Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

Leo crouched, and put his ear against the place where the doors met. He stayed there for a three count, then jumped and slid back out of the doorway. CB and Hernandez swiveled, and Frost crouched down low just as the latch lifted and the door swung inward. A silhouette stepped out of a watery rectangle of light, and Carmichael swung a hard, looping right into the figure’s belly. There was a harsh gasp, and the target stumbled forward. It reached beneath its coat, and Leo kicked it behind the knees. The man went down, and a knife spun out of its fingers. Carmichael put a boot on the man’s back, and the wide mouth of his trench gun against his head.

“You make so much as one little bo peep, and I’ll smash your pumpkin all over, you get me sucker?” Carmichael growled, putting more of his weight onto the prone body. The captive didn’t speak, or even so much as twitch.

At Leo’s signal, Hernandez and CB hit the door, criss-crossing as they went through. There was silence for a long moment, broken only by the sounds of doors opening. A small eternity later each man whispered, “clear” back into the night. Frost picked up the dropped knife, and ducked inside. Carmichael looped an arm around their prisoner’s throat, and hauled him inside. Leo followed, closing the door quietly behind them.

The sanctuary was old. The boards gleamed with varnish, and the rafters were dusty with a hundred years or more of votive smoke. The walls held candle brackets, the flickering flames hiding just as much as they revealed. There were no trappings of any faith the men had ever seen before, though. In the bare places once graced by the portraits of saints sat stone shelves holding sunken, graven images of creatures whose forms were nearly unrecognizable. An altar of smooth, black stone sat on the dais, flanked by gilded statues of tumescent creatures with dozens of blank, empty eyes. A heavy, leather-bound book rested on the sea-green altar cloth, and on the wall above and behind, burnished letters spelled out the legend The Esoteric Order of Dagon . The place was otherwise empty.

Once inside, the team took a good look at who they’d sandbagged. The captive was a portly man with a shiny, bald head and a sunken chin. His long, black robe was frayed at the cuffs, and though a little too big, it marked him as a priest clearly enough. He scrabbled at Carmichael’s arm, digging pale, fish-belly fingers into the choke hold. Frost held up the knife, a wavy-bladed tool more useful in ritual than in combat, and the bald man went still. Frost patted the man down, turning out his pockets and checking all the logical places for hold outs and surprises. He didn’t find any. Frost tucked the decorative dagger behind his web belt, and stepped back out of the line of fire.

“I’m only going to say this once, padre,” Leo told the man. “If you do what I tell you then you’ll live through the night. If you try to scream, or attempt to fight me or my men, I will have that knife in your gullet before you’ve taken a deep breath. Do you understand? Blink once for yes, and twice for no.”

The prisoner stared at Leo with watery, wide-set eyes. He blinked once.

“If I have my man release you, are you going to co-operate?” Leo asked. Again the single blink. Leo nodded. “Let him go, Jukebox.”

Carmichael released his hold. He stepped back and to the side, bringing up the shotgun as he did. The man in the black robe coughed, and kneaded at his wattle. He sucked air, and gagged slightly before he managed to get himself under control. When he spoke his voice was breathy, like he was trying to talk with a hole in his lungs.

“Who are you?” the priest rasped. “What do you want?”

“Sarah Prendergast,” Leo said, ignoring the first question in favor of the second. “Turn her over, and we can all pretend this night didn’t happen.”

The priest shrugged his shoulders, hands clasped at his waist. “I do not know anyone by that name.”

“Five foot five, blond hair, blue eyes, pale,” Leo said, pointing his muzzle right between the holy man’s eyes. “Eighteen years old; runaway. Birthmark on the right cheek, and a jagged scar below her left knee. She came here seven months ago.”

“Ah,” the priest said, nodding. If he noticed the gun, or its proximity to his head, it didn’t seem to bother him any. “And what do you want the girl for?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Leo said.

The priest looked at each of them. He nodded again, agreeing with some unasked question. “I suppose not. If I refuse to assist you?”

“Then you might meet whatever gods you pray to sooner than you think,” Hernandez said.

The priest smiled, and his wide, thick-lipped mouth curved at the corners without showing any teeth. He held his hands up slowly, palms out in surrender. “As you wish. The girl you seek is down below, along with the rest of the congregation. I can lead you to her if you wish?”

“I do,” Leo said, toggling the selector switch on his rifle. “Frost, if he tries any party tricks drop him. Jukebox, you’re on crowd control. CB, Band-Aid, cover our tails and make sure no one sneaks up on us.”

The priest led them to the rear door of the sanctuary, moving with the lurching, awkward gait of someone more used to sea than land. Beyond the door was a short, dark hall lit only by spillover from a cramped, spartan office. Aside from the light the office’s only unique feature was a huge map of the western seaboard. Hundreds of red push-pins were jabbed along the coast, marking the locations of offshore reefs. The man in black pushed open another door, and they stepped into the night.

The church yard may have been well-cared for once-upon-a-time. A wrought-iron fence enclosed the small space, but the iron was warped and pitted from the salt air. The barrier leaned drunkenly too, as if contemplating a leap over the edge of the bluff. Crumbling headstones and canted crosses were half-buried by the overgrown verge. In one corner rotting vegetables gave mute, fecund testimony to a garden gone to seed. The priest followed a trampled path through the foliage, witch grass and burrs snatching at his hem and sleeves. He paid the plants no more mind than he did the men following him.

“I don’t like this, boss,” Hernandez whispered. “It’s too easy.”

“Seconded,” CB said, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I can’t see shit in this black.”

“Just BOLO, boys,” Leo said. “Fingers on triggers, and we’re done before dawn.”

The priest paused, and fiddled with a rusty gate at the end of the path. The men fanned out into the grass, crouching low and trying to look everywhere at once. The priest grunted, and the gate squealed as it swung inward. He stepped into the void without a backward glance.

Frost sucked in a sharp breath, and Carmichael swore. The priest stood in midair a moment longer, his robe flapping in the wind from the ocean. Then he turned, and slipped out of sight.

“Do not lose contact,” Leo said.

Frost slid gun-first toward the yawning hole. “Stairs,” he said, jerking his chin to give the all-clear. A moment later he was gone, and the others followed.

A stairway was carved into the living rock. Barely wide enough for a broad man, the steps had been worn smooth by more than a century of wind, rain, and regular travel. The steps would have been dangerous in full daylight. In the dark and the fog they were suicide. They moved as quickly as good sense allowed, aware of the empty gulf on the left. Each man felt along with his boots, and kept his gun leveled at nothing. All they heard was the sound of the wind, along with the rhythmic pounding of the ocean. There was no sign of the priest.

After one hundred steps and a single switchback, the fog began to clear. Twenty yards below was a stubby shelf of black rock, worn smooth and decorated with the detritus of the retreating tide. The shelf extended out into the water; the natural rock becoming a carved bridge to nowhere wide enough for a convoy to ride two abreast. Heavy stone pylons ranked every fifteen yards or so, but there were no railings between them. Silhouettes moved in the distance, back lit by flickering orange flames and casting dark, monstrous shadows in the remaining mists. The wind blew stronger, carrying slurred consonants chanted by a congregation of ghosts. Carmichael started humming the theme to The A-Team .