by Pete Kahle
He heard the sergeant make a loud grunting noise followed by a distorted whining scream. All three sentries did, but Campbell was closest so he was the first to look into the shelter. That meant he was the first to die.
Kelly’s face had turned an odd shade of puce and he was sitting in the middle of the shelter, staring straight outside.
“Sergeant? Are you O...” was all Campbell managed before Kelly stood up, scattering the wood of the shelter all around, took his rifle in his hands and brought it round up an golf-swing motion, the perfect arc connecting squarely with Campbell’s jaw. Campbell flew backwards and landed on his back near the fire. The sergeant followed, diving on top of him before he could move and slamming the rifle butt once more in his face.
As Lloyd stared woozily up at his attacker, Kelly threw the rifle to one side and picked up the pencil which Lloyd had dropped as he landed. The Sergeant laughed, a bestial noise which scared Lloyd almost as much as the knowledge of his impending death. He twisted under the sergeant, turning on his side in an effort to wriggle free. Sergeant Kelly raised the pencil and stabbed it into Lloyd’s ear. Then he reached down for the radio which he used as a hammer to drive it deep into the brain.
Lloyd shuddered twice and lay still.
The whole attack had taken only a few seconds. Tyson was the next closest and had watched in disbelief as Campbell was thrown across the camp. He shouted for Moseley to get his arse over there quick and help out, and raced to the fire to try to stop Kelly, swinging his rifle in through the air like a baseball bat.
He was too late to help. Kelly stood after finishing off Campbell and side stepped Nathan’s clumsy swing with ease. He then stepped in and smashed the radio into Tyson’s forehead.
Nathan’s scalp split open like an overripe fruit, blood spilling from the hole as he staggered and fell to his knees. Kelly laughed the bestial laugh again and roundhouse kicked Nathan in the back, causing him to fall over face first into the fire.
Nathan had never experienced anything like it. He tried to stand, to push himself away from the heat and the pain, to allow himself to breathe again, but the sergeant’s foot was now planted firmly in the small of his back, stopping him from moving. The skin seared off his face and his hair caught fire, the remnants of the dye he’d used turning the flame an interesting green colour.
In his days in med school before he’d switched careers, he’d read how in extreme situations the brain could switch off the pain receptors. He prayed this would happen to him as he felt his trachea burn and his lungs shut down. The last sensation he was conscious of was his eyeballs popping in the heat, a brief trickle of his aqueous humour trickling down the ruin of his face before he felt nothing more.
“You fucking cunt” screamed Moseley as he raced across the clearing. “Get the fuck off him!”
He ran straight at the sergeant, holding his rifle in both hands. The sergeant aimed a punch but Martin blocked it with his weapon before using the butt of the rifle to break Kelly’s nose. As Kelly staggered backwards with blood pouring down his face, Martin hit him again, across the temple this time. Kelly fell onto his hands and knees and Moseley kicked him hard in the ribs. Kelly was flipped onto his back and Martin continued kicking him and stamping on him, all the time screaming and cursing at him.
By this time the whole camp was awake. Powell, McMahon and Jackson dragged the screaming Moseley off the prostrate body of the sergeant. Kyle received an elbow to the face, splitting his lip and he backed off. Jackson and McMahon had it covered in any case.
“I think that’s enough now.” Jackson yelled as the two of them pinned Martin to the floor.
While Tal and Ryan pulled the body of Private Tyson off the fire, Tom and Kyle knelt down next to the sergeant.
“He’s not breathing,” Tom said, checking the sergeant for signs of life.
Martin stopped struggling, pinned under the combined weight of Warren and Gary. It was the first time he’d killed another human, and it was his own sergeant, a man he’d been proud to call a colleague and a friend. He needed to be alone for a while, to try to adjust to this new reality. That he was a killer. Even if just in self defence. He tried explaining this to the men pinning him down, but all that came out of his mouth were wracking sobs.
Kyle joined Tom in dealing with the sergeant. He tilted Kelly’s head back and clamped the sergeant’s nose shut with his thumb and forefinger. “Tom, you know how to do chest compressions?”
