Lee immediately looked away, lowered his head, backed up a step. He was still small enough to seem a child and could usually avoid conflict with the deungsin.
Another soldier told him to cool it. Lee didn’t look to see if the big man became cool or not, he got lost fast. Nurse Miss Jenny was taking blood pressures at the other end of the room and he found a stack of blankets that she might need.
He liked Nurse Miss Jenny – he liked all of the nurses, but Jenny had a big round bosom and a smile like sun on the river – and spent a few minutes translating for her when a ROKA soldier woke up and started asking questions. His name was Yi Sam and he didn’t remember being shot and was confused. Miss Jenny spoke slowly and clearly so that Lee could explain where he was and what had happened. Lee didn’t show off his English, but he always helped the nurses. They were kind to him in turn, they brought him rolls and sometimes chocolate. Chocolate was the best.
“Gangshi,” someone said loudly.
Miss Jenny had gone back to blood pressures, was talking at him about the upcoming movie night – it was the 8011th’s turn to see Treasure Island – but Lee didn’t hear her anymore. A man had joined the group with the angry soldier, a tall sergeant with a hard jaw and a raspy voice. He was looking around the tent, his eyebrows raised.
“Anyone? Gangshi? Kim, you know what that means?”
A ROKA soldier three cots away who’d had his testicles and most of his right thigh blown off by a cart mine was half-sitting, staring at the sergeant. “What is he saying?” he asked, in Korean. A couple of the soldiers he’d come in with stirred. Lee had spoken with the man earlier, he was Pak Mun-Hee from north of Pusan. “Did he say gangshi?”
“Gangshi,” the American sergeant said again. “You know that word?”
Pak Mun-Hee managed a weak salute when he realized the sergeant was talking to him. One of Pak’s friends looked frightened; two others grinned.
Nurse Miss Jenny spoke up, looking directly at Lee. “Lee, isn’t that what you said when you were telling us about the bug out? Gangshi? That’s the word you used.”
Lee froze, and the tall sergeant focused his attention, stepped away from his group. “Your name is Lee? You speak English?”
“No,” Lee said. “Number ten.”
“He’s putting you on, Sergeant,” Miss Jenny said. “He speaks English real well. He told us the villagers left because of those lanterns. Because they’re calling all of the dead men home.” She smiled prettily. “Only I remember because I wrote a letter to my mother last night, and told her about it. It’s so spooky.”
Pak Mun-Hee had been speaking with his friends, and now raised his voice, calling out, “This man asks about gangshi. What is the situation here?”
Another soldier laughed, and Lee tried to smile, it was all so stupid. But there was a tension now, many of the injured talking amongst themselves, laughter and anxiety quickening the air.
The sergeant seemed to feel the urgency. He walked right up to Lee and crouched in front of him. “What does it mean, gangshi?”
Playing dumb had become so deeply ingrained that he almost didn’t answer, but the man was looking into his face, asking him, and Lee had been taught to speak right.
“The belief is that a man who die away from home, he do not rest,” Lee said. “His soul is homesick. A family hires the priest to call the man home. He… jeompeu. Jumps?”
Lee stretched his arms out in front of him, stiff, and hopped forward.
The sergeant stood up, his shoulders relaxing. After a moment, he smiled, showing all of his teeth. “So a gangshi is a jumping dead man?”
Lee nodded. “The farmers believe this old story.”
A patient cried out from across the room, a boy who was likely from a farm. His voice was high, hysterical. “We must guard against them, before it’s too late!”
Miss Jenny stood up at once, starting towards the shouter. “Now you calm down, there’s no reason to be shouting like that.”
“Jinjeong yeomso saekki,” snarled another. “It is grandmother talk!”
“Ulineun jug-eul geos-ida!” the farm boy cried.
“Dangsin-eun muji!” another said, laughing at the boy’s ignorance.
Miss Jenny called out to the other nurse on duty, Miss Claire, told her to go get someone. Doctor Jimmy was nowhere to be seen, and two of the regular evening nurses were assisting with a surgery in the OR next door.
