SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

The demon was startled to see him there, in the Beyond, the land between the souls of the living and the land of the dead, and as it reared it up in shocked dismay, Cade brought his sword up over his head and brought it slashing down on the thing that very well could have gutted the world of its humanity, both literally and figuratively.

The sword cut through the demon’s hide like softened butter, cleaving the creature in two in one fell stroke.

* * *

Reinforcements arrived just as the sun was breaking over the forest. The two combat units the Seneschal sent scoured the surrounding countryside, eradicating any of the drones that still lived. Many had perished with the demise of the master-demon that controlled them. The trauma team rounded up the survivors and began to treat their injuries.

The men of Echo watched them while resting beneath the overhang of a nearby building.

“What happens to them now?” Duncan asked, nodding toward the dozen or so individuals, including Father Nils, who had survived the night.

“The Order will give them a long-deserved vacation, caring for them and helping them through the ordeal. The physical danger might be over and their wounds will heal quickly enough, but their minds will be filled with trauma for a long time to come,” Cade replied. “We’ve got people who can help them deal with that. Eventually, if all goes well, perhaps their souls will heal and they can get on with their lives. If not, they can always join the Order.”

There was something in Cade’s tone that caught Duncan’s attention.

The question slipped out before he could stop it.

“Is that what happened to you, Commander?”

Cade turned away, staring off into the distance for a long moment, long enough that Duncan thought he might not answer at all.

But then...

“Hearts and bodies heal often enough, I suppose,” the Echo Team leader told him, “but the soul... the soul can be another matter entirely.”

Tarzan Doesn’t Live Here Anymore Weston Ochse

“Me Tarzan. You Jane.”

– Johnny Weissmuller, Tarzan the Apeman

, 1932

The earth was rent as if a leviathan had burst free to sail the galaxy for better worlds to chew. Four miles long, hundreds of feet at its widest point, and more than a thousand feet deep, the Sonoran Rift was one of a hundred that had cleaved the Earth in the past three years. No one knew where they came from nor why they happened. Most had been kept a secret, but those like the Baltimore Scar and the Edmonton Crater couldn’t be ignored. But the Sonoran Rift was the largest of them all, and if it hadn’t been for a disenchanted soldier spilling his guts to the network, no one would have ever had an inkling about it.

Andy’s network had tried four times to get someone near enough to corroborate the unbelievable statements the dying soldier had made, and each of their reporters had failed to return. The idea that another rift existed would be a news coup for the network that could garner millions in advertising.

“Do you think what they say is true?” asked Leon, who rose from checking one of the seventy claymore mines in their sector.

That there are monsters in there? Andy didn’t even want to give voice to the thought, so he just stared.

“Hey vato, I’m talking to you.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Andy said.

“This isn’t a test, maricone. I was just asking your opinion.”

Looking at the way the sun sliced into the Rift, then met an impenetrable wall of shadow, Andy Friarson would have to say that yes, if there was anywhere in the world where monsters existed, this was the place. He’d been to Baltimore, Edmonton and even the tiny crack in the earth in France they called the Vallée de la Mort. All of them were interesting, but they lacked the sense of foreboding the Sonoran Rift had. There was a feeling about it that reminded him of the time he was in Croatia, hiding in a ditch with his camera clutched to his chest while Serbians lined up an entire village, shot them, and shoved them into a mass grave. Andy had known that at any moment he would be found out and added to the ditch. When one of the killers had turned to stare directly at his hiding place, Andy had known the end was near. He’d closed his eyes and waited to die, unwilling to meet it face to face. He’d inexplicably survived that day, but had been left with the memory of the certainty of death he’d felt — which he felt again now, walking so near the place where monsters were born.

* * *