POPCORN

by Victor Gischler

  More about the fairies later.

  What I saw on that beach, though, was a man’s man leading a bunch of soft boys into the jungle, not knowing what we might find there. None of us had ever been in a jungle before.

  The closest any had come was probably Villeponteaux, and only because he was from the Louisiana swamps.

  Of course, no one down there was trying to kill him when he went fishing for catfish.

  Five minutes. Five of the quietest, least anxious minutes any of us had had since the whole war started. But no one came out to greet us.

  The ease we felt sinking as soon as the Loot cleared his throat and said, “Let’s go get em.”

  III

  I would give everything I owned never to see a jungle again, but I see it every night when I sleep. All these years later and it’s the same dream. Jungle. Mud. Bugs like helicopters, one biting a kid so bad he swelled up like a balloon. Allergies.

  Choked to death as we stood watching, the medic and the loot slicing his neck up, breathing in the hole, trying to keep him breathing, but it was too late.

  Turned purple all over while his eyes were still flicking back and forth across ours faces. Like drowning on dry land.

  And we couldn’t turn away. We all watched him go.

  So that left me, the Loot, Villeponteaux, Fancy Mike (liked to keep his hair just right, liked his uniform clean), Jitters (we all could’ve been called “Jitters”, but him being scrawny, we could call him that and not feel so guilty), and a guy we called Horsecock, because, well, yeah.

  But I said we’d talk about the fairies later.

  A slog. The worst slog of my life, even up til now. Tree roots the size of a Buick, except covered with bugs that made sounds I’d never heard before.

  I swear some of them were speaking Japanese, too. The humidity, it was as if the sweat was in the air and you walked into it. Streams of it, from my scalp to my toes. More of it than water in my canteen.

  Vines that Jitters kept brushing against and then flinching away from, convinced they were alive and trying to wrap him up. We laughed at him, called him a weepy pussy, even though we felt exactly the same way.

  And then the booby trap impaled the Loot with twenty sharpened bamboo spears.

  Like an elephant-sized bear trap rising from the jungle floor on the left and right of the man, piercing straight through bone—the crunch was magnificently horrifying—and even through skull.

  He never made a sound, it was so fast. The trap stood upright for a moment before falling over sideways, tearing through vines and tree branches.

  We looked around, aimless kids in a jungle without a leader, until Horsecock said, “Is it me?”

  We thought about it, nodded at each other. “Depends on what your first order is.”

  “How about get the hell out of here and tell the brass we didn’t find the pricks?”

  So, yes, we all agreed that Horsecock was the best one to lead us the hell out of Hell.

  Which is about when we got lost and stumbled into the most awful spectacle I’d ever seen, even after seeing the Loot get killed. It was a clearing, a campsite. A fire going in the middle.

  Four men sat around the fire. Or at least that’s what it seemed like at first. Once we looked a little closer, smelled a little closer, and heard the buzzing of a million flies, the picture became much more clear. Three dead men propped up by sticks and vines like puppets.

  They were long dead, the gases having bloated them, split the skin, and let the jammy blood and bile run free from every orifice. Some limbs were missing…but the bones were nearby, tossed into a pile beside the fire, bits of meat left on them, like they’d been cooked and eaten.

  I can’t put what I smelled into words. We were all making choking noises, trying to hold back the inevitable.

  We all failed, of course, and that’s why it took us so long to realize.

  Because I said there were three dead men propped beside the fire, made to look as if they were still alive, still part of the conversation.

  All of them more U.S. uniforms. None of them looked like the dead Nips back on the beach.

  These were Americans. At first, we thought there were four dead men. In the middle of our collective puking, the fourth one decided to say, “Can’t you do that somewhere else? We’ve got to live here, fellas!”

  We were still retching when we heard it, and we freaked out because we were still full of sick streaming from our mouths and nose while trying to get our rifles aimed at whatever goddamned zombie son of a bitch was taunting us, but by the time we got our bearings and our sights on him, he was gone.

