn’t decided to stay or go.
The temple door was open. The trio of robed men ran inside, calling for their Master. Lee stopped outside and turned back, searching for Sergeant West and Cakes in the chaos, fountains of light and smoke and the silent, glowing dead, hopping and freezing, blurring as they darted forward.
Around the fire, two of the three men who’d killed themselves rose, their bodies stiff, their arms stretched out. The third rose a moment later as the first vibrations shook the world. The priests unable to choose were falling now, fed upon by their dead brothers. Lee held his metal tray out to the grisly scene, blocking it from view.
Lee heard Cakes before he saw him, cursing more than Lee had ever heard anyone curse, taunting the gangshi. Lee saw how far away from the church they were and felt his chest go tight. It was too far.
The sarge fired his revolver into the crowd of gangshi, trying to cover Cakes as the private threw more grenades, but the bullets did nothing. The gangshi were too close and there were too many of them and Cakes was retreating too slowly. Lee opened his mouth to cry a warning but then there was a blur of green light and it was too late.
“I got this one, Sarge!” Cakes shrieked and stepped into the creature, popping rings on the M15s in his arms. He reached out and grabbed a second dead man, his grenades spilling to the ground.
Sergeant West turned and ran for the temple, his face a mask of hard-jawed determination, his eyes anguished. Behind him, Cakes screamed, enveloped by white light. Smoke billowed over the gangshi, the clearing, the world.
Two of the priests tried to close the door but Lee kicked at them, brandished the cheap knife he’d picked up, and then West was pushing through, knocking one of the priests to the ground.
Lee turned and looked at the church, finally. It was a single room, bare except for some rolled mats. It was cold and smelled of decay. At the far end, an old man was lying on the floor, lamps burning by his head and feet. The priests hurried to him, casting frightened looks back at West and Lee. There were only three of them now.
“Is that their master?” West said, starting after them. Lee had to run to keep up. Behind them, the door was crashed off its hinges. A gangshi stood in the jagged frame, white, choking smoke pouring in all around its stiff body.
The priests called for their master to wake, whining voices full of fear. When they saw West and Lee approaching, West holding his revolver, all three of them stood.
“I protect the master with my life!” one of them shouted, and they all ran at West. He shot the first one in the chest but the others crashed into him, all of them collapsing in a tangle of limbs. The revolver went off again.
The building shook as another gangshi thundered through the wall. It was one of the dead priests. Fresh blood oozed from its glowing neck, its head hanging. It hopped forward and was halfway to where the sergeant struggled. Behind it, a third gangshi hopped inside through the ragged hole, a very old and rotten one.
Lee knelt by the old man, the mad master. He didn’t look special or important. His eyes were open, staring at the air, but he was alive, Lee could see the rise and fall of his chest.
“This has to stop now,” Lee said, and drove the cheap knife into the man’s wrinkled neck, deep, pushing as hard as he could.
The Master made a choking sound in his throat. Awareness flooded back into his eyes, and he looked at Lee, who saw depths of madness in his tired old face; suffering and loss and despair twisted into something dark and consuming. When he pulled out the knife, blood poured onto the dirt floor.
The three gangshi inside the church crumpled, suddenly boneless. For a moment there was a sound in the air like the fluttering of wings, but perhaps it was only the last, spluttering hisses of the white phosphorous burning itself to death outside.
The sergeant held his revolver by the barrel and hit the last struggling priest in the head with the gun’s grip. The man groaned and fell away, holding his skull.
West sat up and looked around, taking in the scene. The fallen gangshi. The dead master. The bloody knife in Lee’s hands.
“Good,” he said, and nodded. “Good deal. You okay?”
Lee started to say yes but then shook his head. It was terrible, the thing he’d done, but he wasn’t sorry. The man’s blood was still warm on his hands and he was glad that he’d killed him, he wished he could kill him again, for making the dead walk. He tried never to think of it but the idea that his own family might not be at rest haunted him. Sometimes, it was all he could do not to think about it.
“I don’t know how to feel,” Lee said.
