Toxic Shadows

by Tim Curran

We pushed on.

  I can’t honestly tell you what that fear was like. It was just this cold dread that made my blood feel like ice water. It was in every cell of my body, shivering. I’d known fear before, I’d lived with it day in and day out over there, but never anything remotely similar to what was in me that day.

  I was ahead of Barber and Roshland by then, walking the point. Every step was worse than the last. I wasn’t worried about VC or NVA, but something else entirely. I just didn’t know what.

  Ten minutes later, I stopped dead.

  I motioned Barber and Roshland forward.

  I wanted them to see what I saw, because I was beginning to doubt my own eyes.

  They came up behind me and I just pointed.

  “Shit,” Barber said.

  It was hanging all over the trees and bushes —long, gooey strands of transparent slime that looked like snot. The air was pungent with its scent: sharp, acrid, like ammonia. A dirty yellow mist was steaming from the stuff, collecting along the jungle floor in patches of ground fog.

  “What the fuck?” Roshland said, prodding a dripping mass with the barrel of his 60. The stuff sizzled as it contacted the metal.

  “What is it?” I asked Barber. It was obvious from the drawn look on his face that he’d seen it before or at least knew what it was.

  “Laughing Man,” was all he would say.

  “What’s that?” Roshland said. “What the hell is that?”

  “Bad shit,” I said under my breath.

  Laughing Man was a defoliant.

  The Air Force had high hopes for it at first, but something happened and they canceled the project. That was the official version…and the rumors took off from there. This Laughing Man shit didn’t kill the foliage like it was supposed to, at least not right away. It took a few weeks to work.

  In the interim is when the nasty things happened.

  The inhabitants that came into contact with it sort of went insane and killed each other off. There were all sorts of rumors concerning cannibalism and self-mutilation. What I knew was mostly hearsay and some crazy shit a Marine Recon told me at a bar in Saigon. He and about eighteen or twenty other Recons had to lead a team of Agency spooks up north to a village the Air Force had accidentally sprayed with the stuff. He told me that Laughing Man was no defoliant, but a biological contaminant. He’d heard the spooks whispering about it. A biotoxin.

  When they got to the village, no one was left: the entire population was dead, about twenty-five men, women, and children. The place stunk to high heaven; all those bodies had been lying around in the summer humidity for nearly a week. Most of ‘em were bloated and decomposed and some had been eaten. The spooks opened up a few cadavers and found the stomachs full of half-digested bits of human anatomy. A few had been stripped to the bone by their fellow villagers. Some of the bones had been snapped open, the marrow sucked out.

  Others were just gnawed to hell.

  It was like a fucking slaughterhouse, he said.

  Later that night, as they headed back to the LZ, loaded down with body-bagged villagers for further testing, an NVA patrol came at them. Obviously, they had been dusted by Laughing man, too. They were wired. They didn’t have any weapons…and their eyes shined yellow in the dark. Just like Christmas bulbs, the Recon said. They were foaming at the mouths like rabid dogs. The Marines blew ‘em to hell with everything they had: light machineguns, automatic rifles, SMGs, shot guns, grenades—and still the bastards came. He said he emptied a full clip into one gook and still the little fucker crawled at him like a piece of Swiss cheese. The Marines managed to hold them back long enough to get to high ground and call in an artillery strike on those crazy slopes. The gunners back at the fire station pounded the shit out of ‘em with their 105s.

  It turned out later they weren’t North Viets at all, but an ARVN Ranger patrol. Laughing Man turned them into killers and they didn’t give two shits what uniform you wore. Everyone was the enemy.

  That’s all I knew and it was enough.

  Obviously, the Air Force was still spraying the shit. I had a good idea why we were supposed to waste that village.

  “Maybe we should turn back,” I said to Barber.

  He shook his head as I knew he would. “I’ll take point,” he said. “Don’t touch any of that crap.”

  “Goddammit, Davis, what is that shit?” Roshland demanded.

  “Bad-ass defoliant,” I told him and moved out.

