SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

“Sir, I’m over at the 33^rd under Colonel Swift. We were on a patrol today and ran across some locals, said they came from the 8011^th. A boy and his grandparents. We were ambushed and one of my guys ended up here, shot in the stomach.”

Sanderson nodded. “You’ll want to talk to Captain Anthony, he’s our chief surgeon. He oversees all of the patients.”

“Yes, sir. I was wondering if you noticed them leave the camp, though. The boy said he did cleaning for the officers.”

Sanderson made an impatient sound. “They’re all gone, son. The whole village bugged out two days ago. Every last one of ‘em.”

West blinked. “Why?”

Sanderson shook his head. “Why do these people do anything? They said there were lights on the hill, they packed their kits and started walking.”

“Lights? Sir?”

Sanderson gestured to the north. “The trees, up on that ridge. Last few nights there have been lanterns up there, those yellow paper jobs, swinging back and forth. I sent some of the boys out to look-see, but all they found was footprints in the mud. HQ says it’s nothing, a superstition.”

The priests are waving their lanterns.

“Did they say what the superstition was?”

Sanderson looked at his watch, his demeanor telling West that their reunion was almost over.

“Oh, some gobbledygook about going home,” Sanderson said. “Seems like it worked.”

The lieutenant colonel looked at West, seemed to see him for the first time. He narrowed his eyes. For the briefest of seconds, West imagined punching his teeth in.

“Well, I hope your boy makes it,” Sanderson said, dismissive, gave a brief, false smile and then walked past him.

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” West said automatically. He didn’t fully trust himself to turn around and follow Sanderson so he kept walking south, past the last camp structures, a storage unit, a supply shed. The village behind the MASH was close, less than a quarter mile away.

West passed the last string of security lights and stepped into the dark but went no further, studying the sad clusters of huts. No fires burned beneath the little houses, no lamps were lit; nothing stirred. Empty doorways yawned like black eyes. Scant light from a rising moon cast an eerie, pale ripple across the thatched roofs.

He turned and looked north — and saw the lanterns. There were at least a dozen specks of dim, glowing yellow on the dark upslope in front of the hospital, maybe a half mile away. They were spread out at different heights and distances. The way they swung and shifted, they were being carried. Easy targets if anyone got nervous.

A warning? A curse? Sanderson was no help, big surprise, but there had to be someone around who knew what was happening. He thought about the kid, his unsmiling eyes, the grandmother’s frantic speech. What had the old man said, the word that Young hadn’t known? Gangshi, something like that.

West walked back into the light of the camp. It was nothing, sure, a nothing little mystery that he’d locked onto because he was dog-tired and heart-sore… but then, why did the perfectly clear night have that electric, unstable feeling that preceded action, or a storm? Something was coming.

Maybe he’d see if he could find a ROK with some English, to explain what had scared the villagers away.

* * *

Fourteen-year-old Lee Mal-Chin was sanitizing bedpans when the three soldiers came in, two PFCs and a single stripe. Of the sixty beds in Post-Op 1 only a third were taken, mostly ROKA enlisted from a small skirmish near the DMZ the day before. Lee saw the trio stop and talk to Doctor Jimmy, who spoke at length before gesturing them towards one of the beds… the American man who’d been shot in the stomach, brought in by helicopter in the afternoon.

Lee went on with his work more slowly, listening to the soldiers talk as they made their way to the cot. He understood most of what they said. He had spent the last two years learning English with anyone who would talk to him. Mostly he talked with Father Maloney now. The father was a good teacher. There was also Corporal Timmy with the ordnance, he told Lee what Father Maloney would not say — the bad words. That Timmy was jaemi, a real gas.