SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror

by Jonathan Maberry

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Blackwater

  Little Johnny Jump-Up

  Covert Genesis

  Bug Hunt

  Special Operations Interview PTO-14

  Cold War Gothic

  Making Waves

  The Fossil

  A Tide of Flesh

  Death at 900 Meters

  Holding the Line:

  Thela Hun Gingeet

  The Shrine

  Ptearing All Before Us

  A Time of Blood

  Blank White Page

  CROWDFUNDERS

  Publisher’s Note

  This book is a collection of stories from writers all over the world. For authenticity and voice, we have kept the style of English native to each author’s location, so some stories will be in UK English, and others in US English.

  Also From Cohesion Press

  Horror:

  The Gate Theory – Kaaron Warren

  Carnies – Martin Livings

  Sci-Fi/Thriller:

  Valkeryn 2 – Greig Beck

  Crime:

  Ronnie and Rita – Deborah Sheldon

  Family:

  Magoo Who? – Anne Carmichael

  May I Be Frank – Anne Carmichael

  Coming Soon From Cohesion Press

  Dark Waters – Deborah Sheldon

  Guardian of the Sky Realms – Gerry Huntman

  Blurring the Line – ed. Marty Young

  SNAFU

  An Anthology of Military Horror

  Edited by

  Geoff Brown

  and

  Amanda J Spedding

  Cohesion Press

  2014

  SNAFU:

  An Anthology of Military Horror

  Geoff Brown and Amanda J Spedding (eds)

  ISBN

  Kindle: 978-0-9925023-6-2

  ePub: 978-0-9925023-7-9

  Anthology © Cohesion Press 2014

  Stories © Individual Authors 2014

  Frontispiece © Greg Chapman 2014

  Interior Art © Montgomery Borror 2014

  Cover Art © Mel Gannon 2014

  Internal Layout by Cohesion Editing and Proofreading

  Set in Palatino Linotype

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Cohesion Press

  Bendigo

  Australia

  www.cohesionpress.com

  Foreword

  War is hell.

  Nothing puts people closer to their base state than a threat to their life. Nothing reveals their animal nature more than the desire for survival at any cost. People trained for war have to deal with these extremes time after time, surviving for a greater purpose. Or, at least, one hopes so. Because survival in a personal fight can be selfish, but survival in war might mean the fate of nations, or even species. And pretty much every permutation of that kind of fight for survival is explored in the stories you’re about to read.

  Don’t be fooled into thinking an anthology of military horror is just a book full of Platoon or Aliens knock-offs. In these pages, the variety of story you’ll find is staggering.

  Historical and imagined, science-fictional and contemporary. Mythos, the Wild West and Special Forces. Great wars, small wars and the American Civil War. Shapeshifters and ghosts and extraterrestrial parasites. Japanese demons and supernatural special agents. Monsters large and small. Battles fought with raging gunfire and earth-shattering explosions and battles fought cold, with paper trails and subterfuge. Battles won and lost in moments and battles that stretch across aeons.

  There’s great variety in story style and length too. From very short stories to novella length yarns with lots of meat ready to be stripped off their bones. This book is a fine achievement and a great example of a theme superbly explored.

  You’ll enjoy all the approaches here, and the great writing from both established names and emerging talents. But no matter the variety, one thing that doesn’t change from tale to tale is the underlying truth evident in every one. Lives are at risk, great stakes are being played but throughout every page we’re never allowed to forget that regardless of the nature of the enemy, the real horror is war itself.

  Alan Baxter, NSW Australia, 2014

  Blackwater

  Neal F. Litherland

  Fisher’s Cove was drowning in the fog. It pressed against the dead eyes of dark windows, laced its fingers through rotting fences, and poured itself down alley mouths. The white ghost of the Pacific possessed the seaside town until even the monotonous heartbeat of the reef’s warning buoys could barely be heard. In places, a gabled roof or weather vane broke the surface, clawing at the sky.

