This Shattered Land - 02 (32 page)

“When
we got back to camp with the water, Green and the other boys were busy staring
through their binoculars watching the village. I thought that was unusual.
Normally, at least one of them would be on watch keeping an eye out for
patrols. Cho heard us coming, and got to his feet and rushed over. His face was
as pale as a ghost, and he looked like he’d just seen a couple. ‘You got to see
this, Gunny.’ He said. ‘Something real fucking weird is going on down there.’
Just as he said that, gunshots rang out in the valley below. We all hit the
deck and crawled to the edge of a cliff overlooking the valley. One of the
barracks situated outside the village was close enough that we could just
barely see through the windows with our binoculars. It sounded like there was a
hell of a firefight going on in there. That by itself was strange enough, but
the thing that made it even weirder was the fact that the other soldiers came
running out of their barracks and formed a ring around the one with all the
fighting going on. The shooting started to taper off until it sounded like
there was only one or two guns still in the fight. Even from that far away, I
could hear the screams coming from inside. It was God-awful, like nothing I’d
ever heard before.”

John
shuddered, taking one last drag from his cigarette before leaning up and
stubbing it out against the sole of his boot. He flicked it over the edge of
the platform into the rapidly darkening night.

  “Just
when I was starting to think that whatever was happening was about to end, the
side of the barracks facing us exploded. If I had to guess, I’d say someone set
off a grenade on the other side, maybe more than one. It blew out a big chunk
of wall about five feet high and about the same across. The blast knocked a few
soldiers standing on that side down on their asses, but it didn’t kill them.
After that, everything went quiet for a minute or two. The soldiers just stood
there, staring at the hole. I couldn’t see their faces, but I could tell by their
body language that they were terrified. The dust and smoke over the hole in the
wall was too thick to see through, so some of them ducked down and stepped
closer, like they were trying to peek inside. Then I saw a shape, kind of like
a silhouette, start to walk out of the smoke. There was another behind it, then
another, and another. Next thing I know, there’s all these gooks stumbling and
tripping over each other trying to get out. The soldiers standing around the
barracks all seemed to sort of freeze up for a minute. I remember thinking to
myself—what the hell? Wasn’t there just a firefight in that thing? How the heck
are all these fuckers still on their feet?”

John
shook his shaggy grey head. The look on his face under the dim gray lantern was
the same look I had seen on Gabriel’s mug many times before; a mixture of
weariness, anger, and remembered fear.

“I’d
say about a dozen of them managed to get loose before the shooting started.
Even as far away as I was, I could see their wounds through my bino’s. Most of
them looked like some animal had ripped into them and torn chunks off their
faces and arms. A few were in even worse shape than that.”

I
listened in rapt silence, dumbfounded by what I was hearing. I knew from what
Gabe had told me that the conspiracy to cover up the Phage had been going on
for years and involved the highest levels of government, but what John
described went much farther back than anything that I had ever imagined. Even
Gabe seemed taken aback.

“Hang
on a second,” I said, “you mean to tell me they were walkers? Like the fuckers
making all that racket down there?” I pointed a finger down to indicate the
undead beneath us.

John
shot me a piercing glare. “Is it that difficult to believe?”

I
struggled to think of something to say, my mouth opening and closing like a
fish out of water. Finally, I clamped it shut and shook my head. “Honestly,
there isn’t much I
wouldn’t
believe about the undead at this point.”

The
old man shifted his attention to Gabe who sat silent and stricken in the dim
light.

“What’s
wrong, friend?” John asked, peering intently at him. “Did I strike a nerve?”

“I…I’ve
seen…” The big man grasped for words before clamping his mouth shut. “I can’t
believe it goes back that far.” He said finally, more to himself than to anyone
else.

“Hmm.
Well, that confirms one suspicion, at least.” John said in a dry tone before
taking another pull from the water bottle I gave him.

Gabe
stood up abruptly and walked over to the edge of the loft. He stopped on the
edge of where the barn overlooked the fields, his back rigid, and his palms
planted on his hips. Rather than staring ahead with his usual attentiveness, he
seemed withdrawn, as if distracted by something deep down inside. 

“I
hate to tell you, friend,” John called out. “but I think it goes back much,
much further than that.”

Gabe
half turned back toward us. “What do you mean?”

John
let out a mirthless chuckle. “I mean this thing goes back farther than both you
and me combined. Way the hell farther.”

Gabe
turned and faced John, giving him his full attention. A few seconds passed.

“Well?”
Gabe asked, impatience plain in his voice.

“Come
on back over and sit down, big man.” John said. “Let me finish my story, and
then I’ll tell you another one.”

Gabe
glared at him for a moment, then stomped back over and resumed his seat. John
sat up and stretched his back first one way, then the other. He folded his legs
back underneath him and let out a tired sigh, the fingers of one hand running
through his thick grey mop and scratching at his scalp.

“This
here next part of the story is a bit difficult in the tellin’.” John said, his
voice weary. “Don’t suppose anybody has a bit of the hard stuff nearby, do
they?”

I
leaned over and reached into a side pocket of my pack to retrieve a flask full
of Casadores tequila, my personal favorite. I tossed it to him. He snatched it
out of the air with a deft catch, then unscrewed the cap and sniffed at the
contents. He frowned.

“Gotta
admit, tequila ain’t my favorite…” He lifted the flask and took a deep draught.
The strong liquor made him cough a bit. “But then again, any port in a fuckin’
storm.” A couple more long drinks later, he screwed the cap back on and laid
the flask down beside him.

“So,
what happened next?” I asked.

“The
worst damn day of my life.”

