At Least He's Not On Fire: A Tour of the Things That Escape My Head (7 page)

"Candi, Candi!" the Indonesian military men said, pointing through the impenetrable jungle. Candi was their word for temple.

"Temple? Yeah?" Anton had asked.

"Temple, yes. Candi! Big Candi!" the young soldier said back to Anton. The little Indonesian man couldn't have been more than twenty, but you could never really know how old they were. It seemed like they just got smaller as they aged, not wrinklier. He imagined a nation of tiny Indonesians running underfoot.

The Candi was small by Anton's judgment. They'd just visited the massive complex of Borobudur on the island of Java, and that was something. This little temple was no bigger than a two story house from the UP, but damn it did look old. Anton and his unit, led by their veteran team Captain followed the tiny Kopassus men down a hill into a depression between several hills in the rainforest. The leaf cover above was near total; the temple was only lit by tiny rays of sunlight that pierced holes in the leaves above like javelins sent from God. It was a surreal scene for Anton long before the hole became a part of the story.

The Kopassus men showed the Green Berets around the ancient temple, chattering in their language faster than the Americans could keep up, happy and excited to be sharing something so old and so important from their past. The Americans were delighted as well, sharing relieved expressions and groans of sore muscles. The temple meant time to sit and rest.

"Quite the place huh?" Sergeant Giancola asked as the two Green Berets took up security at the top of one of the small hills that formed the depression. The jungle here was empty of human threats, but they followed protocol anyway. Repetition in times of safety was important for building good habits in times of strife.

"Yeah. Reminds me of a museum I never go to back at home," Anton had said back. The two men chuckled, and went back to comfortable silence.
 

Ten minutes later one of the other men in the team came up the hill and tapped Anton on the shoulder. He was a hulking brute of a man with rippling muscles and a neck almost as wide as his shoulders. The guys on the team called him The Thing. "Go check the place out, I'll cover this. It's creepy as fuck. Really weird etchings in the stone. Gargoyles and shit."

Anton had nodded, thanked The Thing, and trotted down the hill to do as he was told. As soon as he entered, he knew the Sergeant was right; the temple
was
as creepy as fuck. On all four corners of the two story, cone shaped building were carvings and faded paintings of creatures that had to have been dreamt of. Worms with teeth the size of a man's hand sprouted from the earth and ate tiny figures of men who were running away, wild and fearful. Frescos and carvings depicted winged beasts sweeping down from cloud filled skies riding bolts of lightning that split rocks and sundered men and women alike. It was a vengeful scene, filled with wrath and ruin. It was a prophecy, but no one in the temple that day knew that yet.

"This ain't no Hindu temple," the team's Warrant Officer said with a strong Alabama accent. Anton wondered if he would even know what a real Hindu temple looked like. The WO answered the question immediately, "I've seen lots of Hindu temples in my time, and this ain't one, not by a long shot. This is like, satanic shit. Lovecraft shit. Ex-wife shit."

The Americans laughed. The tiny Indonesians had no idea what he was talking about but laughed along with them. Once the laughter faded, the local soldiers tried to explain the temple to the two soldiers who spoke their language decently. One of the Green Berets tried to translate. It was hard to keep up with the little brown soldier's rattling.

"Guy says that a long time ago, there was a deep hole where this temple is. Underneath where we are standing. Says it went down to uh, um, Hell or something. Caverns below maybe. Says all the local warriors rose up and defeated these creatures that came out of the hole in a war that lasted almost two years. He's saying that there were flying monsters, and big worm, or snake things. He said those were the real problem. They would um, eat the earth right out from under you. Swallow you whole."

"Bullshit. They're pranking us," another soldier said with a grin. Soldiers appreciated a good joke at each other's expense. Sometimes it was the only way to smile in such a grim line of work.

The Captain of the A-Team shrugged. "Maybe so boys, but this place had some bad juju. I can feel it in my bones."

The interpreting soldier picked up the story as the local man continued. "Says the hole to 'Hell' was finally capped by this temple. Blessed by the local priests and all that jazz. Says that if the temple is ever destroyed, the things underneath it will come back, this time worse."

