by smr1957 » Wed Jun 07, 2023 1:26 pm
The Jungle
by Steven Ross
The air pressed down on the encampment and the surrounding jungle like the sweaty hand of some cruel and merciless giant. It clung to the skin like damp cloth, wrapping around one's self like the close embrace of an unwanted lover - clinging, clutching, smothering, and, at the last, suffocating. The sheer weight of the air dragged one down as if a necklace of lead had been hung around one's neck, or a hundred such necklaces - or one hundred dead albatrosses, each one putrid and stinking with decay. It was this heaviness which made even the simplest of tasks a herculean labor; made even the drawing of one's breath a chore requiring the summoning of all one's strength. One wanted to escape, to find refuge; some place in which one could hide, a place where the air did not press down quite so hard, did not weigh so heavily upon one's mind or oppress one's senses so thoroughly. But from this heaviness, this oppressiveness, there was no escape - it sought one out; it seeped through the drab green fabric of the camp's tents, slipped under doors and windows, and oozed through cracks in the crumbling cement walls of the encampment's buildings. Finally, having searched one out, it overwhelmed the senses, so that all memory of the light and joy of happier times was driven out and one's mind was turned to darker, more sinister things, until one thought that if one did not find some release, one would be driven insane, sent running and screaming through the encampment until one killed oneself is desperation and despair. This evil did not, however, stem from the air alone; rather, it seemed to ooze from the ground as well, like some foul vapor intent on poisoning life itself; it seemed to drip from the overhanging, oversized, shiny green leaves of the surrounding trees as venom drips from the fangs of a poisonous snake. It was a pervasive, all-encompassing feeling, one felt more in the subconscious than in the conscious mind – flowing as if from some malignant mind deep within the heart of the jungle – rotten, corrupt, and hating all things that were not of its own. And like a living thing of evil incarnate, it crushed all who would not heed its ways, as ants beneath a booted foot. This, then, was the jungle.
The Lieutenant stepped off the ramp leading from the plane, onto the hot asphalt of the tarmac, and looked out into the distance, where, shimmering in the heat, the jungle was a hazy green wall fencing the airfield in. It was hard for him to imagine, but just a bare three months ago he had been back in his home town in Kansas, celebrating with his friends before leaving for final training. Of his friends, he was neither the first, nor would he be the last, to sign up for the service. After all, if you were growing up in America's heartland, in some small town that was steadily dying as the population moved to the opportunities and glamour which awaited one in the big cities, the service provided a sure ticket out. You put in your tour of active service, and when you came home, you were all set and had nothing to worry about. Everyone turned out to see the returning hero. Everyone. Even the people who used to chase you off their property when you were growing up and would curse you out whenever they saw you. And the girls, he thought, remembering his last visit home. It was amazing the way the same girls who hadn't even given him the time of day before he had joined up, suddenly had been all over him when he had returned home on leave for two days before being shipped overseas. Well, he thought, just wait til he got home at the end of his hitch; then he would really have something to look forward to. Even now he could imagine the looks on the girls' faces as he told them the horrifying stories of all he had seen and been through when he was away. And if half the things he told them were pure bullshit, well, they would never know. Yes, he really had it made. The only thing that came close to worrying him, were his parents - ever since his father's illness he had been their main source of support. Despite this, nothing he ever did seemed to please his father. Day after day he had watched as his father's body grew more submissive to age while, at the same time, as if to make up for the sudden weakness in his limbs, his father's will had become increasingly domineering. The Lieutenant thought of the two of them, his mother and father, sitting all alone in that farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, nothing but corn for miles around. Hell, he thought suddenly, they would be all right - besides, the neighbors would be stopping in to see how they were doing. Anyway, the important thing to him right now was that he was finally free, out from under the heel of his father's domineering spirit. Oh sure, he had to take orders - so did everyone else here - but then, he got to give some himself, and at least no one was going tell him to report everything he did on his time off.
He had been walking across to a cluster of buildings set at the edge of the airfield, the jungle beyond an impenetrable mass of riotous growth. Now he was at the main entrance to the largest of the buildings and could see that on its side was a poster containing a picture of a group of men in uniform and the words “WE WANT YOU” emblazoned across the bottom. Shit, he thought, they even have recruiting posters out here. Who did they think they were gonna recruit? The local natives? Hell, they couldn't be bothered with any of it. As a matter of fact, there was a group of them passing with their wagon now – a whole family of them – and not one even bothered to turn their head and look as the planes landed and took off. Well, to hell with them, he thought. In just a few months, with any luck, he would be set up in a permanent post riding a desk and would have learned all the ins and outs of living in this country. And once he learned all those ins and outs, he'd have a blast. After all, if you were going to be stuck in some backwater country that was three quarters jungle anyway, you might as well make the most of it. With that, he was through the main gate and in the cool, air-conditioned interior of the building, on his way to receive his assignment.
Outside, the villagers with their wagon rounded a bend in the road and were swallowed by the jungle.
The Lieutenant stood alone in the harsh sun of the encampment, gazing down at the dead bodies laid out in a row at his feet, his uniform a limp rag clinging to his sweaty skin. He had been assigned to the camp two months ago as its battalion casualty officer, and his mind reeled under the constant bombardment of horror to which it had been subjected. It was his duty to inspect the corpses - the stinking, rotten, corrupt bodies; the effluence of a stinking, rotten, corrupt war, and a stinking, rotten, corrupt world: a cesspool with all of the inherent slime and decay - or, a jungle, where dying leaves drift down to mingle with decaying carcasses in the undergrowth, both nourishing the gargantuan trees until they too, in time, topple over and add to the stinking, primeval loam of the jungle floor. Day in and day out, it was the same routine. How many bodies? How did they die? How many pieces had they been shattered into? It was to this hell that The Lieutenant, Battalion Casualty Officer, awoke each day, and, at night, asleep on his cot, found again in his dreams.
