Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

And if I died out here, I would never have to worry about going home. I would never again need to worry about fitting in, either with or without a disguise.

The sea would take me, and the sea didn’t care about my race, sex, or skin color.

The COB shoved his way back into the control room. “Our orders, Captain.”

The captain took the folded paper. “Thank you, Master Chief.”

“Eighty-eight hundred yards, Captain,” the helmsman said.

“Very well.” The captain unfolded the orders. His eyes scanned across the page once, twice, three times. How many times was he going to read it?

I looked at the clock above the weapons station. Less than two minutes until we were out of torpedo range. And what if the captain decided to abort?

No. I had decided. If Captain Channing was just going to stand there with his thumb up his ass, if Markey didn’t have the balls to follow through on her own goddamn orders, I would fucking do it myself.

The weapons officer on duty was Lieutenant Goldman. I didn’t know him well, but I had played a trick on him in the mess hall once, making him think he was taking the last piece of cake. In fact, he had grabbed a bowl of coleslaw, and I got that delicious cake.

I had glamoured him once, and I could do it again.

I moved toward the weapons station, wriggling between other sailors and around their control stations. I had to be close for this to work. I closed my left hand into a fist to help focus my energies. My disguise might falter for a second when I bore the new glamour, but nobody here was watching me anyway.

The captain looked up from his orders.

“Captain?” Markey said quietly.

The captain handed her the paper. “Weps, close outer doors and stand down.”

That’s what he actually said. What Goldman heard, loud and clear, was: “Fire torpedoes.”

I don’t know how long it took for the commotion in the control room to settle down. As soon as our fish flew out the back door, the captain ordered Goldman placed under arrest, and the COB and the XO seized him. I followed them out of the control room, hoping to slip away in the chaos, but Markey grabbed me and dragged me back to her quarters. I hadn’t expected her to be so strong.

“Why?” she asked after locking us inside. “Why did you do it, Hatcher?”

I stared her down and spoke slowly. “Do what, ma’am?”

She shook her head. “It’s my own fault. I should have been paying more attention to you instead of the captain.”

There was something about the way she said that— “Jesus fuck. You! You put a glamour on the captain.”

“Nice to meet you, too, kettle,” Markey said.

“You disobeyed your own orders!”

Markey’s eyes flashed. “You don’t know what my orders are, Seaman. I couldn’t gamble on the captain making the right decision on his own.”

“Yeah, neither could I.”

Markey glared at me. “You know why I wanted to stop those torpedoes. Why did you want to fire them so badly?”

I took a breath. “Like the captain said, ma’am. We came here to put some hurt on the Japs. Didn’t seem right for us to leave without doing something.”

“No. It’s more than just that.” Markey studied me for a moment. “What’s your real name?”

“Carl Hatcher.”

“No,” Markey said. “Your real name. The one you were born with. The one that’s on the books at whichever Japanese-American internment camp you escaped from.”

I felt suddenly deflated. “You — you knew?”

“I saw past your glamour when you took my bobby pin. That’s why I asked you all those questions. You can disguise your looks, but you can’t disguise your emotions.” Markey sat. “I had to make sure you weren’t a spy.”

I clenched my teeth. She had never really wanted to help me after all. She had only kept me close in case I turned out to be an enemy.

“My family name is Hachiya,” I said. “I am a native-born American citizen, and I am loyal to my country.”

“I’m not questioning your loyalty! I’m concerned about your judgment,” Markey said. “Would you really rather die here, under a false identity, instead of facing life as your true self?”

An unearthly roar saved me from having to answer. The entire boat shuddered, and I imagined the ocean itself trembling.

“Guess they’re awake,” I said.

“You don’t know what you’ve done,” Markey said. “No matter how much you might hate them, the Japanese don’t deserve what’s going to happen when those Things reach shore.”

“War is hell, ma’am.”

She grimaced. “You know nothing about Hell, little girl.”

Captain Channing surfaced the Bowfin as soon as we were back in international waters. Official information about what was happening in Japan remained spotty, but Markey, or rather, Roseler, had a direct line to a primary source. She was still able to connect to the now-catatonic seaman — just like she had during the scry — and report what she saw through the monsters’ eyes. That lady never stopped scaring me.

The Things were faster on land than anybody had expected. Both surfaced on the western shore of Kyushu Island and crawled into the nearest population centers, causing massive damage by their sheer bulk — news reports varied, making them anywhere from fifty to two hundred feet tall, with claws, wings, tentacles, or some combination of all three.

But the worst of it radiated outward from them, as people apparently driven mad by the Things’ mere presence set upon each other. Simple killing was the least of the atrocities Markey reported seeing, and which she ordered me to transcribe in gruesome detail.

She was right. Nobody deserved this, not even the Japs. I wouldn’t have wished this fate on Hitler himself.

But I refused to let myself feel guilty about it.

I hadn’t created those monsters. They were older than humanity. Someone or something would have roused them sooner or later. And no matter what Markey said about their cultural inhibitions, I knew the Japs would have eventually unleashed every weapon in their arsenal and every kind of magic they could muster against the Allies. Just like we were doing all we could to defeat them.

It was inevitable. This was war, all-out war, world war. It was them or us, and I would always choose us . My country; right or wrong.

Every nation in this conflict was doing terrible things. Every single person was doing things that would have been unthinkable before the war. Me breaking out of Manzanar, disguising myself as a man, enlisting in the fucking Navy? That was three hundred percent insane. But I had done all of it in the name of victory. I had to do it. I couldn’t have stayed in that internment camp for one more hour. I refused to continue being a victim. I needed to fight back. I had to do it.

It didn’t stop the nightmares or bring my appetite back any sooner, but that dense nugget of conviction gave me something to hold onto. And I needed it as Markey spent hours on end dictating the relentless details of every hideous, profane, revolting scene she witnessed through Roseler’s link. I did my best to write down her words without thinking about their meaning, repeating slogans in my head to block out comprehension.

This is war. Kill or be killed. Better them than us. I had to do it. I had to do it. I had to do it.

In the end, OP-20-G was right. The Elder Things didn’t seem interested in moving out of Japan any time soon. Mission accomplished.

Markey code-named the monsters Alpha and Bravo. The Japanese evacuated their coastal cities and mobilized heavy artillery. They bombarded both creatures for days. Bravo didn’t budge, but the ground forces managed to drive Alpha back into the ocean. Less than twenty-four hours later, Alpha resurfaced at the southwestern tip of Honshu Island and headed inland. The Japs finally surrounded Alpha at Second Army headquarters and kept it from going anywhere else.