In
the year 2011, when I was only eighteen, I was drafted to fight in a
war I knew nothing about. I was what they called a “comic book
geek” back then; I paid about as much attention to the news and
world events as I did to my guidance counselor in high school. He
was a whiny, touchy-feely asshole who told me for four years how much
potential I had. The problem was, “potential” don't mean squat
in Youngstown, Ohio. I ignored him as best I could and buried myself
in the world of dark heroes who always get the girl, mad villains who
never win in the end. I worked my dead-end job at a fast food joint,
peddling heart attacks to the good people of Y-town just like all my
loser friends. Call us the paper hat society.
My old man was so proud when he first saw me in my dress blues, he
cried a little. Jesus, what a sentimental old dork. Anyway, he wept
and told me, for about the squillionth time, about how he had gotten
a medal for his “leadership skills” in Vietnam. The part he
always leaves out is that he led his men into a field full of land
mines that got damn near every one of them killed. I guess that
medal means a lot more when you have survived such a supreme fuck up.
I
had heard the story of his ill-begotten honor a time or two before,
so I nodded and kept this big, cheesy grin on my face like I was
ecstatic at the prospect of being shipped off to fight for a
president I didn't even like much. I mean, dig this: I was what they
call a “late in life” baby and what my mom calls a “miracle
baby”. My old man came back from Vietnam amid tales of Agent
Orange and God only knew what else; he'd been in country two years.
They tried for ten years to get pregnant, with no luck. They even
spent a whole bunch of money at a fertility clinic to try and find
out what was wrong with them. What they got for their money was some
old fart in a white lab coat who told them they should be thankful
for their own health, especially my pop, who had come out of Nam
alive and well. So when my mom got pregnant at the ripe old age of
forty five, it was considered a divine gift from God.
Sorry,
folks, no divine gift. Just plain old Andy Williams, who never
played basketball or softball, never got the best grades in school,
never aspired to be a doctor or lawyer. The war was my way out,
don't you see? My mom was a tired old lady by the time I entered
middle school, my dad an old man with a shock of white hair when I
progressed to high school. I mean, he was almost fifty when I was
born. My thinking was that they might not live to see me get
married, or have a kid, or any of that crap that makes parents happy.
They certainly weren't going to see me get some great job, not in
that tiny Ohio town in the midst of a recession. I thought I could
be great over there. Hell, I could even come home with a medal
pinned to my uniform.
****
It
all started with the British. They got it in their heads that if the
US won the war in Iraq, we would squander all the gas and oil we
could simply because it would be available, not to mention cheap.
They wanted a piece of the action. So, even though we were allies,
they teamed up with France and declared war on us. Sneaky little
wankers. It was, in their eyes, a pre-emptive strike; after all,
they needed petrol, too.
Then,
in 2010, Russia got in on the act and decided to back us up. The
only problem was, they wanted to fight their way, which meant
spraying a particularly nasty strain of that crazy bird flu over
France and Great Britain. The flu caused uncontrollable bowel
movements, vomiting, fever, dehydration, heart palpitations, and a
curious skin rash, which wasn't a rash at all but a mild form of
leprosy. Over 5,000 people died and many more became
violently--sometimes irreversibly--ill because some Russian got an
itchy trigger finger.
Like
I said, I didn't know much about any of this until I actually got
there, so I heard this story over lukewarm coffee in a burned out
church in what used to be downtown London. The air raid horns were
silent for the moment, which was rare, and the church offered shelter
from the bitter wind that had kicked up. Christmas was only a week
away.
“Those
Russians, man, they don't care,” Charlie Franklin was saying. He
had been a stockbroker in his old life. That was what they called
it: the old life. Nothing would ever be the same.
“They're
smart and all, but not much in the patience department, you know what
I mean?” he went on. “I mean, Jesus, look at what happened two
years ago, with the Germans.”
I
nodded as though I knew what he was talking about and sipped coffee
that tasted like brown water. I had never kept informed about
politics, to be honest. There were too many good games on
Playstation.
While
Charlie babbled on, I started to wonder where the rest of our unit
was. There were eight of us all together, and all but Charlie and me
had gone out on patrol. They should have been back a while ago. I
sat back and let his drone lull me into a near-catatonic state and
looked at our surroundings.
The
church was almost unrecognizable on the inside; only part of an altar
and a huge, wooden crucifix with a sad-eyed Jesus confirmed the
building for what it was. The crucifix lay abandoned on the stone
floor, probably the victim of one of the blasts that had torn part of
the roof off the church. The cross itself was amazingly intact, but
the figure of Jesus was blackened by soot in some places. His
ribcage stood out in stark relief, His dark hair reddened with blood
from the crown of thorns. His eyes seemed to roll toward me in the
dim light of the fire we had built with what was left of the pews. I
looked away a little guiltily without really knowing why and thought
that it must have been a Catholic church. Only they would have held
services under such a tortured figure of the Lord.