Dreams? Nightmares, rather, for in them, The Lieutenant could find no sanctuary. How often had he awakened in terror, chased from the forgetfulness of sleep by the phantoms of the dead, the countless legions that he had at one time or another seen stretch out at his feet? This one missing an arm, that one a leg, another without a face - just a red, pulpy, putrescent mass acrawl with blowflies and maggots - all of these pursuing him across the field of sleep until he awoke in a cold sweat, only to find that even more dead were lying in wait for him on the field of the encampment's parade ground. The dreams of the previous nights had been especially harrowing. The phantoms of his mind had interwoven with the sighing of the wind in the trees to weave a net around his thoughts, a net from which it was impossible to escape completely to that blessed realm - the land of rest and sleep where all one's worries are forgotten. A land where one could find relief from the cares which plague one. A land of escape.
As The Lieutenant stood in the setting sun, the memories the day assailed him. Earlier, a young boy had been brought in, or rather, the remains of a young boy, for there was little left of what had once been a strong, healthy body. The boy had been playing in the fields, looking for empty cans or broken equipment, brass cartridges and spent bullets, discarded or forgotten ammunition - anything of value or what went for value in this disturbed land. He had apparently come upon a mortar shell which had failed to explode, and in this land where the tools of war became the playthings of children, had started digging it up when suddenly it had detonated, blowing him to bits. All that were left were scraps of torn flesh – chopped up gore, bones, gristle, and, by an eerie quirk of the explosive forces of the shell, the boy's face, a happy smile still framed upon the lips. It was this, the memory of the boy's smiling face, which remained with The Lieutenant as the sun slipped behind the trees of the jungle and night descended.
It was night, and as the world slept, the jungle came alive. Out from under the brush and creepers spread over the jungle floor they came. Small and dark they were, possessing eyes bright and glowing. They crept along the ground, only to be followed by larger, more massive bodies, their great mouthes open in anticipation of the kill, while all around was the jungle, its great trees biding their time until the day when the hunters, too, would be theirs.
In the encampment, all was quiet, yet still the dreams came to torment The Lieutenant as he slept; a solitary figure asleep on a cot in a tent. That night he dreamt he was a small boy back in Kansas. He had just come running back to the house after playing all afternoon in the fields of corn and, as he approached home, the delicate aroma of freshly baked apple pies had filled his nose and he had been able to see the pies lined up on the window sill where his mother had set them to cool. He had gone into the kitchen and sat down at the table, while his mother took one of the pies from the window and set it down before him with a glass of fresh milk. He looked out the window where the pies rested and, off in the distance, at the very limits of vision, he saw a dark green line stretching the length of the horizon. He turned back to the table, and as he cut into the still warm pie, the scent of apples escaped anew. Suddenly, his sense of smell was assaulted by the nauseating, yet strangely appealing, scent of burnt flesh, and as he lifted out the slice of pie which he had cut, he could see that it was not apples, but chunks of flesh which constituted the ingredients of the pie. Pushing the pie away from him, he knocked over the glass of milk – milk no longer, for it had been transformed into a malted of blood. Screaming, he ran from the house, pursued now by the voices of the dead, their words unintelligible, and found himself on the encampment's parade ground, the wind whistling and moaning through the trees of the jungle canopy.
Over the ensuing weeks, The Lieutenant would have variations of that same dream, and always, in the distance, that dark green line drew ever nearer, until it was revealed as a malignant jungle devouring the cornfields and all the lands around in its verdant maw. In one dream, his father would tell him to go to the smokehouse to get some hams for supper. Entering the smokehouse, he would see, not shanks of meat, but rather, a collection of human limbs and bodies suspended by hooks from the ceiling. An arm here, a leg there, and over in the corner, an entire human torso. He would dash from the smokehouse, only to find himself once again on the parade ground, his body drenched in sweat. Or another dream might have his mother asking him to get a bottle of milk out of the refrigerator, and opening the refrigerator door, he would be confronted by its grisly contents. Bottles of pickled eyes, all staring at him; bottled tongues, all talking to him; and packed in boxes like so many strange mushrooms, fingers, all reaching out for him. Shutting his eyes to the horror, he would reach in, grabbing at the bottle of milk, only to see too late that it was not milk at all, but a bottle of blood, just as had been in his glass in earlier dreams. Dropping the bottle at his feet, he would try to run, but something or someone was holding him and he would be unable to get away. With a scream, The Lieutenant would awaken, his legs entangled in the mosquito netting which had fallen upon him from the roof of the tent where it had been hung. The rest of the night he would spend tossing and turning, afraid of sleep, yet equally afraid of what the dawn of a new day would bring. And so another night would pass in which The Lieutenant found no rest.
