CANNIBAL KINGDOM

by John L. Campbell

David was better prepared than he’d been when the campaign worker jumped him; with one hand he seized the team commander’s combat vest and used the man’s own momentum to bounce his face off the side of the big SUV, kicking out one knee and sending him face-first into the grass. He planted a boot in the middle of the man’s back and shot him once in the head. There was an explosion of blood, gray matter and what looked like a burst of sticky gelatin. David blinked at it for a moment. He’d seen head shots before; nothing like that was supposed to come out.

  He felt like being sick, choked it back.

  Then he was in the driver’s seat and backing away from the tree. Dropping it into drive, he hauled a sharp U-turn and accelerated, gouging the lawn and kicking up turf, heading for the street where the President’s limousine had made its exit.

  David keyed the mic to the dashboard radio. “All agents, Sierra-3 is mobile in CAT, heading for Angel.” Static answered him. Hundreds of agents and law enforcement officers were on-scene to provide a secure perimeter and safe evacuation routes, and none of them were on the air? Not good.

  The heavily armed Suburban roared as he punched out of the plaza and raced after Stagecoach.

  -18-

  FEATHER MOUNTAIN

  Western Pennsylvania – October 28

  Second Lieutenant Donny Knapp stood just inside the tree-line breathing hard, drawing in the scents of mountain air and blood. He trembled, looking down at the dead man crumpled in the pine needles at his feet, at a green camouflage uniform that was dark and wet.

  At only twenty-two, Donny Knapp had now taken a human life, and not even during war, which would have been expected of a soldier. The combat knife with which he’d done it felt heavy in his hand. A rank pin with three stripes and one rocker was attached to the Velcro chest strip sealing the dead man’s body armor. His platoon sergeant.

  Does the Army still hang you for murdering your own men?

  You bet your ass they do. Especially when you waste an officer.

  Donny looked over at the second crumpled figure, another body in bloody camo. His company executive officer, the one who had chewed him out that first night.

  Twenty-five to life for the sergeant, maybe, but they definitely give you the rope for killing a first lieutenant. No question.

  The three young soldiers standing nearby just stared at him wide-eyed.

  Donny’s body shook and he wanted to cry, wanted to fling the bloody combat knife into the forest, but he did neither.

  It had all happened so goddamn fast.

  It was their third day of field exercises – OPFOR had kicked their ass in every engagement – and the Green Berets who made up the opposing force were about to rotate home to Fort Bragg. Time for one more humiliation, though.

  And here they came, rushing through the trees at his position, howling and raving like mad Celts. Donny stared at them. What the hell kind of assault was this? Until now the Green Berets had been stealthy, setting off devastating ambushes and aggressively maneuvering into the flanks and rear. Their fire had been swift and brutal, filling the forest with the screeching of combat-simulation MILES gear-registering hits. Donny had yet to “survive” a single engagement.

  And now they were attacking head-on, screaming and running through the trees, not firing or even carrying their weapons.

  A final insult, Donny thought, his anger rising. We’re not even worth treating like trained soldiers. He clenched his teeth. “Open fire!” he shouted, and all along the line the men of his platoon, concealed in underbrush and in dips in the forest floor, opened up with their rifles, the woods suddenly alive with the rattle and pop of blank cartridges. The MILES gear worn by the attacking Green Berets squealed and chirped at once, dozens of units going off, a complete slaughter. Donny grinned his satisfaction, squeezing off shots of his own. Screw these Special Forces guys!

  The Green Berets kept running, kept howling.

  No, no they’re supposed to stop when their gear goes off! Where’s the ref-

  The attackers slammed into Donny’s platoon, the Green Berets tackling men who were kneeling to shoot and dropping on those who were prone, scrambling on hands and knees to get at men hidden in the brush. Then the screaming started, louder than the electronic shriek of the activated combat simulators.

