The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy)

by Weaver, Scott

  "Whatever," Jacky replied, grabbing his booze and smokes and getting out of the car, slamming the door.

  "Smooth," Jake said, looking at Johnny.

  "Got him the fuck out of the car, didn't it?"

  Drew started backing up the car. "The ends always justify the means, right, my man?"

  "Exactly," Johnny said with a smile. "Now hand back the party favors, my cans dry."

  "Fucking kids," Jacky said as he opened up his bottle and took a big swig.

  "Hello, Jack," he came out of the early evening shadows like a black panther.

  Jacky looked down at the bottle. "You're a little early to be comin' around ain't ya?"

  He came the rest of the way out of the shade of the trailer, briefly looking like a Viet-Cong soldier, but his AK-47 quickly turned into a bottle of booze and his straw hat became a farm implementation ball cap.

  "Thought maybe we'd have an early drink and you can tell me a little more about those boys in that big, ugly Ford that just dropped you off."

  Jack did his best to hide the fear that tickled up his neck anytime the beast showed up when he was sober. They were old friends from back in the war days, in those dark, tight tunnels. The type of old friend that was a huge part of your life when you were younger, but was nothing more than a reminder of horrible times now.

  "Just a trio of punks, pretty much," Jack replied, taking a big swig from his bottle.

  "They pretty tight?"

  "Seem to be."

  "Any kinks in their armor?"

  "Oh, hell yeah."

  "Well, let's hear about that," the demon's smile seemed to reach all the way back to his ears.

  Chapter 7 Nam

  On August the 26th, 1969, in the Vietnam Jungle, Frank finally got to use the family heirloom. Not by choice so much as desperation, by this time he didn't even want to touch the damn thing.

  The dead of night didn't do much to cool down the thick heat of the jungle, and the bugs and leeches never stopped. For the two last surviving soldiers of the 17th infantry squad, the adrenaline that pumped through their veins put all of the discomforts of the jungle to a minimum, as they focused on trying to stay alive.

  "Fuckin' Cong," Nick whispered. "They're out there, waiting like spiders."

  "Shut up," Frank hissed. "They'll hear you!"

  "We can't sit here any longer, Franky, they're gonna pin us down!"

  Frank let out a sigh. "Lead on then, tough guy."

  Nick sprang like a lion out into the open, and machine gun fire immediately answered him from the left. Frank saw where it came from and squeezed the trigger of his M-16, peppering the area with bullets.

  Silence and darkness followed for a long second.

  "Fuck you, Charlie!" Nick yelled into the night. "You missed me!"

  Frank watched and waited for more gunfire but nothing came.

  "You got 'em Franky," Nick said, standing up.

  "Must have," Frank replied. "Otherwise they would have cut you down by now, Nicky."

  Nick chuckled darkly. "I've got more faith in your marksmanship, than you, pal."

  "Don't fool yourself buddy," Frank reached his friend. "There is always another snake in the grass."

  They ran through the dark jungle, waiting to be cut down by the Viet-Cong, but knowing they had no choice but to hurry. Their only chance at survival was getting the hell out of where they were and back into friendly territory. Their squad had been ambushed less than an hour ago, and as far as they knew, they were the only ones still alive.

  "Haul balls, country boy," Nick said as they ran.

  "Kiss my ass, Boston," Frank replied as they both giggled away the stress as they ran.

  Frank followed Nick, hoping he knew where the hell he was going. They made it about a click or so before they ran into more gunfire.

  Frank dropped to the jungle floor as Nick yelled expletives, firing back with his M-60 into the bush.

  "That's all you commie bastards' got?" he asked, standing tall and letting his machine gun spit out bullets.

  The Cong answered with a barrage of bullets across Nick's face, dropping him like a pile of bricks.

  "Fuck you!" Frank yelled, emptying his clip into the jungle where the enemy fire had come from.

  The Cong answered with a another assault of return fire, pushing Frank back to the ground as the bullets flew. He quickly reloaded his rifle, trying to sink into the ground by sheer force of will. "Nicky is dead," kept chewing at his brain, threatening to make his fingers tremble.

