by James Cook
John leaned over to rest on one elbow and stretched his legs out to the side. “Now, the North Koreans weren’t stupid. They knew that whatever they were doing down there, someone was likely to hear about it and send spies. After all, every man has his price, even brainwashed commie bastards. Back then, the CIA liked to use snipers for that kind of work. As it turned out, the North Koreans knew how to fight fire with fire. Speaking of…”
John pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and shook one loose. He produced a book of matches from his hip pocket, struck one of them, and the acrid scent of burning sulfur diffused into the night air. The little flame lit his craggy face up in orange and yellow for a moment, and then he shook out the match and blew a jet of smoke into the air above him. I frowned, not being a big fan of cigarette smoke, but I let it go. He was, after all, just as trapped as the rest of us. If poisoning his own lungs made him feel better then I was willing to let him get away with it. This time.
“We were on our way to a nearby stream one night to get some water when we found sign that someone had been there recently, and had done a half-assed decent job of covering their tracks. I probably would have walked right by it if Carlos hadn’t noticed something out of place. I tell you, that man must have been part bloodhound, you couldn’t get anything by him. He’d sniff you out no matter how careful you were. He found the edge of a boot-heel track, and we spent a couple of hours following the trail into the hills. Just as we were crawling over the side of a ridge, I spotted movement on a hillside down across the valley from us. Sure enough, we saw two camouflaged Commies with Dragunovs over their shoulder’s moving away back toward the village. We decided to let them go, rather than take them out. The spooks back in Pusan were happy with the intel we were feeding them, and they wanted us to keep at it. In hindsight, we probably should have just shot the bastards and high-tailed it out of there.”
John took another drag from his cigarette. The tip lit up a bright cherry red for a moment, then dimmed back down to a tiny pinpoint of dark orange. He reached over and tipped his ashes through a gap between the plywood platform and the wall.
“When we got back to camp with the water, Green and the other boys were busy staring through their binoculars watching the village. I thought that was unusual. Normally, at least one of them would be on watch keeping an eye out for patrols. Cho heard us coming, and got to his feet and rushed over. His face was as pale as a ghost, and he looked like he’d just seen a couple. ‘You got to see this, Gunny.’ He said. ‘Something real fucking weird is going on down there.’ Just as he said that, gunshots rang out in the valley below. We all hit the deck and crawled to the edge of a cliff overlooking the valley. One of the barracks situated outside the village was close enough that we could just barely see through the windows with our binoculars. It sounded like there was a hell of a firefight going on in there. That by itself was strange enough, but the thing that made it even weirder was the fact that the other soldiers came running out of their barracks and formed a ring around the one with all the fighting going on. The shooting started to taper off until it sounded like there was only one or two guns still in the fight. Even from that far away, I could hear the screams coming from inside. It was God-awful, like nothing I’d ever heard before.”
John shuddered, taking one last drag from his cigarette before leaning up and stubbing it out against the sole of his boot. He flicked it over the edge of the platform into the rapidly darkening night.
“Just when I was starting to think that whatever was happening was about to end, the side of the barracks facing us exploded. If I had to guess, I’d say someone set off a grenade on the other side, maybe more than one. It blew out a big chunk of wall about five feet high and about the same across. The blast knocked a few soldiers standing on that side down on their asses, but it didn’t kill them. After that, everything went quiet for a minute or two. The soldiers just stood there, staring at the hole. I couldn’t see their faces, but I could tell by their body language that they were terrified. The dust and smoke over the hole in the wall was too thick to see through, so some of them ducked down and stepped closer, like they were trying to peek inside. Then I saw a shape, kind of like a silhouette, start to walk out of the smoke. There was another behind it, then another, and another. Next thing I know, there’s all these gooks stumbling and tripping over each other trying to get out. The soldiers standing around the barracks all seemed to sort of freeze up for a minute. I remember thinking to myself—what the hell? Wasn’t there just a firefight in that thing? How the heck are all these fuckers still on their feet?”
