SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

by Jeremy Robinson

  RP said he’d wear its skull for a hard hat. Well, he had the choice of dozens, because the heads that once belonged to living, breathing human beings were now bobbing and weaving on thick tubular arms, and in those warped faces the eyes bulged and glared, and again without too much thought, I knew that the monstrous creature could see through them all at once. The heads swivelled on those tubes like crab eyes, simultaneously fixing all four of us under baleful stares. It weighed and judged us, and made its own target acquisition. A barbed tentacle shot from the mass, the tip formed of something like hardened chitin, and it cut through RP’s chest armour like it wasn’t there. He barely had time to croak out his agony, before the tentacle spasmed and he flew off his feet, suspended in the air a moment before he was slammed against the ceiling, then the floor, his body was a sack of broken bones. The monster wasn’t done with him though. The spear tip must have parted down the middle, because it scissored open, and the upper half of RP landed wetly at my feet while his legs flew over the mass, where other snatching claws tore them into bony fragments.

  “Fuck me…” What else could I say?

  Now our team was halved. And with RP that was stating the obvious.

  Brainpan screamed. But give him his due, he funnelled his horror into rage and he fired, unloading on the vicious tentacle weapon and ripping it to fragments. But it was hardly respite, because half a dozen more tentacles writhed overhead, and the creature had picked the next man to die.

  Me.

  Lance-tipped, one of those writhing tentacles exploded towards me. I threw myself down, and the tip struck the wall instead of my body. It jammed in the plaster, before the creature yanked free, but by then I was scrambling for my life. The lance scythed overhead by inches and again I just threw myself bodily away. I went down flat on my face. A second lance-tentacle snapped into the floor inches from my eyes, and gritty concrete peppered me. I scrabbled sideways, finally got my M4 up, and fired off an arc of rounds. Whether I hit anything of importance or not I’ll never know, because by then I was back on my knees, then my feet, and then hauling arse away from the next sweeping tentacle.

  Something snagged my collar.

  I hollered, battering furiously backwards with an elbow.

  “Watch it! You nearly broke my fucking face!” It was Hooky, and he had a hold of me, propelling me towards the door we’d so recently entered by.

  “Sarge, where’s Brainpan?” My words were a breathless wheeze.

  Hooky thumbed backwards.

  I looked, but my vision was filled with grit and tears and I could make nothing distinct out of the writhing mass now filling the vestibule area.

  The harsh detonation of a grenade hinted at where our pal was. But it was followed seconds later by the ripping and tearing of flesh, Brainpan moaning as each chunk of him was torn away.

  “Should have held on to that grenade, Brainpan,” I said as I slammed my shoulders to the wall alongside the doorjamb.

  “Hold that door, Muppet.” Hooky was braced against the other doorjamb. His carbine flashed.

  I fired too, but the mag fell empty after a short burst of rounds. I grabbed at a full mag even as I dropped the empty one, rammed in the fresh ammo. Before I could hit the arming bolt my M4 was snatched upward. A hand – human-like – but on the end of an insectile arm with too many joints, wrenched my gun up and away. Another one grasped my throat, even as a third punched me in the groin. Only my armour saved me, but I still experienced the dull ache in my nuts from the impact. A lance speared for my face. I ducked out of instinct, my chin mushing into the jellied flesh encircling my throat, and the lance-tip careened off my helmet and sank into the doorjamb with a crack louder than a gunshot.

  I fought to get free of the hand choking me. But I went down, and now the insectile arms rose up and the hands transformed into wicked hooking talons. They raked down on me, not to rip me apart but to ensnare my clothing and drag me towards the pulpy mass now rearing over me. Hooky swung in like a barbarian warrior, his M4 empty, but still a club. He batted at the arms dragging me, breaking fragile limbs that at once reformed, growing needles that hardened into giant thorns. Something akin to a giant thresher arm ripped sideways through the air and hit Hooky in the chest. He flew out of my vision, and if I’d to be totally honest, out of my immediate concern. I tore away from the grasping limbs, and fell out of the door.

  How many minutes had passed since I’d gone inside?

  It’d be under three, but it had felt like an eternity.