  Movement came from the bush to his right, close. He aimed his rifle and let loose a quick barrage of bullets. He saw Charlie buck as he was hit in the brief fire light of his bullets. Half a second before Frank released the trigger of his weapon it stopped firing on its own, jammed.

  "Damn it!" He spit, as more bullets flew through the air above him from some new direction, forcing him back to the ground, trying to get the rifle un-jammed. ”Goddamn finicky M-16's," he thought to himself, pulling the charging handle back several times, trying to get the jam to fly out the ejector port. He soon gave up, dropping the rifle and instead pulling out his father's blade; the switchblade. The family death jewel.

  Crawling through the vegetation like a snake, he waited for something to get his attention. Something moved off to his left, he moved off towards it.

  Frank was almost on top of him before he even suspected anything. The Cong soldier pulled in a quick breath right before Frank pushed the button of the switchblade and stabbed him in the neck. Red bubbles of blood gurgled out of Charlie's neck as he slowly died.

  Frank let go of the blade and grabbed for the AK-47 in the dying Gook's hand. He squeezed the trigger, doing a full three-hundred and sixty degree circle, trying to kill everything. He fell to the ground once again as the clip emptied, expecting return fire, but none came.

  Minutes passed as Frank lay as still as the dead man beside him, waiting for something, anything, fully expecting to die along with his friend, but nothing happened.

  Death didn't come, so Frank sat up, found a fresh clip for the AK and moved off into the darkness, leaving his dead friend and his switchblade in the neck of the dead Cong. He would think of Nick almost constantly for the next few hours, but the switchblade wouldn't enter his mind until the dawn. He would always feel bad about leaving his friend behind, but would actually be glad about leaving the knife. That was one family heirloom he was glad to lose.

  The 32nd Infantry Squad came through the same location on the afternoon of the next day, finding the dead bodies. They had been in the area and had been ordered to see if they could locate any survivors from Squad 17, which was part of a different platoon than the 32nd, so they knew none of the men they were looking for.

  A young private named Jack Young found the body of a dead Gook with a switchblade sticking out of his neck. He pulled it out of the dead body, cleaning it off on the shirt of its victim. "I got a dead Charlie over here, along with one of our boys, probably one of the missing 17th."

  Sergeant Roland and Corporal Purnell walked up beside the private.

  "Tag and bag our man, Purnell," Sarge commanded.

  "Why the hell I gotta do it, skipper?" Purnell whined. "Jack Rat is the one that found him."

  The skipper turned to Purnell. "Cause Santana just found a tunnel opening, so do you want to do this?" He pointed at the dead soldier, "or go check out that hole?"

  "I got this," Purnell mumbled, moving up to the body.

  Sarge turned to Jack Rat. "It's totally your call on going down there soldier, but you never seem to pass up a chance to do this crazy shit, so I thought I'd let you know about it. You ready to do some search and destroy?"

  Jack looked at the switchblade, his new friend. "Hell yeah."

  Walking up to the hole, Jack stopped, setting down his M-16 and pulling off his pack. Rummaging through his gear, he found the .38 revolver he bought on the black market a few weeks back, the .45 army issue pistols were just too damn loud in the tunnels.
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  "Ready?" one of his platoon buddies asked. He didn't know his name, he didn't know any of their names. They just didn't matter enough to him.

  "Yeah," Jack replied, putting the switchblade in his mouth and grabbing his flashlight as he walked up to the hole, crouching down a few feet in front of it.

  With his light in his left hand and the .38 in his right, he motioned at the group of soldiers that surrounded the tunnel entrance."Move back, y'all," he mumbled since the hilt of his knife was still in his mouth.

  The others did as he asked, moving off to do other things. Only three stuck close by. The Sergeant and two others that the Skipper had told to stay put.

