The Last Hellfighter

by Flowers, Thomas S.

  Another toke from his corncob pipe. More wisps of smoke. "For that, young Bruner, I'll need another record from the Victrola."

  Clyde stood, familiar with the process already—conjuring memory through song. He went to the Victrola and pulled the still playing record of Duke Ellington singing about day dreams and building castles in the air. He knelt, waiting, glancing over his shoulder for Harker to tell him which record to play next.

  Benjamin Harker closed his eyes, clenching down on his pipe. After several moments, he said, "The dark blue one...should be...say the name?"

  Clyde searched within the cabinet of the Victrola and pulled out a frayed near black album. On the cover were four shaggy looking men, all young, a few with circular glasses. "The Soft Parade?" he read.

  "The Doors," Harker exhaled. "Though I prefer the songs from my generation—Morrison, that white boy ain't half bad."

  Pulling the black record from the sleeve, Clyde placed it on the Victrola's turntable and cranked the machine. Soon, drums began rolling and electric guitar twanged following by Jim Morrison singing about telling all the people to follow him down to bury all our troubles in the sand. Satisfied the recording would play uninterrupted he went back to the couch and sat down, looking across at his host.

  "Okay, Mr. Harker," Bruner said, "what did this soldier see in Vietnam?"

  Unknown Soldiers

  1969

  "Then his rage boiled over, he ripped open

  the mouth of the building, maddening for blood,

  pacing the length of the patterned floor

  with his loathsome tread, while a baleful light,

  flame more than light, flared from his eyes.

  He saw many men in the mansion, sleeping,

  a ranked company of kinsmen and warriors

  quartered together. And his glee was demonic,

  picturing the mayhem: before morning

  he would rip life from limb and devour them,

  feed on their flesh,"

  —Beowulf (723-733).

  "Breakfast where the news is read

  Television, children fed

  Unborn living, living dead

  Bullet strikes the helmet's head

  And it's all over for the unknown soldier

  It's all over for the unknown soldier

  Uh

  March!

  Company, halt!

  Present arms!

  Make a grave for the unknown soldier

  Nestled in your hollow shoulder

  The unknown soldier,"

  —The Doors (1968)

  Chapter 32

  The Bell UH-1 Iroquois (what the troops nicknamed "Huey"), a utility military helicopter powered by a loud single turboshaft engine with two-blade main and tail rotors, bobbed against a pocket of hot wind pushed up from the seemingly endless expanse of marshes and rice patties along the southern heart of South Vietnam. The old man put an arm up to brace himself with the ceiling, clenching his teeth, and with the other he held his hawk-handle cane. He'd never cared much for flying. The last time he'd been off the ground was on a C-47 transport aircraft just before parachuting over the German town of Diersfordt. But that was 1945—and he was much younger than he was today. Across from him, the boy who survived the Massacre of Champagne, Texas, who eventually became a priest, looked very oddly dressed in his black short-sleeve clergy shirt and black slacks with his white insert collar covered by an Army green flak jacket hanging open. His rosary was wrapped around his hands and the old man could see he was praying.

  "You okay?" Ben shouted over the Huey's whooping engine.

  Father Raymond Bishop glanced over at the old man, pushing his black hair away from his eyes and nodded and then returned his attention to his prayer.

  Ben smirked and stared out the open door; if there had been a door there at all he did not know. Below, the rice and the marsh zipped by in a blur. There was a different kind of heat here. Not like back home on the cusp of No Man's Land where the heat of the day was dry and brittle; here it was a swampy sick kind of hot. Every breath felt heavy and wet.

  Out on the horizon a tall, sharp-peaked mountain came into view.

  As Ben watched, wondering what waited ahead of them, the Huey dipped and swayed.

  "Thou I walk through the valley..." Father Bishop gulped, closing his eyes, tightening his hands onto that rosary.

  Ben tried not to laugh. This had all been the Father's idea after all. To travel across the world on the word from a source who heard of a soldier who claimed he'd seen something, an enemy that was not the Viet Cong, nor the Russians or the Chinese, this was something unnatural and unholy. Something the locals called Krasue.

