SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

THE SLOG Neal F. Litherland

Vietnam smelled like an off-season slaughterhouse. It had been washed by rain and perfumed by flowers, but even after Mother Nature scrubbed and polished the sprawl it was impossible to forget what was underneath. Impossible to forget the sharp tang of cordite and the fresh shit smell of bladders and bowels being emptied. The jungle had blood on its breath, and once that abattoir stink got in the nose you never forgot you were in a cattle chute.

They all coped with that the memory of that smell in different ways. Baxter stripped and cleaned his 60 from belts to barrel every night, his hands assembling and disassembling the pins and latches like it was a lethal rosary. Hawkins read and re-read his letters from home until they were smeared and smudged, tattered around the edges like he’d sucked all the well-wishes out of them. Big Billy Watts built card houses in the moonlight, and before he rolled into his fox hole he knocked ‘em down like a kid with building blocks. They brought their rituals and their talismans, their whispered prayers and their good luck charms. They didn’t really believe those things would keep them safe, but they needed something to hold fast to when the sun went down and the shadows grew bold.

“So there I am, one big bastard on either arm, my hands cuffed behind my back, and my dick still hanging out of my fly,” Johnny drawled, carefully arranging the crown of royals in his helmet band from Jack to King. “They haul me in, and dump me on the bench like a sack of taters. I drop right on my nuts, and for a minute I swear I can hear bells ringing and angels singing.”

“Must have been a lucky drop,” Jenkins said, running the razor edge of his Bowie knife down his left cheek. He had a dozen scars attesting that blade shaving hadn’t always been so easy for him. “Ain’t much of a target to hit.”

“When my eyes uncross the chap’s staring down at me, his greens pressed and his little collar on,” Johnny continued, wiping his florid face on his sleeve and ignoring the commentary. “He tells the monkey patrol to take the bracelets off. Problem is my hands are still numb, so I’m trying to tuck myself back in still half a sheet to the wind and I can’t even bend my fingers.”

Simms was rolling up his poncho from the night before, Gardner was scraping the rest of his MRE between his yellow teeth, and Cooper was going through a last check on his med kit before slinging it over his shoulder. Nobody was really paying attention to Johnny; he was a radio with one station. He faded into the background more often than not, but his stories about what he did once his pretty Susan broke up with him were still better than silence.

“Finally I get my gun holstered, and the chap’s giving me that hellfire and brimstone look.” Johnny turned down the corners of his mouth so they cut deep grooves in his sweaty cheeks, and narrowed his eyes so his forehead wrinkled up. The expression added thirty years to Johnny’s face, and made him look like the chaplain’s red-headed younger brother. That got a chuckle out of some of them.

“The old man say anything?” Luke asked. His back was against a tree stump, and he was rolling a smoke just as thin and dark as he was. A smile played around the corner of his lips, like he’d heard it all before and still found it just as funny the second time around.

Johnny folded his arms across his chest, and like magic the twang was gone from his voice. Instead it was low, deep, and serious. “Is there something you want to confess, my son?”

That got some real laughter. Johnny grinned, and he was himself again. A few more ears turned, but the soldiers’ eyes stayed busy on the jungle. Luke touched his tongue to the paper, and dug out an old steel lighter. He flicked it, and touched the flame to the tip of his smoke.

“So I says to him ‘no sir, I can’t think of anything I’ve done that I need to confess.’ He puts his hand on my shoulder, leaning over me like he’s about to give me the facts of life, right? He looks me right in the eyes, and he says, ‘John, you need to confess before you go back out into that jungle. If you don’t there’s no telling what might happen.’”

“So what did you say?” Luke asked, the words dribbling up from his lips in a blue mist.

“Well I thought about it for a minute,” Johnny said, screwing up his face like he was trying to remember what year he needed to be born to buy a beer. “And I said to him, ‘Father, are you telling me I might end up in the Slog?’”

Gardner choked on his last swallow of runny eggs. Jenkins’ blade stopped, poised just under his jawbone. Even Simms looked up from his meticulous rolling and tying with a nervous, piano-wire smile on his face. Luke let smoke trickle out of his open mouth, dragging it back in through his flaring nostrils. The wind died down, and the trees leaned closer; as if the jungle was curious to hear the rest of Johnny’s story.

Everybody had a story about the Slog. A grunt in Baxter’s old squad said it was a ghost town set up by CIA spooks somewhere deep in the shit. The way he told it the ghosts took deserters, protesters, draft dodgers, and VC fighters, then did something to their heads. The spooks fed them dope, and poked around in their brains until all they could say was “yes sir” before turning them loose in the jungle with no fear, no pain, and a fully loaded M16. Baxter always shook his head and laughed, but he wouldn’t look anyone in the eye when they asked if he believed it.

Jenkins was getting drunk in a bar one night when he heard a couple of non-coms tossing back rice whiskey and talking tall. One of them got real quiet before he told his buddies he’d heard from a green beret that the Slog was where all of the special forces had bivouacked deep in the jungle. He said the greenies had taken over some half-rotted stone temple all covered in red stains and letters nobody could read. According to him the greenies took VC prisoners, staked them out on top of the tallest stones, and cut them up one piece at a time. They let the blood flow, and howled out the old names that wind, rain, and the jungle damp had spent centuries trying to erase from the walls and floors of that unholy place. What they did after was worse though, and when his drinking buddies prodded for more the storyteller tossed back another shot and refused to talk about it anymore.

Luke had been sitting up keeping watch with Cooper one night when the medic had started shaking. Before his teeth had finished chattering Cooper told Luke about his first week on patrol. It had been a routine nature hike until a kid named Frankie Prince had found a booby trap the hard way while walking point. The kid had lost a leg, half his face, and most of an arm, but Cooper had kept him alive. They called in an evac but it didn’t come. Frankie had been lying there moaning and twitching, slipping in and out of consciousness. Cooper was half-nodding when the kid’s good eye shot open, and he grabbed the medic’s arm hard enough to leave week-long bruises. Frankie said they were all dead, dead and rotting in the Slog. He said he’d be dead too if he didn’t get out. He took two more deep breaths, and then whatever was still holding on inside Frankie let go. Cooper said it was like watching someone’s soul drown. Ten minutes later the medic threw up in the latrine.