  Donny saw his men fighting back, throwing punches and grappling and kicking. Their attackers seemed to feel none of it, coming right back to seize hold of their fellow soldiers, gouging and biting and ripping. Young men shrieked in panic and terror, but the Green Berets weren’t among them; they only screamed in fury.

  The young lieutenant’s jaw worked silently for a moment, and then he screamed, “Radio!” He had to call this in, had to-

  His RTO, a private-first-class named Fernandez, was fifteen feet to Donny’s left and trying to crawl away as two Green Berets clung to him, one holding onto his backpack radio and using it to climb the boy’s back, the other with his arms locked around Fernandez’s legs. This one bit deeply into the boy’s thigh, and the one on his back sank his teeth into the PFC’s neck.

  The boy was babbling, “Jesus save me Jesus Jesus JESUS!”

  Donny moved then, reversing his impotent rifle with its blank ammunition so that he could use the stock as a club, leaping toward his overwhelmed radioman. Before he got there he was knocked flat by a tackle from the left, a camouflaged figure slamming into him and taking him to the ground. Donny sensed it more than felt it, the thrashing limbs and grabbing hands, teeth slashing at him as a head whipped from side to side, hot breath and something wet in his face. He tried to curl into a ball, to wrap his arms around his head, and realized in a distant part of his brain that he was screaming.

  There was a tremendous crack, and the body atop him went limp. A hand grabbed the shoulder of his combat harness, pulling hard, and the voice of his platoon sergeant came through gritted teeth. “Get your ass up!”

  Donny did, scrambled to stand, looked around. A Green Beret with a crushed skull was at his feet, and the platoon sergeant was gripping an assault rifle with a now-shattered plastic stock. The screech of activated MILES gear reverberated through the trees all around them, competing with the screams of dying men. Bodies lay still on the forest floor.

  The young lieutenant looked at the carnage, then at his platoon sergeant who was sweating profusely and had raccoon shading around his eyes. “What…what…?”

  The sergeant gave the boy lieutenant a hard shake. “We fucking retreat, Lieutenant, that’s what-what!” He looked around and shouted, “First Platoon, fall back to the rally point!” Then he gave Donny another shove and the young man was running, running, dodging through the trees, remembering to head downhill but little else. He caught glimpses of men from his company running with him, weaving in and out of the pines, most missing their helmets and none carrying their rifles anymore. And when he dared to look back, he saw other soldiers chasing after them, only these men wore bloody face paint and made gurgling, chuckling noises as they pursued, arms outstretched.

  The hunters caught up to the fleeing men, and one by one they tumbled into the pine needles with a raving figure thrashing atop them. Soon it was only Donny and a couple others, sprinting down the hillside, leaping over fallen logs and trying not to run into a tree. Some of his senses returned, and Donny shouted, “To the right, the right!” remembering where the rally point was. The soldiers running with him followed. Donny couldn’t tell if their pursuers did, too. He no longer dared to look back.

  They reached the tree-line, stopping and breathing hard with their hands on their knees, fearfully watching the forest for what might come rushing out of the pines.

  Nothing came at them.

  He looked to his left and right to see that only three men had made it out with him, all younger than he, all privates or PFCs whose names he didn’t know. They were pale, shaking, staring at him, and threw quick looks between the forest and their platoon leader.

  They want me to explain what’s happening. They want me t
o give an order.

  What the fuck do I know about any of this?

  The soldiers picked up on his indecision, and looked at each other instead of their leader. “He’s had it,” one of them said, nodding toward Donny.

  “Fuckin’ officers,” another murmured.

  “We are so fucked,” said the third, edging away from the trees. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”

  Donny shook his head. “Stand where you are.”

  “Fuck you,” the third soldier said, his voice cracking. His name patch read AKINS. “You’re not doing shit!”

  Donny couldn’t believe how fast discipline had simply fragmented. He straightened and glared at the boy. He’s scared, and he’s right. You’re not doing shit. Why shouldn’t he be this way? ‘No bad troops, only bad leaders.’ Remember hearing that?

