Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

Victory had come at a high price. Hill looked over at Turner’s lifeless body. He wasn’t sure, but thought Turner looked paler than he should. Almost luminous. A cold chill settled over Hill and he grabbed a spare magazine from his vest and reloaded his sidearm.

The jeep sat sideways in the middle of the road, blocking it completely. Billy held the grips of the heavy machine gun mounted on its rear, nerves making his grip looser than he would like. He was new to the National Guard, and this was first time in the field. He’d joined to get the money he needed for school. There hadn’t been a real terrorist attack on the United States in years and overall, it was a time of peace, so he’d figured it was a safe time to join. The more liberal party that had come to power in the last election was doing away with the ‘War on Terror’ and every other war or active police action they could. The news was filled with reports of troops being called home. Billy had figured it was safe to join up, thinking the worst things he could be doing would be sandbagging flooded areas and helping out disaster victims.

Jackson, who most folks just called Sarge, stood several feet from the jeep. The older man shook a cigarette from his nearly-empty pack and lit up. Billy watched him with a sense of awe. Sarge had seen real action, all over the world. How the heck the man had ended up back here in the middle of nowhere, North Carolina, was a thing that Billy couldn’t even guess at. Sarge was one tough and cold mother: his off-duty bar fights were legendary, even to the new recruits

Pullman paced the road on the other side of the jeep from Sarge. At least he looked a touch nervous. That brought Billy some comfort, because he was scared and there was no denying it. His hands were slick with sweat where they clutched the jeep’s weapon, and he could feel the pounding of his heart inside his chest.

They had waited here in silence for the better part of three hours. Billy couldn’t take it anymore. He summoned up his courage and called out to Sarge. “Hey man, do you really think this crap they’re telling us is real?”

Sarge finished a long drag of his smoke and turned to face him. Billy’s cheeks grew heated as Sarge looked him up and down.

“This is your first time out ain’t it kid?” Sarge asked.

Billy nodded.

“How come we always get stuck with the newbies?” Pullman asked, walking closer to the jeep, his M-16 held sideways in front of him.

“Stow it,” Sarge grunted at Pullman, his eyes never leaving Billy. “Look kid, it ain’t our place to believe or not, we just do our jobs. In this case, that means if something nine feet tall and hairy comes charging out of the trees, we fill it full of lead and leave its corpse rotting as a warning to any others that might come at us, and we do this until we get different orders.”

Pullman smirked at Sarge’s answer and added. “Ease up kid. None of this is real. It’s all some kind of cover up or something. Has to be. There’s no way on God’s Earth that Bigfoot is real.”

“So what they’re saying about those creatures wiping out the town down the road is just a bunch of crap?” Billy asked, far from convinced.

“Seriously kid?” Pullman laughed. “A whole freaking tribe of Sasquatch just decides to come out of the woods and start killing people? That doesn’t make any sense. Those things, if they do even exist, have spent all this time hiding — why would they just suddenly give that up and go feral? What could they hope to gain by taking out a town and revealing themselves to the world? It’s more likely they’re feeding the public that garbage to keep their attention away from whatever is really going on.”

Sarge tossed the still-glowing butt of his cigarette to the ground and crushed it out with a heel. “Pullman, you’re as bad as the kid. Like I said, it ain’t our job to think. Our job is to kill anything that tries to get past us here, whether it’s some wild-eyed nut job in an ape suit or the real thing. We hold the line here, no matter who or what shows up.”

The night was cold and the sweat that had bled from Billy’s body into the cloth of his uniform wasn’t making it any warmer. He shivered and wished this mess was over with already. Before they had left base, the last bits of news he had seen were calling this the ‘Sasquatch Apocalypse’. Since whatever had hit the small town of Babble creek had gone down, there had been reports from all over the country of Bigfoot pouring in. Not the usual sort of sightings either, but stories of Bigfoot, or entire packs of the things, on the move and ripping apart everyone they came across. Billy didn’t really know what to believe himself. He’d never bought into the tales of things like Sasquatch, the Loch Ness monster, or UFOs. His dad had been a hunter his entire life in these parts before cancer claimed him two years back, and had never once said anything about encountering one of the creatures. Still, Billy guessed that there had to be something going on or the three of them wouldn’t be out here freezing their butts off. Sarge seemed to think the Guard, like the Army, was full of REMFs — rear echelon paper pushers — who enjoyed nothing more than finding new and cruel ways to make grunts like them suffer. Billy had to admit that the idea of the Sasquatch Apocalypse sure sounded crazy. There were plenty of wackos who believed the zombie apocalypse was just around the corner, but swarms of Bigfoot declaring war on mankind? That was just insane.

“Sarge?” Billy spoke up again. “If what they’re saying is real, there can’t be enough of those things to really matter can there?”

“How the Hell should I know kid? I’m a soldier, not a crypto-zoologist.”

“How could there be?” Pullman laid his rifle against the jeep, propping it there as he fished a smoke of his own from his pocket. “There’s no way the things could have stayed hidden this long if there were.”

“We don’t know anything about the creatures, Pullman,” Sarge pointed out, surprising Billy. “We don’t know where they live. We don’t know what they do out there in the woods. Nothing. Who can guess at how many there are or what they’re planning?”

Silence hung in the air like a tangible force around Billy until Pullman finally nodded and answered, “Nobody I guess.”

He placed his cigarette between his lips, picking his weapon back up, and headed back to his spot on the road without another word.

Sarge looked Billy over. “You gonna be okay up there kid?”

Billy nodded from where he stood in the rear of the jeep.

“Good because—” Sarge started, but whatever else he was about to say was lost, drowned out by the half human, half animal shrieks that came from somewhere in the direction of Babble creek.

Sarge and Billy looked up from their conversation to see waves of monsters moving towards them. The things were all between nine and ten feet tall, covered in matted, brown hair. Where moments before, they’d been so quiet as to approach unnoticed, their footfalls on the road now sounded like thunder as they rushed forward. Their mouths were twisted in hungry snarls, and their red eyes burned with hatred and anger.

The chattering bark of Pullman’s rifle as he raced to the jeep, firing over its hood at the advancing horde, snapped Billy and Sarge out their shock. Sarge spun around, jerking his own M-16 up. It spat burst after burst at the things. Billy swung the mounted fifty cal to face the beasts and opened up on them. Sarge and Pullman’s rounds only seemed to be making the creatures madder as they came, without even slowing them, yet Billy’s cut them down in rows. The heavier rounds of the mounted weapon sank deep through thick muscle, cutting down several of the monsters where they ran. Those creatures fell, feet entangled in their own intestines, to sprawl upon the road. Billy blew chunks of flesh away from the bodies of numerous others. One monster even lost an arm and stopped dead in its tracks to stare at the blood jetting from where the limb had once been attached. Resistance was useless though; there were just too many of the damn things.