Gardner had been chasing the dragon in a chop-down tent while some guy two puffs away from floating out of his skin babbled about screaming trees, and something pale and blind swimming down out of sight in the swamp water. Simms had been down in the brig trying to ignore a shiner he’d gotten for taking a swing at his sergeant while the guy in the next cell muttered about ghosts coming to drag him down into the mud. According to the guard the guy had been the only survivor of his unit, and he’d tried to desert twice right out of the hospital. Whatever it was he saw out there had scared him bad enough he was less afraid of a court martial than staying in-country for one more day. In the end he chewed off his own tongue, and choked on it. Even Johnny, with his freckles and carrot-colored high-and-tight wore a hard grin when he said the name of the place out loud. Like those two words might be enough to call up the devil.

“Well,” Luke said, blowing his two-stroke smoke back out through his nose. “What did he say?”

Johnny gave Luke a you-aren’t-going-to-believe-this-shit head shake. The redhead opened his mouth, and the right side of his head exploded like his skull had sneezed. Half a second later lead rain poured through their little camp, accompanied by the distinctive, clacking chatter of Kalashnikovs. Men dove for foxholes, snatching helmets with one hand and rifles with the other. Luke rolled, sucking in breath and choking on his smoke as a nine-pound sledge slammed into his back and sent him tumbling. He crashed into the bottom of his foxhole head-first, and his teeth snapped shut like a spring-loaded trap. Lights blossomed behind his eyes, and he felt wetness around his thighs. Dirt showered down on him, and he had enough time to wonder if he’d pissed himself before he went under.

Luke came to with cold mud cupping his balls, and harsh light slanting the wrong way into his hole. He tensed, then slowly relaxed. He took shallow breaths that barely filled his belly, and listened. He didn’t hear anything. There were no voices, no squelching footsteps, and no groans of pain. There was no wind, and if the jungle was still up there nothing moved in or through it. The constant drone of mosquitoes, like the high tension wires in the backyard you forgot about until there was a blackout, was gone.

Moving like a man underwater Luke felt for his rifle. He dragged it close, and probed blindly for his helmet. He hung the dark green half-turtle on the end of the barrel, and slowly raised it. No shots rang out. Nothing moved. He lowered the decoy, and raised it a moment later. Still nothing. Skin pebbling and muscles tensing he put his muck-smeared helmet back on. Luke checked his weapon then coiled his legs under him. He took a deep breath, kissed the silver crucifix his mama had given him, and stuck half his head out of the hole.

Nothing had changed, but everything was different. The jungle was still there, but in the flat light its deep, rich green was two licks from black. Simms’ bedroll was half-undone, sodden with mud like a bad memory of some forgotten summer camp. Jenkins’ mirror hung from a low branch, swaying and flashing as it swung in and out of shadow. The King of Hearts stared at the sky, his placid face covered with fat, red spatter and tiny chunks of gray meat. Three sheets of notebook paper with ragged edges fluttered from underneath a root like crippled birds. There were no other holes.

Luke’s brain tried to process what he was seeing. A hundred synapses fired in a thousand directions, trying to shine a light on the answer. Luke’s legs decided it would be a question better considered from a distance, and his heart agreed. His lungs fell in line, and in less than three seconds all of him was into the trees and away.

He didn’t run like a soldier, with his eyes up and his ears sharp. He didn’t run like a civilian either, bulling through anything that got in his way. Luke moved like a swamp rabbit, panting as his arms and legs pumped in a perfect rhythm. He leaped over outstretched roots, swung around skinny trunks, tucked down under clutching branches, and vaulted over dead falls without thought or hesitation. It was graceful, even pretty in a desperate sort of way as he defied gravity to put the unnamed terror behind him.

He stopped running when he came to a blasted tree. The thing had been a cypress once upon a time, until God had laid it low. Black and twisted, with gnarled fingers severed at the second knuckle, the tree sat alone like a woodland pariah. Words had been carved into it by a hundred hands, and they were written in nearly as many languages. Luke saw English and French, Vietnamese and Dutch nestled side by side in ways their mother countries never had been. He saw short, choppy characters he didn’t recognize, and letters that made his eyes hurt to try and follow them. Poetry, profanity, and the worst parts of the bible ran helter-skelter over the tree’s lightning-struck skin, blending into a cacophony of carpentry. In the bloody light of late day it looked like the Maypole at a devil’s social.

Luke took one step into the no-man’s-land that surrounded the blasted tree. His nostrils flared, and he silently mouthed the words he could make out. Closer to the tree the smells of char, damp, and rot lingered in the air. There was something else, too; something sharp and tangy, like a sock full of pennies accidentally thrown in the wash. Luke socked his rifle to his shoulder and took a careful, quiet step around the tree. On his third step he found the source of the smell.

The body still wore the black pajamas of a Viet Cong soldier. The cloth was shredded, and it hung like a tattered flag at a hobo’s funeral. Beneath the cloth the flesh had gone bloated and sallow, sagging off the bones like the corpse had been a hundred years old when someone put him out of his misery. The legs were gone at the knees, and only a grisly shard of red bone poked out of the remains of the left sleeve. A colony of beetles nested in the stump of the neck, and the noises as they ate sounded like wet radio static. The ghastly sack of flesh was nailed to the tree, and its one remaining arm pointed off into a thick wall of unbroken tangle. In big, bold letters where the head should be were the words Checkpoint Charlie. Above the hand, little more than a bony puppet held together by strings of gristle was carved one word: Slog.

Luke stood there with his mouth open, and the sour taint of the decaying road sign sitting heavy on his tongue. His guts clenched, and his rifle lowered, but those things seemed far away and unimportant. He stared transfixed at the mangled effigy while mud soaked through the vents in his boots. A centipede as thick as his middle finger and nearly as long as his forearm burrowed out through the hollow of the throat. Charlie sighed, and a rush of thick, black blood burbled down his skinny chest.