Tom nodded and positioned himself over the sergeant’s chest. Kyle wiped the blood from around Kelly’s chin. Then he made the biggest mistake of his life when he leaned over and started mouth to mouth resuscitation.
The smell is knocking me sick but I search the pockets and bags on all the bodies. There are a few water bottles and Zed has a lighter in his pocket which I take. Campbell has a spray on deodorant in his pockets. The Sergeant would have killed him for bringing that along. I don’t need it so I throw it to one side.
The only other thing of interest is his notebook. In the one section I can read, he seems to have been writing a love poem. I don’t know much about poetry but even I know it was bad. I wonder where the pencil he always carries is. When I see it, I decide I don’t want it and move on to the next body.
This one is Powell. His real name was Kyle but he was called Justin by most people because he bore an unfortunate resemblance to that little prick Justin Bieber. His lifeless eyes stare blankly from his bloodstained face at me as I check his pockets.
He has a large and very deep stab wound in his left hand side. It looks like the knife would have pierced his lungs and heart, killing him instantly. The blood pooled in his clothes makes the few items in his pockets completely useless.
His cheek twitches suddenly. I struggle not to cry out in shock. With that hole in his side he can’t possibly be alive. I look more closely at his face and realise that he didn’t actually move. There’s something under his skin moving around, a grotesque bulge moving up his face and onto his forehead. The shape vanishes under his hairline.
As I stare in horror one of his eyes changes colour – the white of the eye becomes blood red, slowly at first but once the process starts it quickens rapidly. Now his eyeball starts bulging the same way the skin was just a moment ago. With a quiet pop, which sounds horribly loud in this cloying heat and loneliness, his eyeball splits open and a number of insects start crawling out though the hole.
They’re blood red and shaped something like a cockroach but with larger pincers. They’re tiny, about half a centimetre long by about two millimetres across the torso.
Kyle’s forehead starts squirming again as about half a dozen of the shapes appear from under his hairline. The shapes find a scratch on his head and congregate round it. I imagine I can hear the gnawing sound as the scratch becomes an open wound and more of the insects come crawling out, larger than the others, a good centimetre long at the smallest, the largest is close to an inch long.
I break out of my panicked state and scrabble for the discarded aerosol can. As the insects start swarming across Kyle’s face I flick on the lighter I found earlier and spray deodorant across the flame. The jet from the can ignites and I have a small portable flamethrower which I direct into the face of my ex friend.
The insects shrivel and burn as Kyle’s face blackens. The heat of the flame causes his other eye to pop and another small swarm of insects rushes out only to be cooked in the flames.
The smell of searing flesh makes me feel horribly hungry. How long is it since I last ate?
I hear a ripping and scuttling noise and turn. While I’ve been incinerating my best friend’s skull, Sergeant Kelly’s face has also split open. He has insects crawling out of his ears and nostrils as well as from his head wounds. I turn the flame on him as well but I’m too late to stop some of the insects from scuttling off into the undergrowth.
I try to stamp on as many as I can but they vanish easily into the shrubbery. The can in my hands is feeling way too hot now so
I throw it in after them. There’s a loud bang as the canister explodes. I know it won’t have killed any more of the things but it gives me a sense of satisfaction to imagine that it did.
Slipping the knife into a holster on my belt, I set off towards the valley. I take a last glance at my former comrades. With their burned faces Powell, Tyson and Kelly look like a set of hellish triplets from my darkest nightmares. I ask them all quietly for forgiveness and move towards what I hope is civilisation.
Kyle straightened and spat blood from his mouth. He nodded to Tom who linked his hands and placed them on the sergeant’s chest. He leaned forward and pushed down hard, putting his weight firmly on Kelly’s sternum. There was a loud cracking noise as the sergeant’s ribs, several of which were already cracked from the kicking Martin had given him, broke completely and his breastbone sank through though his torso. A fresh gout of blood spurted from his mouth and nose as his lungs compressed to a fraction of their working size.