John shook his shaggy grey head. The look on his face under the dim gray lantern was the same look I had seen on Gabriel’s mug many times before; a mixture of weariness, anger, and remembered fear.
“I’d say about a dozen of them managed to get loose before the shooting started. Even as far away as I was, I could see their wounds through my bino’s. Most of them looked like some animal had ripped into them and torn chunks off their faces and arms. A few were in even worse shape than that.”
I listened in rapt silence, dumbfounded by what I was hearing. I knew from what Gabe had told me that the conspiracy to cover up the Phage had been going on for years and involved the highest levels of government, but what John described went much farther back than anything that I had ever imagined. Even Gabe seemed taken aback.
“Hang on a second,” I said, “you mean to tell me they were walkers? Like the fuckers making all that racket down there?” I pointed a finger down to indicate the undead beneath us.
John shot me a piercing glare. “Is it that difficult to believe?”
I struggled to think of something to say, my mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. Finally, I clamped it shut and shook my head. “Honestly, there isn’t much I wouldn’t believe about the undead at this point.”
The old man shifted his attention to Gabe who sat silent and stricken in the dim light.
“What’s wrong, friend?” John asked, peering intently at him. “Did I strike a nerve?”
“I…I’ve seen…” The big man grasped for words before clamping his mouth shut. “I can’t believe it goes back that far.” He said finally, more to himself than to anyone else.
“Hmm. Well, that confirms one suspicion, at least.” John said in a dry tone before taking another pull from the water bottle I gave him.
Gabe stood up abruptly and walked over to the edge of the loft. He stopped on the edge of where the barn overlooked the fields, his back rigid, and his palms planted on his hips. Rather than staring ahead with his usual attentiveness, he seemed withdrawn, as if distracted by something deep down inside.
“I hate to tell you, friend,” John called out. “but I think it goes back much, much further than that.”
Gabe half turned back toward us. “What do you mean?”
John let out a mirthless chuckle. “I mean this thing goes back farther than both you and me combined. Way the hell farther.”
Gabe turned and faced John, giving him his full attention. A few seconds passed.
“Well?” Gabe asked, impatience plain in his voice.
“Come on back over and sit down, big man.” John said. “Let me finish my story, and then I’ll tell you another one.”
Gabe glared at him for a moment, then stomped back over and resumed his seat. John sat up and stretched his back first one way, then the other. He folded his legs back underneath him and let out a tired sigh, the fingers of one hand running through his thick grey mop and scratching at his scalp.
“This here next part of the story is a bit difficult in the tellin’.” John said, his voice weary. “Don’t suppose anybody has a bit of the hard stuff nearby, do they?”
I leaned over and reached into a side pocket of my pack to retrieve a flask full of Casadores tequila, my personal favorite. I tossed it to him. He snatched it out of the air with a deft catch, then unscrewed the cap and sniffed at the contents. He frowned.
“Gotta admit, tequila ain’t my favorite…” He lifted the flask and took a deep draught. The strong liquor made him cough a bit. “But then again, any port in a fuckin’ storm.” A couple more long drinks later, he screwed the cap back on and laid the flask down beside him.
“So, what happened next?” I asked.
“The worst damn day of my life.”
Chapter 11
Conspiracy Theory
“The soldiers around the barracks opened up with their AK’s. They cut a few of the walkers apart, but most of them just kept right on coming. The ones doing the shooting started backing away, and backing away, and backing away, and pretty soon most of them lost their nerve all together. I remember the officers started yelling and firing their pistols at their own troops for running. I guess they forgot that the fellas they were shooting at had guns too. Right up until they started shooting back, anyway.”
John chuckled a bit at the memory. “Now the whole time, me and the other boys are watching all this, and as you might imagine we were freaking the hell out. We didn’t know what on God’s green earth we were looking at, but we knew it was bad. I remember I looked around at the other fellas, and you could tell by the looks on their faces they were scared shitless. I reckon I was too.”