Luke turned his head, and vomited. It was thin and yellow, like polluted river water. He heaved three times, hands on his knees and his asshole puckering every time his belly knotted up. Cold, greasy sweat ran down his cheeks, and dripped from the tip of his nose. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and spit. When he looked up, he saw what Charlie was pointing at.

The jungle had parted her legs, and in the thick tangle Luke saw a hole. The edges dripped dampness, and thick musk wafted from it. The smell was a miasma; new life growing fecund in a womb filled with teeth. It stank of black water in stagnant pools, overgrown toadstools blooming from the mouths of dead things, and the slow, serpentine life that fed and bred in the shadowy places of the earth. To Luke it smelled like home. He looked back the way he’d come, and the twisted trees stared back at him with sunset eyes. The shadows reached for him, and a flock of birds burst into the sky no more than three klicks back. Something was headed his way.

Luke took stock. He had his rifle, two full magazines, a sidearm, an M-7 bayonet, a brush knife, a canteen, and a dirty handkerchief. He had a compass, an old lighter, makings for two or three more smokes, a dirty helmet, a pair of wet boots, an entrenchment tool, a torch with a cracked red lens, and a couple packs of stale crackers he’d been keeping in his breast pocket. What he didn’t have was a radio, a map, or a clue. He was four days’ out, off of any and all trails he knew, and he had to get back to friendly territory. That meant dodging patrols, avoiding the locals, and conserving as much ammunition as he could. He glanced up at Charlie again, and watched as one beetle chased another down the dead man’s shoulder to fight for a particularly succulent chunk of throat meat. He looked where Charlie was pointing, then down at his compass. The needle wavered, but it seemed pretty sure that Charlie was pointing in the direction Luke needed to go. Whatever was down that way was no friend to the Viet Cong. Even if the enemy of his enemy was his friend though, a man would have to be crazy to go down that path in the dark. Another man would have to be even crazier to follow.

“Anybody else comes this way, you never saw me,” Luke said, his usually deep voice an octave or so higher than normal. The rotting neck bobbed slightly, as if Charlie was trying nod. A laugh burbled in Luke’s throat. He choked it back, turned, and ran for the hole before he lost his nerve.

Luke swept his torch over what little path there was, looking for trip wires, snares, or signs of recently disturbed earth. He glanced up every half-dozen steps or so, clearing his three, six, and nine o’clock positions. There was the usual animal chatter, splashings and crashings in the dusk-clotted brush and high up in the dim tree tops, but there was nothing big enough or close enough to warrant his attention. He was fifty yards in when he raised his head; what he’d thought was just another vine was staring at him with flat, dead eyes the size of croaker marbles. He gasped, and fangs as long as bass fish hooks clicked off his helmet. He squeezed the trigger, and his rifle hacked a round into the underbrush.

Luke dropped onto his heels, and brought the M-16 up to catch a blow that never came. The snake swung like a busted door spring, spinning slightly as it arced through the air. Luke swallowed until his heart was back where it belonged. He stopped the fleshy pendulum with the barrel of his weapon, and raised his light.

It was a python, and the goddamn thing was big enough to swallow a six-year-old and still have room for her little dog too. It had a shovel head big enough to dig a grave with, and in the red glare its hide was a dull, rubbery black. It had been stapled to the tree by its tail with wooden stakes, and thick, viscous fluid dripped from the jutting jaw. Something snapped with the wet pop of a sodden rubber band. The mouth bulged, distended, and a pale sack of meat fell out. It plopped into a puddle of the serpent’s dribbling decay, and spattered Luke’s boots. It looked like a leather purse with the lining pulled out. He let the snake go, and kept walking.

There were others. A toad the size of a dinner platter hammered down a broken branch where it had popped like a balloon full of moldering guts. A marbled cat strapped to a skinny trunk with a web belt, all four feet and its tail cut off for good luck. A family of crucified rats watched him pass without so much as a squeak, and a gibbon’s head grinned at him good-naturedly like they shared some private joke.

That wasn’t all. Whoever had left the bloody blazes marked the trail in other ways too. Some of it was smudged and smeared, written in pencil, pen, blood, or shit by the smell of it. Other messages were clearer, dug deep into the bark with knives or burned in with careful patience. I volunteered because I wanted to defend my country, one trunk proclaimed. I married a girl I hate because I knocked her up, another said. I bought drugs for my brother so he’d spend more time with me. After a while Luke stopped reading; the confessions made him sick in ways the gutted signposts never could.

The path decayed along with its markers, meandering back and forth like a drunk with a sextant had plotted the way. What had been a trail grew wild and bent-legged, jogging over hillocks and dipping into ditches. The earth grew wet and spongy until it was like walking over a dead man whose skin was starting to give way to corruption. In places it opened up, and dark water gaped beneath the ground. Flies buzzed in the blackness, eating away the mangled bread crumbs until there was almost nothing left. The clouds parted for Luke’s lamp, and closed in a curtain when he’d taken his light and moved on.

He’d gone nearly twenty yards with no sign of something dead when the air opened up. It was like stepping from a narrow narthex into a vaulted cathedral. The hum ceased, and somewhere nearby water lapped at muddy shores. Far above was a faint click-clacking sound, like bats roosting. Luke held his light up high, but still couldn’t see more than a few yards in any direction. Thick grass shushed against his knees. He turned left, then right, skin prickling on the nape of his neck. The torch flickered, and Luke smacked it against the heel of his hand. It juttered, then steadied. He unscrewed the red lens with careful fingers. White light bloomed, and Luke nearly dropped the flash.

Towering trees stood in a wide circle, their hoary branches and scarred trunks thick and strong. Bones hung from those branches, swaying on twine tendons with every breeze. Femurs clacked against scapulas like wind chime xylophones, and finger bones conducted a symphony of swaying spines. Beneath the bones a lagoon swallowed the land, but eight little islands reared out of the murky pool. Across the expanse, no more than forty or fifty yards away, two trees embraced each other like conjoined lovers. Martyred above the arch like a meat gargoyle was another torso. Black rags and flayed skin dangled from scored ribs, and something was carved in sloping, idiot letters above the carcass.

“Golgotha,” Luke muttered, sounding out the legend written in yard-high letters. The word fell into the quiet, hollow as a lie told in a confession booth. “Jesus Christ.”