  “And thus I came to a place where dreams and death lay down to sleep,” Frost whispered.

  “Jesus Christ, you got to do that now?” Carmichael muttered.

  “Might not have a chance later.” Frost readjusted his rifle sight and took another long, slow scan across what they could see of the little town.

  “Giving me the fucking heebeegeebees,” Carmichael said, running one hand back over his dark, shaved scalp.

  “I can’t give you anything for that,” Hernandez said. “Now if Frost gave you the clap, then I could maybe do something.”

  “Cut the static,” Leo said, voice cracking like a teamster’s whip. They went silent, even CB who hadn’t said anything. “Frost, movements?”

  “Impossible to say for certain,” Frost answered, fiddling with his sight again. “Fog isn’t staying steady; we’ve got a west wind pushing at it. All the buildings are dark, no movement. Visibility’s maybe ten yards once you get into the bank.”

  “CB, report.”

  “No chatter,” the rangy redhead said, lifting his face from his scanner’s shadowed blackout screen. “No cell or sat signals going in or out. Last confirmed contact was a big rig on the interstate testing the air waves two hours ago. No one in the town replied, no indication they knew he was there, or vice versa.”

  Leo nodded. His men watched the darkness, hands on their weapons and minds on the job. Each one of them knew his role, and they knew they were not part of a democracy. If Leo said they waited, they waited. If he said they went in, they went in. If any one of them had a problem then he should have mentioned it before lacing up and gearing out. Leo unslung his weapon, and popped the long clip out of the cut-down M4. The others did the same, flicking safeties and racking slides, offering up one last prayer to the assault-rifle gods that their sights were straight and the brass didn’t jam.

  “Frost, take point,” Leo said. “Carmichael, Hernandez, myself, then CB. Previous intel says the gathering’s going to be at the church, so we get in and get out quick, clean, and quiet. This place is full of sectarian nut jobs, and they may not take kindly to us stealing one of their flock. They give her to us, we walk away. They put up a fight, show them the error of their ways with strict prejudice. You get me?”

  “We get you,” they said. No one called Leo sir. Those days were behind them, and they didn’t pretend otherwise. Leo slid an indigo balaclava over his head. The others did the same.

  It was like a child’s game. Leo pointed, and tapped Frost on the shoulder. Frost ran bent over, his low profile a caricature of some inbred beast loping thr
ough the shadows. He slid behind cover, swept the area, and signaled the all clear. Then the next man went, and the next, and the next. Rear covered fore, then fore covered rear, all of it in total silence. Leo chose the next spot, and the whole cycle began again.

  They ducked behind rusted-out cars sitting on busted rims, and slipped silently past hedges grown long and wild in the sea air. They crouched near rotting doorways with peeling paint, breathing through their mouths and squinting into the swirling night. Pot holes and cracked curbs tried to trip them up. Busted doors creaked in the night breeze, wailing and whining on rusted hinges. The place reeked of swollen, rotting wood, and when they breathed too deep a slimy, fishy scent coated their tongues. The ocean rumbled as the surf rolled in, and shushed when it went out; the snoring of some invisible giant whose dreams the shadow men had no interest in.

  The town felt wrong. None of them said anything, but they all felt it. Frost stroked his finger along the outside of the trigger guard like his personal worry stone. Hernandez crossed himself every time a loud noise turned out to be the wind in the eaves rather than an alarm bell. CB blinked away thick droplets of sweat from the bridge of his nose – uncharacteristic for a cold, autumn night. Carmichael hummed show tunes under his breath.

  “Mute your chute, Jukebox,” Leo hissed, glaring over his shoulder at Carmichael. The big man went silent and shifted his grip on the street sweeper he’d insisted on toting. Leo shifted his gaze to the others. “Put it on ice, all of you. You can puke your guts and shit yourselves on your own time.”

