Tales of the Hidden World

by Simon R. Green

  I eat only the finest food, said the Epicure, made from the finest ingredients. The food of the gods. I have a meal waiting, already prepared. Would you care to join me?

  Of course, I said. I’d be honored.

  It was excellent. Delicious. Good beyond words. I asked him what was in it, and he smiled a slow satisfied smile.

  The last journalist who came looking for me.

  I was too angry, too disappointed, to be shocked. I laughed, right in his face.

  That’s it? That’s your great secret? You claim you’re a cannibal?

  Oh no, he said. There’s far more to it than that.

  Still sitting in the red room. Still staring at the neatly severed head. There’s a sense of threat in the room now, a feeling of menace and imminent danger. I’ve got to get out of here, before something bad happens. But still I don’t move, or rather, it’s more that somehow I don’t want to move. Something bad, something really bad, has already happened. Have I . . . done something bad?

  Memories surge through me, jumbled, flaring up in bright splashes of good times and bad, a rushing kaleidoscope of my past, my life.

  I remember being young, and small, and rolling down endless grassy slopes, with the smell of grass and earth and trees almost unbearably rich in my head. The sun was so bright, the air so warm on my bare arms and legs, comforting as a mother’s arms. I remember walking along a sandy beach, with Emily’s arm thrust possessively through mine, both of us smiling and laughing and telling each other things we’d never told anyone before. To be young and in love, happiness building and building inside me till I thought I’d explode through sheer joy. And then . . .

  I remembered Emily walking away from me, her shoulders hunched against the cold night air, and the pleas I was yelling after her. I’d tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t listen, her reasons just excuses to justify a decision she’d already made. I remembered standing at my parents’ grave, after the car accident, and feeling a cold empty numbness that was worse than tears.

  And the worst memory of all, realizing long before my editor told me, that I just wasn’t good enough to be the kind of reporter I wanted to be.

  Memories, memories, good and bad and everything in between, things I hadn’t let myself think of in years, rushing by me faster and faster, sharp and vivid and yet somehow strangely distant.

  The Epicure continued eating as he lectured me on traditional cannibal beliefs. How certain ancient peoples believed that eating a brave man’s heart would give you courage, or eating a big man’s muscles would make you strong. How recent medical science had both proved and extended these beliefs. Take a planarian worm and teach it to run a maze. Then chop up the worm and feed it to other planarian worms. And they will run the maze perfectly, even though they’ve never seen it before. Meat is memory. Eat a man’s mind, and you can gain access to all his most precious memories. For a while.

  He laughed then, as the drug he’d put in my food finally took effect, and I lost consciousness.

  I finally recognize the face on the severed head. Of course I know that face. It’s mine. Because I’m not who I think I am. I’m somebody else, remembering me. The Epicure doesn’t care about the meat, he eats minds so he can savor the memories. All my most precious moments, all my triumphs and despairs, all the things that made me who I am . . . reduced to a meal, to satisfying another man’s appetite. I want to cry at what I’ve lost, at what has been taken from me, but they aren’t my eyes. Already my memories are fading, my thoughts are fading, as he comes rising up inside me, like a great shark in some bloody sea, eating up what’s left of me so he can be himself again.

  There’s a rich, happy, satisfied smile on my lips.

  You are who you eat. But not for long.

  A wonderful example of You’re not reading the story you think you’re reading—one in which the big reveal comes right at the very end and makes you see everything in a completely new light. I once wrote a story where the big surprise was in the very last word of the very last sentence; and I was unbearably smug for days. . . .

  He Said, Laughing.

  I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one.

  Vietnam is another world; they do things differently here. It’s like going back into the Past, into a more primitive place. That’s what I thought when I got here. It only took me a few months to learn the darker truth, below the surface. Being sent to fight in Vietnam in 1970 is like being thrown down into Hell, while all the time knowing that Heaven is only a plane trip away.