Standing in the hot sun of a new day, staring down at a new set of bodies laid out at his feet, The Lieutenant knew he needn't worry any longer about what each new day would bring; as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west each day without the least prompting from man or animal, so it was with death, whether The Lieutenant wished it or not. Just as at harvest time the corn had been laid out at his father's feet, so too it was with The Lieutenant, except that death was his crop, and for death it was always harvest time. Even as The Lieutenant stood in the bright of day, he could not rid himself of the dark visitations of nights past. The wind blowing through the jungle canopy now carried with it the unheard words of the dead. And The Lieutenant found himself straining to hear, as if listening more intently he could divine the words hidden in that endless wail, could decipher the messages that it contained. But strain his ears as he might, the words remained just out of reach.
And always, in the distance, the jungle waited.
Standing on line in the compound's mess, The Lieutenant tried to stay awake and steady on his feet. The last few nights, whether due to the heat, distress over his job, or just plain fear of once again wandering down those paths which lead to that loathsome midnight land of terror and despair, he had been unable to attain sleep. As The Lieutenant reached the serving area, the messhand could see the drawn, pinched look on his face, the sunken, bloodshot eyes, and his pale, washed out complexion. The messhand spoke to The Lieutenant.
“Lieutenant, I think you should be getting' some sleep. You 'bout ready to fall over from the looks of things.”
"No, I'm all right,” The Lieutenant replied in a tired, detached voice.
“I don't know, Lieutenant. Course this sweat-box weather here 'nought to make anyone look sick.”
“I said I'm fine," The Lieutenant's voice now getting an edge to it. “Just get on with dishing out the food.”
"Sure, sure, Lieutenant, you know what's best, but take a little extra of these here eggs,” and as The Lieutenant held out his tray, the messhand started to place the fried eggs onto it.
Suddenly, it was no longer the messhand standing there, but a leering and mutilated person; and it wasn't eggs being placed on his tray, but accusing eyes which stared up at him, wide open mouths ready to curse him, and open, running sores oozing pus, all sliced off a bloated body lying behind the counter.
“No!” The Lieutenant screamed, his voice breaking with terror. “Stop it! I don't want anymore! Take it away! Take it!” And with that, the tray dropped from The Lieutenant's hands and, hitting the counter, clattered to the floor, its contents - eggs once again - spilling across both counter and floor.
“Now look what you've done,” The Lieutenant exclaimed, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow. “Can't you just do your job? Who asked for extra eggs anyway? Now fill another tray for me and do it with your mouth shut!”
The refilled tray was brought to The Lieutenant, and he took it and walked away. But it was all he could do to control the trembling in his limbs.
The Lieutenant stood watching as the latest load of bodies was carried in. Off in the distance, at the edge of the jungle, a group of villagers trundled their wagon along the road, oblivious to all around them. He glanced at them for a second, and then returned to the business at hand. There had been eight wounded and five killed so far that day. The injuries ranged from a minor shrapnel wound to a leg blown off above the knee when it's owner made the mistake of stepping on on a land mine. Then there was the soldier who, falling into a pit, had skewered himself front to back on a pungi stick - a sharpened stake smeared with human excrement. By itself, the wound was bad enough, but when complicated as a result of its cause, combined with the fact of the soldier having been in the bush for a full day before being properly treated, the outlook was not bright at all. So it looked as if Death's harvest for that day might very well end up being six, with only the lucky seven - if you could call it luck - escaping the sweep of his scythe.
Of the five people who had been killed, four were civilians who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time when the pilot of a fighter bomber had accidentally released his load of napalm, and it was these bodies which had been brought in. All four of the bodies, one of which was that of a small child, were charred beyond recognition. While the bodies were being unloaded from the wagon which had been used to bring them in, the flesh sloughed off the bone, like the meat on a well done shank of lamb. And as The Lieutenant stood watching the bodies being laid on the ground, it seemed to him that the whispering of the wind in the jungle canopy was louder than ever. Then The Lieutenant realized that it wasn't the wind among the trees sighing and whispering secrets, but rather the charred and mutilated remains before him. He tried to catch what they were saying, those four immolated carcasses, but the words eluded him. The Lieutenant strained his ears, but still the words remained inaudible and he wondered why. Then, in a flash, like a burst of pure light piercing his brain, he knew; and he laughed to himself. Of course he couldn't hear them, for they had no mouths with which to speak, their faces just one melted field of flesh. As he turned on his heel and walked up the steps that led into the small, one room building that served as his office, The Lieutenant noticed that the villagers had disappeared into the jungle.
Later, while sitting at his desk filling out casualty report forms, The Lieutenant could still see in his mind the blackened bodies and smell the odor of roasted flesh. As he began to fill in the last report, he suddenly found himself unable to write. Try as he might, he could not make his hand move pen across paper - indeed, it seemed as if his entire arm had gone numb, for he was unable to feel the pen in his hand or even the pressure of his arm resting against the edge of the desk. The Lieutenant stood up, and as he did so, the pen dropped from his now useless hand onto the floor.
The Lieutenant looked across at the figure which occupied the room's other desk – a corporal who was assigned to the office as a clerk. The figure was apparently unaware of The Lieutenant's plight, consumed as it was in the business of filling out endless requisition forms for more body bags. He called across to the figure.
“Corporal, I'm going out for a while. Finish filling out these forms on my desk, okay?”
The figure in the corner grunted its assent without raising its head, and The Lieutenant walked out of the office, his arm hanging uselessly at his side. It would not be till later that evening, when a leering, jaundiced moon rose above the steaming jungle, that the feeling in his arm would return.