  At least that much Ben knew—according to Cambodian lore, Krasue meant vampire.

  If it turned out to be true, this would be the closest he's gotten in years. Hunting the minor class of vampyre was not his pursuit, though he would happily dispatch any of the forlorn ilk. What he really wanted was to find her. Everything seemed to be guiding him here. In Saigon he was even given clearance to travel south to the IV Corp sector—and given a personal ride into the area. It felt all too easy.

  Quickly, the mountain grew larger and larger as the helicopter zipped along the blades of grass. Soon a small wired encampment came into view. The camp wasn't much on the eyes, just several olive-green tents with sandbags stacked around them. Cheaply made wood structures, mess halls maybe, officers' quarters, or Base Command, he couldn't be sure. Still not at this height.

  Slowly the Huey began its final descent into one of several landing zones marked with colored spray paint and crudely made wood signs designated the Delta Helicopter Aviation Battalion, another with the 9th Infantry insignia, and an even larger sign that read IV Corp.

  With a thump and a slow winding down of the engine, the Huey came to a rest. Without waiting, Ben climbed out, his Jungle boots sinking into the soft soil. He was glad he left his jean overalls at home and instead decided on something that allowed him to blend in with everyone else in country.

  Father Bishop climbed out behind him.

  Coming across to greet them was a young-looking officer in an olive-green uniform. He shielded his eyes from the dirt being pulled up by the vortex of the blades.

  "Mr. Harker?" the Army officer asked.

  Ben nodded.

  "Captain Xander Harris," he took Ben's hand and shook it, "Welcome to Chau Doc."

  Chapter 33

  HQ was nothing more than a couple of Army tents sewn together, surrounded with sandbags. The flooring was thin plywood; underneath Ben could feel pallets sinking into whatever they had thrown underneath sinking even farther into the wet lands of Chau Doc. Captain Harris held open the flap of the entrance while they filled inside. The light was a dim yellow compared to the bright orange sunshine outside. Odors of stale coffee and cigarettes, and leftover morning chow lingered in the air. Makeshift desks, crates mostly, with tables clothes strewn over them, maps everywhere. Maps of the area, of the entire theatre, but mostly of mountains and trails leading north from camp marked in red. A radio was buzzing nearby, low chatter. A group stood near one of the maps with mountains and red X's, speaking in code, or so it sounded to Ben. He'd been a soldier himself once, but that was a lifetime ago. Lots changed since. When he had been a soldier, the Army was segregated. Most of the men talking were Army, or so he guessed, all dressed in green fatigues except for one. An oddity as much as Bishop in his black priestly garb, this fellow was dressed in dark slacks and a white button up. He wore a navy-blue striped tie, but it was loose around the collar. A thick pair of black framed glasses sat on the edge of his nose. His face was clean shaven and marked with what Ben could only assume to be acne scars. There was a sheen about him, beads of sweat trickled down his forehead. When he turned and looked at them as they approached, Ben could feel ice running up his spine.

  "Colonel Giles," Captain Harris addressed the man standing in the middle of the group.

  The Army officers turned to the
ir guests. The one Harris identified as Major Giles was a middle-aged man with greying hair and weathered skin—though undoubtedly still twenty years younger than Ben was himself. He had broad shoulders and a steely gaze. Sweat stains saturated his armpits and an unnatural paleness marred his otherwise handsome features. The old man recognized the queer look about him, the look of a man with a problem he had no way of knowing how to solve. The look of someone who all their life followed the rules, believed maybe even marginally in some kind of higher power yet remained for the most part cemented to reality only to have that solid belief shaken to its core by something truly unexplainable.

  Captain Harris continued, "May I introduce Mr. Benjamin Harker and Father Bishop." The younger officer stepped aside as hands were offered and shook.

  Still shaking Ben's hand, Colonel Giles said, without much lack of sarcasm, "Oh yes, our experts, or so I hear."