Chapter 11

Conspiracy Theory

“The
soldiers around the barracks opened up with their AK’s. They cut a few of the
walkers apart, but most of them just kept right on coming. The ones doing the
shooting started backing away, and backing away, and backing away, and pretty
soon most of them lost their nerve all together. I remember the officers
started yelling and firing their pistols at their own troops for running. I
guess they forgot that the fellas they were shooting at had guns too. Right up until
they started shooting back, anyway.”

John
chuckled a bit at the memory. “Now the whole time, me and the other boys are
watching all this, and as you might imagine we were freaking the hell out. We
didn’t know what on God’s green earth we were looking at, but we knew it was
bad. I remember I looked around at the other fellas, and you could tell by the
looks on their faces they were scared shitless. I reckon I was too.” 

The
old man took another long pull from the flask and winced at the burn.

“Now,
while the commies were busy either running away or trying to kill each other,
the villagers decided that it might be a good time to make a strategic exit. A
few of them showed up at the far end of the perimeter fence with a couple of
ladders that looked like they had been slapped together from pieces of scrap
wood and farm tools. The soldiers couldn’t see them from where they were, and
even if they could have, they were too preoccupied with fighting for their
lives to care. The villagers made it over the ladders in two’s and three’s and
took off running into the forest. All of a sudden, I hear Green start cussing
from over on the other side of me and saying something about ‘They’re not gonna
be able to contain this’. I looked over at him, and I remember very clearly
that it was the first time I ever saw fear in that man’s eyes. I asked him what
was wrong, and he told me that we needed to move out. I asked him why he was in
such a hurry all of a sudden, aside from the obvious. He comes over and grabs
me by the front of the shirt. Not like he’s threatening, mind you, more like he
was pleading with me.

‘When
KPA central command finds out that containment at this site is breached, they
are going to send in MIG’s, and artillery, and troops, and every fucking thing
else they have, and they are going to light this valley up like the fourth of
July. We need to be out of here when that happens.’ He says. Once that sunk in,
we didn’t argue with him. We took what gear we needed and left the rest behind.
We spent the rest of that day, all night, and a few hours into the morning
hauling ass south back toward the DMZ. Finally, out of sheer exhaustion, we
stopped to rest under an overhanging ridge about twenty miles away from the
valley. Let me tell you, that was rough country we were trekking through. It
could take you over an hour just to get one mile under your boots. Because we
were still not that far away, we knew immediately when the bombing runs
started.”

John
shook out another cigarette and lit it before continuing. “We could hear the
explosions as clear as day. Hell, we could feel them in our feet rumbling up
through the ground beneath us. None of us liked being so close to all that
ordnance, but we were too tired to go any further. We took turns resting until
the next morning. As we’re getting ready to move out, that idiot Green insisted
on climbing up to the ridge above us to get a look around the countryside. We
tried to talk him out of it. I mean hell, any idiot knows you don’t ever want
to skyline yourself in enemy territory, but he insisted. No sooner than does he
poke his damn fool head up over the edge than does the fucker’s head explode. A
couple of seconds later we heard the sound of the shot that killed him.”

John
shook his head, and took a drag from his cigarette. “Turns out, the KPA had
stationed troops in a series of concentric rings for fifty miles around the
valley. They must have had damn near fifty thousand troops out there with
orders to shoot anything that looked like it was trying to get outside their
perimeter. We didn’t know that at the time, we just knew that our camp had been
spotted. We left behind all our gear except for guns, ammo, and a little bit of
water, and got our asses off that mountain before a patrol came along for us.
To make a long story short, for the next week and a half we played a cat and
mouse game with the KPA forces patrolling the area. One morning, just after
dawn, we were heading for a saddle between two big hills when Hathcock holds up
a hand for everyone stop. Said he saw a flash of light, like the sun reflecting
off a piece of glass on the hillside across from us. We told Cho and Park to
stay hidden while we moved up the side of the hill to get a better look. Sure
enough, when we put a scope on the area where Hatchcock saw the flash we
spotted a little bastard looking back at us over the barrel of a Dragunov.
Maybe he saw me, maybe he didn’t, I really don’t know. What I
do
know is
that I was quicker on the trigger that morning, and I painted the tree behind
him with a nice thick coat of gook brains. Hathcock was pissed at me for
pulling rank to take the shot, but it was worth it. We had to pass the hide
where I shot the other sniper to get where we were going, so I made a little
side trip and took the bullet from his gun. That’s where I got this.” He
dangled the hog’s tooth in front of his face.

“It
was five days later before we finally dragged our exhausted asses back to the
rendezvous at the DMZ. We were half-starved, dehydrated, and suffering from some
stomach bug we got from drinking tainted water from local streams. But by God,
we were alive. We hitched a ride back to Yeoncheon on a military transport with
a South Korean Army guy driving it. I tell you, I was never so happy to see a green
truck in my whole damn life.”

John
smiled, and flicked the butt of his cigarette away into the night. I watched it
sail through the air in a reddish arc until it disappeared over the edge of the
loft. Night had fully set in by then. The kind of black, moonless night where
the darkness is a living thing pressing down on you, and you can’t see your
hand in front of your face. John’s shaggy gray head looked pale and ghostly in
the dimming light of the lantern. I took the lantern down from the para-cord
and wound it up again as John resumed speaking.

“It
was a couple of days later before we got to the Army base in Pusan. The spooks
there separated us and debriefed us while we were in the hospital getting
patched up. Before, during, and after every interview, they kept going on and
on about how important it was never to talk about what happened down in that
valley. We were under orders to take that knowledge with us to the grave.” John
snorted. “As if anybody would have believed us. Hell, I had trouble believing
it myself, and I was there.”