  It’s hot as Hell, even when it isn’t trying. The humidity is inhuman; it’s like trying to breathe underwater. Your clothes are always soaked with sweat, and rain, and blood. If you’re lucky, that’s just from broken blisters. Even worse than the heat is the knowledge that you’re always being watched. You can’t trust anyone. Not the South Vietnamese army, not the civilians, not even your own people. Eyes, everywhere. Waiting to see you die. Is it any wonder I went a little crazy?

  They kept me hanging about in Saigon for weeks, and then the CIA man sent for me. He had a nice little air-conditioned office, and I didn’t care how long he kept me waiting. When I finally got to see him, he sat behind a nice little desk with papers all in order. He didn’t get up when I came in, just waved for me to sit opposite him.

  “Captain Marlowe,” he said. “I’m CIA. You don’t need to know my name.”

  “Then what do I call you?” I said, as though I cared.

  “You call me sir.” He smiled briefly. I didn’t bother. He was CIA. That meant he was probably part of the Phoenix group. Kill teams, operating without restraints, and sometimes without orders. He could do anything he wanted with me.

  He pretended to study the file before him. My file.

  “You have been a bad little soldier, haven’t you, Captain? Civilian massacre. Whole village wiped out, on your orders, with your active participation. One hundred and seventeen men, women, and children. Why, Captain?”

  “Because it was there,” I said. “I’ve already said all I’m going to say. When do we get to the court-martial?”

  He considered me for a moment. “Doesn’t have to be one, Captain. We have a . . . sensitive mission, for you. Carry it out successfully, and I make everything in the folder disappear. You go home with an honorable discharge.”

  “If I don’t?”

  “Then you get a dishonorable discharge, first class. I take you out the back of this building and put two bullets in your head.”

  I surprised him by actually thinking about it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go home, after everything I’d seen, and done. I didn’t think I was safe to send home, among defenseless civilians. But I wasn’t ready to die, not quite yet.

  “Who do I have to kill, sir?”

  He opened another, thicker file, and skimmed a photo across the table to me.

  “That is General Kurtz. He’s gone missing, deep in country. Gone native. He’s been left alone for some time, because of his excellent kill ratios, but now . . . seems he’s sending his people after anything that moves. Killing everyone, ours and theirs. You are to go up the river, to his compound, find out what he’s doing, and if necessary put a stop to it.”

  “I get to kill a general?”

  “If his methods are found to be . . . unsound, yes. Blow his stupid brains out.”

  “And I get this mission because . . . ?”

  “Because you are completely and utterly expendable, Captain. If you fail, we’ll just find another psycho in a uniform and send him. And keep on sending people like you, until one of them does the job.”

  “I kill him, and I can go home? What’s the catch?”

  “The catch is, he’ll probably kill you like he’s killed everyone else. You want this mission, or not?”

  “I’ll go,” I said. “Save your bullets for Charlie.”

  They gave me a boat, a
run-down piece of shit called the Suzie Q. Crew of three to run it, and take me up river, following what maps we had. I didn’t ask their names. Didn’t want to know. They were just grunts. They didn’t matter to me, except to get me where I was going. They were even more expendable than I was.

  One by one, they died, going up the river. In country, into the jungle, into those parts of the world where man was never meant to live, because you can’t survive there if you insist on being a man. You need animal instincts, animal drives, and a complete willingness to kill everything else that moves.

  I saw all kinds of action along the way, action and firefights and killing, but I let the crew do that. I didn’t want to get involved. Partly because my mission was too important for me to endanger myself, but mostly because I was afraid that if I started shooting, started killing, I wouldn’t be able to stop.

  One by one they were killed, and by the time I got to the end of the river, it was just me, on the Suzie Q, chugging slowly through the dark waters, with dark green forest on either side, the trees leaning forward to make a canopy to blot out the sun. There was no day, anymore, just an endless twilight.

