Shades of War: A Collection of Four Short Stories (4 page)

              "No!"

              Jones rushed at the six ghosts. Hearing his shout, they turned to meet him. His emotions out of control, Jones forgot that he was heavily outnumbered. One North Korean ghost flowed at him faster than the rest, and Jones was happy to meet him. He didn't waste any time. Jones and the Korean met each other, arms outstretched. Shifting inside the enemy's grasp, Jones launched a vicious blow to the enemy's groin. Jones couldn't help but smile.

              Guess, what boys. Welcome to my world.

              The man was now bent over, gasping as would any man alive or dead. Jones got an arm around the ghost's neck, and with a sharp awkward twist he drove the man's form downward while trapping the his head at a wrong angle. The move would have broken a live person's neck. The ghost just went limp. And then, while still there in his arms, the Korean ghost disappeared just like Napier.

              The whole action had taken just a few seconds, but that had been enough to distract him. Jones lifting his gaze saw that his chasers had now arrived. The three ghosts plus the remaining five now formed a circle around him.

              Time to leave.

              Jones picked a spot between two ghosts. First rule of any ambush is break the box. Jones didn't even try to attack the two ghosts. He just imitated his old high-school-running-back days. He picked a spot in between a pair of ghosts and with head down burst through them. His momentum carried him past the group, and again Jonesy was fleeing as fast as his phantasmal body could carry him. Eight ghosts were now in pursuit.

              Great. Just great.

              Whether it was luck or some type of ghostly physics, Jonesy was faster than his pursuers. They only chased Jones for a few minutes. To Jones, the chase seemed much longer. As he neared his own lines, the North Korean ghosts gave up their pursuit. Less than an hour later and mentally exhausted, Jones returned to his own lines. Everything had changed. The Ghost platoon was not alone, and they had taken their first casualty.

              Eerily the line from a movie a hundred years gone by came again unbidden to his mind.

              I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks.

Every Last Drop

Section I

Waste Not, Want Not

It started with the snapping of a branch somewhere in the darkness. The three North Korean soldiers stopped in their tracks. There had been no sounds up until now, just the steady sound of their feet crunching in the frozen snow. The soldiers were lost. The dark forest surrounded them, stealing all sense of time and direction. Somehow they had become separated from their unit during the day and now night had closed in sealing their fate. The temperature was plummeting with every step. At this point, they did not care about the war, all they wanted was warmth. However, on this night, survival would not be an option.

              A single snap of branch brought the men to a halt. Wide eyes peered out into the abyss of darkness, then at each other. They waited for a moment with ears straining, waiting to hear more, but there was nothing. The cold drove them past caution and they resumed their trek. The path they were following was more a trampled path in the snow made by a large group of men. The three Koreans were desperate for any kind of shelter, be it friendly or enemy. They were so desperate to get free of the cold that they had turned on their flashlight, praying that the trail was made by their own men.

              There was another crack of a branch and the sound of cloth brushing against a tree or bush. The first soldier turned and whispered something in Korean to the other two. Someone or something was out in the woods with them. The three men turned and pointed the streaming light of their flashlights into the darkness but there was nothing. Panicking, one of the Koreans nervously called out into the darkness. But silence was the only answer.

              The silence finally unnerved them. The last man of the three sprinted past the other two and stumbled forward down the path. The other two, not to be left behind, scrambled after him. All three men ran in a blind panic, but it would do them no good.

              The last man of the trio was beginning to be lag behind when a figure darted out with amazing agility from behind a tree and slid up next to him. With sickening efficiency, the figure slammed a short punch into his throat. The Korean stumbled back, gargling and gasping from breath that could not escape from his crushed larynx. The second soldier must have heard something. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his companion on the ground.

              The shadowy figure had really never stopped moving, and with speed that seemed impossible, the figure was suddenly right in front of the second Korean. A perfect kick to the groin bent the second man over in agony. The soldier stumbled forward, head down and lungs gasping as he tried to overcome the pain. Dancing, the attacker slid close, caught the bent man's head and wrapped an arm around it. Pirouetting, the attacker spun the hapless soldier, using the poor soldiers own weight against him, wrenching the Korean's head at an impossible angle. There was a tell-tale
pop
and the man went limp, slumping to the forest floor. He was not dead yet, a broken neck doesn't always kill right away. But his bodily functions would be shutting down one by one.