The old man took another long pull from the flask and winced at the burn.
“Now, while the commies were busy either running away or trying to kill each other, the villagers decided that it might be a good time to make a strategic exit. A few of them showed up at the far end of the perimeter fence with a couple of ladders that looked like they had been slapped together from pieces of scrap wood and farm tools. The soldiers couldn’t see them from where they were, and even if they could have, they were too preoccupied with fighting for their lives to care. The villagers made it over the ladders in two’s and three’s and took off running into the forest. All of a sudden, I hear Green start cussing from over on the other side of me and saying something about ‘They’re not gonna be able to contain this’. I looked over at him, and I remember very clearly that it was the first time I ever saw fear in that man’s eyes. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that we needed to move out. I asked him why he was in such a hurry all of a sudden, aside from the obvious. He comes over and grabs me by the front of the shirt. Not like he’s threatening, mind you, more like he was pleading with me.
‘When KPA central command finds out that containment at this site is breached, they are going to send in MIG’s, and artillery, and troops, and every fucking thing else they have, and they are going to light this valley up like the fourth of July. We need to be out of here when that happens.’ He says. Once that sunk in, we didn’t argue with him. We took what gear we needed and left the rest behind. We spent the rest of that day, all night, and a few hours into the morning hauling ass south back toward the DMZ. Finally, out of sheer exhaustion, we stopped to rest under an overhanging ridge about twenty miles away from the valley. Let me tell you, that was rough country we were trekking through. It could take you over an hour just to get one mile under your boots. Because we were still not that far away, we knew immediately when the bombing runs started.”
John shook out another cigarette and lit it before continuing. “We could hear the explosions as clear as day. Hell, we could feel them in our feet rumbling up through the ground beneath us. None of us liked being so close to all that ordnance, but we were too tired to go any further. We took turns resting until the next morning. As we’re getting ready to move out, that idiot Green insisted on climbing up to the ridge above us to get a look around the countryside. We tried to talk him out of it. I mean hell, any idiot knows you don’t ever want to skyline yourself in enemy territory, but he insisted. No sooner than does he poke his damn fool head up over the edge than does the fucker’s head explode. A couple of seconds later we heard the sound of the shot that killed him.”
John shook his head, and took a drag from his cigarette. “Turns out, the KPA had stationed troops in a series of concentric rings for fifty miles around the valley. They must have had damn near fifty thousand troops out there with orders to shoot anything that looked like it was trying to get outside their perimeter. We didn’t know that at the time, we just knew that our camp had been spotted. We left behind all our gear except for guns, ammo, and a little bit of water, and got our asses off that mountain before a patrol came along for us. To make a long story short, for the next week and a half we played a cat and mouse game with the KPA forces patrolling the area. One morning, just after dawn, we were heading for a saddle between two big hills when Hathcock holds up a hand for everyone stop. Said he saw a flash of light, like the sun reflecting off a piece of glass on the hillside across from us. We told Cho and Park to stay hidden while we moved up the side of the hill to get a better look. Sure enough, when we put a scope on the area where Hatchcock saw the flash we spotted a little bastard looking back at us over the barrel of a Dragunov. Maybe he saw me, maybe he didn’t, I really don’t know. What I do know is that I was quicker on the trigger that morning, and I painted the tree behind him with a nice thick coat of gook brains. Hathcock was pissed at me for pulling rank to take the shot, but it was worth it. We had to pass the hide where I shot the other sniper to get where we were going, so I made a little side trip and took the bullet from his gun. That’s where I got this.” He dangled the hog’s tooth in front of his face.
“It was five days later before we finally dragged our exhausted asses back to the rendezvous at the DMZ. We were half-starved, dehydrated, and suffering from some stomach bug we got from drinking tainted water from local streams. But by God, we were alive. We hitched a ride back to Yeoncheon on a military transport with a South Korean Army guy driving it. I tell you, I was never so happy to see a green truck in my whole damn life.”