The moon rose high above the compound and the encircling jungle. Somewhere, in the hot and steamy depths behind that green curtain, where the moonlight glimmered and died before reaching the ground and drops of water rolled off elephantine leaves to soak into the already dank and mildewed ground, the hunters were oon the prowl. Through the underbrush they moved, stalking the animals which were their prey. Anything that moved was fair game; the only rule was eat or be eaten. Little did the hunters know that one day, they would be the hunted. But even had they known, would they have realized the truth of that knowledge? Or would they, in their all-consuming pride in their overwhelming strength, have laughed it off, as they crushed out between bloody jaws the life of yet another small creature. Even as that small creature breathed its last and the hunter began his feast, an even greater hunter swooped overhead and, with a roar, split the night apart and lit up the jungle with flames red as blood. The roar died in the thick air, but was still audible as a faint rumble back in the compound where The Lieutenant, in his sleep, heard it and, with a shudder, passed into that nightmare world where he was the hunted.
He was back in his home in Kansas, calling out for his parents, but they were nowhere to be seen. Finally, after wandering through all the rooms of the house, he walked into the kitchen. Going to the refrigerator, he opened the door to get something to eat, and quickly slammed it in terror, for he had found his mother. Turning around with a cry, he faced the rest of the kitchen, only to see that seated at the table was a family of mutilated corpses, with plates and knives and forks all set before them. He knew now that he need no longer search for his father, for on that table, laid out before those horrific corpses, was their dinner. As he stared, speechless and paralyzed with fright, they turned as one, fixing him with empty, hollow sockets where once there had been eyes. Screaming, he dashed for the door, only to find that the teeming, malodorous jungle had completely engulfed everything in sight, and was even now devouring his house. Tearing aside the great leprous leaves which blocked his path, The Lieutenant ran out into the early morning sun of the parade ground, only to stop dead in his tracks as the previous night's harvest was dumped, out of the back of a wagon, at his feet.
The sun baked down on the encampment. The stench of death was everywhere. The steaming jungle seemed to crowd in closer than ever, as if, nourished by the odor of death, it meant to engulf the encampment and all in it in a green hell. On the ground, the dead seemed to stare up at The Lieutenant with accusing eyes; it was a stare that burned its way into one's brain and soul, driving out all other thoughts. As The Lieutenant stood there in the burning sun with the corpses staring up at him and the drone of the flies, which buzzed about the stinking, decaying bodies, filling his ears, it seemed as if he could almost hear the corpses speaking out to him; as if their black and swollen tongues were given life once more. First, a beaten old man, next, a dried up stick of a woman, then a shriveled up old lady and her baby grand daugther – more and more of them spoke up until the entire pile of rotten cadavers screamed with rage, venting their anger and hatred upon him.
“You! You did this!” they screamed at him. “You killed us! You, you , you! It was you!”
The Lieutenant covered his ears to shut out the sound of their cries, but their voices screamed all the louder, as if they emanated from deep within him and his hands served only to lock in the sound - focusing it, intensifying it, until it was as a needle piercing his soul. Louder and louder their cries became, as The Lieutenant, clutching his head, tears streaming down his face, sank slowly to the dry and dusty ground. And as he sank to the ground, The Lieutenant cried out: “No! No! It wasn't me! Please, I didn't do it!”
“You! You! You came here! You killed us!” they shouted back at him. “You killed us! You came here! You did, you did! We won't let you go!”
“Please, let me go! Please, please,” begging now, a mere shell of a man. “Let me go. Let me go - I just want to home.”
He tried to remember the golden, sundrenched corn fields of Kansas, where as a boy he had played hide and seek among the cornstalks with his friends, or pretended to be an Indian scout tracking his enemies - ambushing them, capturing them, killing them. Afterwards, victor and fallen alike would run home in answer to the dinner bell urgently ringing out from the back porch - and all around, the flat plains that stretched as far as the eye could see. He tried to remember, but could not. His memories of these things were gone, or if he did remember, it was as one remembers a dream – dim and hazy, only to be guessed at. All his reality, all his world, was now shrunken down to the few square feet of parched ground, where he groveled in his agony, his tears soaking into the thirsty earth, his mind being consumed by insanity. And all around, there was the jungle.
He tried one last time to resist the voices calling to him, but his will, weakened by months of enduring a living hell, was not strong enough, and the voices had a hold on him altogether too strong and terrible to be broken; their claim would not be denied.
“We want you, we want you!” they called to him. "You can't go home. Come to us!”
It was the last wail, the last cry, the last curse. There was no shutting it out, no defense, and in the face of this onslaught his will crumbled as a sand castle in the surf.
Suddenly, a new scream, louder than all the rest, joined in this funereal chorus - the scream of a man who for too long has kept his feelings bottled up as he tallied bodies like the scorekeeper in some obscene game, a man who for too long has endured the unendurable. It was a scream ripped from the very bottom of his being, torn from the very roots of his soul. It was the scream of the damned.
The Lieutenant's screams echoed throughout the encampment, and men, hearing them, listened for a short while, looked into each other's eyes, and each seeing there the madness awaiting an opportunity to devour their souls, quickly looked away. Continuing their journey, the sounds of the screams traveled through the air - drifting around the buildings, carrying over the tents, passing through the wire - until they were swallowed up by the steaming impenetrable jungle.
