SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

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.