SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

I wanted her to turn around. I wanted to see her face. I needed to see the light of Grace’s soul shining out of her eyes. If that was an impossible wish, who cares. We stood in an impossible place.

“Grace…” I whispered again.

And then a sudden violent sound of splashing water broke the moment into pieces. I spun around as three monstrous shapes rose  from the pool.

Gray-green skin.

Black eyes.

Rows of teeth.

And webbed hands that ended in terrible claws.

Two of them rushed at me, and one launched itself at Felicity Hope and slammed her back against the computers. Felicity screamed in a voice that sounded like the call of a wounded seagull.

I heard myself yelling. Screaming, really. But the sound was lost beneath the roar of the Mermen who ran at me, and thunder of my gun as I fired and fired.

One of them abruptly spun sideways, his face torn away by a bullet that went on to strike a glass cylinder. The glass shattered in a spray of jagged pieces and gushing water. The occupant of the tube tore loose of the wires and fell heavily to the floor.

I saw this only peripherally as the second creature slammed into me.

He was enormously strong and he drove me ten feet backward and nearly crushed me flat against a concrete wall. Even with the impact I managed to keep hold of my gun, but the monster twisted its head and clamped its jaws around my forearm. Blood exploded and I heard my wrist-bones break. Pain burst with inferno heat inside my arm and I almost blacked out.

But there is a part of me that is as cold and inhuman as these monsters. It’s the part of me that survived the trauma of my childhood by being too vicious to die. It’s the part that somehow allowed me to complete the mission that Grace had died to accomplish, even though it meant facing impossible odds. It was the part of me that could kill despite idealism and compassion. It was the part of me that, on some level that I have never wanted to examine with total clarity, enjoys all of this. The pain, the violence.

The killing.

As my flesh ruptured and my bones broke, that part of me shoved the civilized aspect of my mind to one side. In that moment I stopped being a man and became the thing I needed to be in order to survive this encounter.

I became a monster.

With a snarl as inhuman as the thing that attacked me, I drove my knee up into its crotch, then head-butted the thing so hard I could hear cartilage and bone shatter. I drove my stiffened thumb into its eye, bursting the orb. Then I kicked its screaming, writhing body backward.

My right arm flopped bloody and limp, the fingers feeling like swollen bags of blood. My gun was gone — I had no idea where.

I ran at the monster that now lay twisting on the floor, hands pressed to its bloody eye-socket. Its other eye stared at me with uncomprehending horror. It had killed the scientists in this room. It was a predator thing, designed for slaughter, and now it was hurt and helpless and being stalked by something that did not fear its power.

It raised one hand in defence and I kicked it away, then stamped down hard on its throat.

Without even pausing to watch it die, I whirled toward Felicity.

But she was not there.

Instead I saw the third Merman sprawled in a growing lake of blood, its whole body torn apart so savagely that its arms and legs were attached by strings of meat.

Something bulky and gray shot past me, brushing close enough to strike my uninjured arm. It moved so fast I could barely see it.

It plunged into the water and was gone.

It was not a woman, that much was clear. It looked like an animal.

Almost like an animal.

Its gray fur was criss-crossed by jagged cuts and streaked with blood. Within a moment all that was left was a stain of blood on the eddying waters.

I stood alone in the cavernous lab.

Twenty feet away, the Merman who had fallen to the floor when my bullet smashed its tube was beginning to stir.

I bent and picked up the pistol dropped by Felicity Hope.

With blood falling from my shattered arm, I walked over to the creature as it struggled to get to its misshapen feet.

I raised the gun.

Fired.

For a long, long time I stood there. Arm cradled to my body. Pain and adrenaline washing back and forth through me like tidewaters.

There was no sign of Felicity Hope.

I knew there would not be.

Though… I did not understand why.

As the monster in my mind crept back into its cave and the civilized man staggered out again, the mysteries of this place – of this afternoon – rose up above me like a tsunami and threatened to smash me flat.

In my mind I could still hear the echoes of her voice.

“Joe… it stops here.”

I looked around at the computers. And at the tables piled high with equipment.

And chemicals.

And reams of paper.

With my good hand, whimpering at the agony in my arm, I reached into my pocket for my lighter.

-9-

The fire burned the building to black ash.