  The jungle thinned out as we went, dry and dead. Laughing Man was sticking to the canvas of our boots like mucus. The ochre fog was everywhere. We were breathing it in. I could feel it burning my throat and nasal passages. It was too late to turn back by then; we were all contaminated.

  Land of the dead? Goddamn right.

  About that time, Barber and Roshland started getting to me.

  I knew I was tired and possibly even messed-up on Laughing Man, but they were starting to look funny. Like they’d changed or something. They seemed thinner, their eyes never blinking. Their skin had a strange ashen hue to it. I hoped it was my imagination. I really did.

  Roshland and I were following Barber single file, a good distance behind.

  We could see him moving through the dead brush very cautiously. Suddenly, he stopped. He gave us a hand signal and crouched down behind a bush. Something was directly ahead and I had a pretty good idea it wasn’t the village. Roshland kept flashing me these odd grins every time I turned around. His eyes were glazed over. They were like the eyes of a dead fish on a beach. He looked like he was fucked-up on some of that nasty Cambodian shit…except worse.

  Barber gave us another signal and we crept forward. It was just some freaking zipperhead with a rice-picker hat on. He was walking towards us, stumbling drunkenly.

  He didn’t have any weapons that I could see. But there was something wrong with him—we all sensed that. I think maybe it was the way he walked, kind of shuffling as if he were blind, his hands clawing the air in front of him.

  Barber told us to spread out, which we did, each of us crouching behind a dead bush.

  The guy shambled forward and Barber stood up, waiting for him. His fingers were on the trigger of his Stoner. When the guy got within a few feet of him, we all saw what his problem was. He was blind. In fact, he didn’t have any eyes whatsoever, just two bloody sockets.

  “Shiiiit,” I heard Roshland say.

  Barber let go of his Stoner and snaked a hand behind him, clasping the grip of the machete he had slung on his rucksack.

  The slope staggered right at him, his hands hooked into claws and waving wildly. Barber side-stepped him and the guy’s dough-white features were hooked in a manic sneer, lips pulling back from gnashing yellow teeth. It was then I noticed that his fingers were blood-stained, like maybe he’d torn out his own eyes. Maybe Laughing Man had shown him things he didn’t want to see.

  Barber held the machete out in front of him.

  My finger was sweating on the trigger of my AK. I had a bead drawn on the gook’s chest and I wanted to waste him, but Barber had his own ideas. He stepped into my field of fire like he knew what I was doing.

  The gook made another unsuccessful lunge at him and Barber swung the machete at him. It went through the rice-picker hat with a crunch and split the crown of the head beneath like a melon. The gook went down, flopping and snapping his teeth like a mad dog. By all that I’d seen of men dying—and it was considerable—he should’ve been dead. But he wasn’t. He was on the ground, screaming and howling. Barber moved in for the kill, chopping and hacking at the guy’s head until there was nothing left above his shoulders but a few pounds of bloody meat.

  When Roshland and I got there, Barber was just standing there studying the gored blade of his machete.

  “Commander,” I said, “let’s go.”

  Barber nodded, wiping his machete in the grass and sliding it back into its sheath. “Village should be over that next ridge,” he muttered.

  Roshland was giggling.

&nbs
p; We moved out together.

  They were both fucked-up and I didn’t trust either of them, so I didn’t want them on point. And I didn’t want them behind me, so I didn’t walk point either. Barber didn’t object: he and command had parted company. I didn’t think there was any harm in us moving as a group; everything was dead.

  As it turned out, Barber was right.

  The village was just over the ridge. It wasn’t much. Just eight or ten hooches set up on stilts, a small stream, and a few feeble-looking paddies flanking the treeline. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. The air was still, soundless, not even the cry of a jungle bird disturbed it.

  It was eerie.

  And hot. Sweat was rolling off my brow and stinging my eyes. I prayed for a breeze, but none came. It wouldn’t have helped any; the heat wasn’t what was making me sweat—it was the hush, dead feeling of the place. I prayed then for normal worries. Even an ambush would’ve been welcome. After the other vil and what we’d seen since…I expected only the worst.

