SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

Keeping an eye on the corpse Luke panned the water and counted. There were seven little sandbars, each with a tuft of thick grass growing on them. He bounced a rock in his hand, and threw it. It landed on the first island with a dull thud. He threw the others, plopping a few lobs into the water for good measure. Nothing came roaring out of the depths. No mysterious ripples broke the surface. Luke nodded, and built himself a smoke. He took care not to spill any of his tobacco before putting it back in the little pouch that kept his makings dry. He flicked his lighter, and heat lightning lit up the treetops. Luke waited for thunder, but it never came.

He considered his situation. He was hurt, and a little shook up. He had no way to keep his direction straight. He was running out of light in a hurry. He could bed down where he was and hope he made it through the night, or he could keep going. He took a look at the dead thing and imagined what would have happened if it had found him in the dark. His lips writhed. Luke looked back the way he’d come, toward the clouds of flies and the bloody trail they were eating away to nothingness. No one was coming, but if he went back that way he’d be no better off than he was now. He checked what was left of his gear to make sure everything was buttoned up and strapped in.

“After a while, crocodile,” he said, flicking his smoldering roach at the thing that had lived and died in the Golgotha. Luke drew his pistol and started picking his way around the rim of the water.

He paused below the arch and looked up at the body. It was older than the first one, and it had rotted faster. It had both arms, and they were spread wide in welcome. Either that, or it was getting ready to drop on him when he wasn’t looking. Luke pursed his lips, and took a long drink from his canteen. There was another legend scratched into the left tree, faint enough that he had to lean in close to see it.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” he read. He looked back over his shoulder, then back at the dark doorway. He crossed the threshold.

* * *

Luke found the first stone with his bad foot. It was the size of a brick, and cocked at an angle like a sinking ship. It was the color of hospital sheets, and jagged cracks ran the visible length of it. Rounded and pounded by wind and rain the stone stood defiant; the tip of some buried pyramid lost and forgotten for centuries. Luke limped past, barely giving it a thought except to remember to pick up his feet.

He found more. At first there were only one or two, but they grew into clumps of a dozen or more. The clumps grew more frequent until he was on something that resembled a road. The trees parted, and Luke picked his way over the undisciplined-soldier course beneath a sky as black and empty as a Sunday chalkboard.

Nothing moved. No birds scuttled through the trees, and no snakes slithered after them searching for tasty eggs. Nothing stalked through the empty spaces, or pawed through the dead leaves carpeting the ground beneath emaciated bushes. Ragged cobwebs the size of burial shrouds hung from skeletal branches, and wrapped sacs the size of severed heads hung like sticky, tumorous pendulums. The road was dead, and its corpse was unquiet beneath Luke’s feet.

He smelled the river before he saw it. On top was the musty scent of stale rain, but beneath there was something else; a sharp tang like spoiled eggs in a burn bin. It crawled up Luke’s nose and squatted there, adding a touch of brimstone to every breath and making his eyes water if he sucked in too much air. The trees thinned and twisted, thinning like an old man’s hair. Ancient slabs of stone leaned against each other, fringes of thatched roofs still clinging to a few of the lean-tos. Scrimshaw sigils half-erased by time and the caustic air decorated some of the buildings as well, and shifting shadows lived behind their broken lintels. The darkness watched as he passed, and Luke picked up his pace.

The road ended atop a rise between two decaying stone columns. The eroded stumps were each two feet taller than Luke, and wide enough that his whole squad couldn’t have held arms around one of them. Tiger grass grew knee high, and hieroglyphics faded to near-invisibility spiraled over their surfaces. Beyond the leaning towers was a land of mist and darkness that glowed with witch fire. A red moon rose over the horizon, painting fingers of land in scarlet, and the slow-moving water a deeper, darker crimson.