One of the other soldiers had dug out his entrenching tool and was digging at the corner of the temple where the earth rose up to meet it. He was bound and determined to find the hole the building sat on.

"Andrew cut the shit. This place is sacred," the Captain said quietly before the Kopassus men saw what he was doing. The Sergeant with the digging tool stopped and stood immediately, a sheepish grin on his face. "I'm going inside. Is that okay with these guys?"

The interpreting Green Beret asked them, and after some consultation, the Indonesians felt it was okay. The Captain thanked them, and ducked his head low and headed into the stone arched entryway. It was clearly made for much shorter people than the American. It was only a minute before he started yelling for his men. "Holy shit guys, Carl, Anton, get in here!"

The WO and Anton rushed into the breach, weapons up with safeties off as the local soldiers all hid a laugh on their faces. Anton was sure it was nothing, a prank like his buddy had said, but all that changed when he saw the look of terror on his Captain's face. The experienced warrior was backed into the stone outer wall of the cramped temple's single inner room, and his eyes were locked on the floor of the building. Anton looked as the Warrant Officer went to the Captain.

The center room of the temple was square, the same as the outside. The ceiling reached high into the upper levels of the odd, tiered cone roof, creating a room that was tall, yet oppressive. It felt like the weight of the world was crushing down from above. The floor of the room descended down multiple steep steps to a flat surface that was covered in human remains. Skeletons of men, women and children were piled nearly ten feet high, filling the sunken in floor and rising several feet higher than the floor the men stood on. The air was thick with dust, and hot, hard to breathe.

Perched atop the pile of bones at the center of the room was a creature that defied logic and science. It was humanoid, with arms long and sinuous at the shoulder. Its legs were bent backwards, like a goat's or a wolf's, and erupting from its back was a pair of wings that extended out nearly the width of the entire room. All its skin was black as pitch, and its eyes were crimson flecked with bright, alien orange. But all its humanity was lost in its mouth. Fanged like a lamprey's, and hinged like a snake's, the jaw flexed up and down hungrily at the Americans. Anton's primitive brain somehow let him realize that on some of the bodies underfoot the creature were uniforms. Australian uniforms. The Aussies trained with these people.

Anton didn't wait for orders to fire. Fuck the cultural exchange. He shouldered his weapon and squeezed the trigger as he'd been trained a hundred times over, and sent three high velocity rounds straight into the upper torso of the creature. His bullets struck true, but did nothing. They impacted the creature and rocked it backwards, but did no more damage than if he'd pushed the
thing
hard with his finger. Anton's heart dropped to his boots.

Gunfire erupted outside like an echo from Anton's burst. The first barrage was clearly not from the American M4s. It came from the Indonesian weaponry. The second barrage, only a second later, was easily identified as American. It was return fire. Anton's blood curdled when he heard the throaty roar of The Thing's scream.

"They're shooting on us! Return-" The Thing went silent. Anton knew he'd been shot, or was dead, but he had a more significant problem inside the temple as the creature leapt from the bone pile, soaring the twenty feet of distance on its infernal wings. It landed far too close to the soldiers and triggered a gut reaction of terror. Anton thumbed his fire selector to full auto and emptied the magazine at the beast. At his six he heard the Warrant Officer do the same.
 

The bullets did nothing, save for slow the creature's approach and make it look more terrifying.

The
thing
landed beside Anton—just feet away—but he was already diving to create space. A hand with six many-jointed fingers tipped in claws that dripped with black ooze slashed out and tore a graph of lines into the stone. They matched markings on the outside temple wall that Anton thought were decorative carvings. They were signs of struggle. Signs of horror and death. Some of the scratches had looked ancient.

