Don't Bug Me:: Curious Tales from Vietnam:: Part 1

[Faust]

As Jackson ripped through the sky he couldn't help but think of some story he heard long ago. It was the tale of the valkierys, the Noris angel's that would farry the souls of those that died in battle to the afterlife. The inside of a UH-1 Huey was no angel but she sure as hell flew like one. The canvas seatbelts bairly held him in his seat as the open doors to the chopper launched a heavy gust at him and his team. As the flew over the deady jungles of Vietnam, the napalm, bullets, death, and explosions seemed all but forgotten by the lush green canopy.

Jackson looked around the helicopter at his squad. There was Derick, the squad's FNG. Sure as day though, if that boy was ever captured by NVA, he could just as easily talk his way out as killing everyone in the compound. Then there was Nguyễn, a South Vietnamese rebel-turned-soldier after they needed a guide to the surrounding area. Wierdiest thing about Nguyễn though. No matter how many times he was offered and American weapon, he would decline in lue of his AK-47, so named "Hương". When it was the m14, he picked up his rifle, when the m16 became the standered weapon from Army GIs like themselves, Hu'o'ng was right by his side. Honestly, I think if his rifle left him, he'd die.

After the two there was Rian. He was alright. Black-irish by nature, his red hair and loud presance was contrast to his knack for knowing when to stay quiet. His m21 never seemed to be without a magazine, probably because he kept an unneseccary amount hidden in various parts of his person. No, really, I once saw him pop two Charlies, pull a mag out of his groin, then pop two more.

Yeah, his squad was weird like that. Then again, Jackson was a strange guy too. He wouldn't call himself anything that wasn't nice, but he might have been a little hatchet faced. Sure, he might have caught a grenade with his face one, and maybe he got hit by a ricocett bullet another time, but besides that, he was a handsom guy. Right?... Right?

"So," Rian began, attempting to raise his voice over the whirrle of the chopper, "What's our mission Sargent?"

"Command reported having recorded an impact from a downed airal object. They susspect it to be a Soviet spacecraft used for recon of our operations in Vietnam. The crash site was on an unexplored hilltop north of our possition. The chopper will set us down then pull off to avoid any un-needed attention from enemy patrols," Jackson spoke. "They're giving us exactly eight minutes to locate the shuttle and make it back to the LZ! That means no getting lazy! We find this thing and get out before enemy soldiers do. Ho-ah?"

"Understood!" Nguyễn replied quickly.

Jackson turned an eye to Derick who was stairing stait at him.

"Got something to say boy?" Jackson called.

"Huh? Uh, no. I was just looking at your, um--"

"Eye patch? Yeah, I get that a lot. Want a better look?"

Steadily, Jackson removed his eyepatch. Under it lay a perfectly fine eye. Just as the other, it was a dark hazel, it's deapth unmatched by anyone who had otherwised not experienced the horrors of war. Derick was both startalled and confused to see this other eye staring back at him. Then with one burly strike to the back of the head, the eye came out, showing only a fleshy, gapping black hole.

"Gah! Fuck! What the hell man!"

Chuckling Jackson placed the glass eye back into his socket. No matter how many times he did that to a new recruit, it never got old. Nguyen laughed cheerfully, forgetful of how he reacted when Jackson first did that to him. Meanwhile, Rian kept focas, scanning the tops of the trees with his M21 for any signes of movement.

"Alright!" The Huey piolet shouted to the crew, "The LZ is right up ahead. We're looking at a mountain top, there's some flat ground to set you on. Crash site should be about a quarter mile to the East from there. So good luck, yeah?"

"Yeah, I'll fly with you any day friend!"

As the Huey touched ground on the lush grass of the mountain top, all four GIs pilled out as the piolet got everything in order for his sweep of the area before returning. As a sudden last thought came to him, he threw two flareguns out the chopper's door for the men.

"Any issue," he blerted over the radio, "Toss up a flare and we'll reel you out with the towe cable, but don't expect a fun ride!"

"Thanks, we'll keep that in mind!"

