SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

by Jeremy Robinson

  She turned back to me like I was about to steal something from her, which I was I suppose – time. Her eyes narrowed, her entire being ensorcelled by the novella. “You all look alike,” she hissed. “All of you. The same.” Then she gestured at Gomer like she held a knife and wanted to stab him. “Except this one. I don’t know what he looks like.”

  Gomer bowed. “I’m Chinese,” he said.

  Her laugh came out as a bark. “So you say.” Then she turned back to the television and was lost to us.

  I stuck my head in the kitchen. “If your father’s condition changes, please call me.” I held up a card, then seeing her hands covered in dough, put the card on the refrigerator behind a magnet. I nodded goodbye, then left.

  SAN FRANCISCO

  July 7, 1970

  Late Afternoon

  Our offices were on the third floor of Transamerica Corporation, in a triangular building on the corner of Columbus and Montgomery. My corner office view was filled with the construction of what promised to be a two hundred and sixty-meter pyramid. As unpopular as it was to the local populace, who feared a repetition of the giant forest of skyscrapers in New York City, the Transamerica Pyramid was important to the defense of America. In addition to protecting against Soviet agents stealing American technology, Special Unit 77 was also charged with the protection and facilitation of the pyramid’s construction. In fact, without it, we’d have no way to defend against the onslaught of supernatural attacks that both the Chinese and the Soviets were preparing. Even now the plan was to have the Transamerican Shield in place by 1972. I just hoped it wasn’t going to be too late.

  Gunnery Sergeant Chan sat in one chair. Air Force Major Skip Harold sat in the other. I stared at the major over the tops of my fingers. I was a nicknamer, meaning I rarely called people by their actual names. Part of the reason was because I tended to forget them. It was like I was missing something in my brain which caused me to constantly forget. So I nicknamed. Chan’s predecessor had been dubbed Nancy Drew, because of his unfathomable ability to get to the bottom of things. When asked why not one of the Hardy Boys, I remember telling him that only Nancy Drew solved cases on her own. It had seemed to mollify him somewhat, even if I’d called him by the name of a famous fictional girl detective. His replacement had been dubbed Gomer Pyle, and for good reason. Raised in southern Georgia, he was the only Chinese man I’d ever heard with a southern accent. Add to that an endearing wide-eyed appraisal of the world that matched his fictional namesake and his frequent use of southern colloquialisms, it just seemed the appropriate nom de guerre and something I was unlikely to forget. Then, of course, there was this man right in front of me. Blond, blue-eyed and handsome, this fighter jock had probably been the president of his senior class, the quarterback everyone adored, and the one voted most likely to succeed in his yearbook. I didn’t like him. I was still searching for a suitable nickname when he spoke again.

  “Are we clear on this?” he asked with a smile.

  “Colonel,” I said, softly.

  He blinked, shook his head, then replied, “I’m a major.”

  I glanced at Gomer, who couldn’t help smiling as he drawled, “No, Major Harold, Colonel Madsen is a colonel, isn’t that right... Colonel?”

  I nodded. “Right as rain, Gomer. Thanks for clearing that up.” To Harold, I added, “If you insist on talking to me, I just wanted to make sure that you use my rank. It’s not ceremonial. It’s not something I bought from the back of a comic book. It’s something I earned.”

  Harold nodded, but never let his smile slip. “It’s just that since you’re not in uniform it’s easy to forget.”

  Now it was my turn to smile as I turned slightly and pointed at a picture displayed behind me. “You can see me there in uniform. That fellow with the pipe standing beside me is...” I paused as if I forgot. I turned to Gomer. “What’s his name?”

  “That there’s General Douglas MacArthur.”

  “Ah, that’s right. You might recognize the man yourself, isn’t that right, Harold?”

  “Major,” he said, his smile finally faltering.

  I shook my head. “No, colonel. Now what was it you want us to do?”

  “Cease and desist,” he said, pausing intentionally before he added, “Colonel.”

  “You want us to stop what we’re doing with regards to...”

  “The Bohemian Grove.”