  Ben leaned against his cane, searching deep within the Colonel, past his hazy blues, deeper to the truth. "Not by choice, Colonel Giles—never by choice. I've looked upon this career as more of a curse, to bare the burden of a knowledge no rational man would care to believe." He leaned farther forward, nearly whispering. "I can see you've seen and heard of something you yourself don't quite believe, haven't you Colonel? Base camp sounds dreadfully quiet compared to most places I've in Nam. There's a shadow here. An incident has you second guessing. Judging by the markings on your maps, you're trying to pen whatever this is down, is that right? Tell me, Colonel Giles, how many men have you lost thus far in your pursuit of answers?"

  A silence fell in the room, breaths held, all but the crackle of the radio nearby, squawk and beeps and static, squads and units giving the latest sitrep, chatter of security patrols along the perimeter.

  "Colonel, perhaps we should—" Captain Harris started to say.

  "Show him the photos," said the voice from outside the huddled group, from the man in the suit and loose tie leaning back in a folding chair. From his front pocket he produced a nearly bent Camel unfiltered cigarette and struck a match. He took a long drag, exhaling he nudged a manila folder with a circled coffee mug stain on the front toward Ben.

  Ben looked at the folder, at the Colonel, and then at the man in the suit.

  "Go ahead, Mr. Harker," said the man, "tell me what you see."

  Hesitating, Ben reached down and opened the folder as it lay on the table. Inside the folder were photos, black and white, and horrific. He swallowed hard allowing the stark story to unfold in his mind. "Are these?"

  Colonel Giles nodded, watching Ben closely. "That is what remains of Second Platoon 9th Division Reconnaissance. Seventy-nine KIA."

  Ben continued flipping through the photos of grisly scenes of gore and death, of men torn to shreds, arms removed from sockets, flesh flayed and raw. Glass eyes glaring up toward heaven—whose prayers were never given mercy.

  "We heard there was a survivor," Father Bishop spoke up, standing quietly beside Ben. He'd been leaning forward, observing the photos over Ben's shoulder, whispering a couple Our Father's with each horrific glance.

  "Yes. Private Summers. Though I'm not sure that you could call after what's happened to him surviving." Captain Harris rubbed his chin, his eyes darting to the photos. "Damn mess, he was a good soldier."

  Colonel Giles crossed his arms. "They all were."

  Father Bishop looked between them. "Is he not speaking? Surely, he must have said something, why else would we be here?"

  The officers exchanged an uncomfortable glance.

  Finally, Captain Harris offered, "Gibberish mostly. Private Summers has been for the most part catatonic. Every now and then he'll come to, but what he says doesn't make much sense."

  Ben thumbed the last photo, listening to the conversation but drawn by the gravity of what lay underneath his touch.

  "Then why...? We were told you specifically asked for us, surely this Private Summers must have said something, why else would you send for two experts, as you say?" Father Bishop was looking from man to man and getting no reply.

  Ben turned the picture over. Looked. And closed his eyes. "Because of this."

  Bishop looked down at the black and white image. He frowned until his brain connected the shapes, the words. "My God is that..."

  Much like the other photographs, it was a scene of carnage, like a soup of guts and bone and broken teeth. But among the muck and soiled and ruined uniforms lay a body bloated by the sun. His shirt had been pulled up revealing his swollen belly and—something else.

  "...some kind of carving?" the Father held his breath, glaring down at what would forever remain etched in his memory until the day he died.

  "It's a name," Ben said, his voice hardly audible. "My name."

  Father Bishop blinked, leaning farther down to get a better look. "Mary Mother of God. Why would your name be carved on a soldier's stomach?"

  Another grey cloud of smoke drifted across the table. "Why is precisely what we want to know, Father Bishop," said the man in the suit.

  The Father looked over at the man, his irritation raising into his throat like a frog. "How should we know? This is not the information we were given. Our sources said that you were looking for experts in the field of parapsychology. That was the entire reason why I thought you gave us clearance. Why Captain Harris greeted us. Why you sent the Huey."

  The man in the suit took another drag and exhaled. He eyed the Father with a sort of playful smirk. "We may still be in need of an Exorcist, if anything Private Summers screamed during his initial debriefing are true, and there just may be something out there we cannot explain. But now that we have you here, gentleman, if you wouldn't mind indulging us, I'd foremost like to know why this man's name," he gestured at Ben with his nearly burnt out cigarette, "is carved on the belly of a dead American LRRP."