              The third soldier had more time. He had un-slung his weapon and was trying to bring it to bear on the attacker. Again, the attacker was too fast. It grabbed the barrel of the rifle and twisted it slightly. Using his own weapon against him the figure slammed the butt of the rifle repeated into the soldier’s stomach and chest. The man's grip loosened, unable to withstand the multiple blows. Now in complete control of the weapon, the attacker took careful aim and launched a crushing blow into where the abdomen meets the sternum. The strike did its job. The man's chest cavity collapsed perfectly and his heart ruptured.

              The forest was again silent. The figure stood surveying it's handy work. Three men killed with bare hands. But the figure did not care about that accomplishment.

              It had only one thought;
Good. Not one drop.

Chapter II

Drained

Sergeant First Class Bencher was not a happy man. It was late, it was cold, and he was still in Korea. The wind was picking up and to insure that the situation was even more fun, snow was now intermixed with the wind. Bencher's squad was taking a break in a small clearing of trees before continuing with their patrol, just a few quick seconds to get a compass bearing and to make sure everyone was accounted for.

              Bencher's point man, Ramirez, was waiting for him to give the word, but there was no word. Not here, not late at night, and sure as hell not this close to enemy lines. Bencher raised his left hand and used it to silently signal to get everyone back on their feet and ready to move out again.

              Ramirez didn't waste any more time and gently melded with the trees. Bencher and the rest of the patrol would follow his path. Ramirez was his best guy for this kind of stuff as he preferred to be out front always scanning always studying. He had not been caught unaware yet.

The weather was getting worse, and right now the snow was not that deep. If it kept up it would be a lot deeper soon. The humidity of the Peninsula made it real easy for snow to pile up quick. Bencher wanted to finish this stuff up and get back to his semi-warm bunker. The patrol just took them out a few kilometers, scouting through an area of the forest that was fairly well known. Both sides patrolled this part of the forest trying to keep each other at bay.

              Not for the hundredth time this night, Bencher wished one of the Ghost Platoon was out here with them. They could have done this gig in half time with half the stress and worry, but the General saved them for them for more important missions, not just your typical patrol.

              It was in the middle of that train of thought when suddenly the patrol stopped. As was common everyone took a knee and pointed their weapons outwards, waiting. Bencher initially had taken a knee out of habit. He scanned the woods trying to sense some danger. If Ramirez had stopped the patrol there would be a good reason. A slow minute ticked away nothing but the cold and the forest. Hand signals came down the line requesting the squad leader up front. On a night patrol close to enemy lines words were kept to a minimum. Crouched low Bencher moved up towards the Ramirez who was on point. Then at low crouch he slid past his guys and followed the foot prints in the snow. Ramirez had only been a few yards ahead of the rest of the group. He was kneeling along side of the trail with a kid named Dice. Both of them with red lensed flashlights were staring at something in the snow.

              Approaching, Bencher took a knee next to the two soldiers and was finally able to see what had halted the patrol. It wasn't just something, it was some
things
, three some things, to be exact. Ramirez and Dice were carefully looking over the bodies of three North Korean Soldiers.

              Now Bencher was pissed.
Really, bodies? Who gave a damn about a few bodies? After just a month of war everyone was more than used to bodies.
And now that Bencher could see the corpses closer, they weren't even in that bad of shape. The gruesome war had taught him quickly to ignore all the horrors that came with it. It was time to get moving and to stop wasting time looking at a few dead North Koreans. Heaven knew that Bencher had helped create more than his fair share of corpses recently.

              Losing his temper he broke the silence and whispered viciously at Ramirez and Dice.

              "What the hell? Stop staring and get moving you two. You've seen this shit before."

              "But, Sarge, look." Dice protested his voice barely a hiss.

              "Look, what? They're just bodies. You've seen them before, you'll see them again. Let's move out."