  I nodded and pretended thoughtfulness. I looked out one of the glass windows of the office. I had eight men assigned to me, but only five of the ten desks were currently occupied. Gomer was in front of me and the other two were monitoring the Transamerica construction project. Doris Morgan sat at the reception desk in front of the stairwell. She was our own personal Cerberus, able to immediately determine if someone meant the other person harm. Not the same as the Cerberus agents from the NSA program, but she did her job well just the same. She’d come in handy several times, using signals to let the others know that trouble was at the door. But she was also the wife of a retired Air Force colonel, which might dictate loyalty. I’d never thought that there was a problem before, but the fact that Harold was sitting in front of me indicated he had a way of knowing things that he shouldn’t. The only other person who knew we’d gone to track down and meet Enrique was Doris, who filed the meeting report. Of course, Enrique could have been under surveillance, but then that should have been the NSA or the FBI, not the Air Force.

  “So let me get this straight,” I began, my gaze returning to Pretty Boy Floyd – that was it! “We have a valid connection from an East German Ministry of State Security official to a local catering company that deals directly with The Bohemian Grove. You want us to leave that alone? And again, tell me why the Air Force has jurisdiction over this?”

  Pretty Boy Floyd sighed. He found an imaginary piece of lint on the arm of his uniform, picked it off and flicked it onto the floor. “First of all, Colonel, your mission statement refers to the defense of American interests from supernatural attempts to acquire technology. There was no link to supernatural in your description of the problem. Secondly, Travis Air Force base has the security mission for the area. We’ve detected nothing suspicious about the annual gathering at The Bohemian Grove nor have we been asked to assist.”

  “Nothing suspicious. Interesting.” I turned to the gunnery sergeant. “Gomer, please describe for me The Cremation of Care Ceremony.”

  “Yes, sir. The Cremation of Care Ceremony is what marks the beginning of the yearly meeting at The Bohemian Grove. This meeting is attended by many of the richest and most influential men from around the globe. Previous members include founding member Ambrose Bierce, William Randolph Hearst, Eddie Rickenbacker, Teddy Roosevelt, Jack London, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Herbert Hoover, Edward J. Pauly and our current governor, Ronald Reagan, along with our current president, Richard Nixon.”

  I nodded. “Impressive list, but tell us about the ceremony.”

  Gomer grinned like his namesake. “Sorry. So they describe it as a ritualistic shedding of conscience and empathy and abuses of power. It might be that, but what they actually do is ritualistically sacrifice a mock child before a giant statue of the Canaanite god Moloch, shrouded in the figure of an owl.”

  I turned to Pretty Boy Floyd and matched his smile with my own and said, “Ritualistically.”

  He stood and shook his head. “Old men dressed up in robes and pretending to pray to false idols is not illegal. You have no connection or jurisdiction.” He pulled his hat from the leg pocket of his flight suit. “Cease. And. Desist. Colonel,” he said, enunciating every word.

  Then he saluted, turned and left.

  Gomer waited until he left the room to say, “I never mentioned robes, sir.”

  “No,” I said realizing the truth of it. “No you did not.”

  “So what’s next?” Gomer asked, his excitement barely contained.

  I shrugged. “Nothing really. We have to begin desisting, I suppose.”

  SAN FRANCISCO
/>   July 8, 1970

  Early Morning

  I got the call at three AM that Enrique had passed away. I sent word to Burgess to meet me at his residence with the Box Man, then called Gomer and had him pick me up. By the time we arrived, the body had been removed by the morgue and the police had already left. Burgess waited in a paneled truck. I’d asked him to wait while I spoke with the family. Gomer and I had both agreed that the timing of the death was both inopportune as well as convenient for anyone trying to obscure our path.

  It took several minutes of negotiations before I was able to talk our way inside. Clearly the family felt the death was a natural one. I wasn’t going to do anything to change their minds. Whatever I discovered wouldn’t be for their benefit, but for ours. As it was, I could see the relaxation in their shoulders, as if the death was a great burden taken from them.

