Apocalpyse Crying

Their horses are more nimble than leopards and swifter than wolves in the evening: their horsemen will spread out. And then their horsemen will approach from far away: they will fly like the eagle, hurrying to devour. Habakkuk 1:8

Lieutenant Paul Zimmerman clutched the side of his slick as it cut through the air towards destiny. Or at least that’s what Captain Murdock told him. He wasn’t sure that it was his destiny. He was here because he followed orders. The Army drilled that into his brain during basic training.

Those orders meant that Paul and his fellow troopers of the 1^st Aviation Brigade left Saigon not two hours ago, headed upcountry to a place he had never heard of before, some small town called Chu’ Ty. It was Paul’s first mission in country, and right now, he just didn’t want to fall off into the jungle.

The skinny was that Charlie had built a massive base and supply dump there, and it fell to the 1st to be the vengeful hand of the United States Army to smote it out. “Ain’t nothing out there but Charlie, my man,” Corporal Judah Barnes smiled a wide smile, following Paul’s eyes into the trees.

Paul laughed, “I know that,” While Barnes was of lower rank, he had been in country for nine months. Sergeant Vickerman was in another helicopter, and none of the privates would speak to an officer so nonchalantly. Some officers would never allow such familiarity, but Paul wanted the men to respect and love him.

Barnes tapped the magazine on his M-16, “It wouldn’t due to fall out either LT. My first butter bar did just that over the bush not three days after we both got here. Found him broken and bloody impaled on a dead tree. Had a devil of a time getting him down.”

Paul gulped, and tightened his grip on his strap on the Huey. The green trees blurred beneath them, and he could just swear that he could hear the Captain howling with delight.

*******

They stopped at Ban Me Thuot Airfield for several hours, and with the fading light, they resumed their journey. Scuttlebutt around the airfield spoke of more than just a supply base. Paul didn’t want to believe the stories. He was a god-fearing man, like all good Americans. He didn’t put anything past godless Commies, but some things not even they could fathom.

The soft glow from the approaching base told Paul to get ready. “Five minutes!” yelled Captain Murdock. It looked a lot closer than five minutes.

Paul spotted some torches down in the bush. “VC, LT. Take some pot shots if you want,” Barnes smiled, declining to take a shot at them.

“Lieutenant Zimmerman, you make sure you are off the bird first, and lead the men towards the center of the base. We are going to wait for a moment for some fast movers to barbecue the base first. Hit them hard, Lieutenant, hard and fast,” Captain Murdock had a glint in his eye, sending a shiver down Paul’s spine. Or maybe it was the light reflecting off the glow of the base.

Then night became day, briefly. Vast fireballs erupted in the bush, exhaust from the jets fading quickly as they dropped their payloads. Even from this distance, Paul felt the heat from the napalm, “We in the shit now, LT!” Barnes was right, as usual.

The slick circled around the balls of fire, large sections of the jungle burning. Paul could see multiple buildings untouched by fire, and places where large bonfires had been erected.

There was a clear area near an unlit bonfire pile, and the slick headed towards there. Figures moved in the darkness, and Paul gripped his M-16 tighter. One of the gunships lit up the area, spraying lead into the bush. Over the crackling of burning buildings, the roar of the mini guns, and Murdock resuming howling, Paul heard screams as the mini gun found human flesh.

The Huey hovered just above the ground, “Alright guys, its time to get into the shit. Let’s go!” Paul exclaimed. Before he could lead his men off the bird, out of the darkness, Charlie emerged. The man, screaming unintelligibly, thrust his bayonet-mounted AK-47 at Paul, but through the grace of God his aim was off, and the blade smacked into a panel on the bird right next to Paul’s head.

Paul slumped backwards, the immediate urge to shit himself held in by his landing on his rear end on the floor of the bird. Charlie pulled back the AK to try again, but flew backward as Paul’s squad opened fire. “What a way to bust your cherry, LT! Let’s go grunts, get into the fight!” Barnes’s voice boomed, and shook Paul out of shock.

Paul clamored up, and began to run towards the nearest building. “This way men!” He reached the building’s wall, and pressed himself against it as another explosion occurred nearby. “Jackson, give that hooch over there a dose of your thumper,” as Paul pointed at a small hut where two gooks emerged from.

