Lee felt his knees give out and collapsed. Pak Mun-Hee sobbing, thanked him, thanked God. Burtoni was with him in a second, pulling him to his feet, dragging him back to their friend’s cot. Outside, men screamed and fired weapons.
“The story of the mirror, it is true,” Lee said. What a terrible cry! Thinking of it made his knees feel weak again.
“Okay, okay, this’ll work,” Burtoni said. “There’s trays all over the place. We can put ‘em on the patients, maybe hang them from the walls—”
McKay laughed, a high-pitched, rising sound. His gaze darted back and forth, back and forth. “Right, they’re scared,” he said, and laughed again. “They’re scared! They’re not real, but they see themselves and they run away!”
He couldn’t control his laughter now, holding himself, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. Burtoni looked at Lee, met his gaze. Lee could see his thoughts, and agreed. McKay was michin geos. Shook.
Burtoni turned a scornful eye on McKay. “Get ahold of yourself, or I’ll slap you in the puss. What are you, a girl?”
“They’ll be scared,” McKay whispered, wiping his eyes, still grinning. “But they’re not even real.”
“Yeah, that’s a laugh riot,” Burtoni said. “Come on, help me push the cots together. Lee, get as many of those trays as you can carry.”
Lee nodded and McKay at least got up to help Burtoni, still chuckling helplessly. Lee ran for the bins of sterilized trays, unable to believe that he’d been able to act. Perhaps because he was still unable to believe that the villagers had been right, that the dead had been called home.
The building shook and another gangshi crashed into the room through the south wall. The cabinets there fell to the ground and broke, scattering bandages and suture kits. Lee snatched up the trays and headed back for where the Americans had shoved several cots, Pak Mun-Hee, the wounded American, and two of the unconscious men. He looked back over his shoulder, afraid that it was fixing on him but it only stood there, stupid and dead. They would hold up the trays and be safe, they would—
Lee realized what he was seeing. The gangshi’s eyes were gone, dark holes where they should have been. Its whole face had been gnawed and picked at, as though it had been outside on the ground for a long time. A splinter of cartilage was all that remained of its nose. Its cheeks and lips were gone, chewed down to a wide yellow grin. Its tattered shirt was full of new holes. Lee skidded to his knees next to the cots and passed out the trays, sick with new fear. How would it see its reflection without eyes?
Through the holes in the building they could see men running, they could hear trucks driving away.
The eyeless gangshi pivoted towards Lee, and the injured and the cots, huddled together in a great obvious lump, trays sliding to the floor and clattering. Burtoni was whispering a Hail Mary, holding a silver tray over his face. McKay shook, his expression a frozen grin, his eyes full of tears.
The doors to post op slammed open and the doctor, Captain Elliott, came running in with two orderlies and Nurse Miss Claire. They saw the gangshi and stopped, backing towards the door. One of the orderlies made the sign of the cross in the air.
Lee saw what McKay was going to do a second before he did it, but was too late to try and stop him.
McKay stood up, his metal tray falling to the ground, pointing his weapon at the faceless creature. “You’re not real!” he yelled, and then fired and the gangshi hopped once more and was with him, ignorant to the fresh holes in its head and body. McKay screamed and was caught, staring into the chopped mask of flesh. His body began to change, to shrivel up.
“Fire in the hole!” someone called out, and Burtoni pulled his unconscious buddy’s cot over on top of them, slapped an arm around Lee, and slammed them both to the ground.
There was a clatter and then a soft pop and then the air was alive with snakes, with the smoking hot glow of burning phosphorous. The heat was sudden and searing, the light blinding. The gangshi was enveloped in a hissing, electric white shower and Lee had to look away. It was so bright he could see it through his eyelids, and then there were curses and screams and he felt burning particles settle across the backs of his bare legs. He pulled them in, made himself small beneath Burtoni’s heavy arm.
The hissing went on seemingly forever and as it died away Lee dared to look up. Coughing, he waved at the thick, burnt-meat smoke and saw a pile of burning flesh and bone and fabric where the gangshi had been. The doctor and the orderlies were running around and putting out small fires. The holes in the building let out the worst of the smoke but the chemical stink was terrible, like bad garlic, and Lee’s eyes burned and his nose ran.
The two big American soldiers were back, the sergeant and the private with the bad words. The private was spinning a ring around his finger.
“Looks like fireworks,” he said loudly, and coughed.
The GIs helped the doc get the patients loaded into a personnel carrier, Young and five others, plus a handful of camp workers who’d been injured in the attack. All around them chaos reigned. Groups of soldiers ran and fired, yelled and died. A goodly number were getting out, trucks and jeeps heading in all directions. Cakes kept up a steady screen of Willie Petes, the white-hot burning chemicals keeping the gangshi away from them. They wouldn’t jump through one, anyway. Burtoni helped the orderlies carry the patients out, while Lee and the medical officers ran supplies. West watched their backs toward the north, the black hill where the lanterns had been. Outside the brilliantly lit corridor of hissing phosphorous, dimly glowing gangshi hopped and darted silently across the dark land.
There were hundreds of them now, tearing through the MASH buildings, demolishing the tent town on their way to wherever. Main power went out – the generators were dying – and the wailing siren finally wound to a stop. West saw a Jeep whip by with Sanderson peering out the back, dull confusion on his useless face. West didn’t salute.
The doctor made his last trip out of the sagging post-op building holding a clinking duffel bag. Burtoni ran alongside him, holding up a metal instrument tray like a shield.
“We’re bugging out, Sergeant West,” the doctor said. “Get your men in the truck.”
“Yeah, Sarge, we gotta go,” Burtoni said, nodding emphatically.
“What about the priests?” West asked, gesturing vaguely towards the dark hill north of the camp, where he’d seen the lanterns. “If we don’t stop them, they’ll keep calling up more of these things, won’t they?”
“I don’t know anything about any priests,” the doctor said. “I’m getting these men out of here, now. We’re going south to the 124th.”
The Korean kid was looking at West. “The man from the village, he said the temple is rotten. He said the priests follow a bad man.”
“Bad how?” Burtoni asked.
“He is michin,” Lee said. “Ah, wrong in the head. Stark staring bonkers.”
“You know where this temple is?”
Burtoni was shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter about no temple, we gotta go, Sarge. We should stay with Young, right?”
Lee pointed. “North, they said. High on the hill, in the woods.”
West imagined bugging out with the doctor, with the other MASH refugees. Maybe it was safe at the 124th, maybe not. The way these things moved, where was safe? And how long would it take, to convince someone with the authority to call in a strike this far south?