SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

Underwood’s mouth fell open. The man was dressed in ROKA fatigues, there was a gaping hole in his chest, and she recognized him — DOA from yesterday, shot in the back — and his face and hands were glowing, the sickly light green of a night-blooming fungus. Its arms were out stiff in front of him.

O’Donnell screamed and managed to veer away but the dead soldier pivoted after him, its arms pointing at the short corporal. O’Donnell ran, and the dead man hopped towards him, its legs hardly bending. It shouldn’t have moved as fast and as far as it did but O’Donnell was getting away and then the thing was right next to him, close enough to touch him.

Underwood blinked. It had jumped forward like a grasshopper, almost too fast to see. It was stiff, its body straight, arms parallel to the ground, not shaking or wavering. It was a monster, a demon out of hell. She braced the M1911 and took aim.

“Oh, gee!” O’Donnell got out, and then he was screaming, and she fired, once, twice. The dead man was in profile, and the first shot was high but she saw the second round hit its ribs, the fabric of his shirt blown open, blood and flesh and bone pattering to the dirt on the other side. He should have gone down, why was he still standing, why was O’Donnell still screaming? There was some kind of deep vibration in the air and O’Donnell crumpled. His face had changed, his slight body somehow slighter. The dead man glowed brighter.

It sucked the life out of him.

The creature flexed its feet and was suddenly facing her. It hopped forward like a tin soldier that had been picked up and moved, its arms outstretched, its dead gaze unseeing.

She emptied her weapon, five more .45 caliber rounds, hitting it in the throat and again through the bridge of its nose. Tatters of skin and cartilage flew and she saw the goddamn holes open up in its body yet it hopped again, and a third time, and impossibly, it was right in front of her. She could smell the dead man rotting and the fresh wounds were sticky with clotted blood, almost black against the white-green skin. She could smell the heat of the rounds she’d fired, wisps of seared, decaying flesh. It stared past her with no expression, not seeing her, its jaw slack with death. It was a void.

Underwood screamed. She felt it pulling at her, drawing her life away, and she couldn’t move, trapped by whatever it was doing.

— eating me… it’s eating my life—

She could feel her body dying, the tendons and muscles tightening, shrinking, the breath being pulled from her lungs, the will to draw another one falling away.

Stitch, she thought, and was gone.

* * *

The sarge stood up and looked at Cakes. The dame in the corner was shook, all curled up in bloody whites.

“I may have seen a hopping dead man,” West said.

“No shit?”

The sarge shook his head. “I saw something.” He picked up a blanket and covered the nurse.

Cakes’ hand tightened on his weapon. The gooks were trash people, it made sense that they’d have some creepy crawlies they could hoodoo up. That stuff was for real, he knew it was, there were dark places and devils in the world. The hills of Kentucky were full of ‘em, why not a godless country like Korea? Outside, there was shouting. He heard what sounded like the blast of a .45, then another and then five more. Someone had emptied their pistol.

Two MPs charged in with their weapons drawn, barking questions. Before anyone could explain anything, the nurse with the big titties burst in and saw the dead geezers and got real upset, crying and talking about how they looked old but they weren’t, something had happened to ‘em.

“The kid, where’s that kid?” Sergeant West asked. He started back to the room with all the gook patients and one of the MPs yelled at him to stop, he needed to answer some questions. The MP had jug ears and buck teeth and a peeling sunburn on his chunky nose. He looked like he’d fallen off an ugly tree and hit every branch going down. He looked like someone’s butt.

The sarge turned around and laid it out fast. “You’ve been infiltrated, you understand? Report to your CO ASAP and tell him to push the panic button, now. Where’s your armory?”

Armory. Cakes felt something inside of him light up while Buttface stuttered out directions. He surely did love to prang a motherfucker, and how! Maybe the slant demons blew up or caught on fire or something.

Nurse Bazooms was helping the shook girl and the MPs finally clued in that something was happening outside — a man let out a yelp like he’d seen death coming, another weapon discharged, twice, then once more. People ran past the hole in the wall, going either way. Cakes could feel himself heating up, a strong, positive feeling that made his muscles twitch and his dick go half-mast. Korea was a dump and he hated Army life but clobbering gooks, that was good times.