  I wondered if it was only my imagination, until I realized the others were wondering the same thing. We got scared. We moved closer, back to back…

  Villeponteaux whispered, “I think that’s one of them. The last one.”

  “The fuck? Did he kill his own guys?”

  A voice from above, in the trees, though we couldn’t place it. “My friends and I just want to be left alone! Go back where you came from!”

  Horsecock couldn’t help himself. “Your friends are dead!”

  A sharp whistle, and then Horsecock dropped to the jungle floor, convulsing, mouth foaming, a dart sticking out of his neck. Shit.

  Up to me, then, I supposed. “We’re the Navy! We’re here to take you and your friends home! The mission is over!” Then I tensed up, waiting for my own poisoned dart. But it didn’t come.

  The voice again, “Americans?”

  “We’ve come to take you home. You’re all going home.”

  We waited and waited. It was a long stretch of silence. Without us even realizing, there he was, dropping from a vine into the space right beside us, his hands on our shoulders, too close for us to get our rifles on him.

  He was a very smart soldier. But he looked like a madman. He had taken a Nip’s clothing, dark and loose, rather than wear his uniform. Maybe that’s why he stayed alive. His face was gaunt, scarred, and smeared with mud. His long, scraggly hair was black, matted with blood or mud or shit or all three.

  His eyes were unblinking. His breath made us forget about the stench of the dead men and their barbecued limbs.

  He said to us, “These guys, my brothers, they were all I had. I still hear their voices. That’s why I had them here. They sacrifice for me, tell me it’s okay to eat their arms and legs, their loins and roasts. They love me for taking care of them.”

  Horsecock sat up, the effects wearing off, and I saw how angry he was. “Fucking dead! You fucking cannibal! Are you going to roast us, too, you freak?”

  The soldier looked amused, staring unblinking at Horsecock, no quick retort on his lips. Then it occurred to us that he was clean-shaven. Out here for months, no razors other than his knife blade, and he managed to keep his chin naked. Who the hell was this guy?

  I asked, “What’s your name, soldier.”

  He snapped to attention. “Corporal Revel, sir!”

  I shook my head. “No need to ‘sir’ me, Corporal. How about we get back to the sub. We’ll send someone to help the others later.”

  “But, sir,” he said, those eyes still wide open, not one goddamned blink, I swear. “They’re just food. Let the jungle have them.”

  And then he started back to the beach, passing the Loot’s bamboo tomb along the way, chuckled a little as he went by. “Damn thing worked.”

  I tell you, boy, regardless of the heat and the humidity, I had goosebumps and a dry mouth all the way back to the beach.

  IV

  We arrived at the Victor to bad news—three more deaths due to the fucked-up-ness of that piece of shit boat.

  One man scalded to death in his bunk, a guy working in the galley slicing through his wrist when the boat dove without warning, and the last…well…suicide by bullet after one of the ghosts blamed the poor bastard for the whole Pearl Bombing thing before exploding again.

  But first, Corporal Revel demanded to see the Captain. I mean, he wasn’t on board a
full five seconds when he started shouting for the Captain, like he’d already been waiting an hour.

  The Captain, God bless his moron heart, was there with a handshake and a grin, telling Revels, “Mission accomplished, son. Damn fine job. Sorry to hear about your unit.”

  Revel got in the Captain’s face and yelled, “WHERE’S MY PUSSY?”

  “I’m sorry son, could you try that again?”

  “I was told that when we had secured the island, we would be rewarded with some fine Midwestern pussy and all the whisky we could swallow.”

  The Captain, as was his way, sighed and shook his head. “We’re proud of what you did, Corporal, but I’m sorry if someone else misled you. All I can offer you until we get back to port is a shower, some hot food, and a bed. Welcome aboard.”

  He walked away without another word, and we guessed it was up to us to help Revel get himself settled.

