SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

Andy turned in his sleep and groaned happily, safe with the knowledge that as long as Tarzan watched over them, he’d be safe.

Then he awoke to screams.

He twisted free from his blanket and crashed from his upper bunk six feet to the concrete floor. The claxons and emergency lights had sent everyone into frenzy. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed his boots, and struggled into them as he tried to hop and run at the same time. The door to the bunker had been left open to let in the breeze. As he approached it, he bumped into the guy in front of him who’d stopped to stare at the sky.

A hundred black silhouettes shot from the Rift into the night, tracer rounds from the Vulcan cannons stabbing them as they rose. Great black insects with glowing orange wings; each was as large as a World War II Japanese Zero. Rising, falling and slashing sideways, they twisted and twirled to get away from the fusillade of angry rounds fired from the air-cooled Gatling cannons.

Transfixed by the aerial death match, everyone jumped as a Predator drone strafed the action, unleashing its payload of three Hellfire missiles that exploded in awesome tornadoes of orange, red, and green fire.

They stood for ten minutes watching the life and death struggle as the creatures tried to make their way free of the Rift. Each man wore only boots and underwear, expressions agog at a sight that only made sense to little boys with Tarzan dreams who spent their Saturday mornings watching cartoons.

While everyone’s eyes were on the creatures, Andy’s gaze rested on the darkness from whence they came. He felt the Rift watching him. The great gaping hole in the earth was like the eye of that Serbian soldier who’d held Andy’s life in his hands. The capriciousness of Andy’s existence wasn’t lost to him. He wondered if the soldier of his memory wouldn’t decide to fire, the bullet transporting through time to jerk him back to that moment where he’d die and be buried in the ditch with all the other villagers.

One minute the night was filled with unearthly screams and the sounds of battle, the next all was silent. Two Predators took off south after something, but otherwise everything was still. Sometime during the battle the claxons had been turned off but Andy hadn’t noticed until now. The desert was now eerily quiet. The only sound was the breathing of the soldiers standing in the doorway of the bunker, all in rhythm as they stared into the night.

Finally someone chuckled.

“Let’s get some sleep.”

They turned and headed back to their bunks. Andy remained motionless, unable to simply turn off what he’d seen. The others pushed by him, and as the last of them headed for slumber, Andy reached out and grabbed him.

“What was that?”

The man looked Andy in the eye and grinned. “The tarantulas exploded. No problem.”

* * *

Andy didn’t get any sleep after that.

Tarzan had returned to rule his dreams, but he was no longer the King of the Jungle. Where he had once strutted across the great branches of the forest’s ancient trees, now he skulked from shadow to shadow. It wasn’t the Leopard Men or the Ant Men that he feared, nor was it the Golden Lions or the Snake People that sent his heart racing. He was afraid of what he couldn’t see, what he couldn’t know.

A roar came from somewhere in the forest.

Tarzan crouched and peered sideways.

What was it that set him so on edge?

He squatted there for a time. When he finally moved, he was more like a monkey than a great ape.

* * *

“What the hell did he mean when he said ‘the tarantulas exploded’?”

Leon Batista looked at him and spat tobacco juice along the ground. “Where you from you don’t know tarantulas?”

“Upstate New York.”

“They no have tarantulas there?”

Andy shook his head.

Leon spat again. He said something in Spanish that was lost to the constant desert breeze.

Andy paused from checking the ignition line of the mine. He’d been to thirty-seven countries and forty states. He’d even been to Antarctica when he’d had to do an exposé on penguin rustling by Japanese fishermen. He felt the need to demonstrate his worldliness to Leon, but forced himself to hold back. He was supposed to keep his head down and his identity secret. As far as anyone was concerned, he was an Army reservist who’d survived Iraq, gotten into a fight with an off-duty cop in Phoenix, and wanted something more than a regular nine to five. He was a convenience store clerk with saving-the-world dreams.

“Tarantulas? You know... big fucking spiders?” Batista asked as if Andy were a child. He waggled the fingers of both hands like spider legs.

“Yeah. I’ve seen them.” Andy mimicked, “Big fucking spiders.”

Batista glared at him for a moment, then continued. “There are these wasps. They lay their eggs in the tarantulas. Tarantulas no move anymore, then one day poof! Tarantula explodes with baby wasps.”

Andy felt his grin slip into something akin to stupefaction. There was a wasp that laid its eggs in a tarantula? He felt his mouth moving before he could stop it. “What are these wasps called?”