SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

The relief battalion had met in an old silver mine east of Bisbee, Arizona. There were three hundred of them. Many were ex-convicts, with the rest ex-military, fresh from the war but unable to stop killing. With the promise of $100,000 for six months’ work and the opportunity to protect the sovereignty of America, they showed up in droves. The advertisements were posted on the internet, Field and Stream, Gun and Rifle, and Soldier of Fortune. Everyone was vetted in Phoenix first. With the help of Sheriff Arpaio, the Network created a criminal history for Andy, and with it, a desire to get out of Arizona. With a faked military record, his bonafides fit right into the model of a modern redneck protector the US government was arranging to guard the Rift and the American way of life.

* * *

Everyone had their own responsibilities. Andy and his partner, Leon Batista, were in charge of maintaining the landmines in sector six, an area just north and east of the Rift and one of twenty-two sectors. The mines were the last line of defense. If anything or anyone fought its way free of the Rift, it would encounter seven rows of ten claymore mines, positioned far enough apart so that each row could operate independently, creating a cataclysmic explosion of ball bearings traveling at 4,000 feet per second if detonated.

But if anything got to the claymores, they were all in the shit. Andy had been issued an automatic pistol with the reminder that the bullets would be best used on himself so that when he was eaten, he wouldn’t know, or care.

The first lines of defense were right along the edge of the Rift. There was evidence where they’d tried to cap the crevice. Some of the steel webwork remained. But all attempts to cover the mighty hole had been stopped by the monsters. It seemed that as soon as anyone got within a few feet of the darkness, creatures would stir and come out to feed. Andy had been offered a tour of the area, but even his professional craving for information couldn’t defeat the fear that locked his joints and filled his guts with lead-heavy dread.

Many of his network colleagues thought he was a coward. He’d returned from Croatia three weeks into a three month assignment. He’d tried to explain to them what had happened, but they didn’t want to listen. They were reporters, they’d told him. Their job was to go into the mouth of hell itself and report what the devil was having for dinner. If you weren’t willing to do that, why be a reporter?

Why, indeed.

Towers with Vulcan Cannons were interspersed a hundred meters apart along both sides of the Rift. If anything tried to escape, the cannons could create a deadly web of interlocking fire. Each 20mm pneumatically-driven, six-barreled, air-cooled, electrically-fired, Gatling-style cannon was capable of throwing 7,200 depleted uranium rounds each minute into anything that moved. Each tower had their own specified field to fire within, which kept the gunners from aiming directly at another tower. The very idea that anything could survive such a fusillade was unimaginable, but as Andy reminded himself, this was only the first line of defense. By definition that meant the tactical experts who’d created the Rift Defense System planned on things getting through.

Above the towers flew Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with laser targeting for the offsite medium range missiles, as well as video cameras capable of operating in Forward Looking Infra-Red (FLIR), Starlight, optical spectrum and radioactive modes. As another line of first offense, each carried three AGM-114K II Hellfire missiles with High Explosive Metal Augmented Charges.

Satellites were rumored to be on station even farther above, capable of reigning down Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles if they became desperate. Andy occasionally found himself glancing skyward, but he could no more prove the existence of satellites than he could prove the existence of God. Still, he hoped that all the conspiracy theorists and evangelists were right and there was something watching over them other than the hot desert sun.

* * *

That night Andy dreamed of his childhood. Tarzan cavorted through the trees high above a forest, where he swung from vine to vine. Beneath him the earth was rent in much the same manner as it was in Sonora. But where in Sonora the darkness hid everything from the visible eye, Tarzan’s gaze pierced the shadow, revealing converging armies of Ant Men, Golden Lions, Leopard Men, Snake People and Winged Invaders, just as they’d appeared on the covers of his old, cherished paperbacks.

These creatures, first introduced to Andy from Edgar Rice Burroughs books and the unauthorized Barton Werper volumes, glittered in the darkness as they stared back at their Lord of the Jungle nemesis. But fear found home in their eyes. Tarzan was too much for them. He’d done battle with each of their ilk and cast them back into the dusty confines of their paperback prisons long ago.