Luke stepped closer to the water’s edge, shining his light up at the macabre mobiles. They reminded him of the gator bells his uncle put up every spring. They’d ring in the wind, but people in the parish looked for the brass baubles even if they couldn’t hear them. They knew if there was a bell hung in a tree it was there to let everyone know to keep their hands on the throttle and their fingers on their triggers.

Something splashed in the water, and Luke swung his beam over the pool. Ripples skipped and bounced, turning the surface into a melting spiderweb. Luke thumbed his rifle’s selector switch with his right hand and cozied his finger around the trigger. His knees bent without conscious input, and he tracked his light from one end of the water to the other. All he saw were the waves, and seven little sandbars.

Luke was already moving when the water surged. He made it two steps before the little lake burst like an infected sore, showering his back with warm, brackish wet. His ankle turned, and he went down hard. His flash bounced away in a crazy kaleidoscope of light and dark, and something went after it. Something the size of a diesel tractor that hissed like July rain on a hot top. Luke swung his rifle up with clumsy, half-numb hands, and fired. Three rounds made flat, slapping sounds, and the shape grunted. The torch stopped rolling, and the creature turned toward Luke.

It looked like something that had crawled out of the bottom of the barrel after the six days of creation were over and done with. Its hide was a pale, quarried gravel stretched over a too-big frame. Its massive chest dragged the ground, but its belly sloped up and back to pair powerful hindquarters. Meat hook claws tipped the end of massive feet, tree trunk legs churned the mud, and a lashing, scaly tail dug great gouges in the earth. It had too many legs, too many teeth, and a face that was nothing but a pale, eyeless shelf of bone above a double line of gaping, snuffling holes. The blind behemoth hissed, and charged.

It was fast. Fast enough that Luke barely had time for one more burst before it was on him. He rolled, and the thing thundered past. The tail smashed against Luke’s helmet, turning his roll into a spin as the chin strap gave way and the steel cap sailed into the darkness. He slammed into a tree hard enough to shake dew from the leaves. The bones overhead beat out a dinner-bell boogie.

The ground shook as the thing wheeled ‘round and came again. Luke didn’t have time to roll out of the way. He jumped, grabbed a branch, and swung his legs up just as the sightless freight train rammed the base of the huge tree. The tree swayed, and Luke’s grip went queasy. He hooked his legs around the branch, gritted his teeth against the pain in his ankle, and hauled himself up. The thing hit the tree again. Then a third time. It paused, head cocked like it was listening for falling fruit. When nothing fell it walked around the side of the tree with its head held high in the air. It took a step and snuffled. Then two more. Then a third. Luke stood slowly, arms out for balance until he had his back against the trunk. The thing wasn’t sure where he was, but Luke was sure it would find him if he didn’t figure something out fast.

He drew his M-7 and slipped the muzzle ring over the barrel. He held his breath then clicked it into place. There was a pause from below, then the damp snuffling continued. He took a firm grip on his rifle and pressed on the ejector clip with his thumb the same way he’d pushed in the spring lock on his door when he’d been a teenager. The tension built, and it clicked like a tiny twig breaking. The creature paused again, holding its breath. Luke did the same, and after fifteen seconds it started walking and sniffing again. He pressed in the fresh magazine but if the creature heard it around the tree it gave no sign.

Luke shifted his grip on the rifle and waited. The whatever-it-was came closer, circling around the other side of the trunk. It rose up, clawing and sniffing at the lower branches. Luke cocked his arm and let fly. The half-empty magazine sailed through the air and struck a hanging skull with a hollow crack. The skull rebounded, banging off a set of leg bones, which jived along half a dozen ribs. The thing dropped low, pointed itself at the other tree, and Luke jumped. His boots slid on the creature’s skin but he brought his rifle down bayonet-first into the back of its neck. The steel caught against something hard, and turned just as Luke’s boots skidded off the back plates and his ass hit hard enough to make his tailbone go numb.

The creature roared, and the sound reverberated over the water. It shook and bucked, whiplashing back and forth across the broken shore. Luke held on, jerking and twisting the six–and-three-quarter inches of steel embedded just south of the base of the skull. When he didn’t come free, the thing turned back toward the lagoon and started running. It managed three lumbering steps before Luke pulled himself onto his knees, and squeezed the trigger.

A bomb went off in the creature’s neck, and pain raked Luke from crotch to crown. The behemoth spasmed and threw him off. Luke hit the dirt hard enough to jar his brain, skidding through the mud in a graceless ballet. The creature swayed like a drunken prize fighter, blood and ichor pumping from its mangled neck. Its knees gave out slowly and it collapsed with its snout in the water. Blood pooled, pouring into the lagoon and turning it a darker shade of black. Luke watched the thing twitch and scrabble, but he stayed where he was until the creature’s bladder let go in a stream that reeked of battery acid. When he was sure it was dead he levered himself to his feet, collected his light, and went looking for his rifle.

He found what was left of his M-16 half-in and half-out of a mud puddle. The stock was cracked, the carry strap had pulled loose from the front mooring, and a thick clot of muck dribbled from the inner workings. The firing pin had blown through the rear workings, the hammer was bent back like a crippled gymnast, and the barrel ruptured like a rusty sewer pipe. The M-7’s handle was locked in place, but the blade had sheared right off. Luke ejected the clip, unsnapped the strap, and sat on a rock where he could watch the water along with its recently deceased resident.

Luke flexed his ankle and swore. It hurt, but nothing was torn or broken. He took off his boot, wrapped the ankle with the carry strap for support, then laced his boot back up. It still hurt, but he could probably run on it if he had to. He stripped off his jacket, grunting at all the little slivers that had blown back in his face. There were fewer of them than he thought there were, but still enough that it took him some time to pluck them all out. A few of the cuts bled, but not enough to worry about. He put his jacket back on, and ate his crackers while he looked for his helmet. He didn’t find it, but he did find the half-used clip he’d thrown at the bone chimes. A fair trade. He took out his compass. The cover was busted, and the needle was bent up at a useless angle. Luke swore then gathered a couple of big stones.