The sergeant put his fingers to his mouth and whistled, loud. The injured ROKA soldiers all dried up at once, turning to look at him. “Calm down, boys,” he said loudly, a snap in his voice. “It’s a story.”
He was an American soldier and therefore every ROK’s superior, but it was his clear tone of dismissal that calmed them, even the shouter. Nurse Jenny looked at the sergeant with bright eyes and thanked him warmly as everyone settled down. Lee wished that he could earn a look like that, from any of the nurses.
Faintly, from somewhere to the north, he heard a bell toll, a low, carrying note, and froze. He looked at Pak Mun-Hee, who looked back at him with an expression of disbelief. Of fear.
The tall sergeant chuckled, shook his head. “Jumping dead men,” he said, and turned back to his group, and from the OR came a scream of pure terror, and the sound of metal hitting the floor, then more screams.
* * *
Captain Steven ‘Stitch’ Anthony started his shift in a fine mood. The mail had brought a funny, chatty letter from his mother, he’d tagged Jonesy out in the afternoon scratch game – twice – and all of the boys he’d fixed up were doing fine and dandy. He’d been joking around with one of his patients when Claire had called him over to see the Korean kid.
“Read me the chart,” he said, pulling the blanket down. The ROK’s belly was distended and solid.
“Twenty-year-old male presents posterior entry wound at L-1, bullet entered left of mid-sagittal and fragmented off the left lateral process of L-1, no anterior wound, fragments removed—”
“Get him prepped, I want him in the theater five minutes ago,” Stitch said. The nurses moved, God love ‘em. The kid was intubated and Anthony had a scalpel in hand before he had time to notice how rotten his mood had become.
Goddamn Gene, you sack of shit excuse for a surgeon. The major had missed a bowel cut and the kid was in trouble, peritonitis or ascites or a bleed, maybe all three. Gene had learned how to cut from a coloring book; he’d taken care of the mesenteric bundle and called it good.
Good enough for a ROK, anyway. If it had been an American kid, the major would have checked his work; he’d had the time, he just hadn’t bothered. Gene Fowler was a menace, an unskilled, humorless hack.
Lieu Jackieboy was the anesthetist, Sheryl and Linda assisted. Anthony told them to get the towels up and opened the patient’s abdominal cavity, cutting smoothly. As soon as he was in, pink water poured out and the girls sopped it up, mostly lymph and interstitial fluid but there was a nice bleed, too. Thank you, Major Gene!
Linda got retractors on the opening. It took a minute to suction out the fluid and when they were down to sponges, Anthony saw the seep of fresh blood. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
He pushed the viscera aside. “Linda, hold this, I want to take a look at the liver.”
Linda didn’t hesitate, reached into the kid and held his guts out of the way. Sheryl kept sponging. Stitch gently slipped his fingers beneath the rubbery meat of the liver and lifted. Blood spurted out in a jet, splashing the front of his gown. Motherfucker!
He set the organ down immediately but the open cavity began to fill with blood. Significant laceration of the common hepatic, and he’d apparently just made it worse. He reached under and pressed his thumb against the artery, felt it slip and slide.
“BP is a hundred over fifty,” Jackie said.
“Hemostat,” he said. “And hang another bag.”
The only reason the kid hadn’t bled out already was that there had been three pounds of liver sitting on top of the cut. Stitch kept up the pressure
as Sheryl slapped a clamp into his hand, but blood kept coming. Another laceration, maybe the celiac—
“Seventy over forty,” Jackie said, his voice strained.
Stitch cursed under his breath, placed the clamp and called for another one, but the blood wasn’t spurting anymore. Weak pulses of it washed against his hand.
“BP,” he snapped.
Jackie pumped the cuff and Stitch placed a second hemostat, feeling less blood, less pressure beneath his clever fingers. Jackie pumped again, his expression grim.
“Can’t get it,” he said. “Doesn’t register.”
Stitch felt a moment of incredible frustration, of anger and despair. The kid’s heart still beat, the big, dumb muscle unaware that the body it served was already effectively dead. He looked at the kid’s face, pale and waxen, imagined the brain cells dying by the hundreds of thousands, the systems shutting down one by one, robbed of blood and oxygen and purpose. Such a fucking waste. Gene was a prick and he had screwed up but it was really the war, the goddamned war that Stitch hated, an exercise in futility paid for in young men’s lives.