  Five heavily armed soldiers had died in less than one hundred and eighty seconds. What did that mean for the rest of humanity? I was never very good at math, but even I could add up our chance of survival if this thing was allowed to continue unchecked. If it were only about halting this one mass then perhaps the human race had some hope, but this was only one of millions of outbreaks already reported. Though this was the first where the individually infected had been known to come together in one massive conjoining. Was that the plague’s eventual intention, to become one entity? A world-wide mass formed of a singular living organism? Fleetingly I imagined a planet wreathed in a reddish pulpy mass, the only signs of terrestrial life the trees and bushes, all animal life consumed – no, combined. It was a nightmarish snapshot, but it was enough for me to rage against it.

  “Sarge?” I yelled. “Hooky! Where are you?”

  The chatter of his gun told me he was still fighting for his life.

  I looked back to where our command and support team was entrenched. There should have been a dozen armed troopers, vehicles, and a 50-cal machine gun. They were no longer where I’d last seen them. I saw the back end of a truck – troopers stacked in the rear – burning rubber for a nearby underpass.

  “What the fuck?” As usual my question was rhetoric. I knew what was wrong. Our ill-fated assault on the warehouse had been observed via our helmet-cams, second by second, and death by violent death, and our officers had given the order to fall back from a fight they knew they couldn’t win with conventional weapons. They thought both Hooky and I were dead, so I could partly forgive them for abandoning us, but they should have made sure. You didn’t leave anyone behind, not ever.

  That thought galvanised me, because I’d all but abandoned Hooky to his fate, so who was I to judge? I immediately turned to the open doorway. My Remington 870 still hung on its sling from my shoulder, and I’d regular ammo in the chamber – once the Hatton round was fired, you needed a backup plan in case the breach man came under immediate assault. I swung it up into play, and went back inside.

  The amorphous creature now filled the vestibule area, a writhing mass of limbs and protuberances less identifiable. Heads on tubular arms swung towards me. One of those malformed faces was still identifiable by its twinkly blue eyes, the defining feature that had given him his nickname during basic training. There was no hint of recognition in Twinkle’s eyes as they swivelled towards me. His mouth opened in a soundless snarl and his teeth were wicked barbs.

  “Sorry, Twinkle,” I whispered.

  I blasted his head to mince.

  “Muppet? Muppet!”

  Despite the odds, Hooky was still alive. I looked at where the creature seemed to be focusing and saw the vague form of Hooky barricaded behind an overturned desk. He was out of ammunition for his M4, and down to only his sidearm. Rather than waste bullets, he was using his revolver’s barrel to bat away the questing hands reaching for him, but other thin, pulsating tendrils had wrapped his arms and one leg. The creature seemed to understand that he was no longer much of a threat and had chosen to assimilate rather than rend him to pieces.

  “Get it the fuck off me!” Hooky roared.

  I racked the Remington, fired, racked and fired.

  Chunks of protoplasmic jelly flew, splinters of chitinous stuff crackled on the floor. The bulk of the creature swung towards me, but those tendrils kept a firm grip of Hooky, tugging him up and out of hiding. He fired at close range with his pistol, to little effect.
/>   “Muppet! Do something!”

  “I’m trying, I’m trying!”

  Racked and fired.

  “I’ve one round left. I’m not gonna waste it!” Hooky promised.

  “Don’t! Let me…”

  Too late. Hooky placed his gun barrel under his chin.

  Our gazes met, both our heads shaking in denial.

  Hooky squeezed the trigger.

  “Fuck!” he yelled. “I miscounted. Muppet, you’ll have to do me. Don’t let this thing have me.”

  “Can’t, Sarge,” I said.

  “Fuck you, you can. Just fucking do it. That’s a bloody order!”

  I fired.

  But not at Hooky. I placed the shot into the nearest claw bearing down on me. I’d tried to count my rounds too. How many left? I racked and the spent shell clattered at my feet. It caught my eyes as it bounced, and only then did I see the squirming tendrils that had wormed across the floor to latch around my ankles. I turned the Remington on them, but the gun clacked empty. I used the stock as a club, mashing the tendrils into the floor, kicking and dancing free. When next I checked, Hooky was suspended in the air, and now it wasn’t only tendrils that had him, but four of the insectile arms. In desperation, Hooky had yanked out his knife, his final recourse to cut and slice.

