SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

“Fuck-all, Sarge. I’ve got a white-out in front… The same over my right shoulder… And a whole lot of jungle slapping at my left periscope.”

“Maintain that position,” Fisher said, “and keep the speed steady. I’ve got slightly better visibility from up here, but it’s marginal. If you keep the foliage against our left hull it stands to reason we should still be on the road.” Fisher squinted against the forward turret window, constantly wiping condensation from the inside glass. “At this speed the jungle should make way for a clearing in about an hour or so. There we’ll steer left until we find that creek line.”

“Roger that, Sarge.”

“With a little luck this storm will pass over in no time.”

But it didn’t. The hour passed as darkness took hold, the only images outside captured as silhouettes against each lightning strike. That’s when the imagination turned on a man. That’s when you saw Charlie crouching in every shadow. We own the day… That’s when the promise of daylight was the only thing that made the night remotely bearable. They own the night. The hour quickly turned to two, then three, as they eventually stumbled across the now swollen creek and headed due north towards the cathedral site.

“Mr. Green?” Fisher said over the intercom. “Sir, I lost visual of the troop two hours ago, and strongly suggest we break radio silence momentarily to re-group.”

“No,” came Green’s stern reply. “I can’t risk the NVA intercepting our radio chatter, so we push on.”

“But, sir, the troop could be scattered all over this fucking grid. I believe we’d be stronger arriving in force and with some semblance of organisation.”

“Everyone knows their orders, Sergeant. If separated, meet at the RV at 2200. That’s just ten min—”

The vehicle collided with something outside, throwing Fisher against the .50 calibre machine gun’s breach and cutting his cheek. The engine revved in a violent burst as Jenkins’s weight fell against the accelerator with the impact before stalling. The interior lights flickered before going out as the headsets dwindled to total silence. There was only the sound of the torrential rain on the hull until Fisher eventually broke the silence.

“Everyone okay?” he called, wiping the blood from his cheek.

“Yeah,” came Jenkins’s laboured voice.

“A little shook up,” called Fry, “but I’ll live.”

“You okay back there, Mr Green?”

“What the fuck happened, Fisher? Where’s the fucking lights?”

“I’d say we’ve knocked a battery terminal off on impact, sir. Should be an easy fix.”

“Hey, Sarge?” Jenkins broke in. “You might want to see this.”

Fisher straightened. “What is it?”

“I can’t make out what we hit, but I think I see something moving out there. You might be better placed to see from the turret.”

Fisher braced himself against the .50’s breach, straining to see through the sheets of rain outside. A lightning flash briefly revealed an open landscape scattered with familiar shapes, but the multiple silhouettes also triggered a sense of denial. “What the fuck?” he muttered under his breath. Just then, something slapped against the turret’s forward window and Fisher instinctively pushed himself away from the glass with a startled gasp. He wrenched the cocking handle back on the .50 calibre and unlocked the turret rim, his thumbs held firmly against the rear trigger as he manually traversed the turret full-circle to scan the terrain outside.

Finally, with the gun facing forward again, Fisher paused, each heartbeat resonating in his ears. Unblinking, he waited for that next flash of lightning to illuminate the land outside. Breath held trembling in his lungs, he paused to confirm the image he thought he saw earlier. Fresh forks of lightning streaked across the sky to strike the ground beyond the surrounding tree line, briefly illuminating the scattered APCs in the clearing around them, their turrets pointing in all directions, gun barrels spent and motionless. As brief as the lightshow was, there was no mistaking the remaining troop vehicles outside — immobile, strewn in every direction, and not a sign of life.

“Green,” he called below. “We’ve got a problem.”

“What is it?”

“Looks like the rest of the troop made the rendezvous point ahead of us, sir.”

“How’s that a problem?”

“I don’t know that they’re in any shape to go on from here.”

“What the—”

Then the rain stopped.

It didn’t peter out gradually, but rather ceased in a heartbeat, the sudden silence becoming quickly unnerving until the sound of footsteps on the hull outside caught Fisher’s attention.

“Fuck,” he spat at a whisper, staring up at the inch and a half of metal over his head.

“There’s someone out there,” said Green, crouching at the base of the turret space.

“Maybe it’s one of our boys,” said Jenkins from the driver’s seat.