Keeping an eye on the corpse Luke panned the water and counted. There were seven little sandbars, each with a tuft of thick grass growing on them. He bounced a rock in his hand, and threw it. It landed on the first island with a dull thud. He threw the others, plopping a few lobs into the water for good measure. Nothing came roaring out of the depths. No mysterious ripples broke the surface. Luke nodded, and built himself a smoke. He took care not to spill any of his tobacco before putting it back in the little pouch that kept his makings dry. He flicked his lighter, and heat lightning lit up the treetops. Luke waited for thunder, but it never came.

He considered his situation. He was hurt, and a little shook up. He had no way to keep his direction straight. He was running out of light in a hurry. He could bed down where he was and hope he made it through the night, or he could keep going. He took a look at the dead thing and imagined what would have happened if it had found him in the dark. His lips writhed. Luke looked back the way he’d come, toward the clouds of flies and the bloody trail they were eating away to nothingness. No one was coming, but if he went back that way he’d be no better off than he was now. He checked what was left of his gear to make sure everything was buttoned up and strapped in.

“After a while, crocodile,” he said, flicking his smoldering roach at the thing that had lived and died in the Golgotha. Luke drew his pistol and started picking his way around the rim of the water.

He paused below the arch and looked up at the body. It was older than the first one, and it had rotted faster. It had both arms, and they were spread wide in welcome. Either that, or it was getting ready to drop on him when he wasn’t looking. Luke pursed his lips, and took a long drink from his canteen. There was another legend scratched into the left tree, faint enough that he had to lean in close to see it.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” he read. He looked back over his shoulder, then back at the dark doorway. He crossed the threshold.

Luke found the first stone with his bad foot. It was the size of a brick, and cocked at an angle like a sinking ship. It was the color of hospital sheets, and jagged cracks ran the visible length of it. Rounded and pounded by wind and rain the stone stood defiant; the tip of some buried pyramid lost and forgotten for centuries. Luke limped past, barely giving it a thought except to remember to pick up his feet.

He found more. At first there were only one or two, but they grew into clumps of a dozen or more. The clumps grew more frequent until he was on something that resembled a road. The trees parted, and Luke picked his way over the undisciplined-soldier course beneath a sky as black and empty as a Sunday chalkboard.

Nothing moved. No birds scuttled through the trees, and no snakes slithered after them searching for tasty eggs. Nothing stalked through the empty spaces, or pawed through the dead leaves carpeting the ground beneath emaciated bushes. Ragged cobwebs the size of burial shrouds hung from skeletal branches, and wrapped sacs the size of severed heads hung like sticky, tumorous pendulums. The road was dead, and its corpse was unquiet beneath Luke’s feet.

He smelled the river before he saw it. On top was the musty scent of stale rain, but beneath there was something else; a sharp tang like spoiled eggs in a burn bin. It crawled up Luke’s nose and squatted there, adding a touch of brimstone to every breath and making his eyes water if he sucked in too much air. The trees thinned and twisted, thinning like an old man’s hair. Ancient slabs of stone leaned against each other, fringes of thatched roofs still clinging to a few of the lean-tos. Scrimshaw sigils half-erased by time and the caustic air decorated some of the buildings as well, and shifting shadows lived behind their broken lintels. The darkness watched as he passed, and Luke picked up his pace.

The road ended atop a rise between two decaying stone columns. The eroded stumps were each two feet taller than Luke, and wide enough that his whole squad couldn’t have held arms around one of them. Tiger grass grew knee high, and hieroglyphics faded to near-invisibility spiraled over their surfaces. Beyond the leaning towers was a land of mist and darkness that glowed with witch fire. A red moon rose over the horizon, painting fingers of land in scarlet, and the slow-moving water a deeper, darker crimson.

The place was wrong. It looked wrong, it sounded wrong, and it smelled wrong. There were no sulfur swamps in their patrol area. There were no rivers big enough to make a clogged drain like this one for at least a hundred kilometers in the opposite direction. No one in the area had reported stone landmarks to the map crews, and nowhere in the entire fucking country from bombed out tunnels to defoliated drop zones was ever this fucking quiet. It was like a library, in a church, in the middle of a graveyard, on Mars.

Luke flicked off his torch and belly-crawled over the rise. His ankle pulsed like a parade-ground hangover, and his canteen was nearly empty. His skull felt naked, and his eyes throbbed as he tried to see through the murk. The skin between his shoulders puckered, and his gut wouldn’t unclench. Everything in him said there were eyes out there, and whoever owned them was none too friendly. He glanced back the way he’d come, but saw nothing but darkness. When he turned back he saw something scrawled over the stone below the grass line. Luke held his kerchief over the torch to cut the glare, and leaned in for a closer look.

Now Entering Spook Central, the stones proclaimed in letters that had been written in an unsteady hand. Below that, the printing slanting the other way, was the missive Kilroy was here. Luke touched his tongue to the pad of his thumb, and ran it over the last e. It smeared, and when he sniffed his thumb there was no doubt about what the words had been written in. They were fresh, but not that fresh. A gunshot rang out somewhere in the darkness, and Luke’s shoulders twitched. He remembered Baxter telling him once that if you heard the shot you weren’t dead yet, and that if you weren’t dead it was time to get a move on before you were. Forward or backward, Luke couldn’t stay where he was.

The world came in flashes. Luke was halfway down the hill, scooting on his ass like a little kid and trying to look everywhere at once. Then he was at the bottom of the hill, bent over like a runner getting ready to put his feet in the blocks. He was scuttling through the grass, breathing through his open mouth, trying to hear something other than the slamming of his heart. He zigged and zagged over the open land, keeping his head down and his eyes wide open in the dark. He felt with his feet and his fingertips, slithering and scrabbling over ground he could barely see. He used the torch sparingly, kept its flashes brief, and managed not to run into anything. The fourth time he flicked the switch there was a crack in the near distance, and the torch exploded.