As the chopper pulled off, the group got their gear together. Jackson pulled out his m16. Sure, it may not have been as powerful as the m14, but at least his m16 haddn't shot out his other eye yet, and lack of physical injury was reason enough to use it. Nguyen, as always, held his AK-47 in hand, Rian was checking the bullets in his M21, and Derick... wait, what? That couldn't be right. Derick was pulling out two mac 10s, one for each hand.

"Derick," Jackson groaned, "What are you doing."

"Arming myself Sarge!"

"Ha," Rian cut in. "Whatever you're doing, you're going to break you frickin' wrists!"

After another five minutes of debate, the crew had loaded up all their gear and where ready to head out. The lush mountain terrain crumpled under Jackson boots and reminded him just how far into the jungle they were. He could feel it in the way the sun beat down upon the mulched side of his face and saw it in the way Nguyễn scanned the treetops with his rifle close by.

"Alright," Jackson began, "We're knee deep in Charlie shit now... Welcome to paradise."

[Faust]

Part 2: Finders Keepers

As the squad inched nearer to the tree line that led up to a nearby cave, the entire forest seemed devoid of life. The usual hum of insects, the chatter of birds, and the whisper of the wind seemed lost to this ridge that time forgot. As Nguyen scanned the trees, the crew came upon a carcass, just before they reached the entrance to the cave. It was the mangled body of an ox, twisted and torn by some unseen predator.

Nguyen stepped up to the slain beast as if to scavenge what was left of the meat on the remains. Without any hesitation he crotched down on one knee, grabbed a handful of meat, and shovel it into him mouth. The sight of their dear friend feeding on this body was enough to cause the squad to shout out in terror. Expecting this, Nguyen chuckled to himself through his chunk of meat, ensuring he got every bit of information from it before he spat it out on the ground next to him. He stood up, ready to give the verdict.

"Fresh kill. I say two, maybe three hours old."

"You could tell that by the taste?"

"Well, the smell too... But mostly taste."

The gang just managed to swallow down their vomit at the thought of this.

"So what else can the tell us?" Johnston asked.

"Hum... Do you see these tares?"

Nguyen made a point of gripping the wounds the show them. It was defiantly odd. There where massive chunks of flesh removed, however it was not from eating. It was as if something had been dragged through the body before it fell dead.

"Tigers, elephants, even people, they leave their own trades of how they feed. People would have kill the creature with some sort of weapon and stripped it for meat, tigers would never leave a meal behind, elephants are too big for these hills..."

"So you're saying?--"

"What. The. Fuck." Rian finished for him.

"Exactly." Nguyen confirmed.

"Well that's just grand," Johnston started, "Now can we get on with the mission?"

As if to answer Johnston's question, the sound of a falling rock echoed out of the cave, alerting the team. Drawing their weapons, they all took aim at the cave's mouth, half expecting a wave of NVA to pour from it. Instead, they were met with total silence. Rian shot a glare at Derik.

"Derik, go check out that cave."

"What? Why me?"

"Because you're the one with two guns."

Derik quickly dropped one of his guns and continued to aim at the cave's mouth.

"I'm serious asshole, go check it out."

Grumbling to himself, Derik picked up the Mac 11 he dropped, shoved both in his chest rig, then sprinted off into the cave, ready to run if something not-so-friendly waited within. Seconds passed before his voice rang from inside.

"You're safe, advance!"

His group soon followed, meeting him within the jungle cave. At first glance it appeared subterranean, but after studying the multiple skylights and openings in the ceiling, Johnston found it to be an above ground structure carved out via rain water. They found Derik in the center of the structure, standing in amazement. They soon found why.

In the center of this incredible fortress sat a spider's web, though no ordinary spider's web. This web sat fifteen feet tall with a diameter of an up-scale home back in the states. It sat thick too, to the point that Rian even thought for a moment that it would stop a bullet if he tried to fire through it. Nguyen just sat before it puzzled, not having ever seen a web of this magnitude before.

"So what made this?" Rian asked.

"We could throw Derik in it and fine out when it comes to eat him," Johnston joked, "We might get to name it and be famous."

