Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

I raised my pistol, my anger so deep my hand shook.

The satori made a gesture with his left hand and the air unzipped, revealing a line of light that went from floor to ceiling. He grabbed Madame Mizuki by the wrist, then seemed to pause as he inspected me just a little more.

I pulled the trigger. The shot went wide, splintering the wood near its head.

The satori pulled her into the white, then was gone.

“No!” I leaped to my feet. My hands fumbled with the last grenade. Pin and spoon went flying as I hurled it towards the light. It flew straight, disappearing a mere second before the line of light re-zipped and ate itself. Had I missed, I would have killed myself and Jakes.

I glanced at the latter and saw his wide terrified eyes.

I returned to my downed man and shook him. “Nancy. Nancy Drew are you okay?” I patted his face, but there was no reaction, he simply stared into space. I used his real name in desperation. “Chiaki. Chiaki Chiba. Come on, man. Wake up.” But there was nothing. It was as if I had his body, but his mind had been taken from him.

I saw Walter Cronkite cry tonight. Normally a dour deliverer of the world’s news, the white haired man I’d come to trust like my own father first cried, then laughed as the voice of Neil Armstrong beamed from the surface of the moon into a billion living rooms.

I cried myself. I cried for Harvey. I cried for Nancy. I even cried for Jakes. Nancy survived, but his mind is wiped. We tried to get to him, but it’s like he’s an empty vessel. Jakes is at least recoverable. We’ll have to see once he’s medically discharged.

And it was all for what?

Ideology?

Communism vs democracy?

Totalitarianism vs capitalism?

I’d once heard an Army colonel say “if it wasn’t for all the ISMs we wouldn’t have a job to do.”

Brahm brought in several more boxes and put them on the floor by my desk.

We were moving. Not knowing what the satori knew or what its intentions were or even if it survived the blast, we had to protect ourselves. We’d killed a lot of vampires yesterday and when Madame Mizuki finally found time to be pissed off, she would surely come.

We were lucky. They hadn’t known about us and couldn’t have anticipated us becoming involved in their espionage. The Gilroy connection broke the case wide open. So unanticipated. So random. But then again that’s how these cases were solved. Follow your gut, pound the pavement, and luck will find you.

Doris came in.

“Need some help, boss?”

“No. Go celebrate the landing with your friends.”

“Are you sure?”

She’d been planning a party for weeks. But then yesterday’s events happened and she almost cancelled them. I convinced her not to. It was important for someone to celebrate something amidst all of this death.

She thanked me and left.

Instead of packing another box, I opened one of my desk drawers and pulled free a bottle of twelve-year old scotch. I found a glass and poured myself two fingers.

I held my glass up and saluted in the general direction of the moon. Those men were probably the bravest of us all. By now they were on the minds of everyone with a television or radio. But make no mistake. The Cold War was alive and well, even on the moon. By now, with the famous words said and the cameras stopped, they should have placed the obsidian pyramids into the proper formation, their function to keep any other craft from any other country from landing on the lunar surface. Would they work? Only time would tell.

I downed my drink, and resumed packing, my thoughts once again earthbound… thoughts of Nancy and Harvey, two of the greatest men with whom I was fortunate to have served. Two men who’d died protecting their country from an ISM we could never acknowledge. There’d be no hero’s parade and no solemn funeral. In some office in the basement of the Pentagon, someone was taking a file from one filing cabinet and putting it in another. Although it was a simple act, it was a final act, and no less powerful than the killing of a man on the battlefield.

This is how Cold Wars were fought.

Let’s just hope that this is the way Cold Wars are won.

You check those corners, sailor?” the Chief of the Boat barked. “Those lines are off by half a degree and our visitor doesn’t materialize!”

“Re-measuring now, Master Chief!”

The COB was exaggerating, but I’d learned early in my naval career not to argue with a superior. If it wasn’t likely to kill me, I just did it.

I placed my protractor on the dowstone panel we had strapped to the deck and re-checked all the angles in the chalked pentagram, then inspected every stroke of every rune around the circle. Then I climbed the ladder and verified the matching dowstone on the ceiling. Satisfied both stones would activate correctly, I stepped back and reported my progress.

“Very well,” the COB grumbled. “Rosebud!”

The seaman’s real name was Roseler, but after that Orson Welles flick, everyone called him ‘Rosebud’ as a tease. He jumped forward, holding his clipboard. I did my best to get out of the way. The COB’s quarters weren’t exactly spacious. Roseler and I didn’t both need to be here, but we were apparently the only two sailors on the Bowfin rated for magic, and the Master Chief wanted us to double-check each other.

“You got the incantations there?” the COB asked Roseler.

“Aye, Master Chief!” Roseler said, his voice cracking. And people said I sounded like a girl.

“Corrected for position and depth?”

“Aye, Master Chief! I’ve got the math right here—”

“I can’t read your damn chicken scratches.” The COB waved the clipboard away and checked his wristwatch. “Rendezvous in twenty seconds. Make sure you’re doing it right.”

Roseler looked like he might cry. “M-maybe you’d like to do it yourself, Master Chief?”

“Do I look like a motherfucking magician?” the COB roared into Roseler’s face. Their noses couldn’t have been more than half an inch apart. “Now incant that fucking spell so we can receive our goddamn visitor!”

“Aye, Master Chief!” Roseler buried his face in the clipboard. I made a fist, ready to give him a kidney-punch if I heard the slightest mispronunciation. I didn’t want to be within a hundred yards of the Bowfin if anything went wrong on the receiving end of this teleport.

“Five seconds, sailor!” the COB shouted.

“Aye, Master Chief!” Roseler began making unnatural noises. “ Hagitaa, moro-ven-schaa, inlum’taa… ”

Both pentagrams pulsed blue and white. Roseler finished the incantation, only going a little flat on the last syllable, and a pillar of light flashed into being between the two circles. A moment later, the light faded, and an officer stood inside the pentagram, carrying a large suitcase and wearing a… skirt?

“Permission to come aboard, Master Chief,” the woman said.

She looked to be about my mother’s age. Unlike my mother, she wore lieutenant’s bars and the most perfect makeup I’d ever seen. But the expression on her face and the fact that she’d just teleported nearly seven thousand miles onto a submerged attack boat in the South Pacific told me she wasn’t here to entertain anyone. Her nametag read: MARKEY.

“Permission granted, ma’am,” the COB said without missing a beat. I guess you don’t get to be a Master Chief by balking at the unexpected. “Sorry the captain couldn’t be here to greet you himself. We’re playing hide and seek with the Japs.”