  We emerged from a small stand of trees and set about checking out the hooches. I always hated crawling up those ladders and peering inside. Usually there was little more than a couple of children or an old woman huddled in the corner, but sometimes you found yourself staring down the barrel of a Russian rifle. That happened to me once. Whether it was fate or God or the tooth fairy, I don’t know, but the gook’s rifle jammed. I pulled him out of there and snapped his neck. I was lucky that day. Very lucky.

  This time, however, they were empty.

  A couple of wooden bowls and a straw mat or two were all that we found. And it was strange even finding those things. Usually, if the slopes abandoned a village for one reason or another, they’d take anything that wasn’t tied down and some things that were.

  No, this was all wrong. They were around somewhere.

  The knowledge of that really made me start to sweat.

  After we re-grouped, Barber said, “I don’t understand this. I just don’t...know...I don’t know…”

  “Bandits got ‘em,” Roshland suggested.

  “Bullshit,” I said. “Where are the bodies?”

  He shrugged. “Out in the jungle. Who cares?”

  “Let’s take another sweep around,” Barber said. “Then...then we’ll see...I guess…”

  I just looked at him “Fuck that. I’m going to check the perimeter,” I told them. “Then I’m heading for the LZ with or without your sorry asses.”

  Roshland shook his head. “Take it easy, bro. Everything’s cool here. Just mellow.”

  “Damn yer black ass,” I said and moved off into the jungle.

  There was a possibility I was freaking out, but I didn’t think so. Roshland and Barber were contaminated with Laughing Man and I was positive of that. I didn’t know how long I had until it got to me, too. I hadn’t opted to check the perimeter merely to satisfy myself that the area was safe…I had to get away from them. I couldn’t stand looking at them any longer.

  They were starting to look like living dead men.

  I was creeping around, moving from bush to bush, when I saw the hut. I wasn’t sure why it was set off in the jungle away from the others. Possibly, it was a weapons stash for the VC or just a food stash. I had to know either way. I approached it cautiously, my finger stroking the trigger of the AK. I checked around the door for any trip wires and went in. It was pitch black in there. Or had been. Now a shaft of sunlight sliced a path through the murk.

  Thurman was in there.

  He was bound around the ankles with a length of hemp rope and suspended two feet off the ground from a bamboo tripod, his hands tied behind his back. His skin looked like old cheese and his eyes were sunken in. He was dead, but I had to make sure. I prodded him a couple of times with the barrel of my rifle...and he moved. His lids snapped open and he leered at me with yellow, venomous eyes.

  “Davis,” he croaked. “Cut me down, man, cut me down…”

  It was then I noticed his throat was slit.

  It was open beneath his chin, like a grinning, lipless mouth. I could see the tissues in there, dead and bloodless. As I aimed my rifle at him, I imagined what it must have been like for him. The slopes tied him like that, cut his throat, and fed on him like a bunch of fucking vampires. But he wasn’t allowed to die, to rest, Laughing Man had seen to that.

  Clenching my teeth, I put the barrel of my AK against his forehead and emptied the clip.

  I staggered back outside and threw up.

  I thought about going to get Roshland and Barber, but I knew it was pointless. If my gunfire hadn’t brought them charging through the jungle, nothing would. Pulling off my boonie hat, I wiped the sweat from my face. After a good pull from my canteen and a couple of salt tabs, I felt a little better. Functional, at any rate. I dug in my breast pocket and got out my pack of Lark’s. I slipped one between my lips and sat there smoking, not thinking about a thing. When I was done, I butted it against a stone and buried it.

  Then I went back into the hut.

  I cut Thurman’s mangled body down and rolled him into the corner. There was a straw mat on the opposite side of the floor and I tossed it aside. I was looking down the throat of a tunnel. I dropped my pack and rifle and shotgun, took out my .45 and went down.

  The walls were sticky and damp. It wasn’t made for a larger body, so I barely fit. I slithered through there until my back was sore and I was slicked with clay. All I had for a flashlight was a small penlight. Down there, it seemed pretty bright. It was hard moving, crawling through there. My head kept bumping into the low ceiling and my shoulders brushed the walls. After what seemed about an hour, I came to a room.