"We'll name it Derik just for giggles."

"Seriously?" Derik toned, "You see something like this and all you can do is make fun of me?"

"It is very easy." Nguyen spoke.

"Shut up, before I throw your gun into that pit."

Nguyen was still puzzled. What could have created this? He drew his Marine combat knife the Americans had issued him, reached for a dense grouping of webbing, and cut away at it until he had separated a pod-sized clump. Catching his drift, the rest of the group gathered around him, waiting for him to reveal what the creature that made this nest had been bundling up. Three cuts in, something odd fell out of the pod. When Rian picked it up, the group found it to be an AK-47. Urgently, Nguyen tore away at the pod more and more. When a tan cap fell from the pod, the squad already knew what was wrapped up long before Nguyen cut one last tare. When he did, they found them looking into the face of a dead Vietcong.

"Oh God!" Rian hollered. Derik himself almost fell backwards, and then ran of further into the cave to vomit. Johnston immediately radioed the Huey.

"You found the object?" The driver ventured over the radio.

"No, no, we just need to get the hell of this ridge. There is something else up here with us, something big. You need some sort of specialists for this!"

"Like an exterminator!" Derik shouted over to the sergeant, "Tell them to send an exterminator!"

"Alright, alright," the pilot radioed back, "We'll pick you up Sierra, just make sure you are at that LZ in the two minutes you have left."

"Come on," Johnston shouted to his squad, "We need to get out of here."

"That's it?" Rian guessed, "No quickly laid schemes? No shtick? No half-baked plan or even an attempt to figure out what this thing is? Sergeant, I expected better then you."

“Rian..." Johnston attempted to keep the furry he felt inside to a minimum in his voice. He hit his leg where a piece of Vietnamese shrapnel sat in his thigh.

"Vietnam, 1968."

He gripped the left side of his face, now mulched from a Chinese grenade.

"Korean war, 1952."

He flipped open his eye patch, once again showing his unmoving glass eye, his socket carved out from the bullet of an American rifle.

"Boot camp, 1948... And those scars are just the ones I can show you on the outside... All minor stuff compared to some of the stuff I've seen, with both one and two eyes. But I've never seen anything like this. I wasn't cut out for this. We're going back to command, and then they'll figure this ridge out for us."

Rian knew he was right. That was just one pod Nguyen had opened. There were hundreds in this large cobweb. He shivered to think of what might be in some of the others.

"Alright," Rian began, "Nguyen, Derik, we're-- where is Derik?"

Nguyen looked up and shrugged. This was his first time looking up from the face of the dead VC since prying the webbing off. Rian search frantically for Derik. Eventually he found what he was looking for in the tunnel Derik ran off into; one of Derik's Mac 11s. Five feet in front of the weapon sat a large, gaiping hole in the floor, laced with the same cobweb substance they say further into the cave. The three remaining members of the squad encircled the hole is silence.

Rian pulled one of him many Colt clips from his sleeve an tossed it down the hole. It simply slid down without bashing into the sides of the hole are dropping a significant distance. The three-foot-around-hole was covered over in the webbing so well it had become a shoot to the bottom.

"Well," Rian began, "Looks like he could have lived through that. Might have stumbled, dropped his SMG, then went ass-over-end into the hole... I'm sure he'll turn up later."

Johnston gave him a sarcastic look.

"You know we need to find him, right?"

Rian sighed slightly before answering, "Yes."

Johnston spoke back into the radio.

"RT Iowa, hold off on that extraction, we need to take a detour. Look for our flare for an extraction cable to pick us up."

Nguyen looked into the dark slide.

"I really don't want to do this."

"Get down that slide, soldier! You're going first."

Mumbling Vietnamese to himself, Nguyen scooted into the slide, crossed himself, the vaulted himself down into the depths of the cave. Rian was next, saying his prayers out loud for what may have been the last time, the launched himself down. Johnston was the last to do down the slide, loading one mag into Derik's Mac 11 just in case, gripped it with one hand and the slide with the other, and threw himself down into the depths of the underground.