Luke dropped the flash, and rolled to his right. Three more sharp barks followed, and gray grit flew as rounds buried themselves in the dirt around him. Luke let out a moan, and coughed. He let it trail off into silence, going limp in a patch of scrubby grass. His left hand felt hot and wet. He spider-walked his right hand to his hip, making the muscles in his arm relax. He waited. No one approached. There was no more shooting, either. A minute went by, then a friend came to join it. The clock party had just gotten started when he heard whistling.

The notes were flat, tone-deaf things; the ghosts of murdered music. At first Luke thought it was the wind, but the sounds were too regular. Too human. The atonal dirge drifted, and something moved in the mist; a skinny shadow with its weapon held at port arms. Luke drew and fired, squeezing the trigger twice. A firebrand burned the back of his right shoulder, and the figure went down with a sound like laundry being dumped on a concrete floor. The whistling continued, but there was a wet, wheezing quality that said it no longer came from a mouth. Luke stood and approached, weapon leveled.

The shooter was lying on her back. Her frizzy blond hair stuck out like a halo in the dimness. Ugly, puckered worms of scar flesh squirmed at her temples and along the shaved sides of her head. She had a junky’s tan, and the skin around her nails was cracked and jaundiced. One or two of the nails still had chips of yellow paint on them. Her lips writhed over pale gums filled with loose teeth, and her breath hissed through the hole the copper jacketed slug had torn in her chest. She wore busted sandals, cut-off jeans, and beneath the mud and blood her tee shirt was stamped with the letters for Ohio State. She raised empty hands, and squeezed a trigger that wasn’t there. The whistling stopped, and her hands flopped in the dirt like dead starlings.

Luke didn’t recall sitting down. One minute he was standing over the girl, staring into her dead, hazy eyes, and the next he was on his ass. His face was wet, and clear snot dribbled from his right nostril. He flicked his Zippo, and noticed several, deep gashes along his left hand. Shards of plastic stuck out of a few of them. He pulled them out, grunting with each chunk.

He turned his attention to the girl. She had a spare clip in her back pocket, a wad of used chewing gum covered in lint, and a handful of pennies. Luke exchanged his pistol for his brush knife, and cut her shirt into strips. The tearing cloth was like a scream in the silence, and it brought him back to himself. He wrapped a long strip around the knife, and ran the Zippo back and forth over it. The cloth hissed and huffed, but eventually let the flame climb on. That was when Luke noticed the folded piece of notebook paper jutting out of the girl’s bra. He plucked it out and unfolded it.

It was a garbled mess. There were confessions to gods whose names Luke didn’t know, pleas for mercy, and cryptic nursery rhymes that reminded him of the stupid, endless tricks teachers had written on the board to help him remember facts and formulas. He read it twice, lips moving in silent repetition in the wan, wavering light.

Her name was Susan Griffith, and she was a sophomore. She’d been at a protest against the war, and someone had hit her on the head. After that was a series of white rooms, where people gave her pills and patted her arm reassuringly. She was flying, but she didn’t know how she got on the plane. She wasn’t alone, either.

She was taken to a cell to wait in silence and darkness. Then her food had come; a tray of sweet, salty mash with a bitter taste she couldn’t identify. The first three times she refused to eat, but the fourth time she gave in. It was the best meal she’d ever eaten, and she’d fallen into a stupor. She dreamed of men in white coats telling her everything would be all right. Saying her family loved her, and she was away at camp. She woke to whispers in the vents, and the cold, rhythmic echo of gunshots. The devil’s choir didn’t make sense at first, but in time she learned to love their words. To love their words and to hate the light.

They gave her Toto, a sleek, black thing that barked when she squeezed him, and stayed warm in her hands. She cleaned him, loved him, and when they’d grown inseparable the doors opened and she could go. She still thought about home sometimes, and about her boyfriend Paul. She thought about how she was going to fuck him after the protest, but never got a chance. She always found new friends though, and Toto would bark in the dark and put out their lights. The lights that hurt her eyes so much. Across the bottom of the page, written in tiny, smudged letters were the words All roads lead to Midian.

Luke was about to start over at the beginning again when he heard the moaning. It was flat and dull, like a busted church organ that only remembered one note. A high-pitched humming joined it. Teeth chattered in the mist like hungry castanets, with no rhyme or reason. A tongue clucked monotonously, like the owner was calling for a dog whose name he couldn’t remember. Shadows shambled out of the mist, drawn like blow flies to the dying fire in Luke’s left hand.

The first bullet spanged off the knife, twisting the metal out of true. The second tore through the meat of Luke’s little finger, snapping the bone and leaving the digit dangling by a thread. The third and fourth shots hit the knife just above the cross guard, sending it flying out of Luke’s hand. There were others, more than he could count, but they followed the burning brand as it tumbled into the dry grass. Luke leaped away, clutching his left hand to his chest and crouching near the dead girl who’d once been called Susan.

The spooks kept shooting, but the fire wasn’t made of flesh. It grabbed hold of the dry grass, and grew brighter. They kept shooting, but the hot lead passed straight through. The spooks reloaded, moving with a jerky, mechanical quality that was still faster than human hands should have moved. By the time they emptied their second magazines the fire had become a blaze, rearing like a dragon. It ate one of the shooters, who kept humming long after his clip went dry. The others fell back, chattering and clicking like a swarm with a dead queen. Light poured into the darkness like an ink stain, puddling around the borders of the mist. Luke turned, and that was when he saw the bridge.

It was an old bobbing Betty. She was held together with rusty chains, and the slick, moldy boards didn’t look overly reliable. The half-deflated pontoons sagged like an old woman’s dugs in the slow-running current. The span shot straight into the mist though, and Luke knew if the old sow was busted she’d have been pointing down river. He sucked in a breath and forced his feet to move.

The bridge was old, and she ducked below the water in a few places, but she held long enough for Luke to make it across. He fell twice, and almost went over into the river, but he managed to limp onto dry land. The bridge calmed. After a few minutes it started to bob again. In the middle distance something cracked. Someone did a poor imitation of an owl, asking the same nonsense question again and again. Luke snatched the shovel off his belt, and brought the edge down on the bridge. Boards splintered, and the pontoons beneath sighed as they dipped down the rest of the way. Luke crashed the shovel into the chain hard enough to send shivers up his arm, but it held. The bridge bobbed more vigorously, and a chorus of barks and howls joined the questioner. Something stirred the mist, and a bullet clanged off the shovel head. Luke let it go, drew his pistol, and fired. The chain snapped, along with the supports holding it in place. The bridge shuddered, shimmied, and hung on for three more heart beats. Then the second chain gave way with a metallic sigh.