And if any villagers passing with their half starved families heard it, they gave no sign, but continued on their path, for they are of the jungle and know its way. They know - long having lived with death and war, pain and suffering, madness and insanity as constant companions - when one lives in a world gone mad, there is no awakening from a nightmare.
c Steven Ross
[b][i][u]The Jungle[/u][/i][/b]
[i]by Steven Ross[/i]
The air pressed down on the encampment and the surrounding jungle like the sweaty hand of some cruel and merciless giant. It clung to the skin like damp cloth, wrapping around one's self like the close embrace of an unwanted lover - clinging, clutching, smothering, and, at the last, suffocating. The sheer weight of the air dragged one down as if a necklace of lead had been hung around one's neck, or a hundred such necklaces - or one hundred dead albatrosses, each one putrid and stinking with decay. It was this heaviness which made even the simplest of tasks a herculean labor; made even the drawing of one's breath a chore requiring the summoning of all one's strength. One wanted to escape, to find refuge; some place in which one could hide, a place where the air did not press down quite so hard, did not weigh so heavily upon one's mind or oppress one's senses so thoroughly. But from this heaviness, this oppressiveness, there was no escape - it sought one out; it seeped through the drab green fabric of the camp's tents, slipped under doors and windows, and oozed through cracks in the crumbling cement walls of the encampment's buildings. Finally, having searched one out, it overwhelmed the senses, so that all memory of the light and joy of happier times was driven out and one's mind was turned to darker, more sinister things, until one thought that if one did not find some release, one would be driven insane, sent running and screaming through the encampment until one killed oneself is desperation and despair. This evil did not, however, stem from the air alone; rather, it seemed to ooze from the ground as well, like some foul vapor intent on poisoning life itself; it seemed to drip from the overhanging, oversized, shiny green leaves of the surrounding trees as venom drips from the fangs of a poisonous snake. It was a pervasive, all-encompassing feeling, one felt more in the subconscious than in the conscious mind – flowing as if from some malignant mind deep within the heart of the jungle – rotten, corrupt, and hating all things that were not of its own. And like a living thing of evil incarnate, it crushed all who would not heed its ways, as ants beneath a booted foot. This, then, was the jungle.
The Lieutenant stepped off the ramp leading from the plane, onto the hot asphalt of the tarmac, and looked out into the distance, where, shimmering in the heat, the jungle was a hazy green wall fencing the airfield in. It was hard for him to imagine, but just a bare three months ago he had been back in his home town in Kansas, celebrating with his friends before leaving for final training. Of his friends, he was neither the first, nor would he be the last, to sign up for the service. After all, if you were growing up in America's heartland, in some small town that was steadily dying as the population moved to the opportunities and glamour which awaited one in the big cities, the service provided a sure ticket out. You put in your tour of active service, and when you came home, you were all set and had nothing to worry about. Everyone turned out to see the returning hero. Everyone. Even the people who used to chase you off their property when you were growing up and would curse you out whenever they saw you. And the girls, he thought, remembering his last visit home. It was amazing the way the same girls who hadn't even given him the time of day before he had joined up, suddenly had been all over him when he had returned home on leave for two days before being shipped overseas. Well, he thought, just wait til he got home at the end of his hitch; then he would really have something to look forward to. Even now he could imagine the looks on the girls' faces as he told them the horrifying stories of all he had seen and been through when he was away. And if half the things he told them were pure bullshit, well, they would never know. Yes, he really had it made. The only thing that came close to worrying him, were his parents - ever since his father's illness he had been their main source of support. Despite this, nothing he ever did seemed to please his father. Day after day he had watched as his father's body grew more submissive to age while, at the same time, as if to make up for the sudden weakness in his limbs, his father's will had become increasingly domineering. The Lieutenant thought of the two of them, his mother and father, sitting all alone in that farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, nothing but corn for miles around. Hell, he thought suddenly, they would be all right - besides, the neighbors would be stopping in to see how they were doing. Anyway, the important thing to him right now was that he was finally free, out from under the heel of his father's domineering spirit. Oh sure, he had to take orders - so did everyone else here - but then, he got to give some himself, and at least no one was going tell him to report everything he did on his time off.
He had been walking across to a cluster of buildings set at the edge of the airfield, the jungle beyond an impenetrable mass of riotous growth. Now he was at the main entrance to the largest of the buildings and could see that on its side was a poster containing a picture of a group of men in uniform and the words “WE WANT YOU” emblazoned across the bottom. Shit, he thought, they even have recruiting posters out here. Who did they think they were gonna recruit? The local natives? Hell, they couldn't be bothered with any of it. As a matter of fact, there was a group of them passing with their wagon now – a whole family of them – and not one even bothered to turn their head and look as the planes landed and took off. Well, to hell with them, he thought. In just a few months, with any luck, he would be set up in a permanent post riding a desk and would have learned all the ins and outs of living in this country. And once he learned all those ins and outs, he'd have a blast. After all, if you were going to be stuck in some backwater country that was three quarters jungle anyway, you might as well make the most of it. With that, he was through the main gate and in the cool, air-conditioned interior of the building, on his way to receive his assignment.
Outside, the villagers with their wagon rounded a bend in the road and were swallowed by the jungle.
The Lieutenant stood alone in the harsh sun of the encampment, gazing down at the dead bodies laid out in a row at his feet, his uniform a limp rag clinging to his sweaty skin. He had been assigned to the camp two months ago as its battalion casualty officer, and his mind reeled under the constant bombardment of horror to which it had been subjected. It was his duty to inspect the corpses - the stinking, rotten, corrupt bodies; the effluence of a stinking, rotten, corrupt war, and a stinking, rotten, corrupt world: a cesspool with all of the inherent slime and decay - or, a jungle, where dying leaves drift down to mingle with decaying carcasses in the undergrowth, both nourishing the gargantuan trees until they too, in time, topple over and add to the stinking, primeval loam of the jungle floor. Day in and day out, it was the same routine. How many bodies? How did they die? How many pieces had they been shattered into? It was to this hell that The Lieutenant, Battalion Casualty Officer, awoke each day, and, at night, asleep on his cot, found again in his dreams.