  Soon as the Captain was gone, Revel smirked at us and said. “No pussy? Well, thank God this is the Navy.”

  So now, my boy, now we’ll talk about the fairies.

  We were at war. And if you were of a certain age, you were going to fight. That’s all there was to it. Be it as an infantry man, or a pilot, or in a tank, or jumping from airplanes.

  Or, in my case, on a boat. I’m not sure exactly how this historical precedent came about, but it seems that where there are Navies, there are loads of faggots. I know your mother told you not to say that word, but your old grandpappy sure as hell can use it.

  I don’t mean no harm, either. They were out there fighting just as hard as we were, dying just as easily, and they’ll forever have my respect for that. Just that they couldn’t go five minutes without stick it somewhere where it shouldn’t go.

  And there were even men who liked women who got a bit lonely out there, and yes, they, too, would succumb to the wiles of the less-than-manly.

  Some closed eyes and a good imagination, we all knew about that, so I never understood why it couldn’t be their own socks, but another seaman’s stinking ass.

  Anyway…

  Me, I had you ol’ grandma back home waiting for me. She was only sixteen at the time, but we couldn’t wait until after the war, not knowing if we would make it out alive.

  So yeah, one of those nights right before I shipped out, late into the night, we sneaked into the barn and we did all sorts of disgusting things for hours. If it was something we’d heard about, we tried it—oral doggy-style, anal, titty-fucking, pissing… okay, not that you know what any of it means yet, but trust me—I fucked your grandmother up most every hole all over that barn.

  And imagining what I was going to do to her when I got back home alive kept my socks good and sticky with not one seaman’s lips or ass helping to ease the pain.

  Not to mention the local sluts I’d fucked during basic, well, I was a-okay on the voyage.

  The only reason we’re talking about the faeries is that it’s how we first got our suspicions aroused. See, the boys took notice of Revel and his winks, so that all of us would fall asleep to the sound of Revel pounding the goddamned literal shit out of some poof’s ass might hard, with Revel grunting and shouting “Cunt” while the seaman cried like he was being ripped up by Nip bullets.

  The next morning always found a tuckered but satisfied fairy, while a showered and newly buzzed Revel kept getting stronger and stronger. And more fucking weird, too.

  He ate alone. But he hid when he ate, so he could watch us from the shadows.

  He woke us up most mornings singing…in Japanese. Swears he doesn’t know the language—that was a different guy’s job, before he died—but heard his victims sing it so much that he couldn’t shake it.

  He could creep into any area of the ship without being heard. No conversation was safe.

  He knew all the gossip. He knew when we were talking about him, because he would inevitably show up within a minute of when we started whispering.

  And worst of all, the Captain was so afraid of him that we began to feel it wasn’t the Captain giving the orders anymore.

  Especially when he told us we needed to stop the boat and sit still because Nips were planning to ambush us farther along, and we had to wait until they had given up. A solid week of that.

  Never any evidence of an actual ambush. Just, one day, Revel gave the nod and the Captain ordered us ahead again.

  We were running out of food by then, rationed to one meal a day, if by “meal” you mean a couple of slices of canned peach on stale bread. But, hey, we were at war. True, we’d been used to much better food on the way out, but at least the cooks were still trying.

  Nothing they could do once the coffee ran out. That’s when the fear began for real.

  And then…the cooks went missing, one by one.

  V

  A submarine is a cramped place on the best days, and on the worst it’s downright coffin-like.

  And this haunted tin can they shoved us into, well, it was even smaller. But when the first cook went missing and wasn’t found after a thorough search, the Captain’s reaction surprised us all. He announced, “I think we have a deserter.”

  None of us could quite fathom that. How could a man get out of a submerged submarine without anyone noticing, or without triggering some sort of alarm? It was impossible. We all knew it.