****
It
was three am when the horns went off again. I had been dozing beside
the last of the fire, and sat up too quickly at the sudden noise. My
neck was sore from where I had fallen asleep sitting up. I rubbed it
a little and realized Charlie and I were still alone in the church.
He was a few feet away from me, sleeping on his side and drooling
onto the stone floor.
“Wake
up, man,” I whispered in the dark. I couldn't pinpoint why I was
whispering, but it felt right so I went with it. A soldier's gotta
trust his instincts, right?
Charlie
stirred, snorted...and was quiet. I nudged him with my foot and he
grunted and lazily opened one eye. I lit up the green LCD light on
my watch and the room took on a ghostly glow.
“It's
three and they aren't back yet,” I said softly. “Should we go
look for 'em?”
He
yawned and sat up, looking like a sleepy child. “I guess so. Man,
I was sleeping so good. Best sleep I've had since we been here.”
“We
should wait until the sirens stop,” I said. I was still
whispering, and still I could not have said why.
We
sat in the darkness of the church for another ten minutes or so and
waited for the air raids to cease, ticking off the seconds with my
watch. Finally, the London night was quiet again. Too quiet.
“Where
do you think they could be?” Charlie asked, now affecting a
dramatic stage whisper. I think he felt it, too. Whatever it
was.
“Maybe
they got caught out during one of the raids and camped somewhere. Or
maybe they're playing a joke on the new guys,” I said although in
my heart of hearts I didn't believe any such thing.
We
stood slowly and pulled our weapons into position, me leading the
way. I thought, a little crazily, that I might get a medal for
leadership, just like my dad did. He would bust a gut with pride.
I
reached the double doors at the front of the church and crouched down
low. One of them was slightly askew on its hinges. I nudged this
one with the toe of my boot and it fell open enough for us to get
through.
It
was snowing. Silent snowflakes fell in the still air, lending a
surreal quality to the early morning. The streetlamps, the ones that
still worked, cast a dim yellow glow over the scattering of snow that
had already fallen, making it appear dirty.
I
led Charlie down the empty street, our boots crunching in the cold
gravel. Up ahead, a red light flashed its discordant strobe into the
night. I swept the sight on my M-16 across the deserted horizon,
relaxing a little when nothing moved.
I
gestured toward the only other intact building on the street, which
had once been a bakery, and Charlie moved around to my left, sweeping
his gun as he did so. The horns were still silent; we probably could
have heard an ant crawling if we'd tried.
The
bakery was dark and had only one window that wasn't broken. I
crawled through the big picture window and immediately jumped aside
for Charlie to come through. We crunched over broken glass (more
loudly than I would have liked; I still couldn't quiet the voice that
was telling me to be as stealthy as possible) and moved back toward
the kitchen, which stank of yeast gone bad. Some sense of foreboding
caused the hairs to stand up on the back of my neck and, a second
later, I found out why.
The
kitchen was crawling with ants, probably the only living things that
had survived all the bombings. Sugar and flour dusted the floor and
mixed with a small stream of blood, which appeared to be moving
because of all the insects teeming inside it. Somewhere in the back
of my mind, I registered that the tile had once been a green marble
pattern.
In
the corner, beside the huge black industrial stove, sat the remains
of a man. A soldier. It appeared he had contracted the flu that
had been sprayed over the country over a year and a half prior; his
eyes were sunken, his hair mostly fallen out, his body grossly
misshapen under his fatigues. His skin hung in loose flaps on what
was left of his face. But that wasn't the worst, even though I read
the name stitched onto his flak jacket and realized he had been in my
unit; Hell, he had shared his dinner with me earlier, a can of franks
and beans cooked over the fire.
The
worst was what was sitting next to him, gnawing on what had been his
right leg.
It
was a creature that I find hard to put into words. I, dedicated
Trekkie and comic book fanatic.
It
was twice the size of a normal man, yet it had the features of a
human male. Sort of.
The
eyes were red and bulbous and protruded further than any man's,
giving it an odd, fishy look. Its torso was short and bulky, but
long, long legs were tucked up beneath it as it fed. It had no hair
to speak of, but its head was not cleanly shaven and shiny, either;
tiny points of skin stood up all over, giving it an electrified look.
Suddenly,
it looked up at me. I heard Charlie suck in a disgusted breath
behind me but dared not look at him.
The
thing had little divots of meat between its teeth. Joshua meat.
Tiny, wickedly sharp teeth. Blood ran in rivulets down its chin.
The bakery had no electricity, so the only light came from the
streetlamps outside and the odd, pulsing red light that I had, until
now, not thought much of. It suddenly occurred to me that when
something happened to shut down the air raid sirens, a hostile action
of some sort, timed lights went off to announce the presence of an
enemy. I almost smacked myself in the forehead in disbelief that I
could have been so exquisitely stupid.