He looked at the clock on the wall, and heard a bell toll somewhere, as though the world mourned the loss of the boy. A distant, plaintive sound.
“Time of death, 19:53,” he said.
Linda eased her hands out of the boy’s gut. “His name was Hei,” she said, and her voice caught. Linda had been at Frozen Chosin back in 1950, she had been to hell and back, but she still cried sometimes when they lost one.
Again, Stitch heard the lonely sound of a bell, clear and haunting on the cool October air.
“Does anyone hear that?” Jackie asked.
“It sounds like a gong or something,” Sheryl said.
Captain Anthony snapped off his bloody gloves, looking again at the boy’s lifeless face. Gene was going to be cheesed that Stitch had operated on his patient, he would be petty and defensive and wouldn’t even care that he’d killed someone. The kid had deserved better.
Hei. His name was Hei.
Hei groaned, a deep, guttural sound, and started to sit up.
Sheryl screamed and reeled back, knocking the instrument tray to the floor. Stitch automatically reached over to push Hei back down, confused, he’d heard stories of bodies contorting in death but why were his arms coming up, how was he turning to look at Sheryl with his flat dead eyes? His intestines slithered out onto the drape that covered his lower body.
Sheryl screamed again as Hei swiveled towards her, his arms straight out in front of him. She stared at the dead boy, shrieking, her eyes wide and shocked – and the skin of her face seemed to shrivel, to pucker and wrinkle around her eyes, her cheeks hollowing beneath her mask. Her screams became a breathy teakettle sound, rising, going higher – and her entire body visibly shrank. In the space of two seconds, she was shorter, smaller, as pruned as an old woman, her eyes going as flat and dead as the Korean’s.
At the same time came a sound so deep that it was a vibration. Stitch felt his bones quake.
She collapsed and the vibration stopped. Stitch saw that Hei’s skin was now quite nearly glowing, the moldy greenish-white of foxfire. Hei swung his unbent legs off the table, stiff and uncoordinated, and then he was standing, like a sleepwalker in a cartoon, his arms still straight out in front of him, his head angled so that his blank, dead expression was aimed at his own feet. His hands drooped in loose claws. The bloody drape fell to the floor and he was naked but obscenely, his viscera slapped down to cover his genitals, hitting him mid-thigh. The retractors still held the wound open and the stink of hot blood and feces filled the room. Stitch backed up a step, horrified, as Hei turned his whole body towards him.
Hei’s head hung, his eyes unseeing, and he hopped forward without seeming to bend his legs. Stitch felt it then, a sensation that he associated with giving blood, a sense of being drained, but the feeling was so much stronger and there was pain now, sudden and shocking, and he heard Linda screaming and Jackie screaming but he couldn’t look away from the boy and no longer had the strength to scream and then he was gone.
* * *
West had his personal sidearm out and was moving towards the screams even as the patients started cutting up again, their voices querulous with fear and dread. The screams were coming from behind a set of doors in the east wall. Cakes was a half-step behind, unholstering his own weapon, an M1911 pistol. West darted a look back.
“McKay, Burtoni, stay with Young,” he called. “Nurse, get some MPs in here, pronto!”
“What’s the play?” Cakes asked, just as the doors burst open and a figure in a mask and scrubs stumbled out, a man. He tripped on a cot and went sprawling, but was on his feet again in a second and running for the exit.
“Hold up!” West shouted, but the man was only interested in getting the fuck out, he didn’t look back or say boo as he charged through post-op, crashing through the door and out into the night. The screams had stopped but the patients were all talking, shouting, some of them getting up and limping after the masked man, others muttering prayers, the hysterical ROK shrieking like a girl.
“Joyong!” West shouted, the word for quiet, but no one was listening. He and Cakes had reached the doors to the next room. West looked through the window and saw a small room with sinks and towels, a bench on one side. Empty, but it looked like a scrub room. There’d be a surgery past that.