  But the Captain was the Captain. Had he lost his mind? Was this some of Revel’s doing? The Captain seemed powerless in the face of Revel. Why? We wondered if there was more to this mission than we had been told. Some sort of black ops? Or were we fodder for a greater cause?

  Fights among the crew grew more fierce. The paranoia set in, all of us suspicious of all of us, even our closest friends.

  We conducted more searches for the first cook, but without telling the Captain—our own mini-mutiny—but found no trace of the poor schlub.

  Then the second cook disappeared, too. Much the same as the first, he didn’t show up for duty and no one could find him. There wasn’t a trace. Another sweep of the ship. And another, and another.

  This time, the Captain told us, “Another coward. Deserting us in our time of need. Boys, I believe in you. Our bad apples are gone. The rest of our voyage should be peaceful.”

  Peaceful? No coffee? Falling asleep to the cries of the dead? The fear of a pipe bursting at any moment, scalding or freezing us alive? And now vanishing into thin air?

  The time had come to question either our own sanity, or the Captain’s.

  There were a handful of guys in my section who looked to me for guidance on this, since I’d gone ashore and had seen what sort of monstrosities Revel was capable of, and we wondered if would kill anyone, not just Nips, now that he had been rescued. Maybe who was hearing voices in his head. Maybe he liked the way men tasted.

  During one of these secret meetings, as secret as they be on a sub, he snuck into the inner-circle while we were planning another search for the cook, and listened, unnoticed by all of us until he spoke: “Search if you must, but they’re gone, fellas. Gone bye-bye.”

  I grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him in close. He smelled like pigshit. “Listen here, bud. You can help us, or we can make sure you’re locked up tight until we hit the beach. The choice is yours.”

  Goddamn that smile. I’ll never forget that smile. The inside of his mouth was one of the most godforsaken landscapes I’d ever seen. What had been teeth were now crags with festering nerves pulsing. I had no idea how he wasn’t feeling any pain from them.

  Revel said, “You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not the one you want. But if you want to know how a killer thinks, ask me. Ask me. Ask me. I’ll tell you. Ask me.”

  I sniffed. “Then tell us, where did our Cookies go?”

  “Your problem is that you’re looking at all the places a you think a man should be, but you’re not looking in the places you think a man can’t be.”

  “What the hell are you—”

  “Of course they won’t be where you think they are! They won’t even be w
here you think they’re not! But they will be somewhere they just can’t be.”

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I’d had it. It was full-on mutiny time. I nodded at Villeponteaux and Horsecock. “Lock this asshole up. Then meet me in the Heart.”

  The Heart. It was what we were calling the control room on the Victor, as we were convinced it was alive, some sort of damned demon monstrosity that lived and breathed and hurt like any other man would.

  The Heart. That was where I planned to take over from the Captain, God bless his gentle, stupid soul.

  My boys grabbed Revel by both his arms and dragged him back towards the “brig”, which was really just some chains wrapped around big pipes that we didn’t think were hooked up to anything.

  We had no idea what made this boat work, but we knew it had a temper.

  Revel laughed and laughed and laughed and said, “I’ll see you soon, Admiral!”

  And when he was gone, the laughter kept bouncing around the sub, an endless loop of it. Those that weren’t already close to madness were push off the edge that day.

  But me, you should have realized by now that I was far, far, gone.

  VI

  By the time we stormed the Heart, word had spread faster than that maniac’s laughter.

  The Captain was there, slumped low in his chair, massaging his temples. The men on duty stood at attention, waiting for the next move. We weren’t even armed.

  I said, “Sorry, Captain. You understand, don’t you?”

  “Ensign Sticks, it’ll be a firing squad for you, son.”

  All of the men went “Aw,” and some said, “Don’t be like that Captain.”

  I said, “Captain, you’re the best, you know? Just the best. But you’re not cut out for this. Come on, I won’t even lock you up. Just tell me I’m in command.”

  He lifted his eyes. “What did you do to Revel?”