Private Jackson fired two shots in succession, and the hut along with the two gooks exploded. The door in front of Paul opened, and a man stumbled out. This time Paul didn’t hesitate, and he pulled the trigger, and the man spun to the ground, and lay still. “Lets clear this one grunts,” ordered Paul and his men entered the door that the dead Charlie just came out of.

He followed them, and stopped short when his eyes adjusted to the light inside. A large fire illuminated the room from the back, showing a staircase leading up. The firelight reflected off the mountain of human skulls piled in the center of the room, polished to gleam. Surrounding the pile were several dinks, one with a bong son bomber clenched between his black teeth. They giggled and rolled on the ground, oblivious to the Americans surrounding them.

“Barnes, detain these men. We should take some prisoners.”

“Yes LT, we don’t have anything to restrain them with,” sheepishly stated Barnes.

Paul thought for a moment. “Gather them, and put them in that corner under guard. Put two men on them and the rest of us will clear the rest of the building.”

Sergeant Vickerman and his men entered the building at that moment. Charlie started to scream and drew out long daggers, jumping up and moving to attack Paul’s men. Fortunately for them, M-16’s are faster than knives, and Charlie went down again quickly. “Prisoner problem solved, LT,” Barnes quipped.

“Prisoner problem? Lieutenant, we haven’t been given orders to take prisoners,” stated Vickerman.

“You are correct Sergeant. But we aren’t animals. We will give quarter to those surrendering and those unarmed. Lets clear the rest of this building, now.”

“Yes, sir. You heard the Lieutenant. Get moving grunts!” shouted Vickerman.

The men surged towards the stair, and Vickerman took half of them upstairs. Paul lead the rest to the stairs down, visible now that they had reached the upper stair. A hall extended before them at the base of the stair, cloth dividers in the dozen doorways in the poorly illuminated room. His men moving before him, Paul reached the first “door.”. He nodded and Private Small pulled the cloth aside.

Inside there was a boom boom girl, her skin slick with sweat and a rotting smell emanating from the room. “Boom boom GI, no cheap charlie, numbah-one GI,” she beckoned with her right hand, calling for Paul. He had never seen a bare breast before, and even in the insanity of the moment, he felt a tightness in his trousers.

“I wouldn’t go boom boom LT, situation is FUBAR,” chided Barnes, as he pointed to the handcuffs around her right hand and the marks tracked on her right arm. Paul felt sick to his stomach, and ordered the rest of the rooms to be entered. More boom boom girls were in them, each chained to their bed and drugged. Two were dead, one for some time. “You men, get these girls free. I’m going to find the Captain. This is TARFU.”

“Lima charlie LT. This place is fugazi,” nodded Barnes.

******

Captain Murdock stood with one foot up on a crate, watching a two story building burn, flames pouring out of each window and through gaps in the roof. Paul came behind him, waiting to be acknowledged. “Isn’t it glorious, Lieutenant Zimmerman?”

“Glorious, Captain?”

“Yes, glorious. Watching fire devour the holdings of our enemies, his mountains trembling from our bombs,” a rumble from another round of explosions shook the ground, “his hills made desolate and bare, the very ground quaking from our power. Who could stand before us?”

“I don’t know Captain. Charlie sure seems to try,” Paul tried to imagine just how Murdock’s face looked, imagining the glow of incendiary illuminated a grin. “The fire sure does devour their buildings though.”

“You didn’t come to me to revel in the destruction, did you, Lieutenant?”

Paul swallowed, clearing the dryness from this throat. “No, sir. We have found some disturbing things, sir. There have been some women, women placed in positions that I don’t think they wanted. And a number of...skulls...that ummm...was piled up…”

Murdock leaned a bit more towards the burning building, but didn’t turn around, “And what did you expect to find Lieutenant?”

“Not that. We were told that this is some kind of supply base. What we have found so far, well, that isn’t something that should happen in a civilized place…”

“Lieutenant, we aren’t in a civilized place. Now, take your men, and continue to clear these buildings that aren’t burning. This is a city of blood, filled with lies and violence. Be avenging and apply wrath as our instruments.”

“Yes, sir.” Paul saluted, and turned. He couldn’t quite place Murdock’s tone and words, but something about them was familiar. They certainly didn’t sound like any orders he had ever received before. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t need to follow them. Orders were orders.

Vickerman had finished clearing the building by the time Paul returned. “Orders, Lieutenant?”

Paul hesitated, took a swig from his canteen, wetting his mouth, “We need to move on, clear some more hooches. Have the girls been released?”

