Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

They were building a ladder of their dead.

I hurried along the wall; it was the same at each point: a slowly building ramp of dead; organs bursting and oozing in the moat. The night had been loud before: the roar of tigers; the shrieking of monkeys, now… near silence, bar the raspy scrambling of the dead.

A wind kicked up, and with it the stench of dead long-decayed. The men trembled on the walls. I walked among them, touching shoulders, whispering quietly, and did what I could to reassure them.

The morning would bring no relief, I feared. We could not send out runners now: we were fully surrounded. There was no way to make contact with the nearby town for reinforcements from their garrison. In fact, a steady trickle of the enemy was moving that way — their purposeful shuffle could be maintained all day.

I feared we were lost…

As dawn broke, so did Hell.

The first sliver of sun peeked over the horizon. And the first dead, finally mounting the ramparts, came over the walls.

“Fire!” I yelled.

A barrage of musket-fire tore down the first invaders, shattering bone and spraying guts. The men reloaded and fired, reloaded and fired, mechanical almost as the dead that mounted the summit and were torn down by the blasts.

It stretched on for hours. The fighting intensified as some demons breached the wall. The hand-to-hand fighting was gut-wrenching. Stabbing another man is hard enough, it’s worse when he doesn’t notice he should be dead and pulls the musket deeper, trying to reach you with rotten hands.

I filled breaches in the ranks, hacking at limbs and crushed bones with my saber. I wished for the heavier cavalry blade more than once.

A slight lull in the fighting brought Captain McKee to me.

“Nick!”

“Robert,” I said.

“Seems we might hold after all. Your boys love a scrap!”

“So do we all, I hope. It seems long from over.”

“Oh, aye, much killing to be done yet, but your boys have the stomach for it. Fighting for your life makes things more lively than in the drill yard, I reckon.”

I had to laugh… until McKee’s mirth faded as he looked over my shoulder to the dawn.

“What do ye make of that?” he asked.

I followed his pointed finger. A cloud of smoke was blooming on the horizon. I snapped out my own glass and peered through. My heart sank.

“Time to form up in the yard, I think.” McKee nodded and hurried off as I yelled the order: “Off the walls! Form square in the yard! Form square! Now!”

Men leapt from the fire steps and hurried down the ladders, forming an orderly square in the yard. I was the last off our side of the wall, slashing and snarling at the demons snatching at me.

A thunderous crash rocked the fort.

“Roll up the artillery. Guns here, now! Hurry!” The gunners pushed the twelve-pounders into the formation and aimed them at the gates.

“Ready! Present arms!” The north face of the square drew up and leveled their muskets, the gunners waiting with leather-clad fingers and burning tapers.

Another crash and the men’s muskets wavered.

“Steady men, steady!”

Another crash and the gate slammed down. A flood of demons poured through. My blood turned cold. A huge elephant pushed through the ruined gate and threw its head back, trumpeting so loud some men dropped their muskets to cover their ears. It had no tusks I could see, and it was covered in rot and putrid pus. It turned milky eyes towards us, but hatred of the living gave the dead orbs evil fire.

The demons poured around its legs and under its body, coming in a tide of rotten flesh that threatened to fill the fort.

The elephant trumpeted again and stumbled into a charge.

“Fire!” I bellowed.

The gunners put fire to touch-holes and the guns roared, thundered, and leapt back from the recoil. Two shots from the flank guns missed the elephant but left a long trail of shattered and ruptured bodies in their wake. The center gun hit dead on. The elephant’s head burst like an over-ripe melon, and its guts blew out its sides. It wavered, stumbled, then fell.

The men sighed with relief and muttered prayers.

We opened fire on the remaining demons in the yard — fire, the crackling of muskets, and smoke surrounded us as those in the square battled for their lives.

Another trumpeting.

Thunderous on the air.

My heart fell.

“We killed the cow,” said Sgt. Stuart, suddenly at my side. “Now we get the bull.”

Another elephant appeared in the gates, straining at the small opening, cracking timbers and threatening to upset the whole wall. Demons popped beneath its feet like grapes. The stench made the gorge rise in my throat.

This monster had tusks — one broken halfway down.

Nothing we had could stop it.

“Load!” I shouted at the gunners, but they were well ahead of me, swabbing and ramming powder, their eyes wide and feverish as they prepared another volley. “Hold, men! The demons of India shall not linger!”

The guns fired, and this time they hit true.

The beast’s sheer size made the cannons seem small. The flank guns tore at its guts, cracking monstrous ribs and shattering bone. Splinters flew in all directions — shrapnel that tore apart demons too close to the impact.

The center gun hit it in the chest, blowing its guts out the back and blasting rotten bits of dangling organs from the many oozing holes in its hide.

To our horror, our unthinkable, indescribable horror, it trumpeted again then lurched into a charge. The men rushed to reload before it could crash into the line — its speed was terrifying. “Fire! Load! Fire! Load!” Nothing else could save us but steady fire and discipline. The monstrous elephant bore down on us.

A trumpet call!

McKee and his dragoons burst from the smoke around the stables and charged the beast, yelling like insane banshees.

“For King and country!” McKee’s voice roared over the din of battle.

The dragoons met the charging monster head on. They slashed at tendons, legs; muzzles flashed as they fired carbines and pistols into its head and sides — a ferocious and unrelenting sea of blades and bullets.

The elephant faltered; started to back up. It trumpeted in anger; slashed about with its tusks.

McKee’s horse was gored and tossed through the air like a child’s toy. I could only keep to my square, moving about the inside faces and checking on men, pulling some from the front ranks who were too tired to fight on, and helping haul back any dead.

The great elephant tried to rear on its back legs but the bones were too far gone and shattered under its remaining bulk. The dragoons dismounted and hacked into the beast’s flanks, trying to quench the demonic fire that gave it life. I ordered the infantry to advance. I moved with the north face of the square to secure the fort walls.

We fought like demons ourselves, slashing and roaring bloody battle cries. The monsters fell beneath our steel; rancid blood burst and flowed, thick and stinking. Carnage.

Demons were ripped and gutted with twisting bayonets; heads burst by musket fire. I saw a man stomping on a little demon monster — a babe that had clawed its way out of its fighting mother’s womb.

Such things no man was meant to see.

Finally, the demons were driven back and the north face of the fort secured.

We built a barricade of whatever we could find at the gate then climbed the walls again.

A ring of dead, twelve feet high, formed grisly ramps around our fort. We must have slain thousands.

And yet, and yet… the tide kept coming. But the demons now avoided our fort, as though some unknown force told them to bypass us. We’d saved our lives at some cost to the enemy. Whatever it was that drove them now knew we had teeth. The enemy could be seen for miles. We were a single tree standing against an avalanche. A single point of human sanity.