John smiled, and flicked the butt of his cigarette away into the night. I watched it sail through the air in a reddish arc until it disappeared over the edge of the loft. Night had fully set in by then. The kind of black, moonless night where the darkness is a living thing pressing down on you, and you can’t see your hand in front of your face. John’s shaggy gray head looked pale and ghostly in the dimming light of the lantern. I took the lantern down from the para-cord and wound it up again as John resumed speaking.
“It was a couple of days later before we got to the Army base in Pusan. The spooks there separated us and debriefed us while we were in the hospital getting patched up. Before, during, and after every interview, they kept going on and on about how important it was never to talk about what happened down in that valley. We were under orders to take that knowledge with us to the grave.” John snorted. “As if anybody would have believed us. Hell, I had trouble believing it myself, and I was there.”
John let out a bitter, mirthless laugh and took another pull from the tequila. I could tell from the glazed look in his eyes that he was starting to feel the effects.
“Anyway, my tour ended a year later, so I took my walking papers and came back home to the States. The memory of what happened that day in Kangwon Province was burning a hole in my brain, and I knew I had to tell someone about it, or I was going to go out of my damn mind. A few months after I got back, I drove up to that cabin over yonder to visit my Grandpa. He’d fought in World War One, and the two of us always had a pretty special bond. I knew I could tell him anything, and be absolutely sure that he would keep it between the two of us, no matter what. Grandpa could tell something was bothering me the minute I walked through the door. He knew I wanted to tell him, but I just didn’t know where to start. We made small talk for a little while, and drank a little homemade wine until I worked up the nerve. Once I started talking, it all just came pouring out of me. I had kept all that pain and confusion bottled up inside me for so long…I don’t know. It’s like I was starting to crack, up here.” He tapped a finger against one grey temple.
“I told him everything. All of it. I kept expecting him to laugh at me, or yell at me to stop yanking h
is chain, but he didn’t do that. He just sat there quietly and listened until I was done. I wasn’t sure what he was gonna do, but what he told me after I finished my story was about the last thing in the world I expected to hear. ‘Johnnie, I ain’t never told nobody about this before,’ he says, ‘but seein’ as you done been through the same thing, I figure now’s as good a time as any.’”
The old man took another hit from the flask and lit another cigarette. His words were starting to slur a little as he talked.
“Grandpa told me about a night in France when the Germans in the trench across from them started screaming and yelling and shooting at anything that moved. Grandpa had seen men die in agony many times, but the screams coming from that trench were unlike anything he had ever heard. Next thing he knows, the krauts are pouring over the top and running like madmen across no-man’s-land. The machine gunners cut them down, but some of them just wouldn’t drop. They made it all the way across and tumbled down onto the guys waiting at the bottom of the trench. They shot them, they stabbed them, they did everything they could to kill them, but nothing seemed to hurt the bastards. One of them attacked a man standing next to my Grandpa. He rode him to the ground and took a bite out of his neck. Not knowing what else to do, Grandpa picked up an entrenching tool that he had sharpened up so that it was like a kind of axe, and bashed the things head in with it. When that killed it, he started running up and down the lines shouting to the other men. ‘Aim for the head!’ he yelled, ‘Smash their fucking skulls in! That’s the only way to kill ‘em!’ He stayed on the move for the next few hours in cramped, mud-filled trenches, sometimes fighting so close that he could smell the rot on the walker’s breath, but finally they managed to put them all down. During the night, they noticed a few of their comrades who had been dead for hours start to get back up. They made the same horrible moaning sound that the dead krauts had, so the soldiers put two and two together and killed them before they could hurt anybody. An intelligence officer came around the next morning and rounded up all the soldiers that had been bit, and all the ones who died from their wounds. Grandpa asked what was going to happen to the fellas that got bit, and the officer told him that they were being taken away to receive special medical attention.”