              Ramirez defended Dice.

              "Sergeant, the bodies aren't right. Look."

              Bencher stopped looking at his men and looked at the bodies. There was something strange. Dice and Ramirez were right, something was weird about them. First of all, the bodies seemed relatively new, as in not dead that long. Again, a few weeks at war and you quickly become an expert on bodies and how bodies changed after death. It wasn't that they seemed to be fresh kills, but someone had taken the time to put them kind of in a line. What was really odd was that both their hands and feet were bound.

              But the most random thing was that at first Bencher couldn't see how they had been killed. At first glance he could make out no major wounds, but their pallor looked as if the bodies had bled out from a major trauma wound. Dice saw him studying the bodies and knew the answer to his unasked question.

              "I couldn't figure it out either at first. Look at their necks, Sarge."

              "What?"

              "The neck; someone cut their jugular."

              Bencher looked around at the bodies and the ground, thinking he was wrong. There was no blood. Not a drop on them or on the ground. The snow should have been stained red. You cut someone's neck open, they're going to bleed, and bleed a lot. Three guys with their necks opened up, there should have been something, Ramirez and Dice had to be wrong.

              Ramirez saw the confusion on his face and pointed at the neck of one of the bodies.

              "Take a look. He's right."

              Bencher took Dice's out held flashlight. Sure enough, there was a deep cut on right side of all three corpses.

              "All right, what the hell is going on here?" He asked more to himself than Dice or Ramirez.

              They answered anyway.

              "Beats the shit out of me."

              "I have no idea."

              Bencher started to hypothesize out loud.

              "It looks like they were executed, but it can't have been right here. There's no blood. So did someone dump these bodies? And who killed these Koreans? Was it their own guys? We're closer to their side than ours. It can't be us, we don't do things this way."

              Ramirez and Dice looked at him quizzically after his last comment. The war had gotten very brutal very quickly. Executing an enemy prisoner that was proving a pain was not out of the question in this new war that was being played far away from the niceties of the Geneva Convention.

              "Ok, maybe we do. But we would have just shot them."

              Dice had a thought and unfortunately he voiced it aloud. It gave Bencher the creeps as soon as he did.

              "It looks like they've just been drained. Like when we used to slaughter animals back on the farm, you let them drain out. When finally you gut them it's less messy."

              He paused but still mumbled to himself.

              "Yep, they've been drained."

              All three men stared at the bodies. Bencher started to shiver. It wasn't the cold though. It was Dice's words that gave him the chill.
Drained.
I sure as hell hope not. Enough of this, it was time to wrap this patrol up.
They'd been out long enough as is.
Bencher was just about to tell Ramirez and Dice to start moving back to their own lines when a scream came ripping through the forest.

              It was the pitched wailing scream of a man in agony. It was so loud that it carried above the wind. The scream rose to a height of agony then slowly faded out as if it was like the volume of a radio being slowly turned to nothing.

              Again came the silence. Just the wind and the snow and three tired soldiers trapped in the middle of a Korean winter. The silence lasted only for a moment, then came another sound. If the scream was not startling enough, the next sound though not as loud but was far more disturbing. This sound was softer but more difficult to comprehend. Carried on the wind the sound was barely perceptible. The sound hung there disgustingly like bad joke teasing the men.

              Slrrp... Slrrp... Slrrp...

              At first Bencher couldn't tell what it was. It was as if his mind recoiled from the idea of what he might be hearing. His resistance shattered, he knew what he was hearing; it was the sound of someone drinking.

              Bencher turned in the snow and ran back to where the rest of the squad waited shivering in the cold. He gave a few quick orders and brought the rest of the squad through the forest to where Dice and Ramirez were waiting. The awful slurping sound was still there, drifting with the wind. If anything it was getting a little louder. Deep in the hollow pit of his stomach, Bencher wanted to lead the patrol away from the sound. Safety and warmth were only few kilometers away. He and his men could just say they heard the wind. Shouldn't some sounds be left alone? But this was his patrol and he knew what was his duty. His next orders were simple.