Luke stood with the smoking gun held tightly in numb fingers, and watched the bridge float away into the mist. He heard splashes, but no one came toward him. No one shot at him. The expended .45 shell bobbed in the water like a small boat. Luke watched until it vanished, wondering for a moment just where the fuck it was going. He wished he’d had the presence of mind to snatch Susan’s rifle.

A rope creaked, and Luke turned. A black ash stood tall in the center of the little island, its dead roots anchored in dead soil. A dozen busted pieces of wood were nailed to the trunk, and strips of ragged canvas hung from the branches like a mummy’s wrappings. A fraying, hemp rope hung from a top branch, and a rocking chair dangled from the end. Luke sighed. Seated in the chair and dressed in dusty black scraps, was a headless body. Hanging from the foot rest was a bent, dented number plate with rust around the edges. Written on it were three, simple words; Welcome to Hell.

Luke shook his head slowly. He coughed, wincing as he moved his left hand. He flexed his remaining fingers, gritted his teeth, and snapped the string holding the tip of his pinky on. Luke wrapped the warm, wet nub in a cloth, and put it in his pocket.

“Don’t mind me,” he said to the dead man. “I’m just passing through.”

Charlie nodded, bobbing his hollow neck in a wind Luke didn’t feel.

The tree was a directory of the damned. One set of splintered boards pointed toward a plank bridge anchored to the ground with steel stakes. In that direction were Gehenna, Tartaros, and Limbo. Another pointed to a stone trestle that stretched onto a shadowy patch. It said Viti, Butcher Field, and the Stalking Grounds were that way. An arrow pointed at nothing, but when Luke looked closer he saw the water was broken by rounded stones the color of infected teeth. The splintered sign claimed Sheol was down that path. Scratched into the bottom of every sign in jagged, palsied letters was the word Midian.

Luke seared the worst of his wounds, then wrapped them in the cleanest strips of cloth he had. He drank all but a mouthful of his water, and found his shovel lying in the dead, dry weeds. There was a pockmark in the blade, but it was still serviceable. He stood next to the tree, and listened. He didn’t hear anything except the dead man’s creaking rope and the shushing water all around him. He tried to orient his direction. He looked up at the moon, but it sat high in the sky with no stars anywhere to be seen. In the end he chose the rope bridge, carefully notching the post before setting off across the planks.

Luke shifted his weight slowly at first, keeping his good hand on the rough-spun rope. It prickled his skin, and after about ten feet he tied another strip of cloth around his palm. That was better, but gripping the rope still felt like he was bare-hand fishing in a nettle jar. Down in the water fairy lights bobbed like the souls of drowned children. Luke reached a pair of heavy, wooden pylons. The left said Look, and the right said Don’t Touch.

The second span dipped lower, a few of the slats nearly kissing the water below. Luke focused on the boards, and on putting one foot in front of the other. His shoulders hunched, and the cords in his neck stuck out. He was gritting his teeth, but couldn’t make himself stop. Step, creak, wait, breathe became the stuttered rhythm of his life. The rhythm broke without warning as a board snapped, and Luke’s left foot plunged into the water.

It was like stepping on a stove. A hiss, followed by a sublime moment of nothing. Then lightning coursed along his leg, and slammed into his head. Luke tried to scream, but only managed a high, mewling sound like a dog whose lungs had been crushed by a car. He threw himself forward, and the bridge shuddered under his horizontal weight. His foot came out of the water, but kept burning in his boot. Luke snatched his canteen, and dumped the remaining water over his foot. There wasn’t much, but smoke rose from Luke’s leg as the cool stream turned his boot from soaked to sodden. He fell back, breathing in little sobs as he waited for the pain to retreat.

It did, eventually. Luke moved his foot experimentally. The skin felt taut, swollen inside its leather casing like an overcooked sausage. He wiggled each toe, and felt it move even if there was a delay from his brain to his foot. He rolled onto his side, and that was when he saw it; the sleek, black stock of a standard-issue M-16. Luke blinked, but the stock stayed there, standing straight up not two feet from the bridge.

Luke was flat on his belly, peering at the stock. There was a deep groove along the right side, and one screw seemed a little loose, but it looked serviceable. A ball chain ran through the sling clip, and a single dog tag trailed in the water. He wondered how long it had been submerged, and if it would be possible to dry it out and get it working again. He wondered if the bayonet was still in one piece. He ran his tongue back and forth over his teeth. He tasted blood, and he couldn’t place when that had started. He swallowed hard, and reached. His fingertips were half an inch from the rifle butt when the bridge shivered. Luke froze. He looked down, and something looked back up at him.

The kid had been handsome. His hair looked like black silk in the water, and the strands billowed out to reveal a face that was all hard planes and sharp features. He had a straight nose, a strong jaw, and a single, dark eye like a polished agate. The other eye was gone, swallowed up by a black hole in the side of his skull. White bone jutted up through an alien landscape of melted fat and seared skin. He was missing a leg, and most of an arm. The rifle was driven in through his heart, pinning him down like a moth on a cork board. The eye blinked, and the mouth opened. He reached for Luke, and Luke snatched his arm back so fast he was sure he’d tip the bridge and spill himself over the side.

The mist shifted. Upstream the scarred stock of an AK-47 stuck out at a 45-degree angle. The distinct, heavy butt of an M-1 Garand rose like the mast of a sunken ship, straight and true with the broken bowline of its strap bobbing to and fro. There were more, many more, in uneven, staggered lines up and down the wide river. They shifted, shook, and occasionally a few fingers broke the surface. They scrabbled at the weapons, fingernails leaving gouges and grooves, but none of them came free.

Luke turned his eyes away, and pulled himself to his feet. He ignored the pain the ropes cut into his palms, and the protest from his missing finger. He rejected the outrage from his swollen foot or twisted ankle. He took deep, chest-stretching breaths, and looked straight ahead. He didn’t run, but only because some distant part of him knew that if he did he’d go down to join the dead men all around him.