Dreams? Nightmares, rather, for in them, The Lieutenant could find no sanctuary. How often had he awakened in terror, chased from the forgetfulness of sleep by the phantoms of the dead, the countless legions that he had at one time or another seen stretch out at his feet? This one missing an arm, that one a leg, another without a face - just a red, pulpy, putrescent mass acrawl with blowflies and maggots - all of these pursuing him across the field of sleep until he awoke in a cold sweat, only to find that even more dead were lying in wait for him on the field of the encampment's parade ground. The dreams of the previous nights had been especially harrowing. The phantoms of his mind had interwoven with the sighing of the wind in the trees to weave a net around his thoughts, a net from which it was impossible to escape completely to that blessed realm - the land of rest and sleep where all one's worries are forgotten. A land where one could find relief from the cares which plague one. A land of escape.
As The Lieutenant stood in the setting sun, the memories the day assailed him. Earlier, a young boy had been brought in, or rather, the remains of a young boy, for there was little left of what had once been a strong, healthy body. The boy had been playing in the fields, looking for empty cans or broken equipment, brass cartridges and spent bullets, discarded or forgotten ammunition - anything of value or what went for value in this disturbed land. He had apparently come upon a mortar shell which had failed to explode, and in this land where the tools of war became the playthings of children, had started digging it up when suddenly it had detonated, blowing him to bits. All that were left were scraps of torn flesh – chopped up gore, bones, gristle, and, by an eerie quirk of the explosive forces of the shell, the boy's face, a happy smile still framed upon the lips. It was this, the memory of the boy's smiling face, which remained with The Lieutenant as the sun slipped behind the trees of the jungle and night descended.
It was night, and as the world slept, the jungle came alive. Out from under the brush and creepers spread over the jungle floor they came. Small and dark they were, possessing eyes bright and glowing. They crept along the ground, only to be followed by larger, more massive bodies, their great mouthes open in anticipation of the kill, while all around was the jungle, its great trees biding their time until the day when the hunters, too, would be theirs.
In the encampment, all was quiet, yet still the dreams came to torment The Lieutenant as he slept; a solitary figure asleep on a cot in a tent. That night he dreamt he was a small boy back in Kansas. He had just come running back to the house after playing all afternoon in the fields of corn and, as he approached home, the delicate aroma of freshly baked apple pies had filled his nose and he had been able to see the pies lined up on the window sill where his mother had set them to cool. He had gone into the kitchen and sat down at the table, while his mother took one of the pies from the window and set it down before him with a glass of fresh milk. He looked out the window where the pies rested and, off in the distance, at the very limits of vision, he saw a dark green line stretching the length of the horizon. He turned back to the table, and as he cut into the still warm pie, the scent of apples escaped anew. Suddenly, his sense of smell was assaulted by the nauseating, yet strangely appealing, scent of burnt flesh, and as he lifted out the slice of pie which he had cut, he could see that it was not apples, but chunks of flesh which constituted the ingredients of the pie. Pushing the pie away from him, he knocked over the glass of milk – milk no longer, for it had been transformed into a malted of blood. Screaming, he ran from the house, pursued now by the voices of the dead, their words unintelligible, and found himself on the encampment's parade ground, the wind whistling and moaning through the trees of the jungle canopy.
Over the ensuing weeks, The Lieutenant would have variations of that same dream, and always, in the distance, that dark green line drew ever nearer, until it was revealed as a malignant jungle devouring the cornfields and all the lands around in its verdant maw. In one dream, his father would tell him to go to the smokehouse to get some hams for supper. Entering the smokehouse, he would see, not shanks of meat, but rather, a collection of human limbs and bodies suspended by hooks from the ceiling. An arm here, a leg there, and over in the corner, an entire human torso. He would dash from the smokehouse, only to find himself once again on the parade ground, his body drenched in sweat. Or another dream might have his mother asking him to get a bottle of milk out of the refrigerator, and opening the refrigerator door, he would be confronted by its grisly contents. Bottles of pickled eyes, all staring at him; bottled tongues, all talking to him; and packed in boxes like so many strange mushrooms, fingers, all reaching out for him. Shutting his eyes to the horror, he would reach in, grabbing at the bottle of milk, only to see too late that it was not milk at all, but a bottle of blood, just as had been in his glass in earlier dreams. Dropping the bottle at his feet, he would try to run, but something or someone was holding him and he would be unable to get away. With a scream, The Lieutenant would awaken, his legs entangled in the mosquito netting which had fallen upon him from the roof of the tent where it had been hung. The rest of the night he would spend tossing and turning, afraid of sleep, yet equally afraid of what the dawn of a new day would bring. And so another night would pass in which The Lieutenant found no rest.
