SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Eighty-five hundred yards, Captain,” the helmsman said.

  “Eighty-five hundred, aye,” the captain repeated. “Weapons, flood aft torpedo tubes.”

  “Aye, sir, flooding aft tubes,” the weapons officer said.

  My stomach fluttered, but it wasn’t fear. It took me a moment to understand that I was actually excited. I wanted the captain to go through with this.

  “Captain,” Markey said. She clenched both her hands into fists. Was she actually thinking about throwing a punch? “Listen to me, please.”

  “Master Chief, get our latest orders and bring them in here,” the captain said.

  “Aye, sir.” The COB turned and maneuvered his way forward.

  “Lieutenant, in seven minutes we’re out of range and we don’t get another shot at this.” The captain spoke softly but firmly. “So we’re both going to look at those orders and see precisely what the fuck we’re authorized to do.”

  “Listen to me, Captain,” Markey said with an unnatural calm. “You cannot do this. You cannot unleash those Things upon the world.”

  Why not? I thought. The Japs brought the war to us. The least we can do is return the favor.

  “Aft tubes flooded, sir,” the weapons officer reported.

  “Open outer doors,” the captain said.

  “Opening outer doors, aye.”

  Yes. Hell yes. I wanted us to shoot off those fish. I wanted those monsters to wake up and destroy our enemies. So what if we got caught in the crossfire? This was war. One little submarine for untold devastation on their shores was more than a fair trade.

  And if I died out here, I would never have to worry about going home. I would never again need to worry about fitting in, either with or without a disguise.

  The sea would take me, and the sea didn’t care about my race, sex, or skin color.

  The COB shoved his way back into the control room. “Our orders, Captain.”

  The captain took the folded paper. “Thank you, Master Chief.”

  “Eighty-eight hundred yards, Captain,” the helmsman said.

  “Very well.” The captain unfolded the orders. His eyes scanned across the page once, twice, three times. How many times was he going to read it?

  I looked at the clock above the weapons station. Less than two minutes until we were out of torpedo range. And what if the captain decided to abort?

  No. I had decided. If Captain Channing was just going to stand there with his thumb up his ass, if Markey didn’t have the balls to follow through on her own goddamn orders, I would fucking do it myself.

  The weapons officer on duty was Lieutenant Goldman. I didn’t know him well, but I had played a trick on him in the mess hall once, making him think he was taking the last piece of cake. In fact, he had grabbed a bowl of coleslaw, and I got that delicious cake.

  I had glamoured him once, and I could do it again.

  I moved toward the weapons station, wriggling between other sailors and around their control stations. I had to be close for this to work. I closed my left hand into a fist to help focus my energies. My disguise might falter for a second when I bore the new glamour, but nobody here was watching me anyway.

  The captain looked up from his orders.

  “Captain?” Markey said quietly.

  The captain handed her the paper. “Weps, close outer doors and stand down.”

  That’s what he actually said. What Goldman heard, loud and clear, was: “Fire torpedoes.”

  * * *

  I don’t know how long it took for the commotion in the control room to settle down. As soon as our fish flew out the back door, the captain ordered Goldman placed under arrest, and the COB and the XO seized him. I followed them out of the control room, hoping to slip away in the chaos, but Markey grabbed me and dragged me back to her quarters. I hadn’t expected her to be so strong.

  “Why?” she asked after locking us inside. “Why did you do it, Hatcher?”

  I stared her down and spoke slowly. “Do what, ma’am?”

  She shook her head. “It’s my own fault. I should have been paying more attention to you instead of the captain.”

  There was something about the way she said that— “Jesus fuck. You! You put a glamour on the captain.”

  “Nice to meet you, too, kettle,” Markey said.

  “You disobeyed your own orders!”

  Markey’s eyes flashed. “You don’t know what my orders are, Seaman. I couldn’t gamble on the captain making the right decision on his own.”

  “Yeah, neither could I.”

  Markey glared at me. “You know why I wanted to stop those torpedoes. Why did you want to fire them so badly?”

  I took a breath. “Like the captain said, ma’am. We came here to put some hurt on the Japs. Didn’t seem right for us to leave without doing something.”

  “No. It’s more than just that.” Markey studied me for a moment. “What’s your real name?”

  “Carl Hatcher.”

  “No,” Markey said. “Your real name. The one you were born with. The one that’s on the books at whichever Japanese-American internment camp you escaped from.”

  I felt suddenly deflated. “You – you knew?”

  “I saw past your glamour when you took my bobby pin. That’s why I asked you all those questions. You can disguise your looks, but you can’t disguise your emotions.” Markey sat. “I had to make sure you weren’t a spy.”

  I clenched my teeth. She had never really wanted to help me after all. She had only kept me close in case I turned out to be an enemy.

  “My family name is Hachiya,” I said. “I am a native-born American citizen, and I am loyal to my country.”

  “I’m not questioning your loyalty! I’m concerned about your judgment,” Markey said. “Would you really rather die here, under a false identity, instead of facing life as your true self?”

  An unearthly roar saved me from having to answer. The entire boat shuddered, and I imagined the ocean itself trembling.