  So it was with the family safely in the kitchen, coffee brewing, eggs sizzling, their conversation lightening as they increasingly realized their newfound freedom that we gathered inside the small bedroom of the recently deceased.

  Gomer and I stood side-by-side against the far wall, trying to stay out of the way.

  Lance Corporal Burgess Washta, a Lakota from Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota who’d made his escape by joining the military and surviving Vietnam, brought two creatures into the room. The first was the Box Man who was led in with a leash attached to a metal box completely covering his head. Rusted, riveted, and made of old iron, the weight of the box made the Box Man move like a hunchback, favoring one side over the other as he tried to keep the incredible weight upright yet still manage locomotion. A fine mesh screen covered the mouth and eye areas. The only other opening was a circular door on the very top of the box through which he was fed and from where he began his divinations. Behind him and walking free of a leash was the Licking Boy. Of small stature and with his eyes sewn shut, he wore a black jumpsuit and black boots. The only splash of color was the red unit path of Special Unit 77 on his shoulder. Not really a boy, he was an achondroplasiac, or dwarf. His real name had been Walter Scoggins, but he was now known as the Licking Boy.

  Why Burgess had brought him, I didn’t know. I shot him an enquiring look.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Chan asked that I bring him.”

  To that, I turned to Gomer.

  “I got a gut feeling we might need him.”

  I knew that Gomer liked spending time at our special warehouse. My worry was that he’d go soft on our singular acquisitions. God knew it was bad enough to have them. If they didn’t like what they did, we’d never even use them. Harvey had been that way at first as well. Even I felt a tug at my heart, especially when I witnessed the Singing Girl do her thing. But I reminded myself that these were tools, much like a marine was a tool to take a beach or a pilot was a tool to fly an airplane. These creatures were purposely made by some arcane hand and were now ours to treasure and use. Feeling sorry for them would cause no end of problems.

  Gomer recognized my look. “He doesn’t get out as much as the others. I think he could really do some good here.”

  I nodded. We’d see about that.

  Burgess searched the corners of the room and then under the bed, but didn’t find what he was looking for. Instead, he reported a Santeria egg and several colored candles. He checked behind the bureau as well, but no joy. The lady of the house was a conscientious cleaner and we were hard-pressed to find what we needed.

  I gestured toward the headboard. Little known fact was that most spiders in bedrooms lived behind headboards, and sure enough, a meaty house spider sat hunched against the wood.

  Burgess pulled a glass Gerber baby food jar out of his pocket, removed the top, and scooped the spider from the web, then handed it across the bed to me.

  I moved over to the Box Man. “Okay, Boxie. Let’s get this done.”

  “Done and done,” came the high-pitched raspy voice from inside the metal box.

  I twisted the screw open that kept the door shut on the top of the box and opened it, revealing the scarred top of the Box Man’s head. Wisps of oily brownish gray hair shot up in lonely clumps around massive scarring. “Spider’s coming, Boxie.”

  “Mamma says yum yum.” He made obscene smacking sounds with its mouth.

  I couldn’t help wrinkling my nose as I dumped the spider onto the Box Man’s head then closed the door, making sure to tighten the screw.

  I nodded for Burgess to release the leash and stand back.

  “Spidle tickles.” The Box Man laughed, then jerked. “It bites. Bad spidle. Bad, bad spidle.” It began to gyrate, jerking its head left, then right. “Ah, I get it. Spidle wants to play. Spidle didle fo middle.”

  It twisted fully around, smashing into the bureau. Burgess was barely able to step aside. The Box Man crashed to the floor where it slammed the metal box several times against the ground.

  Enrique’s son-in-law called out from the kitchen. “What’s going on in there? It sounds like you’re breaking furniture.”

  I nodded for Gomer to talk to them. After he left, Burgess closed the door behind him.

  I glanced at the Licking Boy, whose head was turned at an odd angle as he listened to the Box Man’s childish laughter and slurping sounds.

  I bent over and put my hands on my knees. “Can you hear me?”

  The Box Man twitched on the floor, with minute jerks of its legs and arms.

  “We need to speak with you.”