  “Muppet! You coward! Just fucking do me.”

  I threw away my shotgun. Pulled out my sidearm.

  Deeming him more trouble than he was worth the creature lanced Hooky through the gut, the tip spearing out of his lower back, dripping with his viscera. Blood flooded his mouth, but he turned to me, his eyes pleading. You can do it, his expression said.

  OK, Sarge, mine said.

  I shot him in the face.

  The creature must have sensed his instant demise, because it suddenly whipped half a dozen lances into him and they scissored, chunks of bloody flesh and splintered bones flying overhead. Then those lances whipped towards me.

  I tripped, but good job, because my fall took me back out of the door and I slid down the short incline to the pavement. Before I’d got my arse under me, the monster was forcing its gelatinous bulk out of the doorway, reminiscent of the way an octopus can contort and constrict to negotiate seemingly impossible places. As its compressed form cleared the doorjamb, it grew exponentially, almost flooding the ground around the exit with barely recognisable shapes. The heads had absorbed into the mass, but now they began popping out on those stalks. Rolling eyes searched for and then fixed on me. Sitting there, I fired, and my rounds took some of those faces, some of those bilious eyes, but for each one I obliterated a couple more oozed out of hiding.

  It began pouring towards me, and those waving arms that came through the door reached out. But they didn’t snatch at me; they simply wavered overhead, the fingers moving like an impatient pianist’s.

  I didn’t run.

  Why bother?

  Something squirmed in my chest and I knew.

  I allowed my handgun to slip from my fingers and reached down to fasten it over the splinter of rib bone that had pierced my vest when Brainpan let loose with that first grenade. The bone was red with gore as you’d expect, but the red was too jellified to be human. I pushed down on the rib and felt a corresponding scratch against my own sternum.

  Sonofabitch…

  The bone had punctured my vest, got through my fatigues to the skin beneath, made a shallow groove in my flesh. The wound was so inconsequential that it hadn’t really registered when I’d expected to be torn to ribbons by the detonation. Shit, at the time I’d only been thankful that the rib hadn’t sliced through my windpipe. Now I wasn’t as sure.

  The squirming was in my throat in the next instant, and in my gut and groin. I felt as if I needed to shit. I did pee; there was no controlling it. I rolled back my head and peered up at the hands above me. They now gestured, coaxed me, soothed me with their gently waving motions.

  Now…

  I am becoming.

  Bill Grover is a memory, one that will be forever lost, forgotten, no more. Muppet barely exists anymore. I can’t recall the names of my teammates. They aren’t important. They were a threat but they have been dealt with. I shouldn’t be troubled with their memories. They… are… no… more…

  I look to the greater part of me. Those welcoming hands, those faces that are me, those lancing spines that will protect me, and I reach up to accept.

  A noise.

  Some dim recollection tells me what it is.

  Something called an ‘officer’ once watched me.

  Abandoned me.

  Called in this rocket strike.

  I don’t know what a rocket is any more.

  I don’t even recognise these final words that play through my fleeting conscience, but I know they are dangerous.

  Offsuuu… I moan in warning to my beautiful brethren.

  Rohcutt…

  My words lose meaning.

  I am become.

  White and heat and burning…

  I am…

  The Slog

  Neal F. Litherland

  Vietnam smelled like an off-season slaughterhouse. It had been washed by rain and perfumed by flowers, but even after Mother Nature scrubbed and polished the sprawl it was impossible to forget what was underneath. Impossible to forget the sharp tang of cordite and the fresh shit smell of bladders and bowels being emptied. The jungle had blood on its breath, and once that abattoir stink got in the nose you never forgot you were in a cattle chute.