“Lee! Tell them to dry up!” he shouted, and a beat later, the kid was talking loudly, his tone harsh, chiding. Whatever he said had some effect, the din of the scared ROKs dying down. Something had definitely happened, but West was betting on a North Joe attacking his doctors. There’d been no rounds fired and the screams had apparently come from the OR. The talk about the gangshi had gotten everyone riled up, which was his own goddamn fault.
There was no noise except for the muttering patients, but for a second he felt a strange tension that was almost like a sound, one that made his back teeth clatter. He pushed through a door guarded by a tent flap, into the scrub room. It smelled like bleach and sweat and Army soap. Him and Cakes both kept their weapons aimed at the next door, moved in slow, crouching. The door was thick canvas with a window tied open. A smell of shit and blood wafted out.
West signaled for Cakes to stay put, that he was just going to look-see, and Cakes nodded. West stood and looked through the tied flap – and saw a Korean’s naked backside, the skin all over his narrow, gangly body glowing green-white, blood running down his thin legs. There was enough of an angle that West could see a loop of his intestines hanging out of his belly.
What. In hell.
The glowing man jumped at the far wall and rammed right through it, tearing down canvas and wood, shaking the whole building. The noise was terrific and West pushed through the door and fired twice at the retreating figure through the hole, the naked man hopping forward and then south, out of sight in a second.
Cool wind blew in through the ragged opening. West took in the OR, blood everywhere, the two old people on the floor, eyes dead and staring. A masked figure had pushed into the far corner, a woman on her side, curled up like a baby, her knees hugged to her chest.
Cakes stepped to the hole in the wall and leaned out, looked both ways. “I don’t see nothing. What was it, Sarge?”
West didn’t answer. He went to the nurse, crouched at her side. Behind him, he could hear the calls of the MPs or whoever had come to back them up.
“He was dead,” the nurse whispered, and then there were people outside screaming, running, and beneath it all West could hear the ringing note of a bell.
* * *
Basin, soap, water, clothespins. Major Helen Underwood was all set to wash out her personals. She’d taken to doing her own, after a couple of the girls had had some of their underthings go missing from the laundry a few months back. Some disgusting creep was probably pawing through them even now.
Underwood sneered, picking up her bra, thinking about Private Fazangas. It was revolting, the way some of th
em acted. Her nurses were good girls, they didn’t run around.
Her own status as a good girl – as a good woman – made her think of Captain Steve Anthony, which was confusing. They’d worked together for over a year. She respected him as a surgeon but they didn’t get along well – he was practically a protester, the way he talked, and was always turning everything into a joke. She was a married woman, and besides, she didn’t think of the men she worked with like that. Or, she hadn’t.
They’d been thrown together one night a few months ago by circumstance, traveling back from a village, caught in a firefight, shells dropping to either side of them. Their driver had been killed. She and the Captain had taken cover in an abandoned hut not far from the wreck, shaken but not injured, except the shelling didn’t stop, it had closed in. Convinced that they were going to die, they’d made love on the dirty floor, holding each other through the endless, thundering night. They hadn’t spoken of it since, not a word, but she thought about it sometimes, just before falling asleep – how they’d both trembled and wept, whispering their fears in the dark, comforting one another. How he’d felt inside of her, warm and alive. She’d made love with a man who wasn’t her husband. Was she bad now, because of what had happened?
Outside a man screamed.
Underwood dropped her soapy bra and stepped to her desk, wiping her hands on her pants. Her holstered pistol was on the card table she used as a desk. She slid the semi out of the worn leather, checked the action, and strode for the door of her tent.
Someone ran past just as she opened the flap, looking back with wide eyes. It was Corporal O’Donnell, his chubby cheeks flushed, his glasses sliding down his nose, his expression one of absolute terror.
“Run, Major!” he shrieked, and turned back to look where he was going – just as a man hopped out from behind one of the nurses’ tents, directly in front of him.
Underwood’s mouth fell open. The man was dressed in ROKA fatigues, there was a gaping hole in his chest, and she recognized him – DOA from yesterday, shot in the back – and his face and hands were glowing, the sickly light green of a night-blooming fungus. Its arms were out stiff in front of him.
SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest Page 3