  Akins looked at the other private and the PFC. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” He started down the hill, and the other two made to follow him.

  “I said stand-” Donny started, and then he saw his platoon sergeant running toward him from within the trees, followed by the company XO. Donny sighed his relief and started to smile, but then he saw the glazed eyes, the bloody faces and hands, the gnashing teeth. He heard the horrible sounds that were part growl, part throaty chuckle. Then they were on him, and without conscious thought Donny went for the knife strapped upside-down on his combat harness.

  The three soldiers stood and stared at their bloodied platoon leader, a man who had just taken out two experienced combat veterans with a knife. He’d first dropped their platoon sergeant by ramming the blade up through the neck’s soft spot beneath the jaw, driving the razored steel into the brain, then repeated the move with the XO even as the sergeant was falling. The XO had first managed to claw a line down their officer’s face and had bitten deep into Knapp’s shoulder, but the young lieutenant hadn’t seemed to notice then or now.

  Donny looked down at the dead staff sergeant. He’d only been working with the man for a short while, didn’t really know him at all. Their first meeting had been the day the sergeant returned from leave in the Philippines, only a week or so ago. The gossip was that he had a wife (or something close to it) and kids living in Subic Bay, all off the Army’s books. The NCO had shown off the souvenir he’d brought back from the Philippines, the tattoo of a blue and green Chinese dragon twining about his right forearm from his elbow to just below his wrist, so new it was still raw and pink at the edges.

  He’d slid the sleeve down and stood as soon as his new officer opened the door, appraising Donny with a cool eye and quickly appearing to dismiss him. Every conversation between them since and right up to the moment he’d saved Donny’s life in the forest - a gift Donny had repaid by running eight inches of steel into the man’s brain – had been clipped and impersonal. Donny had hoped they could be friends. That wasn’t going to happen now.

  Unknown to Donny Knapp, the platoon sergeant brought more back from the Philippines than just a new tattoo. He’d picked up Trident there, in the food and water and air, on every surface he’d touched and in every sexual encounter (he had kids in Subic Bay, ones he didn’t know, but the wife was nothing more than a rumor) and Trident had even hitched a ride in the ink of his new dragon.

  The sergeant passed it to everyone he came in contact with during his trip back, and delivered it to his company. Many of them had already been infected from other sources.

  The Green Berets had caught it even earlier.

  All Donny knew now was that he’d killed a man who had saved him, as well as a senior officer, and whether or not it had been self-defense didn’t make much difference.

  Donny looked at his men, waiting for curses, accusations, desertion.

  “What are your orders, sir?” the PFC asked. Akins and the other boy just nodded.

  The lieutenant blinked. What were his orders? What now? What the hell had happened to transform these Green Berets – as well as men from his own unit – into homicidal madmen?

  “We can’t stay here,” he said at last. “We’re going to have to sweep these woods, look for survivors and find a radio. We have to call this in. But we’re not going back in there,” he pointed into the shadowy pines, “until we’re properly equipped.” He had only a vague idea about what that meant, but it absolutely involved live ammunition instead of blanks.

  “I’ll make the run for the base HQ, sir,” said one of the privates, not Akins, a kid named Jones.

  Donny shook his head. “Negative. We’ll head for HQ, but we’ll do it together. The MPs guarding the base will have weapons and live rounds. We’ll hook up with them.” He looked at the young soldiers and hefted the knife in his hand. “Until we get something better, be ready with this.”

  All three pulled their combat knives. None looked more confident because of it.

  The scream of turbines and thump of rotor blades exploded across the trees over their heads, and an Army Black Hawk roared in, banking and flying downhill. The soldiers turned to watch it, and Donny took in the scene below, finally realizing where they were. He’d lost his plastic-coated tactical map somewhere in the forest, probably during the initial attack, but he dug into a cargo pocket and pulled out the folded, photocopy diagram of the base he’d been given that first afternoon of orientation.