  "I told you, how should we know—" Father Bishop stood with his hands on his hips, sweat dripping down his face, soaking into his white collar.

  "It's her, Bishop. It's her." Ben spoke without taking his gaze away from the photo, at the black and white image of the dead soldier with the distended belly and the puffy, wet-looking letters, the name Come Benjamin Harker—come.

  "Her who?" Colonel Giles chimed in.

  Ben stared at the photo, his thoughts running wild, all the possible outcomes and probabilities as to the reason to the question that lay on the table before him.

  Why?

  Why his name?

  If it's her—why now? Why show herself?

  Why expose her ilk from the relative safety of the war in Vietnam?

  Why step out of the shadows?

  What benefit is there in this play?

  Play?

  Yes, like pieces on a chess board.

  But to what end?

  "Mr. Harker, who are you talking about? Who—what is 'her?'" the man in the suit was asking now, his chair square on the floor, leaning forward on the table, his Camel snuffed out in a coffee mug.

  Ben looked up from the photo and gazed at the man in the suit, he looked around at all the officers who in turn were studying him. All except for Father Bishop who had closed his eyes and was praying in muttered silence. "Her?" he said.

  "Yes, you said, 'its her,' who is she?" the man pressed.

  Ben looked at him and back to the photo, eyes downcast, his voice trembled and grew into a low gravelled growl. "She is an evil the likes you have never experienced. As hard as this will be to accept, your survivor Private Summers, and your dead soldiers encountered an ancient race of vampyre who have walked this world as far back as the first civilizations, before flags and borders. When men were more superstitious than today. And they took notice of what lurked in the shadow."

  Some nervous snickering. "Vampyre? Are you saying Vampires?"

  Laughter abroad.

  Father Bishop waved a hand, finished with his prayers, slapping it on the table, clearly frustrated. "Gentlemen, what Mr. Harker says is the truth, as strange and terrible as it might sound.
There are things in this world you were never meant to believe, but that does not make it any less true."

  "And how do you know?" the man in the suit asked.

  Ben shook his head. "I've been hunting her and her ilk for much of my life. I know this is them. The signs are clear enough."

  "Does she have a name?"

  "Whatever it is or was, she is the first of their kind." Ben leaned upon his hawk handled cane, recalling some fifty years ago, the lessons passed on to him from Professor Helwing—recalling his own stubborn unwillingness to believe.

  "Why did she carve your name like that?" Captain Harris chimed in, his eyes wide but oddly accepting of what was being said.

  "I've hunted her for a long many years. Each and every time she has slipped through my grasp, like mist evaporating upon the rising sun. What has happened here, to your men, the marking, I've never seen this before. But I believe the intent is clear enough."

  "What intent is that?"

  Everyone was looking at him now. Silent. Watchful.

  "This is a game to her. She wants to see if I can kill her."

  "Can you?"

  "I don't know."

  "You don't know? Aren't you the expert here? How do you kill a vampire? Stake through the heart? Sunlight? Garlic?" The man in suit was standing now. He lit another smoke, rubbing his temple with his other hand.

  Smirking, Ben said, "I'm afraid it's not that easy. To slay one of her drones is a simple enough act, if you consider beheading a man or woman or child to be easy. See, that is what they do, they infect and turn those we love against us. And then you must also burn the remains. Stakes do nothing but maim. Garlic is useless. Sunlight will do the trick, though it's difficult to bring them out from their hiding places during the day. And crosses and prayer, silver—these will not kill but they can subdue long enough to remove the head. These methods work on the ilk—not on the alpha, not on her. She is unique."

  Colonel Giles hit the table with a closed fist, rattling the empty canteens and mugs of dried up coffee. He exhaled low. Tired. And closed minded. "I can't believe we are entertaining this story. Vampires? Jesus Christ. There is nothing supernatural going on here. Fucked up shit happens every day in the Nam."