Vickerman stood up straighter, “Yes, sir. I ordered two privates to take the lot over to the medivac, get them out of here.”

“Good, lets move on then. Lets head towards due north, away from the major bombings.”

“Yes, sir.”

The platoon advanced up the street, weapons at the ready. Paul spied movement in the darkness, and leveled his M-16, and popped a few rounds towards it. Then the rest of the men began to fire. More and more emerged from the bush, only to be cut down. Paul went down to one knee, “Keep up the fire, men, here they come.”

A deluge of Charlie rushed towards Paul’s men, only to be scythed down like chaff. Some carried AK’s, but most had similar knives as those drugged ones before. These men moved as though they were drugged as well, stumbling and jerking until the troopers wasted them. Paul saw a look of hatred in Charlie’s eyes, but he felt no fear, for once.

When the last of them fell, Paul ordered his men into the bush. They advanced, and found where these men had come from. A scene of blasphemic horror greeted them. A long table, complete with place settings for thirteen, lay before them, with the food replaced with bloody chunks of human flesh. Thinking back, Paul pictured those men advancing towards them, were indeed covered in blood and gore.

“You are seeing it now too, LT?” Barnes broke the silence.

“The men were covered in their victims? They seemed drunk on human flesh? I don’t think this is some supply base.”

“I heard that LT. I ain’t never seen nuthin like this before. Whats even stranger, I don’t feel scared. I feel like there is work that needs to be done, and that I am tasked to do it. Never felt that way before.”

“Hell of a first mission out into the bush, I think.”

“I hear that. Can you dig it?”

Paul could dig it. “Sergeant?”

Almost as unsettling as the supper before them, the Sergeant seemed in shock, muttering to himself, “Don’t mean nothing, don’t mean nothing…”

“Sergeant Vickerman!”

“Ummm, yes sir!”

“Get your shit together, and lets move these men out, there is gonna be more of this ahead. Somebody sent us here to clean this place out, and we are gonna do that job,” Paul felt strange being so forceful, a good strange.

Vickerman snapped out of it, and yelled at the nearest private to head past the gruesome scene.

*****

More horrors greeted Paul’s platoon as they moved through the base. Crazed dinks would emerge from the shadows, to be wasted by Paul’s men. When the last died, they discovered all manner of depravities. Group rapes, drugged women, cannibalistic feasts, circles of torture, and a scene which caused Barnes himself to walk away silent, unable to speak for several minutes.

The sun began to crest over the horizon when the last building fell, a half collapsed structure which had three men crucified upside down in front of it. This time Charlie tried to run away, escaping into the jungle. Gunships fired down into the retreat, and Paul found that he couldn’t nor desired to stop his men from pursuing them until the last one died.

Paul found Captain Murdock sitting on a tree stump, his head in his hands as they returned to the remains of the base. “Captain, the enemy has been destroyed, sir.”

Murdock looked up, and smiled. “Now, there is the man that I thought was always in there.”

Paul wiped his cheek, “Was there any orders about a supply base?”

Murdock stood up, stretching his back, “This place needed to be destroyed, our war or not. As part of a larger, and longer war I think. That's why we felt no fear, and I don’t think that we are going to be haunted about what we did here. Maybe by what we saw, but what we did was right here, ordered by powers greater than us.”

That felt right. “Was that why we had no casualties, no dead?”

“It must be. We served as His instrument. His judgment was swift, and final.”

Paul stood there, his eyes stinging. The faces of the men he killed melted away in this mind, but the horrors they did remained. Those he believed would be with him for the rest of his days.

“Its time to go Lieutenant. We are being relieved by the 7^th Cavalry. They will clean this place up. Devour it with fire. Get your men on the birds.”

Paul led his troopers to the awaiting Hueys. He climbed aboard last, and hung his feet off the side, leaning back against the helicopter. A small bit of metal poked in his back, and he turned around to see what it was. The hole made by the first man here that tried to stab him. A bit of the metal was pulled out when the NV removed the bayonet. He pushed the metal back into the hole, and told the pilot to take off.

“LT, you aren’t no cherry anymore,” Barnes’s white teeth were the only part of him that wasn’t covered in filth.

“Barnes, I believe you are right. But that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“LT, it don’t mean nuthin.”

Barnes’s face was wet, just as Paul’s was. Funny thing, it wasn’t raining.