Tom toppled forward as the ribcage gave way beneath him. With an effort he managed to straighten up and throw himself back, narrowly avoiding collapsing across the now definitively deceased body beneath him. He stared at Kyle, his face white.
“He had no real chance anyway.” Kyle murmured, his face also drained of colour. They stood and turned to face Martin, still being held by Gary and Warren.
Martin continued to sob. Had he been free to move, he would have curled into a foetal ball and stayed there.
The seven men sat in the clearing staring at each other, none of them talking, each trying to process the events of the past two minutes. The only sound to break the silence was Martin’s crying.
Eventually Warren voiced all their thoughts.
“What are we supposed to do now?”
Tom stood up and gestured to Kyle to help him move the body of the sergeant. “Start by showing some respect to the dead,” he said.
The men silently laid the three dead bodies side by side. Kyle and Tal found jackets to use as sheets and covered up the faces of the deceased. Once this was done, Tom signalled the men to gather round. Martin was left lying in his pool of grief by the fire.
Tom sat next to him and stroked his ginger hair. “Come on mate, come back to us.”
He eased Martin into a sitting position and hugged him tightly. Martin’s sobs slowly subsided with the more gentle human contact. He finally managed to ask for the alone time he craved.
“OK,” Tom said. “But stay where we can see you. We don’t know what’s going on here. We don‘t know why the sergeant did that to Lloyd and Nathan. Did you see anything?”
Martin shook his head and crawled to the opposite side of the clearing where he sat against a tree.
“Let’s just radio for help” Gary said. “They’ll send a chopper for us.”
“Kelly had the only radio, and it looks like he used it to kill Lloyd.” Tom replied. “He always comes out on... came out on these exercises short of equipment. Fuck him.”
“I’ll run to get help then.” Ryan volunteered.
If anyone could do it out of the squad it would have been between Ryan and Kyle. They were by far the fittest in the group. Kyle was looking listless and tired though.
Gillott shook his head. “It’s too dark. You’d never make it. We’ll have to stay till the morning and you can go for help then.”
“What are we going to say though? We’ve got three men dead and no story that makes sense to explain it!” Gary asked.
“What’s the alternative? We all go AWOL and the bodies are found... That looks great for us then doesn’t it?” Tom snapped.
Kyle yawned and announced he was going to sleep. Despite the dirty looks from his comrades, he retreated to his shelter while the remaining soldiers discussed the situation. They talked about the sergeant, the good times and the bad with him. They talked about sneaking Nathan into barracks after he passed out drunk on a night out. As they talked only Davids noticed the grunting noise and the strange distorted scream that came from Kyle’s tent.
They all noticed when Kyle stood up suddenly, scattering his shelter. His face was a strange colour and he had his hunting knife in his hand. His breath was raspy and almost inhuman. He laughed and ran straight at the group of men, the knife raised.
“What the hell are you doing?” Warren pulled his own knife from its holster and tried to hold his ground as the other soldiers instinctively moved out of the way. This was Jackson’s final and greatest mistake.
Kyle was left handed. In a knife fight, the left handed person has an automatic advantage against a right-hander. He’s used to his opponent using the opposite arm. Right handed people aren’t.
Warren’s blocking move missed entirely and Kyle plunged the hunting knife straight through his chin and thrust upward. He felt his jaws pinned together as the knife pierced his tongue and broke through the hard palate at the roof of the mouth. He gurgled on his own blood as Kyle removed the knife and plunged it into his cheek, just below the right eye. This time the blade entered the cranium and pierced the brain. He slumped to the floor as Kyle pulled the knife out and turned to face the others.
Four of the men had spread out and formed a circle around him. Martin had curled into a ball on the other side of the clearing.
“Put the knife down Justin!” Gillott barked at his former friend. “We don’t want to hurt you. Just put the...”
Kyle raced at him with the knife. Gillott sidestepped and prepared to block the knife swing but stumbled when it didn’t arrive.
Gary had jumped in and rugby-tackled Kyle as he raced forward and now the two of them were struggling on the ground together. Kyle had dropped the knife as he landed and was scrabbling to grab it again as Gary tried to pin him down.