Standing in the hot sun of a new day, staring down at a new set of bodies laid out at his feet, The Lieutenant knew he needn't worry any longer about what each new day would bring; as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west each day without the least prompting from man or animal, so it was with death, whether The Lieutenant wished it or not. Just as at harvest time the corn had been laid out at his father's feet, so too it was with The Lieutenant, except that death was his crop, and for death it was always harvest time. Even as The Lieutenant stood in the bright of day, he could not rid himself of the dark visitations of nights past. The wind blowing through the jungle canopy now carried with it the unheard words of the dead. And The Lieutenant found himself straining to hear, as if listening more intently he could divine the words hidden in that endless wail, could decipher the messages that it contained. But strain his ears as he might, the words remained just out of reach.
And always, in the distance, the jungle waited.
Standing on line in the compound's mess, The Lieutenant tried to stay awake and steady on his feet. The last few nights, whether due to the heat, distress over his job, or just plain fear of once again wandering down those paths which lead to that loathsome midnight land of terror and despair, he had been unable to attain sleep. As The Lieutenant reached the serving area, the messhand could see the drawn, pinched look on his face, the sunken, bloodshot eyes, and his pale, washed out complexion. The messhand spoke to The Lieutenant.
“Lieutenant, I think you should be getting' some sleep. You 'bout ready to fall over from the looks of things.”
"No, I'm all right,” The Lieutenant replied in a tired, detached voice.
“I don't know, Lieutenant. Course this sweat-box weather here 'nought to make anyone look sick.”
“I said I'm fine," The Lieutenant's voice now getting an edge to it. “Just get on with dishing out the food.”
"Sure, sure, Lieutenant, you know what's best, but take a little extra of these here eggs,” and as The Lieutenant held out his tray, the messhand started to place the fried eggs onto it.
Suddenly, it was no longer the messhand standing there, but a leering and mutilated person; and it wasn't eggs being placed on his tray, but accusing eyes which stared up at him, wide open mouths ready to curse him, and open, running sores oozing pus, all sliced off a bloated body lying behind the counter.
“No!” The Lieutenant screamed, his voice breaking with terror. “Stop it! I don't want anymore! Take it away! Take it!” And with that, the tray dropped from The Lieutenant's hands and, hitting the counter, clattered to the floor, its contents - eggs once again - spilling across both counter and floor.
“Now look what you've done,” The Lieutenant exclaimed, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow. “Can't you just do your job? Who asked for extra eggs anyway? Now fill another tray for me and do it with your mouth shut!”
The refilled tray was brought to The Lieutenant, and he took it and walked away. But it was all he could do to control the trembling in his limbs.
The Lieutenant stood watching as the latest load of bodies was carried in. Off in the distance, at the edge of the jungle, a group of villagers trundled their wagon along the road, oblivious to all around them. He glanced at them for a second, and then returned to the business at hand. There had been eight wounded and five killed so far that day. The injuries ranged from a minor shrapnel wound to a leg blown off above the knee when it's owner made the mistake of stepping on on a land mine. Then there was the soldier who, falling into a pit, had skewered himself front to back on a pungi stick - a sharpened stake smeared with human excrement. By itself, the wound was bad enough, but when complicated as a result of its cause, combined with the fact of the soldier having been in the bush for a full day before being properly treated, the outlook was not bright at all. So it looked as if Death's harvest for that day might very well end up being six, with only the lucky seven - if you could call it luck - escaping the sweep of his scythe.
Of the five people who had been killed, four were civilians who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time when the pilot of a fighter bomber had accidentally released his load of napalm, and it was these bodies which had been brought in. All four of the bodies, one of which was that of a small child, were charred beyond recognition. While the bodies were being unloaded from the wagon which had been used to bring them in, the flesh sloughed off the bone, like the meat on a well done shank of lamb. And as The Lieutenant stood watching the bodies being laid on the ground, it seemed to him that the whispering of the wind in the jungle canopy was louder than ever. Then The Lieutenant realized that it wasn't the wind among the trees sighing and whispering secrets, but rather the charred and mutilated remains before him. He tried to catch what they were saying, those four immolated carcasses, but the words eluded him. The Lieutenant strained his ears, but still the words remained inaudible and he wondered why. Then, in a flash, like a burst of pure light piercing his brain, he knew; and he laughed to himself. Of course he couldn't hear them, for they had no mouths with which to speak, their faces just one melted field of flesh. As he turned on his heel and walked up the steps that led into the small, one room building that served as his office, The Lieutenant noticed that the villagers had disappeared into the jungle.
Later, while sitting at his desk filling out casualty report forms, The Lieutenant could still see in his mind the blackened bodies and smell the odor of roasted flesh. As he began to fill in the last report, he suddenly found himself unable to write. Try as he might, he could not make his hand move pen across paper - indeed, it seemed as if his entire arm had gone numb, for he was unable to feel the pen in his hand or even the pressure of his arm resting against the edge of the desk. The Lieutenant stood up, and as he did so, the pen dropped from his now useless hand onto the floor.
The Lieutenant looked across at the figure which occupied the room's other desk – a corporal who was assigned to the office as a clerk. The figure was apparently unaware of The Lieutenant's plight, consumed as it was in the business of filling out endless requisition forms for more body bags. He called across to the figure.
“Corporal, I'm going out for a while. Finish filling out these forms on my desk, okay?”
The figure in the corner grunted its assent without raising its head, and The Lieutenant walked out of the office, his arm hanging uselessly at his side. It would not be till later that evening, when a leering, jaundiced moon rose above the steaming jungle, that the feeling in his arm would return.
