Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers

He lay on his belly, his head and shoulders overhanging the bluff, trying to see into the black woods. It seemed to him that he heard women singing far off. Now and then, a patch of purple glistened in the darkness before him, a little flash from his mushroom.

There were people who claimed to have gone into the line on acid but he had never believed them.

He was not very high, not high at all, it seemed to him — but prone to small marginal hallucinations. He felt at home in the darkness.

After lying still for a while it occurred to him that he was losing time; he felt along the edge of the rock face for the handholds that were carved there and when he felt two of them, swung himself over the edge and started down.’ He lowered himself very slowly, his feet scurrying over the rock to find the next foothold. It was awkward and he was off balance. With each descending step, his weight more oppressed his grip.

He was three quarters of the way down when, he heard the first flutter — a second later a solid weight crashed into his chest, closing off breath and knocking him from his handhold. He landed with his ankles together and rolled over on his shoulder, lying still until his breath came back. When it came, he felt the wounds on his chest — there was blood on his shirt. A black shape whistled close over his head and disappeared into the trees; a bat he thought at first, then realized that it must have been an owl or a nighthawk, panicked bird, a freak, to the Japanese the worst of omens.

There was no trail where he was and he saw no light. He stumbled downward, making an unconscionable amount of noise.

He would be below them now. They would come down the trail to his left, Marge from the right. Acting on instinct, they would be able to intercept her where her trail joined the dirt road at a point he reckoned to be almost directly below him. He struck off through the woods again, wary of the drops and deadfalls he knew were all around him.

The women’s voices came to him again — they were faint but real enough. The Brotherhood’s women — singing in the village.

A little farther down, he saw a shape below him that made no sense. He slowed and stalked it, bringing his weapon up — when he saw what it was, he ducked and hurried off to the left, easing into steep hollow grown with ferns which he had made out just in time.

It was the pickup truck and through its window he could see the lighted end of a cigarette burning. Covered in ferns, he sought higher ground, then sat listening as hard as his concentration allowed. His frame arched from the fall but he was beginning to enjoy himself. The folly and complacency of the smoker in the truck were a great com fort to him.

I’m the little man in the boonies now, he thought

The thing would be to have one of their Sg mortars. He was conceiving a passionate hatred for the truck — its bulk and mass — and for the man who sat inside it.

The right side for a change.

Marge tried to make it like walking into the ocean, picturing herself a swimmer on a beach stepping into the tide. The image of ocean kept her almost calm; she clung to it.

All it could do, she assured herself was kill — there would be no need to talk to it. At intervals she shifted the package from arm to arm.

Where the grade of the trail eased, she switched off her light. The sky was moonlit but the moon itself invisible, sealed off by close hills. There was light enough for her to make out tree shapes and rocks along the trail. She heard singing but she had forgotten whether the voices were real or imaginary.

A sound in the woods on her right caused her to stop; the sound was like a shod footstep on metal with the creak of a steel hinge. She could smell gasoline. Turning round slowly, she saw against the dark trees the figure of a man in a broad-brimmed hat above on the trail. Oceanic comforts shattered; her body ached with fear.

A little farther on, she was certain that she had passed a second man who was standing just beside the trail. The man followed her, moving through the brush, level with her descent.

“Stop,” a voice whispered. She stopped.

“I have it,” she said softly.

“Shut up,” the voice whispered back. A whisper of authority, clearly enunciated.

The three of them stood in the darkness; for what seemed several full minutes neither of the men moved or spoke.

Hands took the package from her.

“Where is he?” she asked.

The figures before her swayed as the package passed between them.

“Right over there,” a man said.

“Where?”

“Just right down there,” the man’s voice told her. “Just ahead. Turn your light on.” She moved away from them and switched on the flash light; its beam probed among rocks and ferns. There was no one.

One of the men who had intercepted her stepped off the trail and a few moments later headlights flashed out of the darkness into which he had gone. He had set the package on the fender grid of a truck and was unwrapping the tape that bound it. The man in the Stetson was coming behind her, about ten paces back.

Ahead on the trail, in a clearing where it intersected the dirt road on which the truck was parked, she saw someone move out of the shadows. She hurried toward them.

“John?” she called.

In spongy darkness among ferns, they watched her light.

“It could turn out O.K.,” Smitty told Converse. His arm was thrown loosely, in a comradely fashion, around Con verse’s neck; in his other hand he held a large square pistol. He had passed the rifle to Danskin who was waiting in the brush behind them.

“I hope so,” Converse said. The fear of death had come back for him with darkness, a mindless craving for light. Danskin moved down with them, crouching on one knee.

“Here she comes. They got it.”

He stood up and went quickly across the trail.

“She brought it,” Converse said. “Don’t hurt her.”

“No, no,” Smitty told him earnestly. “No need, man.”

Marge’s light grew larger; he could see her bare legs and recognize the Ensenada sandals she wore. Smitty rose slowly, his hand resting on Converse’s shoulder. He had released the safety on his pistol and was leveling the weapon in Marge’s direction.

Converse heard her call to him..

He leaned back on his heels and prepared to jump. There was no force to uncoil, he would have to go on nerves, as always.

Antheil called up from the truck.

“Whoa now, folks! Just a minute here!”

Smitty paused in what Converse realized was the act of taking aim. Converse dived for where the gun might be seized and the hand that held it.

“Go, Marge,” he shouted.

“Go, Marge,” a laughing voice called. It was Danskin across the road. There was a rifle shot close by.

Smitty’s arm was like iron; he could not bend it. He looped his leg between Smitty’s legs, bent his knees, and hung on. The pistol went off twice as he turned his face from Smitty’s left-hand blows. As they wrestled, Converse heard to his astonishment a sound which he was certain might be heard in Vietnam and nowhere else — a pwock , like a steel cork popping from an empty metal drum, the sound of an M-70 grenade launcher firing its cartridge. In a moment a monstrous ball of fire swelled up under the trees down the hill from them.

He had been used to thinking of Smitty as a weak link and the man’s strength surprised him. His own was ground down — Smitty’s hand was shortly free. He turned to stare over his shoulder at the fire and then adjusted his grip on the gun while Converse, turtled on the ground, scurried backward in a panicking flail of arms and legs. Clawing at pine needles, trembling in every muscle, he covered up awaiting the shell — when the forest around them burst into pure white light, then darkened and glowed white again. Smitty froze, his eyes wild. Converse turned over, landed a kick below his knee, and lunged for the gun a second time. Desperately, they searched out each other’s hands — there was only skin.