SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

The kid pointed them along a steep road north that cut back and forth through the woods. As the MASH fell behind them, Cakes dug through their bags, seeing what they had left to work with. It could be worse. He found the loose box mags for the M1s and a carton of rounds. Wincing at the pain in his leg — it was swelling, too — he started loading.

“You been to this temple before, Lee?” the sarge called back.

“No,” said the gook kid. “Only the villagers told us about it. It is by the road north.”

Cakes looked at him. “Ain’t you a villager?”

“No.” The kid gazed at him with flat eyes. “I am KATUSA, with the MASH.”

Korean Augmentation To the United States Army. Cakes snorted. Bunch of starving refugees digging shitholes and hauling sandbags.

“You have family with you?” the sarge asked, raising his voice to be heard over the grind of the Jeep’s lower gears. The grade was steep and bumpy as hell. Burtoni was a shit driver.

“No,” the kid said. “No family.”

He didn’t sound whiny or look all heart-broke about it, just said it, matter of fact.

“What happened to ‘em?” Cakes asked.

“We were on the Hangang Bridge two days after 625,” the kid said. “In the early morning. Our army blew it up to stop the North from advancing into Seoul. I would have died, too, except my father sent me ahead to find out why no one was moving.”

Cakes wasn’t sure what to say to that. He tried to imagine all his relations, his parents and sisters and cousins and grandparents, all blown up at once. He couldn’t do it.

“After that, many of us walked all the way to Pusan,” he went on. “I was there in September 1950 when the first UN soldiers landed.”

“Fuckin’ marines,” Cakes said, and shook his head. “Think their shit don’t stink.”

The kid smiled a little. “Hey, I got a Marine joke.”

“You’ve got a Marine joke?” Cakes snorted. “Let’s hear it.”

The kid nodded, smiling a little more. “A dogface and a marine are walking down the street, and they see a kid playing with a ball of shit. The dogface says, what are you making? The kid says, a dogface. The dogface says, why aren’t you making a marine? The kid goes, I don’t have enough shit.”

Not enough shit to make a marine, that was a good one! Cakes laughed. The kid had more hard bark on him than Burtoni, anyway.

“You getting an inventory?” the sarge called back.

Cakes kept loading. “We got eight signal grenades left, four extra mags of .45 ACP for the M1911s plus about forty rounds, six full clips of thirty-aught-six for the M1s plus a carton loose.”

“There are the silver trays,” Lee said. He held a stack of them in his lap. “We saw one run from its reflection.”

West looked back at them. “We’re going in ready but we’re gonna talk to them first, okay? See if we can’t persuade these guys to stop what they’re doing…” He trailed off, staring out the back.

Cakes craned his head around and looked.

A pale green glimmer far back on the road was suddenly closer, close enough for Cakes to see the outstretched arms, the hanging face. It hopped forward and then was falling away, standing still as they drove on.

“Hey, I think this is it,” Burtoni said. “There’s some hooches up here on the left—”

Cakes was watching the devil recede, and it was some strange trick of the eye, that its narrow hands were suddenly pressed to the back flap of the moving Jeep. They’d left it behind but now it was right on them, its mouth hanging open drooling and stupid, one of its eyes stuck closed, its skin glowing like radium.

* * *

There was one of them right in front of the Jeep, out of the goddamn blue. Burtoni swerved, fighting the machine for control and then they were slamming to a stop, almost rolling, settling back to the rocky dirt with a jaw-slamming bounce. Burtoni felt the steering wheel stomp on his chest and he gasped for air. The Jeep died, leaving them in the dark.

“Move out!”

Burtoni grabbed his rifle and stumbled out of the Jeep, looking everywhere, holding on to one of the MASH’s metal instrument trays. There were two, three of the things closing in. One of them hopped closer to the sarge, fixing its lifeless attention to him like a moth fixed to a light. It was a young ROK with a big dent in one side of its head. The eye on that side had bulged out, giving it an almost comically lopsided look.

“Head for the buildings!” West said, falling back. Cakes ignored him, aiming his M1 at the creature’s legs. He opened up and put all eight rounds of Springfield through the thing’s knees, the Garand’s clip ejecting with an audible ping.

The gangshi hopped forward on its broken, shredded legs, shorter by a foot and a half but still holding its arms out, leering up at the sarge with that bulging eye. It was almost close enough to the sarge to touch him.

“Catch!” the kid yelled, and swung one of the surgical trays at Cakes.

Cakes caught the tray and pivoted with it, smashing the gangshi in the face, knocking it backwards.