Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

Lund, Samuel.

Or Carter, Jacob?

“Are you all right, Carter?” Kane was grabbing his shoulder.

Carter looked up and saw the mantis flit away. He shook his head, trying to clear it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Well, check it out, you looked like there was nobody home for a minute there, know what I mean?” Kane’s brilliant blue eyes were set in a piercing stare.

Carter pushed Kane’s hand away. “I said I’m fine. Where the hell are Jek and Phut One? We need to get this show on the road. I want us to be up there while there’s still light.” He took another tug from the canteen, his hand trembling.

As if on cue, the two Yards burst through the vegetation. Phut’s arm was draped over Jek’s shoulder, his eyes wide and staring. All the color seemed to have drained from him. Jek was holding his kinsman upright.

“What the hell happened?” Carter demanded.

Before Jek could answer, Phut stammered and spit out something in his dialect.

Carter shook his head; he didn’t speak the indigenous lingo. It all sounded like gibberish to him. The Yards spoke halting English, enough to be understood by their American allies, so he had no idea why this one was trying his patience. Carter’s nerves already frayed, he felt ready to explode. The men sensed his anger and eyed each other silently.

Jek spoke, keeping Carter from losing his shit. “He say that he see his mother… out there, in the jungle.”

Carter shook his head, confused. He couldn’t even form a sentence through his frustration. His hands and feet tingled.

“How the fuck is that even possible?” Kane asked.

“It is not,” said Jek with his thick accent. “His mother is dead, many year.”

Jek helped settle his countryman on the ground. Phut practically collapsed into a shaking heap, curling into himself in a semi-fetal position. He cried helplessly.

“Did you see someone? ” Carter asked, “Anyone? Something?”

Jek shook his head, his face sober.

“Kane, take Mock and have a look around. Mac, hang with me.”

Kane sighed, but followed the orders.

Carter reached into his pocket. His heart stopped beating for a painful moment.

The tags he had held there a minute before were now gone.

He shook his head to dispel the mounting haze.

What the hell is going on?

Pearson . That son of a bitch spooky cocksucker had done something to them. Had to have fucked with them somehow.

Maybe he’d slipped something funny into their Dapsone… maybe some kind of hallucinogen? Or maybe they’d sprayed it in the air before inserting the team? Maybe there was another team out here, watching them, seeing what happened, judging how they reacted?

Typical DOD voodoo shit .

Who knew what the bastards were up to here in these dense jungle locations.

Carter rubbed his temples. He asked Jek, “Is he gonna be all right?” He jerked his head at Phut One.

“Yah, he will be ho-kay,” Jek answered, nodding too rapidly. Then the Yard knelt by his shaken compatriot, talking quietly in their Bahnar language.

A chill raced through Carter; he had a bad feeling about this op. He took one more swig from his canteen before stowing it back in his rucksack as he waited for Kane and Mock to return from their sweep. Around him the jungle was teeming. Life was so thick here you couldn’t move without it touching you, breathing on you, leaning on you. Carter had learned to ignore most of it because the inability to tell the difference between a bead of sweat running down the back of your neck and a poisonous spider crawling down the collar of your shirt could drive a guy nuts. But today he couldn’t seem to blot it out. He was having trouble sorting out the important information from the trivial. His nerves seemed on edge while his senses felt dulled.

Today it all seemed new, and Carter was overloading.

He sensed it, but couldn’t stop it.

Something rustled in the undergrowth. Carter crouched and trained his machine gun on the movement. He relaxed his finger off the trigger. It was Kane and Mock, breaking quietly through the thick growth.

“Nothin’ out there, Sarge,” Kane said, disgusted. “And I mean nothing. No trace of Charlie whatsoever. No footpaths, no huts, no sign of anyone even somewhat civilized,” and with a sideways glance at Phut One and Jek, “…or their mothers.”

“All right then, let’s move out,” said Carter.

“Move out to where?”

“We’re going to the top of this mountain.”

“There’s nothing out here, man. We’re literally in the middle of nowhere.”

“Then it’ll be like a vacation, right?”

They left the riverbank and resumed their ascent. The higher they moved the more hostile the growth became, broad leaves became saw blades, stems seemed encrusted with nasty barbed thorns, and tangled vines grew into impenetrable walls of vegetation. Biting and stinging insects seemed to grow in both size and number. It was as if the land itself were trying to dissuade the team; keep them from completing their mission.

Ahead, Kane signaled Carter: get down . Carter turned to wave down Mock, who was now taking up the rear in lieu of Phut One, but he could see no trace of him. He scrutinized the underbrush, but nothing moved. Leaves and branches hung motionless. Carter was about to retrace his steps when a small stone bounced off his shoulder. He jerked, swiveling the RPD’s muzzle around, his finger brushing the trigger.

Kane, trying to get his attention down the path they’d made .

Jesus .

Kane and McBride were conferring. They beckoned Carter.

“What’s going on?” Carter whispered, approaching cautiously at a crouch.

“I don’t know,” McBride said, “I–I lost the rest of the team.”

“ What? ”

“I don’t know where they went, Sarge. I was right behind Phut. He was right there…” McBride motioned with his hand, “and then he was just gone .”

Carter rose up from his crouch, and stood looking over his shoulder where Mock should have been. The other two special ops soldiers followed suit.

“It was like… like the jungle just swallowed them,” McBride mumbled, almost in a daze. Trying to convince himself.

“What are we gonna do, Carter?” Kane grabbed him by the elbow. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Carter. “We’re gonna finish the mission.”

He wasn’t fine though, was he?

“No really, check it — it’s like you’re out of it today.”

“I’m fine , Kane! Let’s get to the top of the fuckin’ mountain and get the hell out of here. Sound like a plan to you?”

He realized he’d turned the RPD to face them, then turned it away again.

“What about the Yards?” McBride was jittery, his eyes searching, never still.

“We’ll have to report them missing, but first we need to accomplish what we were sent out here to accomplish.”

“Which is?”

“Look,” said Kane, “something’s seriously fucked here.”

“I know, I agree. But the top of this mountain is gonna be our best extraction point if we can’t make the scheduled rendezvous anyway. Can’t go back down. We might as well hightail it up there. I don’t like it either. As for the Yards… I don’t have an answer. I… I have some theories. Nothin’ I’d say out loud in sane company. Not that you guys are sane.”

McBride and Kane looked each other up and down and nodded. Reluctantly.

“We all right, then?” Carter asked. “Let’s head out. Mac, take point.”

Nervous and twitchy, fingers on triggers, the three remaining members of RT Python continued their climb, McBride in the lead.