  I knew I was getting closer to Kurtz’s compound when I saw lights up ahead. Bright flaring yellow lights, like will-o’-the-wisps dancing on the air. They were torches, held in unmoving hands by a small army of natives, lined up on the bank at the end of the river. Huge muddy banks rose up to either side of me, casting a dark shadow across the river. The natives watched me ease my boat to a halt. None of them said anything. They wore rags and tatters of clothing. Some North uniforms, some South, most just rotting fragments of cloth. All standing perfectly, unnaturally still. The whole area was completely silent. Not even any of the normal jungle noises, of beast and bird and insect. I looked around me. There was no sign of any compound, or buildings, or any kind of civilization. Just great dark holes in the muddy banks, like caves. Or eyes.

  There was a small natural docking area ahead, just a flattened-off sandbank. I stepped off the boat, and two natives came forward to greet me. The smell hit me first. A terrible smell, of death and rotting flesh. They stopped before me. Their eyes didn’t blink, and they didn’t breathe, and there were patches of decaying flesh all over their naked gray bodies. They were dead. They were dead, and they moved.

  I’d only thought I knew what Hell was.

  They took me with them, into one of the dark caves. Turned out that General Kurtz had dug his compound out of the earth itself. Long tunnels led from the riverbanks into the ground beneath the jungle. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Charlie’s always had a fondness for tunnels. The warren was huge, extensive, tunnels crisscrossing. There were no signs anywhere, but my guides knew where they were going. The tunnel ceilings slowly lowered, till we had to walk bent over, moving through the dark, wet, muddy passages like worms in the earth. The smell got worse and worse. A terrible stench of death and decay. And finally, in the heart of that torchlit maze, I was brought into the awful court of General Kurtz.

  It was almost shockingly normal, even civilized. A table, and chairs, and books on shelves in the walls. Kurtz himself was stick thin, with sharp aesthetic features, restless with never-ending nervous energy. His general’s uniform flapped about him, as though he’d once been a much larger man. It was spotlessly clean. The stench was just as appalling, though. All the smells of death, and not one scent of living things. Kurtz clearly couldn’t smell it. He lived in it every day.

  I stood before the man I’d been sent to kill and nodded to him. I didn’t have any weapons. The native guides had taken my gun and my knife. I didn’t care. I’d been trained to kill with my bare hands, if need be. And even in this awful place, before this strange, unsettling man, I had no doubt I could kill him, if need be. I wouldn’t get out alive, of course, but it had been a long time since I’d given much thought to that. General Kurtz gestured for me to sit down. The same kind of casual order I’d seen from the CIA man. The gesture of a man who has power. I sat down.

  Kurtz smiled briefly. “Yes,” he said. “They’re dead. The men who brought you here. Dead men walking, torn from their graves, and set to work by me. They’re all dead here, except me. All my troops, all my armies: dead men. Zombies. Old voodoo magic, from the Deep South of America. Don’t worry; they won’t try to eat you, like in that film. They don’t eat, any more than they drink or piss or sweat. They’re beyond such earthly needs. They have no appetites, no desires; there is nothing they want. The bodies may move, but there’s no one home. Left to themselves, they would just stand beside their empty graves, until they rotted and fell apart. I give them orders, and they obey. I give them order and purpose. For as long as they last. They are my warriors of the night, my army of the unliving.

  “War is far too important to be left to the living.”

  “Dead soldiers,” I said numbly. “They don’t get tired, and they don’t get hurt, and they’ll follow any order you give them, because nothing matters to them.”

  “Exactly. The perfect fighting force. I just point them in the right direction, and they swarm over everything in their path. Like army ants. And if I lose a few, through too much damage, I can always replace them with the fallen enemy dead. You’re not shocked, Captain. How refreshing.”

  “Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it,” I said. “I’ve always known this was a bad place, a dark place, that I had come among mad people. Zombies aren’t the worst thing I’ve seen in country.”