The sergeant looked at him for a long time. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, it’s like that sometimes. Let’s get out of here, what do you say?”
Lee nodded. The church was cold, the air heavy with blood and smoke and maybe ghosts.
The ground outside was littered with corpses. The gangshi had lost their glow, were only dead now, heaps of skin and bones and clothes. They passed what was left of Cakes and then Burtoni, but the sarge didn’t look at them, and told Lee not to look, either. He said they were good guys, and his voice broke a little.
Lee thought they might talk on the long walk back to where the MASH had been, but neither of them did. As they came down out of the woods, the sky opened up over them, clear and beautiful, and they walked on in silence, occasionally slowing to look at the stars, to breathe in the air.
Of Storms and Flame
Tim Marquitz & J.M. Martin
AD 955
Island of Frei, Norway
Fog suffocated the light.
Bard clung to his axe as a drowning man to driftwood. His fingers throbbed, pinpricks of fire erupting across his skin as the numbness crept in, no mercy in its arctic crawl. The blood of his enemies – the Austmann who’d met them on the field of Rastarkalv – dripped from his hands. The gore dulled the shimmer of his blade, its cloying wetness magnifying the chill, but the tang of Eiriksønnene’s defeat infiltrated the frigid air. Bard had followed his young king, Harald Greycloak, into battle, and now he wondered if he would soon see Greycloak’s father, King Erik the Bloodax, in the halls of Valhöll.
They had been routed by Haakon’s forces, especially his circle of detestable witches, the spastic, chanting völur. And though Bard had slew many warriors and his limbs ached from the doing, a swirling mass of unnatural grayness now washed over him, clawed at his throat, and he held his breath for fear of its dark magic befouling his lungs.
Witchery, this was. The product of an invoked galdr. And Bard went to one knee, clenching his teeth against the mist. But it caressed his defiant lips, a foul lover, perilous in its kiss. He knew it would not be long before he would drink it in, and he feared the fog would obscure his lifeless body. Would his spirit make it to the Golden Halls? Or had the Norns of old another fate in store for him? Even if he did somehow find his way to a warrior’s afterlife, how could the Allfather accept an offering as p
oor as this?
Death had thus far left Bard unscathed. Even as armies clashed amid the witches’ fiery galdrar, and Haakon’s beasts, summoned from the very depths of Hel, tore flesh from the bones of his brothers-and sisters-in-arms, Bard knew there was no honor in such an end – to merely slip away into the cold silence, unremembered by the gods.
No.
The word filled his skull.
No. It strengthened with every whispered echo.
No. He would not succumb to the treachery of Haakon the Good’s sorcerers, whose abominations had slain so many this day. The scion of warriors would not meet Death on his knees. Bard tightened his grip upon his ax, stood, urged his feet forward.
“No,” he growled through clenched teeth. The direction no longer mattered. The familiar swell of the sea had long since faded in the distance. Only the empty gray greeted his senses, and in its embrace, with enemies all around, one way was just as good as any other.
His muscles ached as he pushed on, bones creaking in their joints. The dead grass was slick beneath his boots, and the muffled squelch of his footfalls built to a careful rhythm as he bulled forward. Bard cursed the noise of his passage as only silence came back at him through the mist. Spiders of fear crawled along his spine. A tribe of jötnar might well loom just paces ahead but he would never know it. Not in this murk. He swallowed hard at the thought; set one foot in front of the other.
Bard traveled for a thousand beats of his heart, ax gripped tight, scowling, his eyes narrowed and searching for someone – something – to kill, until a shadow materialized, and another beside it a moment later, and yet another. But this was no enemy.
Runestones.
Bard tapped the first with his boot to test its certainty. He ran a cautious hand across its graven surface. Futhark stood out from its smoothness. The meaning of the script leapt clear to his mind before his eyes could pick them from the stone. The runes read: Honor. Peace. Memory. The words sang against his fingertips in turn. Haraldr Hárfagri ræisþi kumbl þausi æftiR Øyvind eR vaR, he read on the nearest stone, equal in height to himself as it manifested from the gloom.
SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest Page 6
