Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

In time, after struggling against the heat, the voracious insects, and the nearly impenetrable vegetation, they made the summit just as the hazy setting sun bathed it in a red firelight glow. They stood just inside the jungle’s crown, catching their breath, attempting to calm their racing hearts.

The flat mountaintop was oddly devoid of vegetation, with one exception. Near the center of what looked like an open field, a single huge tree stood like a lonely sentinel. Unlike its brethren in the jungle below the summit line, here the tree was not required to stretch upward for life-giving sunlight, but instead could expand outward — and it had. This tree had branched out low on the trunk, and often, creating the appearance of a gigantic bush.

As Team Python cautiously entered the courtyard, the reason there was no plant life clogging the peak became clear. Sometime in the temple’s long history, the priests had meticulously paved the area with large flat stones, leaving only the cracks between each slab to foster the sparse plant life, which turned out to be mostly stunted weeds. At the far end of this manmade clearing at the mountain’s summit squatted the temple itself, its columns and crumbling walls bound with twisting vines. The stone walls themselves were stained green with moss.

Carter’s nerves didn’t keep him from wondering how in goddamn hell those flat stone slabs, each of them the size and thickness of a king-size bed, had been transported up the mountain. It hadn’t been helicopters, as the paving was clearly hundreds of years old.

Kane kicked at a weed poking up from between the massive stones. “Looks like an NVA stronghold to me,” he said sarcastically.

“Stay frosty,” Carter ordered. “We’ve already lost four men on this mission.”

“They probably realized we were out of our minds and ditched us.”

“That’s enough, Kane.” Carter motioned his remaining team members into flanking positions. Even though the temple seemed abandoned, he wasn’t taking any chances.

After the others had repositioned themselves, Carter moved forward in a crouch and took a sheltered position behind that strange single tree. McBride and Kane stayed near the jungle cover on either side of the courtyard.

Carter poked his head around the tree’s bulk and stared into the shadows inside the abandoned temple. It certainly didn’t look occupied. At least not for the last hundred years. He motioned his men forward until they had flanked the building’s entrance. Then Carter moved forward, his gun muzzle trained on the darkened doorway. The three soldiers came together and, with his RPD still aimed at the shadows, Carter made a motion and Kane stepped up through wall-rubble and entered the temple. The darkness swallowed him as if he had never been there at all. McBride followed him and duly disappeared, fading into the darkness. Carter brought up the rear.

Carter’s eyes took a few moments to adjust to the low light. He cursed himself for forgetting to try the night vision gear, but he figured it wouldn’t have worked. Slowly details became clear. The temple was destroyed. Half the roof had caved in and a matting of vines had thatched the hole like a chaotic spider’s web. Shade-craving plants had grown between the indoor stones as tenaciously as their sun-loving kin in the courtyard. It was obvious that no one had called this place home in an impossibly long time. Not home or temple or even shelter.

The mission was a bust. Carter had to wonder for the hundredth time about the intel on this one. Or had Pearson, the DOD’s favorite spook, been playing them all along for some twisted voodoo experiment?

He lowered his rucksack to the stone floor.

“All right, fuck this, I’m calling in an extraction,” he said.

Carter’s voice echoed in the empty shrine.

“Hey, Kane. Mac? Hey, where the hell are you guys?”

He whirled, his gun trembling in his hands. Suddenly it was so heavy he wanted to drop it. He lowered the muzzle and shuffled around the floor, on which the moist remnants of dead leaves clung, forming a mucky slurry.

Hell, there aren’t even any footprints outside of mine .

How could it be?

“ Kane! McBride! ”

He stumbled back out into the gloaming. Night was settling in quickly, and the crimson sky had turned a deep purple, like a bruise on the universe.

And he was alone.

“Kane! Mac!”

Carter walked the perimeter of the courtyard in jagged steps, calling out to his missing men. An increasingly loud chorus of insects, nocturnal birds, and animals answered him from the edge of the flat mountain, where the jungle resumed its dominance, but there was no other answer.

The shock of his complete isolation shot a sudden chill through him, and he shivered like a man with the ague. He turned in a staggering circle, aiming his RPD at the phantoms. The machine gun was heavy again, and the muzzle drooped as his muscles could no longer hold it upright. He dropped the gun with a clatter that echoed loudly and drove birds from their perches and caused something else to rustle in the thick vegetation.

If this was the enemy, he was now unarmed.

“Mac?” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Kane?”

The jungle fell abnormally silent, as if it were also listening for a response. Paranoia washed over him in a sudden wave. Carter felt the eyes on him, watching. But it didn’t feel like a person hiding behind the tree line observing him, but more like the jungle itself was just a reflection and behind the mirrored glass something scrutinized his every move.

He stumbled back from the jungle’s edge and into the temple proper, dug the radio from his sack, and called for a Huey slick. When his trembling finger released the chunky push-to-talk button, static was the only reply.

Static and something… something he couldn’t define.

A sudden gentle breeze stirred the clearing and behind him Carter heard a tinkling sound, like muffled windchimes and light creaking in the one tree’s branches, and something else…

It was a child, laughing .

He spun around.

It took a long moment to register, but the bush-like tree in the courtyard had changed. All of its leaves had fallen to the stones below, where the breeze stirred them in tiny circles. They had been replaced on the bare branches by dog tags, thousands or maybe millions of them, jingling in the wind.

Carter blinked rapidly. Suspended from two of the thicker branches were Kane and Mac, hanging by their necks, vines wrapped around them. Their eyes were bloody holes.

Stumbling forward in a trance, he tripped over his abandoned RPD, landed on his knees and barely felt the pain.

He looked up, blinking again. Now he could see the bodies of the Montagnards suspended in the same way.

He cried out, a single strangled scream that died before it had completely escaped his throat.

Beneath the tree, he saw a girl dressed in a chang-ao sitting on the back of a huge black tortoise. She was giggling, one hand almost concealing her childish smile. Carter was transfixed by her as the tortoise slowly ambled forward, scraping over the stones. The girl’s eyes seemed to glow with white light.

Though he didn’t initially notice, the tortoise somehow transformed into a crane and flew into the night sky with the child still on its back.

Carter watched them soar upward, the white feathers of the bird becoming brighter and brighter until he had to shield his eyes from the light. And he felt its wings beat down with hurricane force winds that blew through the tree and made the tags jingle.

Then the crane was gone, replaced by a bigger bird, a Huey gunship — its cold spotlight glaring down on Carter like a single cyclopean eye. It took him into its body.