  Jack crouched, looking into the darkness of the hole, slowly drawing a small circle in the dirt with the butt of his flashlight. The three soldiers watched him, completely silent, knowing this was the same weird ritual Jack always did before he went into the abyss of the tunnel. Sometimes this lasted for only a few seconds, other times for several minutes. The Sarge never questioned him about it though, because he always went in, but never until he was ready.

  It took close to three minutes this time before he crawled in like a hungry badger chasing a rabbit.

  "Jack-Rat is a fucking weirdo," one of the corporals; named Ford, commented after he disappeared.

  "Yeah," the Skipper agreed. "But he's gone into every hole we've found and came back out in one piece, so he obviously knows what he's doing."

  The other corporal, named Santana nodded his head. "How many times has he done this? A dozen?"

  "Eighteen," Sarge replied.

  "That's way past weird, man." Ford commented. "That's just crazy."

  The Skipper just nodded his head, saying nothing. He was a good sergeant that did his best to keep his boys alive. Most of his men liked him, and even if they didn't, they still respected him, cause they knew he wouldn't ask them to do anything that he himself wouldn't do. Except for Jack.

  Sarge would never go down in one of those death holes, and under no circumstances would he ask any of his men to. He didn't like all of his men, in fact some were lazy pieces of shit, but he did value their lives. The only reason he had agreed to Jack's request to investigate the underground mazes was because it had been the first time he had seen a spark of interest in his eyes, which were usually dead like and beady at the same time.

  "Gator eyes," Skipper thought to himself. "The pupils might be round like a person's, but everything else is reptile."

  The sergeant was a very good judge of character as well as being somewhat of a bad-ass. Standing a little over six feet tall with arms like a gorilla, it took a lot to intimidate him, but Jack made his steel nerves a little shaky. It's not that the skinny little runt had ever done anything. He actually followed orders pretty well and seemed immune to what anyone else said or thought about him, which inherently was the root of the problem. Other people just didn't matter, Whether it was the VC or one of his fellow GI's.

  "The shadow of death is that boy's only friend," Sarge said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

  The sergeant's assessment was correct, but today something else intended to become his new best buddy. It crawled past the soldiers like a small spider and leaked into the tunnel like ethereal darkness, flowing after Jack.

  At five foot four and one hundred and twelve pounds of nothing but bone and muscle, Jack was the perfect build and size for a tunnel rat, but his exceptional limberness gave him an almost alien perfection to crawling the tunnels. If a spotlight was shining on him as he traveled, he would have the look of a wounded insect moving along on four legs instead of six, but still quite mobile and quick.

  Slowly but surely the tunnel started to shrink on him, first forcing him on his knees and elbows, and then on his belly, forcing him to move forward like an earthworm in both pace and technique, his arms stretched out in front of him . The air got even thinner in the squeezing confines with the swirling dirt particles.

  He forced himself to stop moving, knowing he wasn't drawing in enough air to expend any energy. ”Stay still, let the air come to you," he told himself. "The tunnel will open back up soon, this is just another one of Charlie's tricks. Once I catch my breath, I'll be back on my way."

  So there Jack lay, in a tunnel tighter than a burial plot, slowly catching his breath, fully aware that if the Cong found him from either direction, he was dead. It had also occurred to him that this tiny tunnel could be a dead end, never getting any larger as he slowly crawled forward, till there was no longer any air left. Instead of being one of Charlie's tricks, it could be one of Charlie's death traps.

  "Too late to change direction now, anyway," He said to himself, feeling better now that he was getting back a little more of his breath. Jack was truly a freak of nature in this respect, for not only did he have no fear of death by suffocation, he feared no means of demise down in the tunnels. If he died, then so be it, no big deal. He'd rather be down here doing this then be up top, having to listen to all those dip-shits talking about all the pussy they got back home, how cool of a car they had back home, how much they missed their wife and kids back home. Hearing that kind of shit was what really drove him up the wall, listening about shit that didn't have anything to do with him. Shit that wasn't even real. Not like down here, down here was where the real was. Whether it was life or death, it was the true thing, not that fake shit back home.