Ryan kicked the knife out his reach and it landed at Davids’ feet. He aimed a kick at Kyle’s head but Kyle managed to twist and block with both arms. He wrapped his arms round Ryan’s legs and twisted again, pulling Ryan forward so he fell on his face and lay there stunned, blood leaking from his nose and scalp where he’d hit the floor.
Fights for life in reality are rarely as graceful and coordinated as fiction and films would suggest. They’re messy and vulgar affairs, even the best trained fighters fumble in the heat of the moment. Punches are thrown that miss entirely. It’s ugly and brutal, but for the victors, essential.
Gary struggled to hold the squirming little shit but he seemed stronger than ever. Suddenly Kyle grabbed a large rock and twisted round again into a sitting position with Gary now lying prone in his lap. As Tom and Tal leapt forward to try to prevent yet another tragedy, he brought the rock crashing down on Gary’s skull and laughed as he heard the satisfying crack.
Tom and Tal, in a scene that would have been funny in any other circumstance, managed to run into each other as they both aimed for Kyle. They hit the floor with a crash of heads.
Kyle turned his attention to Ryan, who was wiping the blood out of his eyes as he tried to get his shit back together. He straddled the prone Hargreaves’s muscled chest and raised the rock again. As he started to bring the rock down on Ryan’s young face he stopped, a look of surprise in his own eyes, and slumped forward.
Tal stood above him, the knife in his hand. He wasn’t the strongest fighter but he was one of the brightest, and his technique was excellent. He’d plunged the knife in the optimal spot between Kyle’s ribs and pierced the heart with his first stab.
Hargreaves squirmed. The corpse had landed so the stab wound was almost directly over his face and Kyle’s blood was flooding into his mouth and nose. He rolled over and pushed the dead weight off him and spat out the viscous fluid.
“Fuck, I think I swallowed some” Ryan tried to wipe the blood off his face with the edge of his shirt, smearing it across his own wounds in the process. He sat up. “What the fuck is going on? We’ve got to get out of here.”
“We’ll never be able to see our way down into that valley in the dark. We’ve got no choice but to wait till first light”
Tom said. He turned to Taliesin who was still staring at the bloody knife in his hands. “Are you ok?” This was Davids’ first kill too.
Tal dropped the knife and staggered over to the fire.
“I think it’s something to do with those insects,” he said, staring into the flickering flames.
“What are you talking about Tal?” Tom asked.
Tal started explaining about the clearing they’d found earlier that day, or was it yesterday? He’d lost track of time. Even in the middle of the night the heat was still sticky and draining.
Ryan yawned. “Look, if we’re not heading back now I’m going to catch some sleep.”
Tal glared at him and continued with his story. Martin joined in and between them they filled Tom in on every detail of the strange battleground they’d visited earlier.
Tom shook his head. “What’s that got to do with all of this?”
“Don’t you see?” Tal asked. “Kelly grabs this big insect. Did it sting him? I don’t know? But he goes crazy and starts killing everyone.
The animals in the clearing just kept fighting each other even as they were bleeding out. That’s not normal. I’ve never seen anything like it. That’s what’s happened here, first the Sarge and now Kyle, they just wouldn’t stop till they were dead.”
“When we saw the insects they were fighting each other? What’s that about?” Martin asked.
“I read somewhere that if you lock a hundred spiders in a room together, eventually what you’ll have is an empty room with one very well fed spider in it.” Tal said. “I think these things are like that, they limit their own population growth.”
Martin wasn’t convinced. He wanted to be. If there was a good reason he’d had to kill his sergeant, he might be able to live with himself again. “But that doesn’t work still, Kyle didn’t touch the insect. Why did he go crazy?”
Davids thought for a moment. “I honestly don’t know.”
They talked more about the possible reasons for the violence of the night but failed to reach any agreement. The one thing that the three of them did agree on was that they should plan the route back to camp for the next day. Tal retrieved the map from his pack and they worked by the light of the fire to plan the trek.