  They made the last dash for the church as a whole, every man watching and running with his weapon socked to his shoulder; a hair-trigger phalanx with no safety just begging for a target. Nothing shambled out of the fog, slick and wet from the sea floor. No one shot at them either. They pounded up the stone steps, Leo taking up position to the right of the iron-bound double doors and Carmichael taking the left. Hernandez and CB took a knee at the base of the stairs and watched back the way they’d come. Frost stood calm and easy, halfway up with his suppressed barrel pointing at the sky.

  Leo crouched, and put his ear against the place where the doors met. He stayed there for a three count, then jumped and slid back out of the doorway. CB and Hernandez swiveled, and Frost crouched down low just as the latch lifted and the door swung inward. A silhouette stepped out of a watery rectangle of light, and Carmichael swung a hard, looping right into the figure’s belly. There was a harsh gasp, and the target stumbled forward. It reached beneath its coat, and Leo kicked it behind the knees. The man went down, and a knife spun out of its fingers. Carmichael put a boot on the man’s back, and the wide mouth of his trench gun against his head.

  “You make so much as one little bo peep, and I’ll smash your pumpkin all over, you get me sucker?” Carmichael growled, putting more of his weight onto the prone body. The captive didn’t speak, or even so much as twitch.

  At Leo’s signal, Hernandez and CB hit the door, criss-crossing as they went through. There was silence for a long moment, broken only by the sounds of doors opening. A small eternity later each man whispered, “clear” back into the night. Frost picked up the dropped knife, and ducked inside. Carmichael looped an arm around their prisoner’s throat, and hauled him inside. Leo followed, closing the door quietly behind them.

  The sanctuary was old. The boards gleamed with varnish, and the rafters were dusty with a hundred years or more of votive smoke. The walls held candle brackets, the flickering flames hiding just as much as they revealed. There were no trappings of any faith the men had ever seen before, though. In the bare places once graced by the portraits of saints sat stone shelves holding sunken, graven images of creatures whose forms were nearly unrecognizable. An altar of smooth, black stone sat on the dais, flanked by gilded statues of tumescent creatures with dozens of blank, empty eyes. A heavy, leather-bound book rested on the sea-green altar cloth, and on the wall above and behind, burnished letters spelled out the legend The Esoteric Order of Dagon. The place was otherwise empty.

  Once inside, the team took a good look at who they’d sandbagged. The captive was a portly man with a shiny, bald head and a sunken chin. His long, black robe was frayed at the cuffs, and though a little too big, it marked him as a priest clearly enough. He scrabbled at Carmichael’s arm, digging pale, fish-belly fingers into the choke hold. Frost held up the knife, a wavy-bladed tool more useful in ritual than in combat, and the bald man went still. Frost patted the man down, turning out his pockets and checking all the logical places for hold outs and surprises. He didn’t find any. Frost tucked the decorative dagger behind his web belt, and stepped back out of the line of fire.

  “I’m only going to say this once, padre,” Leo told the man. “If you do what I tell you then you’ll live through the night. If you try to scream, or attempt to fight me or my men, I will have that knife in your gullet before you’ve taken a deep breath. Do you understand? Blink once for yes, and twice for no.”

  The prisoner stared at Leo with watery, wide-set eyes. He blinked once.

  “If I have my man release you, are you going to co-operate?” Leo asked. Again the single blink. Leo nodded. “Let him go, Jukebox.”

  Carmichael released his hold. He stepped back and to the side, bringing up the shotgun as he did. The man in the black robe coughed, and kneaded at his wattle. He sucked air, and gagged slightly before he managed to get himself under control. When he spoke his voice was breathy, like he was trying to talk with a hole in his lungs.

  “Who are you?” the priest rasped. “What do you want?”

  “Sarah Prendergast,” Leo said, ignoring the first question in favor of the second. “Turn her over, and we can all pretend this night didn’t happen.”

  The priest shrugged his shoulders, hands clasped at his waist. “I do not know anyone by that name.”

