SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

West’s adrenaline machine started back up. They were in a hurry, all right. What were they running from?

Young stammered his way through a sentence. The old man said something, Young said something. The old man repeated himself, slowing his words down.

“Come on,” West said, starting to feel impatient. They’d been standing still for too long.

“I don’t know,” Young said. He tilted his helmet back, wiping at his brow. “He says that the priests are waving their lanterns, something like that. Then… gangshi? I don’t know the word. He says we should go home, too.”

“Try again.”

Another stilted exchange, and Young shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sarge. He just keeps saying it’s not safe and you have to let ‘em go.”

“Some superstitious thing?” It sounded right, home before dark, priests waving lanterns. West remembered when one of the ROKA kids back at base had flipped his wig over someone whistling at night, saying that it attracted spirits.

“You got me, sir.”

Behind them, Burtoni. “Hey! We got—”

The rattle of a burp gun drowned him out and West ducked and spun, saw Kelly go down, saw Addy fall. West raised his weapon, searching. Next to him, Young grabbed his gut and fell to his knees, and then Cakes and Burtoni were firing back, there, two-hundred feet and ten o’clock, movement at the top of a low rock formation. Rock chips flew. West yelled for everyone to get down but his voice was lost to the old woman’s scream, a terrible high wailing, and the deeper rattle of return fire.

Again, that flash of movement, a head bobbing up — and then the rocks spat up blood, a distinct spray of gore rising into the air. Cakes or Burtoni had gotten the fucker, taken the top of his head off. Cakes fired once more and the Garand’s clip popped, ping! In the ringing aftermath there was only the sound of the old woman, sobbing. Nothing moved but the wind.

“Call it in!” West shouted, and then Burtoni was on his knees next to Addy, pulling at the radio. Addison wasn’t moving. Kelly had his hands clapped to his throat, blood gushing through his fingers. Cakes grabbed for Kelly’s medkit and dumped it out, his thick fingers rummaging. If there were more shooters, they were all fucked.

West dropped to his knees next to Young, saw the pool of blood at his gut. Young turned panicky blue eyes up to him, breathing in choppy little gasps. Burtoni babbled their position into the radio, his voice breaking… medevac… three wounded. Cakes cursed, a steady stream of expletives as he held a stack of red gauze to their medic’s throat.

“Hurts,” Young said.

“I know it does,” West said, pulling off his shirt, balling it up to press to the kid’s stomach. “Don’t talk. Choppers are coming.”

The old woman had stopped crying, at least. West looked up and saw that the travelers had disappeared, like they’d never been there at all.

* * *

After the eggbeaters came and went, Sarge ordered them back to camp, his face grim. Him and Cakes were both blood-spattered and didn’t talk much, which was a good thing, since PFC Peter Antony Burtoni was point back to base and he didn’t want to miss a mouse farting. They’d been flanked by four gooks without even knowing. Addy and Kelly were dead and who knew about Young? Burtoni was clanked up, edgy, and the whole way back he was bugging his eyes out at everything. How many more lone Joes were out there, creeping behind the low hills, clinging to the shadowy rocks?

The only conversation was between Cakes and Sarge, about what had happened. Cakes said it was a setup with the kid and his grandparents but the sarge didn’t think so, he said they were running from something. Seemed like a pretty big coincidence in Burtoni’s book, but he was too busy straining to hear and see and smell everything to think too much on it. He was glad that Sarge and Cakes were with him. They were both hard-boiled, but by the time they got back to camp, Burtoni was out of gas.

He got a shower and ate, and drank enough coffee to give him the squirts, but he couldn’t get his mojo back. He was actually making plans to hit the sack as soon as it got dark but Sarge came over just when the shadows were getting long. Young had made it out of surgery at the 8011^th MASH and was doing fine. Sergeant West and Young’s best buddy, PFC Kyle McKay, were heading out in twenty, Cakes was driving… Did Burtoni want in? And how! If anyone deserved to see a few familiar faces when he woke up, it was Young.