But
who was this enemy?
“What
the fuck is that thing?” Charlie asked in a horrified whisper.
The
thing in question stood up slowly, seeming to savor our fear, because
even I could almost smell it seeping from our pores.
“Stop!”
I called, hating the weak note in my voice and unable to help it. I
just couldn't stop shooting glances at Joshua, poor Josh, and
wondering what the fuck had happened. If he had indeed contracted
the flu, was he still contagious? And how had it worked on him so
damned fast? “We will shoot if you do not stay where you are!”
Behind
me, Charlie vomited gracelessly onto the kitchen floor.
And
still it came forward.
I
watched with horror as it chewed the last of the meat in its mouth
and swallowed.
“Try
to use your weapon against me,” it taunted softly, and I wanted to
scream at the burbling sound of its voice. It was a voice full of
madness. “Just try it,” it invited.
I
pulled the trigger and heard nothing but a dry, hissing pop.
“No,”
I whispered.
It
shambled on its spidery legs toward me, ever closer, and I could
smell dead meat on its breath and something else I couldn't identify.
It
reached out and stroked my arm and I screamed and pulled hard on the
trigger, hearing nothing but that same dry wheeze, as though the
weapon had no ammunition or I had tried to fire it under water. I
was frozen in place. All my training hadn't prepared me for this. I
couldn't hear Charlie anymore and thought wildly that if he had
passed out if would be up to me to kill this thing.
Or
to be eaten.
“I
am not alone,” It said. “There are thousands of us. Tens of
thousands. We have been here long before you, and we will be here
long after you are gone. You might call us the boys of Company B.”
It
laughed at its own joke and I shivered and felt tears of shame and
disgust well up in my eyes as my bladder let go and hot urine flooded
down my leg and into my boot.
“What
are you?” I asked hoarsely.
It
chuckled. It was enough to drive a man crazy, that laugh.
“I
am all,” It said simply. “I am humanity. I am you.”
“I
don't understand,” I whispered.
“People
rarely do.”
I
cracked then. Screw the Medal of Honor, I thought. I didn't want to
die. I had made it this far and I would be damned if I was going to
lose my life, not in this stinking war, but to some sort of monster.
“Please
don't kill me!” I screamed. “I don't want to die!”
“Then
you should have never been born.”
I
was prepared to scream myself hoarse, but It didn't come any nearer,
only watched me with those red eyes.
“I
won't kill you,” It said suddenly. I looked at It, at the open
mouth which looked like it was bleeding, and my mind started to go to
another place. I felt it begin to slide away, and then It spoke
again.
“I
want to give you something,” It said. “A little present from the
boys of Company B. A souvenir of the war, you might say.”
My
eyes could only focus on the thing's eyes as It spoke, and I only
half heard what It said as It took my hand and peeled the gun from
it. I felt as though a hot band of slime had been wrapped around my
arm, growing tighter and tighter, making me think crazily of those
old blood pressure machines that used to be in pharmacies. I closed
my eyes and saw parts of my life flash by: the first fish I ever
caught with my old man; the time I felt up Jamie Woods at the movies,
and how she'd worn some light, flowery perfume that had always gotten
my engine running hot; the way my mom had looked when I told her I
was going to be drafted. These images whirled around in my head and
behind my eyes until I thought I would throw up, and then suddenly--
It was gone. I blinked and saw the remains of the soldier in the
corner, and the ants that had moved on from the sugary blood on the
floor to what was coming out of his severed leg. I heard nothing.
For a moment I was afraid that the thing had rendered me deaf, until
a great whirring of machinery came to life somewhere outside, along
with multicolored lights and a humming, thrumming vibration that I
felt in my bones.
I
stood where I was for a long time, until the sun came up and broke
through the darkness, although of course by then I had become used to
it. Behind me, Charlie was dead, probably of a heart attack.
And
outside, nothing moved.
So
now, a month later, I sit in my parent's house and write this story
down, because if something happens I want people to know why.
My
parents are both dead, of “natural causes”. That's what the
military called it, anyway. I think it's just because they don't
want the real cause of death to get out.
Or
maybe they don't know what really killed them.
The
military has been making visits since I got back. Even the FBI,
once. They ran all kinds of tests on me, but no one has given me any
results. I think it's because of what happened in London. I was the
only soldier to come out of there alive. I got my medal, alright.
And
I got something else, as well.
An
itchy, burning rash on the arm that It touched. It won't go away, no
matter how much Calamine lotion I rub on it. It seems I'm the only
one who can touch it, because I let my parents look at it when I got
home, and they both died within the week.
Now
my dog isn't doing so well.
I
wonder what I brought home with me from London.
A
souvenir, it said.