  It was finally time to start moving again, and sure enough the tunnel did open back up before he was forced to take another break. By now, the evil that was following him was right up to his boots.

  Jack's steps were slow and deliberate as he bear-walked through the much wider tunnel, the flashlight in his left hand, turned off long ago. In mid-step he stopped cold, hearing something.

  Jack's right hand slowly curled towards his chest, equally near both the .38 revolver in his belt or the switchblade in his mouth. Whatever it was, near or close, he had the appropriate weapon on the ready, just waiting for him to use it.

  That was when things changed. Instead of Jack's certainty of the enemy close by him, needing to be killed, he had a feeling of kinship to whatever was in the dark, as if a fellow wolf had just howled a silent greeting to him.

  ”Partners in the darkness," it seemed to whisper in his ear.

  The clarity of the enemy's location came back into focus for Jack. Six feet right in front of him, crouching, waiting for him.

  "Together, nothing can stand against us down here."

  He nodded his head slightly, taking the knife from his mouth, throwing it hard into the pitch.

  A gurgled choke came from ahead as his knife sank deep into the Viet Cong's throat. After a few moments, he moved forward, retrieving his knife.

  Squatting over his kill in the darkness, he wiped the blood from his new knife on the shirt of the dead Cong and then put it back between his teeth. After examining the body and finding nothing of significance, he moved on slowly through the dark, listening intently. No noise came from the tunnels or his new mystery friend as he made his way forward.

  Sensing something ahead, he stopped, waiting for more information to come to his ears or possibly his nose. After several minutes of nothing, he near silently laid down, leaning up against the right side of the tunnel. He pulled his pistol out with his right hand, and lifted his flashlight up with his left, holding it up high above his body. Stretching his right hand forward, he aimed at the center of the tunnel, ready to adjust his aim at a moment's notice. He turned his flashlight on for a fraction of a second and then back off, going more on the imprint the light put on his pupils than the actual moment of illumination.

  As the glowing image of the ahead tunnel quickly faded from his eyes, he now knew what it was his senses had hinted at him. The tunnel was about to fork into two different directions. He put his revolver back in his belt.

  If someone would have asked Jack how he sensed the tunnel was about to split, because there was no way he could have heard or smelled something like that, he wouldn't have
had an adequate answer.

  "It's a tunnel rat thing," would have been his reply, and unless you were a member of that brave but crazy alumni, you most likely wouldn't quite understand.

  Moving up to the tunnel split, he stopped, crouching down, breathing slowly as he drew a circle in the dirt with the butt of his flashlight, waiting for the right moment to go into the correct tunnel.

  It took less than a minute for him to decide to move down the left tunnel. In the same slow methodical pace, he crept on for about ten feet before stopping. There seemed to be a quiet scrapping, but he wasn't sure. It was so subtle, he couldn't tell if it was real or just his imagination. Then something fell on his shoulder.

  It scurried down his arm in the spindly way that only a spider moved. He swiped it away with the flick of his hand, more out of concern of a potential venomous bite than the creepy feeling spiders give most people. Spiders were just another pest, like all other insects, like all other people.

  Then another fell on his head, and another on his back. Brushing both off, he took a step back, realizing what he might have stepped into. Turning on his flashlight, he confirmed his hunch. The tunnel walls in front of him shifted and seemed to pulse. The entire passageway was covered with small spiders with purple backs. He stood right before the beginning of the horde, but he was more than close enough to be exposed to a light rain of the arachnids.

  He increased his pace back to the fork, which still wouldn't be classified as anything faster than a slow walk.

  Brushing the last of the spiders off of him, he decided to head back topside. If he was gone much longer, they might think something happened to him. Their concern meant nothing to him, but if they sent some rookie down here after him, they might end up doing something stupid, like throwing a grenade at Jack cause they heard him coming back. Nobody wins against a grenade in the tunnels.

  Jack wasn't sure what it was he had found in the tunnel that day, and in all honesty he didn't really care what it was. For the first time in his life, he had what he considered not just a partner, but a friend.