  “Five foot five, blond hair, blue eyes, pale,” Leo said, pointing his muzzle right between the holy man’s eyes. “Eighteen years old; runaway. Birthmark on the right cheek, and a jagged scar below her left knee. She came here seven months ago.”

  “Ah,” the priest said, nodding. If he noticed the gun, or its proximity to his head, it didn’t seem to bother him any. “And what do you want the girl for?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Leo said.

  The priest looked at each of them. He nodded again, agreeing with some unasked question. “I suppose not. If I refuse to assist you?”

  “Then you might meet whatever gods you pray to sooner than you think,” Hernandez said.

  The priest smiled, and his wide, thick-lipped mouth curved at the corners without showing any teeth. He held his hands up slowly, palms out in surrender. “As you wish. The girl you seek is down below, along with the rest of the congregation. I can lead you to her if you wish?”

  “I do,” Leo said, toggling the selector switch on his rifle. “Frost, if he tries any party tricks drop him. Jukebox, you’re on crowd control. CB, Band-Aid, cover our tails and make sure no one sneaks up on us.”

  The priest led them to the rear door of the sanctuary, moving with the lurching, awkward gait of someone more used to sea than land. Beyond the door was a short, dark hall lit only by spillover from a cramped, spartan office. Aside from the light the office’s only unique feature was a huge map of the western seaboard. Hundreds of red push-pins were jabbed along the coast, marking the locations of offshore reefs. The man in black pushed open another door, and they stepped into the night.

  The church yard may have been well-cared for once-upon-a-time. A wrought-iron fence enclosed the small space, but the iron was warped and pitted from the salt air. The barrier leaned drunkenly too, as if contemplating a leap over the edge of the bluff. Crumbling headstones and canted crosses were half-buried by the overgrown verge. In one corner rotting vegetables gave mute, fecund testimony to a garden gone to seed. The priest followed a trampled path through the foliage, witch grass and burrs snatching at his hem and sleeves. He paid the plants no more mind than he did the
men following him.

  “I don’t like this, boss,” Hernandez whispered. “It’s too easy.”

  “Seconded,” CB said, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I can’t see shit in this black.”

  “Just BOLO, boys,” Leo said. “Fingers on triggers, and we’re done before dawn.”

  The priest paused, and fiddled with a rusty gate at the end of the path. The men fanned out into the grass, crouching low and trying to look everywhere at once. The priest grunted, and the gate squealed as it swung inward. He stepped into the void without a backward glance.

  Frost sucked in a sharp breath, and Carmichael swore. The priest stood in midair a moment longer, his robe flapping in the wind from the ocean. Then he turned, and slipped out of sight.

  “Do not lose contact,” Leo said.

  Frost slid gun-first toward the yawning hole. “Stairs,” he said, jerking his chin to give the all-clear. A moment later he was gone, and the others followed.

  A stairway was carved into the living rock. Barely wide enough for a broad man, the steps had been worn smooth by more than a century of wind, rain, and regular travel. The steps would have been dangerous in full daylight. In the dark and the fog they were suicide. They moved as quickly as good sense allowed, aware of the empty gulf on the left. Each man felt along with his boots, and kept his gun leveled at nothing. All they heard was the sound of the wind, along with the rhythmic pounding of the ocean. There was no sign of the priest.

  After one hundred steps and a single switchback, the fog began to clear. Twenty yards below was a stubby shelf of black rock, worn smooth and decorated with the detritus of the retreating tide. The shelf extended out into the water; the natural rock becoming a carved bridge to nowhere wide enough for a convoy to ride two abreast. Heavy stone pylons ranked every fifteen yards or so, but there were no railings between them. Silhouettes moved in the distance, back lit by flickering orange flames and casting dark, monstrous shadows in the remaining mists. The wind blew stronger, carrying slurred consonants chanted by a congregation of ghosts. Carmichael started humming the theme to The A-Team.