  Downhill from them about three hundred yards was the overly long runway he’d seen in the diagram and wanted to ask about, a great concrete strip amid a cleared section of forest. A cinderblock building had been built at the edge, sitting upon a square of close-cropped grass, a cluster of antennae poking out of its roof. A pair of Humvees was parked beside the building. From there a road led away and climbed the hill Donny and his men were standing on, passing just twenty yards to their left. According to the diagram, that road eventually led back to the core of the small base, where all the barracks, admin and support buildings were located.

  As they watched, the big chopper flared and did a fast landing on the airstrip near the cinderblock building. The moment it touched down, a dozen figures in uniform poured out the side doors, troops with packs and weapons and what looked like small suitcases, running for the Humvees. Another figure emerged from the building, spoke briefly with one of them, then went back inside. In moments both vehicles were filled and rolling, racing up the road toward Donny’s position. Behind them, the helicopter had already lifted off and was banking away, disappearing over the tree tops.

  “I thought that was our evac,” moaned Private Akins.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Donny said without looking at him. He started jogging toward the road, waving his arms at the approaching Humvees. His men followed without being told.

  The lead vehicle’s braked squealed as it came to a halt. It had to; Donny was standing in the middle of the road. The side door opened and a uniformed, older man with a silver crewcut stepped out, pointing his sidearm at Donny’s face. Several more men emerged, these with M4 rifles all trained on the man in the road.

  “Identify,” the older man growled.

  Donny saw his collar, saw the three stars of a lieutenant General, the name ROWE over one pocket. He snapped to attention, dropping the knife and saluting. “Second Lieutenant Donald Knapp, First Platoon, Bravo Company-”

  The general waved a hand at the rest of it, not lowering his pistol. “Come toward me. Tell your men to get in the road.” Donny did as ordered, as the general looked them over. He finally holstered his pistol. “Are you the outgoing unit, or the incoming?”

  Donny processed for a moment, then understood. “Incoming, sir. Replacing a Green Beret company. We were wrapping up our final exercise when-”

  “When everything went bugshit crazy,” the general said, cutting him off.

  Donny nodded, then gave him a brief (you were always brief when talking to generals – not that shavetails like him got many opportunities to talk to senior commanders) explanation about what had happened in the forest. He swallowed hard and ended his story by confessing to the mu
rders of a superior officer and an enlisted man, waiting for the general’s sidearm to reappear as he was taken into custody for capital offenses.

  The pistol didn’t come out, and the older man’s expression didn’t change, not at the junior officer’s wild tale of maniacs or his murder confession.

  “There might be survivors out there,” Rowe said, “but I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “We were going to go search for them, sir,” said Donny.

  “The hell you are, Lieutenant. Did the sirens go off?”

  The younger officer shook his head. “We didn’t hear any sirens.” The three men with him shook their heads as well.

  The general muttered something to himself. Then aloud said, “Means the MP detail has probably had it, too. God knows what’s waiting inside the mountain.”

  Donny didn’t know what he meant.

  The general walked over and clapped a hand on Donny’s shoulder, his face grim. “Son, this makes you and your squad our perimeter security. Follow the emergency protocol and hang tough. There are probably no friendlies out there, so no hesitating. Your mission is to keep that field secure for inbound aircraft.” He pointed back down the hill at the airstrip. “Secure at all costs.” He climbed back into the Humvee. “Don’t let me down.” Then both vehicles were driving past, leaving Donny and his men in a dust cloud as they climbed and then disappeared over the top of the hill.

  Perimeter security?

  Hold the airfield?

  What emergency protocol?

  Squad? There were only four of them for Chrissake!

  “What was he talking about, Lieutenant?” one of his men asked. It was Vaughn, the PFC.

  Donny didn’t answer, but held up a hand, needing to think. Holding the airfield and providing perimeter security were duties he could understand, no matter how unlikely it was that they could be accomplished by four unarmed men. But emergency protocols? What was…?