  “Guess they’re awake,” I said.

  “You don’t know what you’ve done,” Markey said. “No matter how much you might hate them, the Japanese don’t deserve what’s going to happen when those Things reach shore.”

  “War is hell, ma’am.”

  She grimaced. “You know nothing about Hell, little girl.”

  * * *

  Captain Channing surfaced the Bowfin as soon as we were back in international waters. Official information about what was happening in Japan remained spotty, but Markey, or rather, Roseler, had a direct line to a primary source. She was still able to connect to the now-catatonic seaman – just like she had during the scry – and report what she saw through the monsters’ eyes. That lady never stopped scaring me.

  The Things were faster on land than anybody had expected. Both surfaced on the western shore of Kyushu Island and crawled into the nearest population centers, causing massive damage by their sheer bulk – news reports varied, making them anywhere from fifty to two hundred feet tall, with claws, wings, tentacles, or some combination of all three.

  But the worst of it radiated outward from them, as people apparently driven mad by the Things’ mere presence set upon each other. Simple killing was the least of the atrocities Markey reported seeing, and which she ordered me to transcribe in gruesome detail.

  She was right. Nobody deserved this, not even the Japs. I wouldn’t have wished this fate on Hitler himself.

  But I refused to let myself feel guilty about it.

  I hadn’t created those monsters. They were older than humanity. Someone or something would have roused them sooner or later. And no matter what Markey said about their cultural inhibitions, I knew the Japs would have eventually unleashed every weapon in their arsenal and every kind of magic they could muster against the Allies. Just like we were doing all we could to defeat them.

  It was inevitable. This was war, all-out war, world war. It was them or us, and I would always choose us. My country; right or wrong.
>
  Every nation in this conflict was doing terrible things. Every single person was doing things that would have been unthinkable before the war. Me breaking out of Manzanar, disguising myself as a man, enlisting in the fucking Navy? That was three hundred percent insane. But I had done all of it in the name of victory. I had to do it. I couldn’t have stayed in that internment camp for one more hour. I refused to continue being a victim. I needed to fight back. I had to do it.

  It didn’t stop the nightmares or bring my appetite back any sooner, but that dense nugget of conviction gave me something to hold onto. And I needed it as Markey spent hours on end dictating the relentless details of every hideous, profane, revolting scene she witnessed through Roseler’s link. I did my best to write down her words without thinking about their meaning, repeating slogans in my head to block out comprehension.

  This is war. Kill or be killed. Better them than us. I had to do it. I had to do it. I had to do it.

  In the end, OP-20-G was right. The Elder Things didn’t seem interested in moving out of Japan any time soon. Mission accomplished.

  Markey code-named the monsters Alpha and Bravo. The Japanese evacuated their coastal cities and mobilized heavy artillery. They bombarded both creatures for days. Bravo didn’t budge, but the ground forces managed to drive Alpha back into the ocean. Less than twenty-four hours later, Alpha resurfaced at the southwestern tip of Honshu Island and headed inland. The Japs finally surrounded Alpha at Second Army headquarters and kept it from going anywhere else.

  But stopping the Things was one matter; killing them seemed to be impossible. Machine guns, Howitzers, and even high explosives only irritated them. According to OP-20-G’s researchers, Alpha and Bravo were immortal, had existed for millions of years before mankind evolved, and we might have to invent completely new weapons if we actually wanted to destroy them.

  For the foreseeable future, the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima would remain sealed quarantine zones.

  * * *

  Markey summoned me to her quarters the day she left Bowfin. She had changed back into a standard woman’s uniform, presumably to avoid ruffling any brass feathers when she arrived in DC. Her eyes were as dark and unreadable as ever.

  “I teleport out in a few minutes,” she said, gesturing at the dowstone circle she’d inscribed herself. A fat bundle of files sat inside the pentagram on the floor. “I need you to wipe the inscriptions after I’m gone.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  She stepped around me and closed the door. “I also want you to know that I’m not going to expose you.”

  I blinked. “Uh, thank you, ma’am.”

  “Lieutenant Goldman will go before a court-martial. There’s no way around that,” she said. “But I’ll testify on his behalf, tell the jury his mind was touched – a side effect of Bowfin’s proximity to Alpha and Bravo. Nothing anybody can disprove. He’ll be fine.”

  “That’s good,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “But you, Hatcher,” Markey said, “you will have to live with what you’ve done. Disguise yourself all you want, run away from home, hide under the sea, but you can never escape who you are on the inside, Miss Hachiya. Remember that.”

  “I’m not a coward,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I believed it.

  “No, you’re not.” Markey stared at me. “That’s why I like you so much.”

  I had no response to that. After a moment, Markey’s wristwatch made a noise. She stepped into the pentagram, picked up her files, and said, “Do you enjoy serving on this boat, Seaman?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Is that a rhetorical question, ma’am? I’m trapped inside a metal tube with sixty men who don’t wash for weeks at a time and smoke like chimneys every second they’re awake.”

  “Well, then,” Markey said, “can I give you some advice?”

  I was sure I wouldn’t like what came next. “I can’t stop you from talking, ma’am.”