  It wasn’t very big. Only about four feet from floor to ceiling and twice that in area.

  I could smell the bodies before I saw them.

  Their reek was awful. There were about three or four of them sprawled on the floor, chewed to shit. Their faces were gone, nothing but skull left. They had been VC once. I saw what was left of their black pajamas and a few AK-47s half-buried in the mud.

  Then I saw the girl.

  She was crouched among them, hugging herself. Her blue-black hair was tangled over her face. She looked at me. A crusty blob of snot hung from one nostril and her eyes had no pupils. She was drooling.

  “You boom-boom me, numba one?” she asked.

  I put two slugs between her eyes and left the dead alone to do whatever they do in the darkness.

  Out in the sunlight, I headed back toward the village.

  I went back to where I left Roshland and Barber, but they were gone. I was close to panicking now; it had all been just too much. I ran from hootch to hootch shouting their names. But they were gone. I found Barber’s Stoner machine gun lying at the edge of the forest, but nothing else. They’d gone through the jungle, I could see that much. Either gone or been taken. Maybe if I’d been sane, I would’ve gotten out of there right then. But all that training was too ingrained in my mind; I couldn’t leave my comrades. SEALs didn’t leave other SEALs behind. I’d dragged the bodies of fallen team members through miles of jungle more than once.

  I spent the next hour looking for Barber and Roshland.

  I patrolled through the jungle in an ever-widening search grid, but I didn’t find jack shit. Just more and more jungle, all dead and silent as a mortuary. I went back to the vil and made my plans. I should’ve evaded to the LZ, but Barber and Roshland, they were my friends. I couldn’t leave them. I found a ridge outside the vil that was heavy with undergrowth. I hid in there, set up a nice little OP, observation post. I told myself I’d give them until dark to show, then I was outta there.

  Just after sunset, I was still there. I was watching the village with my Starlight scope, expecting something. Before too long, the villagers started showing up—singly at first, then in twos and threes, and finally in roving gangs. I could hear them down there howling and hissing and shrieking. Like animals. I saw Barber and Roshland in their company. Even in the murky green field o
f the Starlight it wasn’t hard to pick out a tall Caucasian and a heavy Negro amongst those small Asians. After a time, they wandered off into the jungle.

  But I didn’t sleep.

  I kept watch, waiting for dawn. It was the longest night of my life, just waiting and waiting for sunup so I could get out of there. The night belonged to them; there was no question of that. They were hunters. Even with all my training, all my experience, I knew I was no match for them. Off and on I could hear screams, gunfire, shouting. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Maybe some gook patrol had run into the villagers. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to know.

  Just before dawn, it started to rain. Before long it was pouring, turning the landscape muddy and sloppy. At first light, I went down into the village. It was dead and empty. Thurman’s body was gone. I started patrolling through the jungle again, ankle-deep in mud, soaked to the skin, and finally I found a path beaten through the knife-grass. You had to be really paying attention to see it. I followed it for about three clicks to the top of a forested rise. In the distance, I could see other villages spread out. But I didn’t bother with them. If there were still people in them, then it was best I stay away. One heavily-armed man is still one man.

  But I knew they were empty.

  I figured that’s what all the commotion had been in the night, those things attacking the villages.

  I followed the trail up and down through the hills until I finally found what I was looking for: a cave. It was set into the wall of a craggy, overhanging bluff. Creepers grew over the rock like ivy, they hung in knotted ropes over the entrance. I almost missed it. But when I saw it…yeah, I knew where the things, those rabids, were hiding.

  I brushed aside the dangling jungle and peered inside. It was very dark, so I checked it out with my light. The slopes were real good with caves, tunnels, that sort of thing. You’ve heard about that. You give ‘em a nice deep hole and pretty soon they’ve got themselves a dandy ammo dump or ordinance drop. Sneaky little fucks even ran hospitals and weapons factories, command posts and intelligence networks right out of the ground.

  I was armed to the teeth, but I wondered if it was enough.