The bridge ended, and Luke collapsed onto solid ground. He coughed and wheezed, cried and shuddered. He heaved, but nothing came up. Something burst in his boot, and thick fluid sloshed in his sock. He contemplated staying where he was until something came along and put him out of his misery. Or doing it himself. He stroked his hand along the .45 then froze. He pulled his hand away from the gun, got up, and started moving again.

Luke toured islands of madness in a quiet, uncaring sea. He passed through an orchard of gallows trees, where meat had been hung piecemeal from vines that pulsed and quivered like spider veins. He saw a place where cleavers were buried in salted stumps like axes awaiting the grinder. Another was covered in stone plinths, leaning against each other in some places, standing tall in others. Some bore dark stains, and the wind howled like the rocks had bitten it bloody. He followed mismatched footprints through gray dirt on an isle where nothing grew, and felt eyes on his back even though there was nowhere to hide. He crossed over stone arches, chain suspension bridges, twisted trees that grew from one bank to another, and made his way over fallen stones where the river gurgled and whispered with drowned secrets. He saw shapes in the shadows; hunched, bent things that watched with wide, yellow eyes as he passed. Twice they ran when he pulled his pistol. The third time he fired, and something screamed. He kept moving.

The moon was kissing the horizon when Luke crossed the final bridge and came to the walls of Midian. They were old and worn, crumbled in a hundred places. They seemed held in place by the weight of years more than by mortar. The buildings inside the city were boxes of stone smoothed by time. The windows were open sockets, and their doors slack, stupid mouths. They were stacked a dozen high in some places, like piles of skulls at the entrances of crypts. Dusty tarps hung over some of the doors, their jungle green dusted to a colorless gray. Bent, rusting antennae jutted above a few of the roofs, and a pair of boots sat next to one doorstep like forlorn puppies. There were no voices but the mute ghosts of abandoned things.

“Hello?” Luke croaked, licking a split in his bottom lip. “Is anybody here?”

No one answered. Luke’s throat tensed up, and as dry as the rest of him was, tears welled in his eyes. His legs wobbled like sprung springs and he started to pant. He patted at his belt absently, like he couldn’t quite remember what he was looking for. That was when he looked up and saw the light. It blazed over the rooftops; a burning beacon that could be seen for miles. He approached, breath hitching in time with his steps.

He walked until the detritus of the one-time occupiers was behind him. He crossed ancient aqueducts, and stepped past dried-up fountains filled with flat stones. He turned down crumbling boulevards and ducked between the shadows of the too-close ruins. He continued until the city grew humble, with the eaves cut at sharp angles so the houses bowed toward the center.

The heart of Midian was a colossus that dwarfed the rest of the city. Built of the same stone as everything else, it was a tapering pyramid that brushed the low-hanging firmament. The plateau of the lowest level was higher than the tallest of the surrounding structures, built from blocks bigger than they had any right to be. They were cut with short, narrow stairs. He saw no other way up, so Luke started climbing.

The stairs were deceptive. The first dozen went by easily, and he barely noticed the dozen after that. They seemed designed to strain the ankles and torture the feet of climbers though, and they were cut at such an angle that Luke had to lean into them like a man in a high wind. Sweat streamed down his skin, burning like battery acid as it cut through the dirt and seeped into his wounds. He stepped wrong and almost fell, pin-wheeling his arms as he tried to reclaim his balance. His shovel slid off his belt, clanking and spinning off into open air. He crawled from that point on.

Dragons guarded the first landing; huge, serpentine things with hollow eyes and empty mouths full of sharp teeth. They reared out of the walls like they were trying to escape the stone. Ball chains had been hooked around their jaws, and dozens of dog tags swung below their maws like grisly souvenirs. Luke stared at them, trying to get his breath back. Slowly he pulled his tags off, and took them apart. He hung the long chain on the left, and the short chain on the right. Then he started climbing again, looking back every few steps to be sure the dragons weren’t following.

There were others. Graven demons with no eyes; carved forests with men’s faces along their branches; and giants who stood the full height of several blocks. Some of the guardians hurt Luke’s eyes to look at; creatures who seemed to be made of light with thousands of eyes that lived inside ever-dancing flames. He left his spare magazines, his empty canteen, his pistol, his equipment belt, his shirt, his boots, and even the stump of his little finger behind as he marked his own, bloody trail up the side of mountain.

In time he reached the summit, shaking and shivering like a newborn. A fire burned brightly, but it gave off neither heat nor sound. It was like someone had torn a hole in the night, and the light that lived behind the sky was looking in. Luke stared at it until his muscles ceased trembling and his breath came clear again. He stared until his pains quieted. Then he looked up, and nearly fell back down the way he’d come.

Something sat on the other side of the fire. A shroud covered its face, the threadbare cloth imploding as it breathed deep, and billowing as it breathed out. Ichor dripped from its chin and pooled in its lap. Two legs were crossed under it while the other two sat splayed out. Its cock dangled, barbs glistening with something too thick to be sweat. Antlers and horns curled above its distended head, framing it like a predator’s smile. It sat on a throne of meat that heaved and breathed, sweated and shitted. It dragged talons over the shivering cushions, and chittered as the blood ran from the pulped, palpitating flesh. Luke’s chest cried out, and his vision went pale as he clutched at his chest. His hands came away bloody, and the thing laughed a hissing laugh. Its breath smelled of corruption and cordite.

It had many names; Lord Flatline, King Cancer, Old Man Darkness, Mourning Glory, The Great Beast, Baphomet, The Pale Rider, and others. There were more, many more, but they didn’t matter. Luke had heard them whispered at family funerals, and in evac choppers, in med tents and on burial duty. Every man was born with a death, and one day he’d have to look it in the eye. Luke stood, and stared. The thing lifted its veil. Luke pulled his cross over his head with his bloody hand, and kissed it once. He threw it at the king’s feet and it tinkled like a broken bell. Luke took a single step forward, and fell into the fire. He had enough time to wonder if he’d pissed himself, and then he was gone.