Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

“I’ll take my chances,” Grant said.

Paulson coughed, and blood wet his lips. “No, I don’t think you will…” Then he slumped forward, silent.

Grant grabbed Paulson’s canteen. The man would not need it anymore. He drank until his thirst was slacked. Then Grant grabbed the saber sticking out of the Thunderbird.

He had a lot of work to do…

Grant rode all day with the carcass of the thunderbird split among the horses of Paulson, Webster and Breckenridge. He pushed the animals as hard as he could, sometimes seeing ominous dust clouds on the horizon and crossing too many fresh Indian trails. It wouldn’t do to get killed now, not when he was on his way into the history books. Buttons cascaded through Grant’s mind. No petroglyph animals this time, just dollar signs.

Paulson’s words came back to Grant.

What does it profit a man if he gains the world and loses his soul?

Grant rubbed his arm where the Thunderbird had snatched him. The flesh had turned an ugly purple. If one looked into the bruise long enough, it almost looked like it contained an answer to that question. Grant looked away before he could make it out. Maybe such questions would be relevant in the future, but not for a long, long time.

Eventually, Grant topped a hill and spotted sanctuary. The column of horse soldiers was long and formidable. Plus, such troopers were an eclectic bunch. Surely, a taxidermist was among their number…

Smiling, Grant sang a verse of his own from Gary Owen .

“In the fighting Seventh’s the place for me; it’s the cream of the cavalry; no other regiment can ever claim; its pride, honor, glory and undying fame…”

Finishing the song, Grant kicked his spurs, and Cerberus carried him into the midst of the Seventh Cavalry — as General George Armstrong Custer led them all toward Little Bighorn…

A huge, sickly-yellow moon hung over Salisbury Plain. This was no glorious, golden ‘Hunter’s Moon’, resplendent in the heavens and, thanks to an optical illusion of cosmic proportions, apparently thousands of miles closer than it would be normally. This wasn’t a moon worthy of salutation by a bunch of druids pratting around in white sheets. This was a greasy yellow orb, producing a phosphorescent glow that made healthy plants look diseased and wasted, and trees on the skyline take on the appearance of twisted, deformed skeletons.

The Stones loomed on the horizon like silent sentinels — guardians of a landscape saturated in legend, death, war, and blood. At night, shadows clustered around the mighty Sarsen obelisks like the spectral fingers of long-dead ancestors who had raised them up thousands of years before, caressing the pits and ruts on the weathered surface. Stonehenge was a monument to man’s ingenuity, a testament to his ability to create something astonishing, and a demonstration of his fear of what terrible reprisals the Gods might rain down upon the land and tribe if homage wasn’t forthcoming, usually in the form of blood sacrifices.

Many theories had been bandied about concerning the Stones.

They were a temple.

A meeting place.

A shrine for the dead.

A celebration of the solstices.

The truth? Nobody really knew. So the new age brigade and the ‘Druids’ laid claim to the place, sanitising it and diluting its majesty with drumming, chanting and a shit-load of hugging and love-ins. They conveniently airbrushed out the bloodier facet of the Stones’ past in this hippy-trippy interpretation. A brutal, savage past. Just like the unforgiving landscape, these Stones didn’t care if you sang to them, drummed at their feet or laid out the entrails and still-beating heart of a human sacrifice on the ground to please the Gods. They were stone. They were immortal — reminders of a time of blood.

Sergeant Mick Jones of Her Majesty’s own arse-kicking bastards, 2Para, stared at them and sniffed, singularly unimpressed. Lumps of rock. Admittedly, bloody big lumps of rock, but nevertheless, just lumps of rock. But there was something odd about them, even from this distance. He frowned and muttered to himself quietly. “Ya know? I swear them buggers look bigger in the dark.”

“Yeah. That’s what he says about his cock.” Snorts of laughter in the darkness were followed by a sharp rebut.

Mick rounded on the nearest crouched figure and snarled. “Cox, shut your damn mouth and keep your eyes open!”

“Oh, lighten up, for Christ’s sake! It’s an exercise, Sarge! Seriously, how the holy hell did you actually manage to get through the obstacle course during basic with that stick jammed up your arse?”

“Daft bastard wants to be a Rupert, don’t ya, sweetheart? Trouble is, he couldn’t make the cut at Sandhurst.”

“Fuck off, Jonno.”

“That true then, Sarge?”

“Bollocks.”

“So that’s a yes, then?”

“Go fuck yourself!”

Gary Cox giggled. “Is that an order, sir? Because I know for a fact there’s a steaming hot little redhead in the pub we passed about half an hour ago. Just want to make sure I keep my pecker up for Queen and country, sah!” Cox ripped off a salute and the rest of the unit chuckled.

Mick Jones glowered at the gloomy hump he presumed was Private Gary Cox. “You know who’s playing the enemy, Cox? Those mad fuckers from Hereford. They’d probably take great delight in relieving you of your pecker and presenting it to Brenda as a trophy! I promise you son, they don’t know the meaning of the words down time.”

“Nor do you, you uptight twat.” The muttered comment came out of the darkness.

“Go fuck yourself with a cactus or something, Armstrong!”

Jones could practically hear Phil Armstrong’s eyes rolling in the dark, and wasn’t in the least surprised when the college-educated twat started getting all pedantic. “Cacti, you ignoramus. And cacti are not indigenous to Wiltshire. I could try go fucking myself with a stick of rhubarb or summat, if that would make you feel better about life in general?”

“Actually, you know Phil, as much as it pains me to say, he was correct. Cactus is the singular of cacti. Theoretically, you’d only need one cactus to go fuck yourself, not several.”

“How much rhubarb would you need?”

“ Wait , what? What is wrong with you people? ” Jones now had to get a particularly unpleasant mental image involving rhubarb out of his mind’s eye.

“A whole fucking crumble’s worth, mate. Goes limp quickly, see?” Jonno giggled like a schoolgirl.

“Just like Jonesy.” Cox’s reply was predictably caustic.

“Fuck off, Cox. And seriously? You’re weird, Jonno.”

“I’m not the one comparing rhubarb and cacti as sex toys. Now that’s weird.”

Jones lost his shit. “For the love of fuck will you lot belt up! Eyes open, mouths shut!”

An uneasy silence descended over the Unit. In the privacy of the darkness, Mick Jones glowered at the crouched figures, waiting for one of the smart-mouthed bastards to start up again. They were a bloody disgrace to the uniform. This wasn’t his first time out on the Plain leading a unit of wet-behind-the-ears rookies, but it was crystal that these little bastards had bugger-all respect for him or for the situation they were in. These weren’t serious soldiers. These were fuck-abouts. Why the hell they hadn’t joined the Territorials instead of the regulars, he’d never know.

Salisbury Plain could be a weird old place. You could get mazed out here. Turned around. The official term was ‘royally fucked up’.

The huge open sky could feel like it was pressing down on you, crushing the life out of your body and the air out of your lungs. The way the wind howled around the Stones sounded like children crying. The massive slabs seemed to tower three times higher at night, and there were rumours that the closer you got to the Stones, the more likely it was that your equipment would start going haywire. You needed to stay sharp. Alert. Focused.