Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

Crowley was next, moving past him with no sign of a weapon in his hands and that mad grin of his spreading across his face.

His hearing was coming back enough that he heard the words from the smiling man’s mouth. “What are they, Mister Slate?”

The gaunt man shook his head. “No idea, Mister Crowley, but I believe they are connected to whatever is drawing me here.”

One of the things, too thin and too tall and reaching for a private who was screaming and staring down at the stump where his hand had been, turned its attention to the man named Slate and let out a sound like a cat hissing, if that cat was the size of a bear.

Crowley stepped around the gaunt one and blocked the oversized hand that reached for the albino. He struck hard enough that the nearly-skeletal thing reared back in shock. It was almost twice as tall as a man and had a face that was stretched and thin and filled with teeth the size of knives.

“No. I don’t think you want to do that.” Crowley kept smiling.

Folsom shook off his confusion and decided to handle the matter. The revolver kicked when he pulled the trigger and he watched the left half of the thing’s neck explode in a gout of crimson that splashed both of the men.

Slate flinched as the thing screamed and clutched at the wound. That made Folsom feel a little better about his own fear.

Crowley stepped in closer and kicked the spindly leg of the thing with the heel of his boot. Bones snapped and the ghostly white demon fell as surely as if struck by an axe.

Folsom felt something touch his leg, and almost shrieked. He looked down and aimed his Colt at the source of whatever was touching him. It was Song. Half of the Chinaman’s face had been carved into bloody red trenches and his eye was missing. He clutched at Folsom’s pant leg and let out a sound. And then he died.

Folsom shook his head, angrier at the loss of the heathen than he would have ever expected. “That’s enough of this madness!” he roared, and all around him the soldiers stopped their panic, or at least calmed it down. They were soldiers and they were used to combat. What they needed, what they always needed, was someone to lead them. “Kill these damned things!”

To make his point he aimed at the next of the things close enough for him to hit, and fired. The shot went astray and only clipped one overly large ear on the beast. When it looked at him, really looked at him, Folsom knew he’d made a horrible mistake. He’d have apologized if he could have found the words, but it was on him far too quickly. Folsom let out a yelp as clawed fingers ripped into his coat and the beast lifted him into the air, baring impossible teeth and roaring directly into his face.

Folsom aimed his weapon and fired, and nothing at all happened.

He tried again.

Nothing.

“Well, damn.” It was all he could think to say.

The captain was staring at his death, and Crowley was tempted to let it take him. As a boy he’d been a scared, confused little thing. As a man he smacked of too much cocky attitude and too little common sense. Worse, he was actually making himself useful. It was easier to ignore men who were useless and cocky about it.

Still, at the moment there were other considerations, like the damned things chewing their way through a dozen soldiers. They were monsters, yes, but nothing he’d ever seen before. They did not reek of the demons he was used to, and they were not spirits in any sense he was familiar with.

When he’d come to the New World he’d done so to study these exact sorts of creatures. There had been a definite excitement in finding new and interesting beings in a land he had never been to before.

That excitement had not changed. Adding to it was the sheer variety of shapes that these creatures took. They were, he had no doubt, of similar ilk. They had to be.

Even things that ran in packs seldom liked to mingle with different creatures.

That was the part that made him smile.

Crowley saw Lucas Slate grab the thing holding the captain and haul it backward by the scruff of its bullish neck. It let out a yowlp of surprise and so did the Cavalryman. The good news for the captain was that it let go of him. That was also the bad news for Slate. The thing he was holding onto moved like a sack of cats held over a roaring fire. It twisted and whipped its arms in wide arcs and screeched as it turned on Crowley’s companion, and both of them stumbled back and fell.

Before Crowley could get to them, they were lost in the crush of people.

A soldier aimed for the area where they’d fallen and Crowley knocked him aside, throwing off his aim as he waded into the crush of flesh. People moved and thrashed and pushed in and out of his view. Crowley ignored them all, save to push them aside. Somewhere ahead of him, not but a few feet to be sure, but in the press of struggling bodies it might well have been miles, his companion was down on the ground and fighting.

When the bullish thing flew through the air, it was as limp as a sack of horse dung. The thing trailed blood, and as it rose into the air, Lucas Slate stood, covered in the same crimson stains and looking truly enraged.

His shirt had been torn apart and deep cuts ran along the left side of his muscular chest. Those cuts bled, a reminder that he was still at least partially human despite his appearance.

Slate looked around and stooped long enough to grab his fool hat from the ground. That hat had seen better days and likely would have been thrown away by most people, but the battered old thing with its dusty band and the broken feathers sticking from the same went back on Slate’s head before he looked around and the rage faded from his expression.

It was a calmer expression he wore as he reached for his Navy revolvers and started aiming.

Crowley had the good sense to stay well away from the man as he pulled the triggers. The first bullet blew a hole through a white, scaly thing with too many eyes, and also took the hand from one of the Cavalry. The creature flopped to the ground and twitched. The soldier fell to his knees and screamed. By the time those two things had occurred, Slate had turned his attention to the next target and fired with that same dead expression on his face. Boom! The creature fell. Slate’s mouth twisted into a feral snarl and he fired again. The bullets from his weapon were a reminder that death could be sudden and violent. Another explosive noise and the Indians and the soldiers alike were quickly backing away from Slate. He stood taller than any of them and he looked like the Grim Reaper ready for the harvest. The only things that didn’t run were the white nightmares around them. They should have fled but it seemed beyond them to reason that well. Instead they charged toward Slate and he fired again and again until the last of them fell at his feet.

Through it all, Jonathan Crowley watched with his eyes narrowed to slits and a grin frozen in place.

When the final beast had fallen, Lucas Slate looked at Captain Folsom and shook his head. “I do not currently feel inclined to go with you for trial.” Both of the weapons were still in his hands and the barrels of the Navy six-shooters were smoking in the cold air.

Folsom stared at the spectre before him for ten heartbeats without responding and then finally he said, “Currently, I do not feel much inclined to argue the matter, sir. We have all of us had a day already.”

“Indeed.”

Folsom called for his men to gather the dead and the wounded. His voice was weaker than before and his hands shook. That did not make him a coward in Crowley’s eyes. It merely made him human.

He rather envied the soldier that.

Folsom sat in his newly-appropriated office in town. He thought about the day’s events. All told, if you counted the Chinaman — and he did — he had lost seven men, and the number of wounded was higher still.