  The Box Man stilled.

  This was the tough part. It was only a fragment, but the fragment didn’t know it. It thought it was its entire existence. It felt whole because it didn’t know any better.

  I knelt lower and whispered. “Enrique, this is Madsen. Do you remember me?”

  “Maddie Maddie Madsen.”

  “Yes. Madsen. Tell us what happened.”

  “Light bright fight kite sight night...”

  “Rhyming loop,” I said to Burgess, who was recording everything on a notepad.

  I banged the side of the metal box with my knuckles and the rhyming stopped. “Enrique? Tell us what happened.”

  He began to hum a recognizable tune.

  “It’s the theme to the television show Perry Mason,” I said to Burgess. He had to record everything. Trying to understand a fragment was like trying to decipher a riddle. You had to have all the clues or you might never figure it out.

  I knocked on the side of the box once more and the humming stopped.

  Then he began to growl. Low at first, it grew louder and louder, until it sounded like a mountain lion was in the room with us.

  I glanced at Burgess and the Licking Boy, who both had looks of worry on their faces. This was absolutely something new. I hadn’t encountered anything like this at all.

  “Enrique, what’s happening?”

  The roaring stopped, replaced by a tiny voice. “Pain. It can’t get out. I won’t let it out. I won’t...” Box Man sighed heavily. The timbre of the voice changed to someone completely different. In a sophisticated whisper it said, “It’s gone and so am I.” Then the Box Man stopped breathing.

  I dragged a key ring out of my pocket and flipped madly through the chain. I found the key I wanted and hurriedly unlocked the box. It fell open, revealing the sickly skin of the Box Man. I turned his body so I could get to his ruined, spotchy face. His eyes were wide. Spittle dotted his mouth.

  I looked around and found a lamp on the nightstand. I ripped free the wire, stripped the ends, then jammed them into his mouth. The effect was instantaneous. The home’s power went brown, then returned to full as the zap snapped inside the Box Man’s mouth.

  His eyes snapped shut, then open.

  He began to weep.

  I closed the box and locked it shut.

  The door opened and Gomer burst in. The son-in-law was behind him.

  The young man glanced at the Box Man and at me. “What’s going on?”

  “How long was your dad possessed?”

  He glanced toward
s the bed then back to me. “What are you talking about?”

  “The egg beneath the bed is a cleansing spell. The candles are for protection. He didn’t have Alzheimer’s. He had a demon inside of him didn’t he?”

  The young man licked his lips, then hung his head. “We were trying to get it out.”

  “But your father didn’t want it to leave. He was keeping it inside to protect something.”

  “We don’t need protection.”

  “I beg to fucking differ.” I reached down and grabbed the egg. I hurled it against one of the white walls. It exploded in blood. “Also realize that it might not have been you he was trying to protect.” I got to my feet, then gestured to Burgess. “Get these two back to the warehouse then meet me back at HQ.” I shoved my way through the door. It was all so unfuckingly unnecessary. “Let’s go, Gomer.”

  “What about the family?”

  “They say they don’t need protection.”

  “But—”

  “Let them reap what they sowed.”

  SAN FRANCISCO

  July 8, 1970

  Mid-morning

  “Do we know what kind of demon it was?” Gomer asked.

  I shook my head. “We have a call into NSA asking them for his case file, but they’re never going to give that up. I did find out from a backchannel source that Enrique was replaced by USAF Major Everett Duncan. I have his contact information in Monte Rio.”

  “So this Everett is the new Cerberus for The Bohemian Grove?”

  “It appears so. And know what else? We now have a reason to go there.”

  Gomer smiled.

  Instead of smiling with him, I got up and went to Doris’s desk. I needed to confront her about this. I just stood there staring at her, saying nothing. Everything I needed to communicate was in my frown. It took about half a minute until she lowered her head and sighed.

  “They just wanted to know what you were doing,” she said. “They’re very sensitive about The Bohemian Grove.”

  “And Harold?”

  She gave me a long stare, then answered, “He’s part of the security detail for Air Force One. He’s also a reserve pilot.”