The moon rose high above the compound and the encircling jungle. Somewhere, in the hot and steamy depths behind that green curtain, where the moonlight glimmered and died before reaching the ground and drops of water rolled off elephantine leaves to soak into the already dank and mildewed ground, the hunters were oon the prowl. Through the underbrush they moved, stalking the animals which were their prey. Anything that moved was fair game; the only rule was eat or be eaten. Little did the hunters know that one day, they would be the hunted. But even had they known, would they have realized the truth of that knowledge? Or would they, in their all-consuming pride in their overwhelming strength, have laughed it off, as they crushed out between bloody jaws the life of yet another small creature. Even as that small creature breathed its last and the hunter began his feast, an even greater hunter swooped overhead and, with a roar, split the night apart and lit up the jungle with flames red as blood. The roar died in the thick air, but was still audible as a faint rumble back in the compound where The Lieutenant, in his sleep, heard it and, with a shudder, passed into that nightmare world where he was the hunted.
He was back in his home in Kansas, calling out for his parents, but they were nowhere to be seen. Finally, after wandering through all the rooms of the house, he walked into the kitchen. Going to the refrigerator, he opened the door to get something to eat, and quickly slammed it in terror, for he had found his mother. Turning around with a cry, he faced the rest of the kitchen, only to see that seated at the table was a family of mutilated corpses, with plates and knives and forks all set before them. He knew now that he need no longer search for his father, for on that table, laid out before those horrific corpses, was their dinner. As he stared, speechless and paralyzed with fright, they turned as one, fixing him with empty, hollow sockets where once there had been eyes. Screaming, he dashed for the door, only to find that the teeming, malodorous jungle had completely engulfed everything in sight, and was even now devouring his house. Tearing aside the great leprous leaves which blocked his path, The Lieutenant ran out into the early morning sun of the parade ground, only to stop dead in his tracks as the previous night's harvest was dumped, out of the back of a wagon, at his feet.
The sun baked down on the encampment. The stench of death was everywhere. The steaming jungle seemed to crowd in closer than ever, as if, nourished by the odor of death, it meant to engulf the encampment and all in it in a green hell. On the ground, the dead seemed to stare up at The Lieutenant with accusing eyes; it was a stare that burned its way into one's brain and soul, driving out all other thoughts. As The Lieutenant stood there in the burning sun with the corpses staring up at him and the drone of the flies, which buzzed about the stinking, decaying bodies, filling his ears, it seemed as if he could almost hear the corpses speaking out to him; as if their black and swollen tongues were given life once more. First, a beaten old man, next, a dried up stick of a woman, then a shriveled up old lady and her baby grand daugther – more and more of them spoke up until the entire pile of rotten cadavers screamed with rage, venting their anger and hatred upon him.
“You! You did this!” they screamed at him. “You killed us! You, you , you! It was you!”
The Lieutenant covered his ears to shut out the sound of their cries, but their voices screamed all the louder, as if they emanated from deep within him and his hands served only to lock in the sound - focusing it, intensifying it, until it was as a needle piercing his soul. Louder and louder their cries became, as The Lieutenant, clutching his head, tears streaming down his face, sank slowly to the dry and dusty ground. And as he sank to the ground, The Lieutenant cried out: “No! No! It wasn't me! Please, I didn't do it!”
“You! You! You came here! You killed us!” they shouted back at him. “You killed us! You came here! You did, you did! We won't let you go!”
“Please, let me go! Please, please,” begging now, a mere shell of a man. “Let me go. Let me go - I just want to home.”
He tried to remember the golden, sundrenched corn fields of Kansas, where as a boy he had played hide and seek among the cornstalks with his friends, or pretended to be an Indian scout tracking his enemies - ambushing them, capturing them, killing them. Afterwards, victor and fallen alike would run home in answer to the dinner bell urgently ringing out from the back porch - and all around, the flat plains that stretched as far as the eye could see. He tried to remember, but could not. His memories of these things were gone, or if he did remember, it was as one remembers a dream – dim and hazy, only to be guessed at. All his reality, all his world, was now shrunken down to the few square feet of parched ground, where he groveled in his agony, his tears soaking into the thirsty earth, his mind being consumed by insanity. And all around, there was the jungle.
He tried one last time to resist the voices calling to him, but his will, weakened by months of enduring a living hell, was not strong enough, and the voices had a hold on him altogether too strong and terrible to be broken; their claim would not be denied.
“We want you, we want you!” they called to him. "You can't go home. Come to us!”
It was the last wail, the last cry, the last curse. There was no shutting it out, no defense, and in the face of this onslaught his will crumbled as a sand castle in the surf.
Suddenly, a new scream, louder than all the rest, joined in this funereal chorus - the scream of a man who for too long has kept his feelings bottled up as he tallied bodies like the scorekeeper in some obscene game, a man who for too long has endured the unendurable. It was a scream ripped from the very bottom of his being, torn from the very roots of his soul. It was the scream of the damned.
The Lieutenant's screams echoed throughout the encampment, and men, hearing them, listened for a short while, looked into each other's eyes, and each seeing there the madness awaiting an opportunity to devour their souls, quickly looked away. Continuing their journey, the sounds of the screams traveled through the air - drifting around the buildings, carrying over the tents, passing through the wire - until they were swallowed up by the steaming impenetrable jungle.
And if any villagers passing with their half starved families heard it, they gave no sign, but continued on their path, for they are of the jungle and know its way. They know - long having lived with death and war, pain and suffering, madness and insanity as constant companions - when one lives in a world gone mad, there is no awakening from a nightmare.
c Steven Ross
Modding on the Spectrum