Johnny folded his arms across his chest, and like magic the twang was gone from his voice. Instead it was low, deep, and serious. “Is there something you want to confess, my son?”
That got some real laughter. Johnny grinned, and he was himself again. A few more ears turned, but the soldiers’ eyes stayed busy on the jungle. Luke touched his tongue to the paper, and dug out an old steel lighter. He flicked it, and touched the flame to the tip of his smoke.
“So I says to him ‘no sir, I can’t think of anything I’ve done that I need to confess.’ He puts his hand on my shoulder, leaning over me like he’s about to give me the facts of life, right? He looks me right in the eyes, and he says, ‘John, you need to confess before you go back out into that jungle. If you don’t there’s no telling what might happen.’”
“So what did you say?” Luke asked, the words dribbling up from his lips in a blue mist.
“Well I thought about it for a minute,” Johnny said, screwing up his face like he was trying to remember what year he needed to be born to buy a beer. “And I said to him, ‘Father, are you telling me I might end up in the Slog?’”
Gardner choked on his last swallow of runny eggs. Jenkins’ blade stopped, poised just under his jawbone. Even Simms looked up from his meticulous rolling and tying with a nervous, piano-wire smile on his face. Luke let smoke trickle out of his open mouth, dragging it back in through his flaring nostrils. The wind died down, and the trees leaned closer; as if the jungle was curious to hear the rest of Johnny’s story.
Everybody had a story about the Slog. A grunt in Baxter’s old squad said it was a ghost town set up by CIA spooks somewhere deep in the shit. The way he told it the ghosts took deserters, protesters, draft dodgers, and VC fighters, then did something to their heads. The spooks fed them dope, and poked around in their brains until all they could say was “yes sir” before turning them loose in the jungle with no fear, no pain, and a fully loaded M16. Baxter always shook his head and laughed, but he wouldn’t look anyone in the eye when they asked if he believed it.
Jenkins was getting drunk in a bar one night when he heard a couple of non-coms tossing back rice whiskey and talking tall. One of them got real quiet before he told his buddies he’d heard from a green beret that the Slog was where all of the special forces had bivouacked deep in the jungle. He said the greenies had taken over some half-rotted stone temple all covered in red stains and letters nobody could read. According to him the greenies took VC prisoners, staked them out on top of the tallest stones, and cut them up one piece at a time. They let the blood flow, and howled out the old names that wind, rain, and the jungle damp had spent centuries trying to erase from the walls and floors of that unholy place. What they did after was worse though, and when his drinking buddies prodded for more the storyteller tossed back another shot and refused to talk about it anymore.
Luke had been sitting up keeping watch with Cooper one night when the medic had started shaking. Before his teeth had finished chattering Cooper told Luke about his first week on patrol. It had been a routine nature hike until a kid named Frankie Prince had found a booby trap the hard way while walking point. The kid had lost a leg, half his face, and most of an arm, but Cooper had kept him alive. They called in an evac but it didn’t come. Frankie had been lying there moaning and twitching, slipping in and out of consciousness. Cooper was half-nodding when the kid’s good eye shot open, and he grabbed the medic’s arm hard enough to leave week-long bruises. Frankie said they were all dead, dead and rotting in the Slog. He said he’d be dead too if he didn’t get out. He took two more deep breaths, and then whatever was still holding on inside Frankie let go. Cooper said it was like watching someone’s soul drown. Ten minutes later the medic threw up in the latrine.
Gardner had been chasing the dragon in a chop-down tent while some guy two puffs away from floating out of his skin babbled about screaming trees, and something pale and blind swimming down out of sight in the swamp water. Simms had been down in the brig trying to ignore a shiner he’d gotten for taking a swing at his sergeant while the guy in the next cell muttered about ghosts coming to drag him down into the mud. According to the guard the guy had been the only survivor of his unit, and he’d tried to desert twice right out of the hospital. Whatever it was he saw out there had scared him bad enough he was less afraid of a court martial than staying in-country for one more day. In the end he chewed off his own tongue, and choked on it. Even Johnny, with his freckles and carrot-colored high-and-tight wore a hard grin when he said the name of the place out loud. Like those two words might be enough to call up the devil.
“Well,” Luke said, blowing his two-stroke smoke back out through his nose. “What did he say?”
Johnny gave Luke a you-aren’t-going-to-believe-this-shit head shake. The redhead opened his mouth, and the right side of his head exploded like his skull had sneezed. Half a second later lead rain poured through their little camp, accompanied by the distinctive, clacking chatter of Kalashnikovs. Men dove for foxholes, snatching helmets with one hand and rifles with the other. Luke rolled, sucking in breath and choking on his smoke as a nine-pound sledge slammed into his back and sent him tumbling. He crashed into the bottom of his foxhole head-first, and his teeth snapped shut like a spring-loaded trap. Lights blossomed behind his eyes, and he felt wetness around his thighs. Dirt showered down on him, and he had enough time to wonder if he’d pissed himself before he went under.
Luke came to with cold mud cupping his balls, and harsh light slanting the wrong way into his hole. He tensed, then slowly relaxed. He took shallow breaths that barely filled his belly, and listened. He didn’t hear anything. There were no voices, no squelching footsteps, and no groans of pain. There was no wind, and if the jungle was still up there nothing moved in or through it. The constant drone of mosquitoes, like the high tension wires in the backyard you forgot about until there was a blackout, was gone.
Moving like a man underwater Luke felt for his rifle. He dragged it close, and probed blindly for his helmet. He hung the dark green half-turtle on the end of the barrel, and slowly raised it. No shots rang out. Nothing moved. He lowered the decoy, and raised it a moment later. Still nothing. Skin pebbling and muscles tensing he put his muck-smeared helmet back on. Luke checked his weapon then coiled his legs under him. He took a deep breath, kissed the silver crucifix his mama had given him, and stuck half his head out of the hole.
Nothing had changed, but everything was different. The jungle was still there, but in the flat light its deep, rich green was two licks from black. Simms’ bedroll was half-undone, sodden with mud like a bad memory of some forgotten summer camp. Jenkins’ mirror hung from a low branch, swaying and flashing as it swung in and out of shadow. The King of Hearts stared at the sky, his placid face covered with fat, red spatter and tiny chunks of gray meat. Three sheets of notebook paper with ragged edges fluttered from underneath a root like crippled birds. There were no other holes.
Luke’s brain tried to process what he was seeing. A hundred synapses fired in a thousand directions, trying to shine a light on the answer. Luke’s legs decided it would be a question better considered from a distance, and his heart agreed. His lungs fell in line, and in less than three seconds all of him was into the trees and away.
He didn’t run like a soldier, with his eyes up and his ears sharp. He didn’t run like a civilian either, bulling through anything that got in his way. Luke moved like a swamp rabbit, panting as his arms and legs pumped in a perfect rhythm. He leaped over outstretched roots, swung around skinny trunks, tucked down under clutching branches, and vaulted over dead falls without thought or hesitation. It was graceful, even pretty in a desperate sort of way as he defied gravity to put the unnamed terror behind him.