SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

The jungle had parted her legs, and in the thick tangle Luke saw a hole. The edges dripped dampness, and thick musk wafted from it. The smell was a miasma; new life growing fecund in a womb filled with teeth. It stank of black water in stagnant pools, overgrown toadstools blooming from the mouths of dead things, and the slow, serpentine life that fed and bred in the shadowy places of the earth. To Luke it smelled like home. He looked back the way he’d come, and the twisted trees stared back at him with sunset eyes. The shadows reached for him, and a flock of birds burst into the sky no more than three klicks back. Something was headed his way.

Luke took stock. He had his rifle, two full magazines, a sidearm, an M-7 bayonet, a brush knife, a canteen, and a dirty handkerchief. He had a compass, an old lighter, makings for two or three more smokes, a dirty helmet, a pair of wet boots, an entrenchment tool, a torch with a cracked red lens, and a couple packs of stale crackers he’d been keeping in his breast pocket. What he didn’t have was a radio, a map, or a clue. He was four days’ out, off of any and all trails he knew, and he had to get back to friendly territory. That meant dodging patrols, avoiding the locals, and conserving as much ammunition as he could. He glanced up at Charlie again, and watched as one beetle chased another down the dead man’s shoulder to fight for a particularly succulent chunk of throat meat. He looked where Charlie was pointing, then down at his compass. The needle wavered, but it seemed pretty sure that Charlie was pointing in the direction Luke needed to go. Whatever was down that way was no friend to the Viet Cong. Even if the enemy of his enemy was his friend though, a man would have to be crazy to go down that path in the dark. Another man would have to be even crazier to follow.

“Anybody else comes this way, you never saw me,” Luke said, his usually deep voice an octave or so higher than normal. The rotting neck bobbed slightly, as if Charlie was trying nod. A laugh burbled in Luke’s throat. He choked it back, turned, and ran for the hole before he lost his nerve.

* * *

Luke swept his torch over what little path there was, looking for trip wires, snares, or signs of recently disturbed earth. He glanced up every half-dozen steps or so, clearing his three, six, and nine o’clock positions. There was the usual animal chatter, splashings and crashings in the dusk-clotted brush and high up in the dim tree tops, but there was nothing big enough or close enough to warrant his attention. He was fifty yards in when he raised his head; what he’d thought was just another vine was staring at him with flat, dead eyes the size of croaker marbles. He gasped, and fangs as long as bass fish hooks clicked off his helmet. He squeezed the trigger, and his rifle hacked a round into the underbrush.

Luke dropped onto his heels, and brought the M-16 up to catch a blow that never came. The snake swung like a busted door spring, spinning slightly as it arced through the air. Luke swallowed until his heart was back where it belonged. He stopped the fleshy pendulum with the barrel of his weapon, and raised his light.

It was a python, and the goddamn thing was big enough to swallow a six-year-old and still have room for her little dog too. It had a shovel head big enough to dig a grave with, and in the red glare its hide was a dull, rubbery black. It had been stapled to the tree by its tail with wooden stakes, and thick, viscous fluid dripped from the jutting jaw. Something snapped with the wet pop of a sodden rubber band. The mouth bulged, distended, and a pale sack of meat fell out. It plopped into a puddle of the serpent’s dribbling decay, and spattered Luke’s boots. It looked like a leather purse with the lining pulled out. He let the snake go, and kept walking.

There were others. A toad the size of a dinner platter hammered down a broken branch where it had popped like a balloon full of moldering guts. A marbled cat strapped to a skinny trunk with a web belt, all four feet and its tail cut off for good luck. A family of crucified rats watched him pass without so much as a squeak, and a gibbon’s head grinned at him good-naturedly like they shared some private joke.

That wasn’t all. Whoever had left the bloody blazes marked the trail in other ways too. Some of it was smudged and smeared, written in pencil, pen, blood, or shit by the smell of it. Other messages were clearer, dug deep into the bark with knives or burned in with careful patience. I volunteered because I wanted to defend my country, one trunk proclaimed. I married a girl I hate because I knocked her up, another said. I bought drugs for my brother so he’d spend more time with me. After a while Luke stopped reading; the confessions made him sick in ways the gutted signposts never could.