  “Maybe it’s time you considered a less forward position in the Navy,” she said. “This war isn’t just about combat. The President has ordered the formation of a new, covert intelligence agency: the Office of Strategic Services. And OSS could use people like you.”

  I felt blood rushing to my cheeks and ears. “Are you offering me a job, ma’am? Or just blackmailing me?”

  Markey’s wristwatch chirped again. I stepped back as she incanted her end of the teleport spell. Then she looked at me, grinned, and vanished in a flash of light. A second later, I realized her final words had been in English:

  “I’ll be seeing you, Seaman Hatcher.”

  The Fossil

  Greig Beck

  There is life on other worlds.

  But it is not alien.

  Instead it is us, looking back from the future.

  ~1~

  Neanders Valley, Germany

  48,000 BC

  Drun staggered, the skin on his upper body raw and weeping where it had been burned away. The pain was like nothing he had ever felt before in his long and arduous thirty years of life.

  He needed to rest – he needed to hide – and he needed to find the Drawing Cave. For days, he and his tribe had been aware of the strange newcomers in their territory. He had urged his people to ignore them and simply wait until they passed on, as they had done many times before. But Orlak, Orlak the angry one, had managed to convince the young warriors to attack them, steal their goods and let all the peoples of other tribes know that this land belonged to the Urdan.

  Drun had argued, but no one listened to the old chief anymore. Orlak carried the spear of leadership now. Only his voice would be heard.

  They had crept closer to the strangers, like any other hunt. There had only been two of them, and they were weak and small. It should have been easy – two quick kills for Orlak to crow about.

  Orlak was first, as always, leading the tribe in a whooping charge that had surprised the pair of visitors. Spears were thrust into the shimmering body of one, making him collapse at their feet. But the other was faster and had not fled as they expected, instead turning to point at them, some small object flaring in its hand. Immediately most of the tribe had been covered with fire and light.

  Drun whimpered as he remembered the pain of the burning rays – it was like staring into the sky at the great ball of heat and fire. His eyes still ached. Once again, Orlak had been first. He simply vanished in the beams of light that had flown from the stranger’s hand. Many of the Urdan had burned along with their new leader, their screams of fear cut off as they were turned to ash. Drun had been close, partly shielded by the body of one of the young . Even so, the heat had been unbearable, and it had seared his flesh deeply.

  The old warrior staggered on, finally spotting the refuge he sought. It was the deep cave they used to capture the spirits of animals they would hunt by painting their images. Drun himself had drawn bison, musk ox, and the greatest prize of all, the giant mammoth.

  He crawled deep inside, the precious thing still held tight in his hand, and dropped down against the cave wall. He grimaced as another wave of pain wracked his body. He breathed deeply for a few moments, trying to ease himself into a more comfortable position, and rested his head against the cool damp stone. He listened for the sound of pursuit, or some other beast that might have taken up residence deeper in the cave. Nothing save the continual drip of milky water.

  Drun opened his hand to examine the mysterious object. When he had fallen, he had found himself on the ground near the speared visitor… and beside him had lain the beautiful shiny thing – hard as a piece of stone, but so polished and smooth it defied belief. And now when he looked closely, he could see there was something bright inside it. Something like fire.

  He held it in one open hand, pressing and stroking it with a blunt finger. Immediately a beam of lightning shot from its narrow end, striking the ceiling of the cave. Rocks fells, dust rose, and the small vestiges of light from outside were shut out.

  Drun cried out, and his hand lo
cked tight again over the object. Before the dust had even settled, he knew he was trapped. He cried out again but the echo of his voice was absolute. He was sealed in. He wept; sorry for himself, sorry for his lost brother warriors, and sorry for not being strong enough to stop Orlak from making war on the strange visitors.

  He lay back, not caring that the drip of the water fell upon his matted hair. Drun closed his eyes and let his mind wander, taking him away from the darkness and the pain. He dreamed of his youth, of his mate, of hunting in warm spring sunshine. He exhaled, the long breath leaving him slowly for the last time.

  The water continued to drip down upon him.

  ~2~

  Neanders Valley, Germany

  Today

  “There’s something in there.”

  Klaus Hoffman shone his flashlight onto the wall of the new cave, moving it slowly back and forth, letting the beam penetrate from different angles. He felt rather than heard Doris creep closer. She did little more than sniff in the cold darkness, letting him know her disinterest was peaking.

  ”Look, look.” He turned and grabbed her sleeve as he crouched down, pulling her toward him.

  “Ow.” Doris pulled her arm away from his grasp. He’d thought his girlfriend had been slightly interested in entering the cave. He couldn’t count the times she had seemed to sit spellbound as he had recounted his many spelunking adventures over the past few months. Perhaps her interest had been feigned, or perhaps her interest only extended to hearing about caves – entering them was a whole different ballgame.

  “I don’t see anything.” She looked away and down into the interior of the cave. “It’s too dark.”

  Klaus muttered in annoyance and tugged her sleeve again. “Here… don’t look at the rock, look into it. It’s called a limestone flow, and it’s rather like solidified dishwater… cloudy but you can still see through it.”