SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

“Joyong!” West shouted, the word for quiet, but no one was listening. He and Cakes had reached the doors to the next room. West looked through the window and saw a small room with sinks and towels, a bench on one side. Empty, but it looked like a scrub room. There’d be a surgery past that.

“Lee! Tell them to dry up!” he shouted, and a beat later, the kid was talking loudly, his tone harsh, chiding. Whatever he said had some effect, the din of the scared ROKs dying down. Something had definitely happened, but West was betting on a North Joe attacking his doctors. There’d been no rounds fired and the screams had apparently come from the OR. The talk about the gangshi had gotten everyone riled up, which was his own goddamn fault.

There was no noise except for the muttering patients, but for a second he felt a strange tension that was almost like a sound, one that made his back teeth clatter. He pushed through a door guarded by a tent flap, into the scrub room. It smelled like bleach and sweat and Army soap. Him and Cakes both kept their weapons aimed at the next door, moved in slow, crouching. The door was thick canvas with a window tied open. A smell of shit and blood wafted out.

West signaled for Cakes to stay put, that he was just going to look-see, and Cakes nodded. West stood and looked through the tied flap — and saw a Korean’s naked backside, the skin all over his narrow, gangly body glowing green-white, blood running down his thin legs. There was enough of an angle that West could see a loop of his intestines hanging out of his belly.

What. In hell.

The glowing man jumped at the far wall and rammed right through it, tearing down canvas and wood, shaking the whole building. The noise was terrific and West pushed through the door and fired twice at the retreating figure through the hole, the naked man hopping forward and then south, out of sight in a second.

Cool wind blew in through the ragged opening. West took in the OR, blood everywhere, the two old people on the floor, eyes dead and staring. A masked figure had pushed into the far corner, a woman on her side, curled up like a baby, her knees hugged to her chest.

Cakes stepped to the hole in the wall and leaned out, looked both ways. “I don’t see nothing. What was it, Sarge?”

West didn’t answer. He went to the nurse, crouched at her side. Behind him, he could hear the calls of the MPs or whoever had come to back them up.

“He was dead,” the nurse whispered, and then there were people outside screaming, running, and beneath it all West could hear the ringing note of a bell.

* * *

Basin, soap, water, clothespins. Major Helen Underwood was all set to wash out her personals. She’d taken to doing her own, after a couple of the girls had had some of their underthings go missing from the laundry a few months back. Some disgusting creep was probably pawing through them even now.

Underwood sneered, picking up her bra, thinking about Private Fazangas. It was revolting, the way some of them acted. Her nurses were good girls, they didn’t run around.

Her own status as a good girl — as a good woman — made her think of Captain Steve Anthony, which was confusing. They’d worked together for over a year. She respected him as a surgeon but they didn’t get along well — he was practically a protester, the way he talked, and was always turning everything into a joke. She was a married woman, and besides, she didn’t think of the men she worked with like that. Or, she hadn’t.

They’d been thrown together one night a few months ago by circumstance, traveling back from a village, caught in a firefight, shells dropping to either side of them. Their driver had been killed. She and the Captain had taken cover in an abandoned hut not far from the wreck, shaken but not injured, except the shelling didn’t stop, it had closed in. Convinced that they were going to die, they’d made love on the dirty floor, holding each other through the endless, thundering night. They hadn’t spoken of it since, not a word, but she thought about it sometimes, just before falling asleep — how they’d both trembled and wept, whispering their fears in the dark, comforting one another. How he’d felt inside of her, warm and alive. She’d made love with a man who wasn’t her husband. Was she bad now, because of what had happened?

Outside a man screamed.

Underwood dropped her soapy bra and stepped to her desk, wiping her hands on her pants. Her holstered pistol was on the card table she used as a desk. She slid the semi out of the worn leather, checked the action, and strode for the door of her tent.

Someone ran past just as she opened the flap, looking back with wide eyes. It was Corporal O’Donnell, his chubby cheeks flushed, his glasses sliding down his nose, his expression one of absolute terror.

“Run, Major!” he shrieked, and turned back to look where he was going — just as a man hopped out from behind one of the nurses’ tents, directly in front of him.