  “No. This isn’t like any other war we’ve ever fought. The only way to win, to survive, is to be willing to do even worse things than the enemy. To encourage the darkness in our minds, in our souls. This is a dark place, and the only way to deal with that darkness is to come to terms with it. To embrace it, to make it your own. Give it shape and purpose and meaning. I have done . . . awful, unforgivable things, Captain, but for the first time . . . I am making progress. Taking and holding territory. Driving the enemy back.

  “I will win this war, that people are saying cannot be won. I tried everything else first, but this is the only thing that works. Sometimes . . . I wonder what it must be like, to be dead, and not to have to feel anymore. To have no needs, or fears, or conscience. To be just the perfect killing machine. I held this territory with living men for some time. Growing more desperate, more extreme with every fruitless victory. The things I did, the things I had to do . . . You feel less and less. When you have power, you can do anything, everything, because nothing matters. You end up driving yourself to extremes, just to feel . . . something. There is comfort in death.

  “But I’m not ready to die yet. After I’ve won the war here, the war they sent me to win knowing it could not be won . . . then I will go home. I will bring my dead people with me, and I will bring the war home. I will give them a taste of the Hell they sent us all into, and make our country a charnel house just like this.”

  He looked at me. “You won’t kill me, Captain. Because that’s not what you really want. I can see the same darkness in your eyes that I have come to know. Stay here with me. I will kill you, and then raise you up, and take all your cares away. No more pain, no more bad dreams, no more conscience. I will take you home with me, and we will show those fat, sheltered civilians the true cost of war.

  “There will be blood and suffering and death all across America when Johnny comes marching home. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

  “The horror! The horror!” he said, laughing.

  Once again, they come to me for a zombie story, and I think . . . what hasn’t been done? So I turned to one of my old favorites: Apocalypse Now. The original short novel—Heart of Darkness—is such a wonderful model you can hang pretty much anything on it and it still works. I once used it in my science fiction novel Deathstalker War, where I stopped the whole plot dead for two hundred pages just so I could write a version of Heart of Darkness featuring the Muppets. Really. I’m not kidding. And here I go again . . . bec
ause the real horror in this story isn’t the risen dead; it’s the darkness in the hearts of men.

  Soldier, Soldier

  I shot the kid in the belly, spreading his guts across a wall. One kid is worth two women; one woman is worth two men. That’s what they drum into each and every one of us, till you scream it in your sleep.

  Just me and Matt, stalking the smoking ruins. The silence is unnerving: no shots, no crackling fires, no voices yelling or cursing or screaming. Matt walks slowly down the other side of the deserted street, his rifle in his hands. I keep mine slung over my shoulder. It’s heavy, and under the midday sun, it’s growing heavier. The air’s hot and sticky and my feet hurt. A cool beer would be great, but there isn’t any. I reach into my rucksack and pull out a Coke, smashing the glass bottle open against a wall. The sickly lukewarm drink is better than nothing.

  Matt stops and listens, and then I hear it, too: footsteps approaching. Matt slides into a dark doorway as I unsling my rifle with the ease of long practice. I throw off the safety and wait. A figure springs into view at the end of the street, and even against the sun I can see the dark gray uniform. The bastard’s one of ours. I hear Matt curse quietly as he steps back into the light, rifle hanging disappointedly at his side.

  I put up my rifle and take another gulp of Coke. It slides down nice and easy. Matt asks the newcomer what he wants. He jumps to attention under Matt’s tone and swings a snappy salute. The way he tells it, the captain said we’re to take out a sniper’s nest at the end of the next street. Matt and I look at each other and shrug. What the hell.

  We take it out.

  We blast and frag the house, and shoot them down as they crawl out. There are three bodies, and only one is recognizably human. The others are hamburger.

  Back at the camp, we stand to attention while the captain talks. They know we’re in the city. The radio reports a bloody massacre of soldiers and civilians by an unknown guerrilla force. Both sides are unanimous in condemning the atrocities. Both sides blame the other. Matt doesn’t smile, but then he never does unless his rifle is bucking at his hip. Then he smiles kind of dreamy, far away. But his eyes don’t miss a thing.