“Looks like, but what the fuck!”
“Lay it in the tray.” He cycles five rounds through. All five feed and eject. The plastic links fall out the bottom just like steel links.
But he still doesn’t trust it.
He tries to get his head down but can’t close his eyes. Too wired. Images. Pink paste. Vats of blood. Detached heads. The shudder of chickens being electrocuted. Instead he cleans the Pig. He feels better when it’s finally clean and lubed. So much better that he cleans it all over again.
At dusk they stand to. But nothing happens other than flares, or something, that light up the sky now and then to the north. Somebody’s getting his shit hammered there, that’s for sure. But it’s far away. He decides not to worry about it.
Worry about their front. About whether the funky ammo will feed if they get hit.
An hour after dark comms go down. Suddenly, no warning, with the dull pop they’ve heard before. Only this time they stay down. Half an hour later a runner jogs along the perimeter. Hissing, “Stand to. Stand to. Motion to the front.”
“Fuck they think we been doing?” Whipkey mutters sourly. But he flips down his NVGs. Clicks them on and off. “Fuck. Gotta op check these things too. Yours work?”
Hector slides his down and turns them on. But instead of the familiar seething green all he gets is black. “Nada.”
“Whatever fried our comms got them, too.”
He pats the Pig. No matter what, the Pig will keep them safe. He loosens his pistol in its holster too. Not much, but a last resort.
Distant chugs echo. “Fuck,” Whipkey mutters, and they dive for the bottom of the dugout.
The earth rocks. The detonations walk up and down the line as if the enemy knows exactly where they are. A near miss shovels dirt over them and sucks the air out of their lungs. Hector lies with eyes and asshole squeezed tight, praying for it to be over. Then not praying, just enduring. His arms are wrapped around the assistant gunner. Another near hit blows the overhead cover down, burying them. Fumes choke him. He screams and claws at the dirt until he gets just enough airspace to breathe. Starts to dig out, then stops. Let the earth cover him. Let it bury him. Until this is over.
The detonations go on and on. Far from waning, they’re succeeded by deeper, more violent ones. The sides of the hole quake, battering them. Someone’s moaning, barking in his ear. He can’t tell if it’s himself or Whipkey. There no longer seems to be any difference.
Flares trickle down, shedding a glaring unearthly illumination that makes the shadows all the darker. Beneath the lurid light the ground’s pocked with bomb craters, shell craters, still smoking. Between them figures creep. They drop into cover and vanish, while others pop up and rush forward. Drones buzz overhead, their own or the enemy’s Hector doesn’t know. A steady wink of fire gutters from Chinese guns, and trails of fire from RPGs or something like the marines’ Javelins flash toward and over the battalion’s line, succeeded by hollow explosions. Something deep red flickers back and forth, over there, in the night.
Hector hunches his shoulders, sets the sights by feel, and squeezes the trigger.
The Pig fires five rounds, bam bam bam bam bam, and jams. Hector drags the operating handle back, ejects the bad round, and recharges. Fires eleven more rounds before it jams again.
The deep red flickers. It reaches out, searching among the craters.
He’s fumbling at the action, trying to clear it, but the cartridge is jammed in hard, caught on the bolt face, when a deep carmine brilliance bursts, fragments, echoes and resounds all around him. It smears cobwebs over his vision. His whole brain turns red.
“Laser!” Whipkey screams, and claws at his face. He keeps screaming, staggering up.
“Get down!” Hector shouts, grabbing for him, shielding his eyes with his other hand. But bullets crack, whiplashing across the hill, and then something buzzes overhead, whining in, dreadfully close.
It cuts off suddenly and Whipkey screams again, a choked-off burst of animal terror. Ramos catches the flicker of a muzzle flash, frames it in the sight, and fires, fires, fires until the gun halts again, jammed once more.
When he looks back his assistant gunner lies half in, half out of the caved-in fighting hole, chin back at an unnatural angle. In the light of the falling flares a scarlet well pulses at his throat, in which is wedged something small and black, with stiff stubby wings. His open eyes stare up at the stars.
He’s lying in the open, on his side, hugging the Pig. Somehow he knows he’s out of ammo. Something heavy weighs down his right hand. When he lifts it the flare-light shows him his pistol, smeared with blood.
He’s in a hole with three other marines. A rifle in his hands. No idea where it came from. Where’s the Pig? He has to find it. But right now he’s slapping in magazines, firing them out. The others are firing too, as fast as they can. One is Lieutenant Smalls. Face contorted, snarling, he’s firing his pistol two-handed, double-tapping Chinese after Chinese. The rifle barrels glow and smoke in the darkness. They’re not built to fire burst after burst, mag after mag. But the shadows keep coming. One ducks, straightens, flings out an arm. Smalls yells “Grenade” in a strange hoarse voice. He dives to the ground just before the explosion, and his body jumps, humps up, as Hector fires a burst over him into the grenadier.
HE’S hammering at something in the darkness. Without looking, he knows it’s the Pig. Hammering its butt down again and again. Grunting. With rhythmic force. Then a flashlight illuminates the thing he’s flailing at. A face. A mashed-in, concave mass of blood and bone now. But still breathing. Bubbles burst and slide. It’s still trying to get up.
“Stand back,” Hern orders. Hector sledgehammers twice more, slowing, exhausted, and finally obeys, staggering to his feet.
The flat final report of Hern’s rifle.
Running. Staggering. Figures in front of him, fitfully illuminated by explosion-flashes.
The wreck of a mule. Hundreds of cartridges lie scattered across the dirt. Brass ones, he notes dully. The driver blown into shreds of meat where he’s been perforated from above. Strips of flesh hanging.
An interminable night. A night that never ends. That never will end, in the memories of those who survive it.
Dawn. Somehow, they’re overlooking the water. Dimly he understands they’ve crossed the island’s waist during the night. Fought their way here, to a new sea. Crouched in a shallow fighting hole, he’s obsessively, compulsively cleaning the Pig. Scrubbing burnt carbon off the bolt. Lubricating it. Reassembling it. No idea where the gun came from; at some point during the night there it was again, after he thought he’d lost it. Inexplicable. Or maybe it’s someone else’s. And maybe it doesn’t matter.
The waves walk out of the fog, shattering on the red sand.
The dawn is old silver. Mist seethes above the surf.
An unfamiliar sergeant walks along, straightening the line. A net bag of liter bottles hangs off his shoulder. Two young women trail him, belts of cartridges draped around their shoulders like golden shawls. He tosses down a water bottle. Hector catches it in midair, tears the cap off, fastens his mouth to it greedily, and beckons for another. The sergeant tosses him a second liter. “Tail on to him,” the NCO tells one of the marines with him, the black woman. Then, to Hector, “A ship went down out there. Some of ’em might try to make it to shore. Gunner, your new assistant. Private Phelps.”