Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

“Sarge! Jesus Christ! Sarge!”

The shock sent Jones’ brain into shutdown mode. His oppo’s words became muffled and distant, as if Cox was shouting at him from the opposite side of a parade ground. He wanted to tell Cox that he was okay, but that was a bloody lie. He quite clearly wasn’t. And Cox’s obvious inability to function under extreme stress was starting to send the younger man spinning towards full-on hysteria. Well, tough titties, kiddo. Your sergeant’s down. It’s up to you, now. It’s called ‘teamwork’, fella… Jones started to embrace the unconsciousness that kept threatening to overwhelm him…

Cox cradled Jones’ head, instinctively pressing two fingers to his neck to check his pulse. He felt about a hair’s breadth away from total pissing your pants and crying for your mummy meltdown. He held Jones in his arms, trying to comprehend what had just happened and to shut out the crushing fear that was filling him. He was not normally that bothered by the dark or enclosed spaces — he’d always believed that they were phobias only pussies got. But right now those pussy phobias seemed to contain other, more threatening horrors. Where were the bodies that had produced the copious amount of corpse fluids that turned the floor into a slime-covered, foetid skating rink? Why had his sergeant just been thrown across the chamber after touching the foot of the Sarsen Stone?

And was his terrified imagination playing twisted tricks on him, or did a part of the blackness have a distinctly bipedal form?

He turned his headtorch towards the spot, expecting the beam to light up a human form; please God, perhaps one of the 22 ndwho’d yomped down the hole and was going to pull them to safety.

There was nothing there. The shadow form had slid sideways to just beyond the edge of the beam, away from the light. Still cradling the drooling, semi-conscious Jones in his arms, Cox swivelled his head, sending the torchlight scampering across the stones. No matter where he looked, that bipedal form was always just out of the path of the beam.

His headtorch flickered and dimmed. “Oh, no, no, No ! Shit! C’mon, do not do this!” He batted the side of the torch, willing the beam to power up again, but the torch suddenly winked out. The chamber was plunged into darkness. But at last a shred of his training kicked in as Cox remembered his NVGs perched on his helmet. He flicked them down and suddenly looked out into an eerie, vivid green chamber.

Glancing down, he could see the prone body of Jones, still shaking and convulsing. “S’alright, Sarge, you’re gonna be fine. Take it easy.” Cox took a deep breath and tried to stop his own hands from shaking so violently, afraid he’d drop Jones’ head and shoulders back down into the slime that covered the floor. Cox shifted his weight and positioned his thigh underneath Jones’ shoulders, keeping the man’s head and neck clear of the ooze. “Easy, Sarge. Easy. I’m gonna get you out of here, okay?” Cox frantically scanned the chamber. It was huge — far bigger than the limited glow of the headtorches had revealed. The night vision goggles allowed him to see details, but still there was something just at the edge of his peripheral vision — something that seemed to be taunting him in a sick game of Marco Polo. Wherever he looked in the chamber he could sense it…

He looked down again at Jones. “Sarge, c’mon, stay with me!” He slapped Jones’ face gently, garnering a moan in response. “Sarge, hey, Sarge…” Cox looked up — straight into the wild, staring eyes of a massive figure. “Jesus Christ!”

He scuttled backwards, ignoring the crack as Jones’ head hit the hard stone floor and propelled himself away from the figure. Gun! Gun! Grab your gun! He swung the SA80 up, and then realised that it would probably be more effective as a club. This was not a live ammo exercise. It was a ‘shit and thunder’ romp across the Wiltshire countryside, with plenty of flash-bangs, noise and piss and not much else. The SA80’s magazine was full of blanks, which made it about as much use as chucking confetti at a seven-foot tall… what?

What the actual fuck was it?

Human? Hell no, he’d never seen anyone that big. And even though it was showing up in his goggles, it seemed to have an almost ethereal quality, as if it was trying to exist in two alternative dimensions at once. Here, and as long as you were looking directly at it, the figure appeared solid. But glance at it out of the corner of your eye and it flitted in and out of phase. He also felt wave after wave of hatred coming from the thing, slamming into him like the Atlantic on spin cycle. This fucker was majorly pissed off, and it seemed majorly pissed off at Jones in particular. It loomed over the prone man, a snarl contorting what would otherwise pass as a face. Broken and rotting teeth dripped pus and drool, and the massive muscles on its arms and shoulders flexed.

Moving faster than anything that size had a right to, its right arm shot down towards Jones and taloned fingers slashed at the front of his MTP camouflage jacket, shredding it into ribbons. Jones screamed as the claws sliced into his flesh.

Cox’s scream matched Jones’, only his was one of fury at what this thing was doing to his sergeant. “ No! ” Cox scrabbled to his feet and fumbled for his bayonet, willing his shaking fingers to do what they were told. The bayonet clicked and locked into place. He picked up every ounce of courage he had left and charged at the creature.

He got three steps, tops.

The thing looked up, flicked a hand and Cox was sent spinning across the chamber by an invisible force and slammed into the wall. The creature’s hand stayed outstretched towards Cox, and he slowly raised it, as if it were conducting some demonic orchestra to a crescendo. As he did, Cox slid painfully up the wall, pinned to the rough stone and unable to break free. The stone slabs jarred against his vertebrae and no matter how hard he struggled, he could only watch, helpless, as the creature turned its attention back to the whimpering form of Jones…

Jones stared up into the eyes of a creature that had no fucking right to exist. Not here. Not anywhere. The thing snorted then pressed its palm against Jones’ forehead. Instantly, Jones was engulfed in a wave of flashing images bursting through his brain. The stinking piles of corpses he’d seen in that slaughterhouse; the dead child, expiring in his arms, her fingers grasping at his hand in a vain attempt to hang on to life; his mate Chris, when that IED had taken his legs off at the knees and blown the shreds of the poor bastard’s skin and muscle tissue into Jones' face. Foul, tainted images of combat in a distant land, etched into his soul and twisting like rotting fibres in his mind. He wept, crying for everything he’d suffered.

Then new images came. More savage, more horrific than he’d imagined possible. This place, filled with the screams of the dying as a circle of hazy figures chanted incessantly, calling to the darkest god of the Stones — Aeron, the Celtic god of slaughter. Images of a war waged by the real druids against the Roman Legions filled Jones’ mind. He saw them hunting Aeron in the Welsh Preseli Hills, capturing the God using trickery and guile, bringing him back here and entombing him in the bluestones that were erected at the entrance of this portal to the Underworld. Here, on the open Plains, Legionnaires were lured to their doom, tumbling into the cavern as its roof gave way and they were deposited at the feet of a starving, angry god. A god who revelled in slaughter. A god who could sense the mind of a soldier and lure him to this place, calling him with images of unimaginable savagery and a lust for power.