"Changing mags!" the Warrant Officer hollered as Anton got to his feet. Anton was out as well, and he hollered the same just as the winged creature turned its bloody eyes in the direction of the two A-Team officers. It sprang forward, crossing the distance between as easily as Anton might reach for a salt shaker. The Warrant Officer dropped his weapon's bolt home just as the monster punched a hole straight through his midsection, holdings the remnants of his spine in a triumphant claw. The monster-thing screeched in exultation, picking the soldier up with strength that was beyond superhuman. It tossed the man over its shoulder, discarding him onto the skeleton heap as if he were a bale of hay to be fed to the cattle later. Dried bones broke under his weight as he sagged low into the pile. It turned its ire to the still paralyzed Captain that was frozen against the temple's wall.

"Motherfucker over here!" Anton screamed, trying to buy a moment for his Captain to get his shit together. The bat-beast turned to Anton and snarled, spitting out some of the black goo that covered its claws. It sizzled and hissed when the substance hit the stone. "Captain! Get your fucking gun in the fight!"

The Captain's eyes galvanized suddenly, and he lifted his weapon. A moment of error nearly cost them both their lives as the officer squeezed his trigger with the weapon on safe, but a reflexive thumb twitch remedied the issue as the gargoyle lowered its head and charged at Anton. The Captain's weapon barked out a stream of 5.56mm rounds, every third a burning tracer.

This time, the monster felt the sting. Anton's memory was good, some called it great, but sometimes he wished he could forget how easily he could recall the creature ignoring so many of the bullets in that moment. It was in his mind in slow motion from then 'til death, and he hated it. But he loved how those third, white-hot phosphorous tracer rounds bit into the blackened skin and flesh of the thing that had tried to kill him. Bright red blood spilled out of the punctures in its side as it was riddled with the Captain's rounds.

The monster collapsed to the floor at Anton's feet, bleeding a sickly red blood that looked far too thick for any heart to pump. It twitched and squealed a wet noise of death. The smell of it got into Anton's nose as the gunfire died down outside. He fought down a gag.

"Tracers. It couldn't handle the tracers," The Captain said to Anton, now very lucid and back in control.

"No shit. I wish we'd all loaded them up. I think those fuckers led us here Captain. A sacrifice. I think some of those bodies are Australian 1
^st
Commando. I can't tell, but what the fuck?" Anton was angry as he slapped a fresh mag home.

"What the fuck is happening outside?" The Captain replied. He thumbed his helmet microphone and started to hail the other men still outside but stopped when something small and metallic rolled across the floor between the two soldiers. "Frag out!" The officer screamed as he dove flat to the floor, facing the wall. Anton put a stone pillar between the grenade and his body just in time as the explosion happened. His ears rang, his mouth tasted metallic and he was enveloped in a cloud of dirt as well as a mental fog. He watched as three more grenades skittered across the floor like strange little grapefruits, straight over the edge of the first step and down into the pile of bones. Anton dove this time, and narrowly avoided being perforated by the metal and bone shrapnel from the repeated grenade detonations. But he survived. And he was ready as the Indonesians came in to finish what the demon had not.

Three of the eight Asian special operators came in and saw the Captain on the floor, still. They focused on his body a second too long and Anton was able to cut them down with a trio of short bursts from his weapon. The gunfire was deafening in the tiny Candi, as was the smell of demolished bowels, monster gore, and spilled human blood.
 

Anton got a grenade free and tossed it out the entrance of the temple after pulling the pin. The Captain rolled over and Anton gave him the thumbs up. The grenade boomed outside, loud but considerably quieter to his ears than the four that had gone off in the temple. As soon as the explosion finished, the two Green Berets assaulted out the door, moving as one.

The remaining five Indonesian turncoats were dead in the span of three heartbeats. Two had been flanking the doorway and were caught unaware by the grenade coming out of the temple's entrance. They got bellies full of grenade shards, and the other three traitors had hit the ground to avoid being ripped to shreds. The Captain and Anton were able to put several rounds into their backs before they got to their feet, ending the human treachery. The two surviving operators began to search for their fallen comrades. Perhaps they could be saved.

As they found one dead body after another spirits sagged. The young Michigan soldier could taste his anger, boiling and acidic in his mouth and throat. He wanted more vengeance against the people who'd led his friends to their death. He wanted to kill another monster. After checking another of his friend's throats for a pulse and finding none, Anton called out, "Parker is down Captain."