Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

Mick felt alienated.

Alone.

Angry.

So bloody angry .

This wasn’t how things were supposed to have been. He had wanted to follow his dad into the Paras ever since he was a nipper. Now he was here, and determined to do the memory of his dad proud. His old man had copped a bullet in Belfast just two days before the withdrawal. Dumb luck shot for the IRA bastard pulling the trigger. Shit out of luck for his dad. That had brought it home to him. This wasn’t a fuck-about job for numbnuts. People died. This was a job for professionals. And this bunch of pillocks were making a mockery of everything he believed in.

The anger frothed in his brain, setting his heart pounding and his teeth on edge. Just at the limit of his senses, he could almost hear his dad’s voice whispering: “They’re laughing at you, son. At me. At the Regiment …”

Anger. So much anger. Choking, vomit-inducing anger.

A boiling, churning rage that turned his guts into knots and made his throat tighten. An anger so utterly consuming it made him want to let loose a primal scream, tear his clothes from his body and bludgeon every one of those pathetic dick-cheeses who had the bloody nerve to call themselves his ‘oppos’ to death with his bare hands.

It was the same kind of anger he’d felt when he’d walked into a pock-marked mud-brick building in Helmund and found it littered with the bodies of dead children. All girls. The local schoolteacher had had the audacity to teach little girls to read. The Taliban had disagreed with that policy. They didn’t make particularly good school governors. And they’d disagreed by using AK47s on the helpless children and their teachers. They’d spared the boys.

Jones had felt his heart break as he listened to the tortured wailing of children, terrified and alone. Vomit on the floor, shit and piss everywhere. They’d got the all clear to go in after an ATO had dealt with an IED strapped to the doorframe. Finally, they’d managed to get the little boys out, but it was too late for the eleven girls. A pile of bodies lay in a lake of blood. But then, a tiny, filthy finger had twitched, causing three fully-grown and battle-hardened men to jump out of their skins. They’d scrabbled to dig the child out from underneath the bodies of the dead, but as Jones had scooped her up in his arms, she’d gasped a final death rattle and fallen limp in his arms. That rasping, final breath had echoed in Jones’ mind for months afterwards.

That was an understandable trigger for that eyeball-aching rage that descended. But why was the flippancy of a few newbies causing him to feel the same way? Was it because they were belittling the seriousness of what was out there? Or had he brought some of the war back home with him?

Now it seemed the little girl’s death rattle was surrounding him on Salisbury Plain, as if the ghost of that child had followed him thousands of miles from that sad little grave in Helmund Province.

He looked up again at the Stones. They seemed to shimmer, resonating that gasping, rasping noise of a dying child’s last breath back at him, but intensifying and amplifying it a thousand-fold.

Briefly he tried to get back control. For a split second he knew that he was having the mother of all flashbacks. No. Not now. Not fucking now ! He was on night manoeuvres with those nutjobs from Hereford after them, babysitting a bunch of newbies who didn’t know their arses from their elbows. Not fucking now, for Christ’s sake! Not now! He needed to focus. Jones shook his head, trying to clear the fog of the flashback; getting the images of dead children out of his mind. These little shits might be newbies, but the last thing they needed was their UC going fruitloops on them in the middle of a night exercise.

But every time he looked at the Stones, the rage seemed to intensify. He stared at them, mesmerised. They filled his world with a white-hot fury that flooded his brain with adrenaline. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears. The confusion of images started to thin out and his focus turned to Gary Cox.

His smirking face.

His smart-arse one liners.

His total disrespect for the chain of command.

Mick’s consciousness started to shift. He couldn’t focus on the mission. All he could think about was what he’d like to do to that son of a bitch.

A resonant hum seemed to be punching and pulsating through his skull, making his brain vibrate, and sending savage images cascading through his mind. Images that were so real, so foul, so gloriously violent …

A pile of bodies, contorted and soaked in blood. That strange pulsating movement underneath the surface of the skin as the maggots started to do their work. His detached consciousness walked through the carnage, seeing through unfamiliar eyes. A sense of hunger filled him — a five thousand-year-old hunger that demanded to be sated…

He would stand up. He’d walk over to Cox, as silent and as unfeeling as the Sarsen Stones that stood silently on the skyline. He’d stand over him, examining his victim, savouring the rising smell of fear and uncertainty that tainted the air like acrid smoke. He’d reach down, slicing the cloth of Cox’s jacket aside with his knife. Clawing his fingers, he’d force them through the soft, yielding skin, sinking through flesh, pushing aside the other organs — they could be spread at the feet of the stones later for the ravens to dine upon.

He’d ignore the screaming, the frantic and futile grabs by his victim at his wrist as his hand sunk deeper into the man’s chest. He’d feel the pulsating, throbbing heart, pumping furiously, as if it knew it was about to be torn from the warm safety of the body.

His fingers would close around the pump and slowly, agonisingly slowly, he would tear out Cox’s beating heart and hold it up, blood dripping between his fingers, paying no attention to the pathetic bastard’s pleas for mercy and blood-frothed gurgles as he died.

He’d lick the still warm heart, letting the blood and fluid coat his tongue, savouring its deliciousness, He’d take a bite and swallow, letting the hot lump of tissue slide down his throat, the coppery flavour filling his mouth, giving him strength, vigour, power .

Then he would crush what was left of the organ between his fingers, amused by the sheer fragility of the soft muscle tissue as he turned what was the most precious of all organs into a useless mush of bloody pulp.

The images were so real.

Was he actually doing it?

Or was it some kind of horrific, waking nightmare?

No. Not horrific.

Sensual.

Powerful .

God, the rush of power he would feel would be unlike anything he’d ever experienced! He was getting a feeling of sexual arousal as the images in his mind became more and more vile. He could feel a pressure building behind his eyeballs and screwed his lids tight shut, fearful that they’d pop out like a couple of ping-pong balls shot out of a Thai whore’s fanny…

“Movement! On the left!” Jonno let out a hoarse whisper.

Mick’s eyes snapped open and he swivelled around. Cox was still very much alive, his beating heart still firmly ensconced in his chest. Mick battled as hard as he could not to puke like a drunken teenager, swallowing back the mouthful of vomit that threatened to spew out.

What the fuck just happened?

He fought back against his body’s gag reflex and tried desperately to snap himself back into the here and now. Sweat poured down the back of his neck, even though the wind was icy cold and the temperature was nudging the ‘brass monkey’ zone.

Barrack-room banter was instantly forgotten. Any second now a couple of flash-bangs followed by a beating of epic proportions would descend on their heads like a huge, painful pile of SAS-shaped crap. The Hereford crew had a tendency to forget they were on ‘exercise’ and go in hard and fast. Not surprising, really. It’s what they were trained to do. Trouble was, sometimes they forgot that the ordinary squaddies from 2Para were on the same damn side as they were.