  They all coped with that the memory of that smell in different ways. Baxter stripped and cleaned his 60 from belts to barrel every night, his hands assembling and disassembling the pins and latches like it was a lethal rosary. Hawkins read and re-read his letters from home until they were smeared and smudged, tattered around the edges like he’d sucked all the well-wishes out of them. Big Billy Watts built card houses in the moonlight, and before he rolled into his fox hole he knocked ‘em down like a kid with building blocks. They brought their rituals and their talismans, their whispered prayers and their good luck charms. They didn’t really believe those things would keep them safe, but they needed something to hold fast to when the sun went down and the shadows grew bold.

  “So there I am, one big bastard on either arm, my hands cuffed behind my back, and my dick still hanging out of my fly,” Johnny drawled, carefully arranging the crown of royals in his helmet band from Jack to King. “They haul me in, and dump me on the bench like a sack of taters. I drop right on my nuts, and for a minute I swear I can hear bells ringing and angels singing.”

  “Must have been a lucky drop,” Jenkins said, running the razor edge of his Bowie knife down his left cheek. He had a dozen scars attesting that blade shaving hadn’t always been so easy for him. “Ain’t much of a target to hit.”

  “When my eyes uncross the chap’s staring down at me, his greens pressed and his little collar on,” Johnny continued, wiping his florid face on his sleeve and ignoring the commentary. “He tells the monkey patrol to take the bracelets off. Problem is my hands are still numb, so I’m trying to tuck myself back in still half a sheet to the wind and I can’t even bend my fingers.”

  Simms was rolling up his poncho from the night before, Gardner was scraping the rest of his MRE between his yellow teeth, and Cooper was going through a last check on his med kit before slinging it over his shoulder. Nobody was really paying attention to Johnny; he was a radio with one station. He faded into the background more often than not, but his stories about what he did once his pretty Susan broke up with him were still better than silence.

  “Finally I get my gun holstered, and the chap’s giving me that hellfire and brimstone look.” Johnny turned down the corners of his mouth so they cut deep grooves in his sweaty cheeks, and narrowed his eyes so his forehead wrinkled up. The expression added thirty years to Johnny’s face, and made him look like the chaplain’s red-headed younger brother. That got a chuckle out of some of them.

  “The old man say anything?” Luke
asked. His back was against a tree stump, and he was rolling a smoke just as thin and dark as he was. A smile played around the corner of his lips, like he’d heard it all before and still found it just as funny the second time around.

  Johnny folded his arms across his chest, and like magic the twang was gone from his voice. Instead it was low, deep, and serious. “Is there something you want to confess, my son?”

  That got some real laughter. Johnny grinned, and he was himself again. A few more ears turned, but the soldiers’ eyes stayed busy on the jungle. Luke touched his tongue to the paper, and dug out an old steel lighter. He flicked it, and touched the flame to the tip of his smoke.

  “So I says to him ‘no sir, I can’t think of anything I’ve done that I need to confess.’ He puts his hand on my shoulder, leaning over me like he’s about to give me the facts of life, right? He looks me right in the eyes, and he says, ‘John, you need to confess before you go back out into that jungle. If you don’t there’s no telling what might happen.’”

  “So what did you say?” Luke asked, the words dribbling up from his lips in a blue mist.

  “Well I thought about it for a minute,” Johnny said, screwing up his face like he was trying to remember what year he needed to be born to buy a beer. “And I said to him, ‘Father, are you telling me I might end up in the Slog?’”

  Gardner choked on his last swallow of runny eggs. Jenkins’ blade stopped, poised just under his jawbone. Even Simms looked up from his meticulous rolling and tying with a nervous, piano-wire smile on his face. Luke let smoke trickle out of his open mouth, dragging it back in through his flaring nostrils. The wind died down, and the trees leaned closer; as if the jungle was curious to hear the rest of Johnny’s story.

  Everybody had a story about the Slog. A grunt in Baxter’s old squad said it was a ghost town set up by CIA spooks somewhere deep in the shit. The way he told it the ghosts took deserters, protesters, draft dodgers, and VC fighters, then did something to their heads. The spooks fed them dope, and poked around in their brains until all they could say was “yes sir” before turning them loose in the jungle with no fear, no pain, and a fully loaded M16. Baxter always shook his head and laughed, but he wouldn’t look anyone in the eye when they asked if he believed it.