The transcript, p.16
The Transcript, page 16
“Hey, we got a live one here!” shouted a soldier.
Rayburn shuffled over to where his two guys now stood over a new body. What was left of a man wiggled and coughed. Rayburn felt the bile rise in his throat and he felt himself recoil in horror. The man was missing every arm and leg. Large gashes covered his face, slashes that went around his eye sockets which now were both gaping and empty. How this man was alive was a mystery to Rayburn. He couldn’t deny the cruelness of the violence inflicted on this man…and deep within his soul he knew something had done this because it had enjoyed it.
“Holy fuck, that’s fuckin’ fucked up, man. What the fuck,” one of the soldiers stammered. “This is beyond fucked.”
“Shut up—he’s trying to say something,” the other soldier said, pushing him aside. “We need Ali and a medic up here!”
Rayburn just stared, the body wiggling like a worm in the blood and dirt. He appreciated the humanity of calling for a medic, but this man was dead. He turned to watch the medic and Ali approach. The medic took one look at the scene and vomited onto the ground.
“Ali, get over here,” Rayburn demanded. “What is he saying?” Rayburn watched the terrified interpreter; how the color was draining from his face.
“Ali, wake the fuck up!” Rayburn shouted, his voice cracking from his own fear.
Ali hustled over, clumsily falling to his knees. He gulped and leaned his ear to the dying man. He winced and looked up at Rayburn, confused looking, before speaking slowly as the brown of his face drained completely. “He’s saying something about demons. Demons, demons, demons, over and over again.”
“What do you mean demo…” Rayburn started to say. But before he could finish, the doomed man at his feet died with the sound of a wet death rattle.
“Poor fucker,” a soldier remarked.
Rayburn turned around to see Vega marching up to him, “Sir, we need to leave—now.”
The lieutenant took a reluctant step backward before composing himself. “Our mission is to recon this area and set up an observation post. I don't know what this is about, but we can't let it scare us.”
SFC Vega’s face turned to stone. They stared at the other without a word until, at last, the platoon sergeant said calmly, “We’ve done our recon, sir. We should pullout and report this higher. Something is wrong here. I’ve tried calling back. Nothing. Without comms we’re on our own right now.” The usually stoic Vega was cracking and Rayburn could see it replicating in the faces of his soldiers.
“It’s getting dark,” continued Vega. “This is not the place to get caught with no comms and no support.
Rayburn thought it over. Vega was spooked. But, to his point, something was wrong and without comms they were on their own. If what was left of the Taliban or whatever did this decided to confront them, having no way to call for help meant none of them were getting out of here alive.
“Alright, let’s egress out of the valley. We’ll set up an observation post at the mouth and contact the rest of the company. Get the platoon on their feet.”
With that Vega was in motion, getting the platoon organized to move. Rayburn turned to look over the bodies once again. What happened here? He gripped his M4 tighter. It was around then when something caught his eye, movement among some rocks in the distance. For a second, he swore he saw a dark shape scurry over them before darting from view. He suddenly had the distinct feeling that he was being watched. He raised his M4 and scanned the terrain. Just my nerves, he told himself.
Rayburn turned to join his platoon and they began mov-ing swiftly back the way they came. He followed up at the rear, partly because the platoon started without him and partly because he wanted to make sure no one got left behind. Vega, eager to leave, took point with the map as they followed their footprints back to the pass. Rayburn couldn't shake that feeling: he was being watched. He kept glancing behind him, seeing if they were being followed. The men were jumpy, too. They gripped their weapons as if marching into a shoot house. The discovery of the bodies was enough, but Vega’s demeanor only served to shake harder their nerves.
The platoon came to an abrupt halt. Rayburn looked over his men’s heads and his blood ran cold as he saw what the cause for the stop was. The pass was gone. He looked around the sheer cliff face before them. The pass to the valley should be right here. But it wasn't. It was impossible. Yet, as he continued to scrutinize their surroundings, everything seemed different from when they had entered the valley. In front of them was exactly where they had come from. He could see their footprints. But now a massive cliff blocked their gone mountain pass. Rayburn ran to the front of the formation as Vega and several other soldiers spread out along the cliff face, searching in vain for a way through. He approached and placed a hand on the wall, it didn't seem real and yet here it was.
Vega came up to him with a map in one hand, GPS in the other. “It doesn’t make sense. No fucking sense,” he muttered. He then turned to the radioman, “Try again, call back to them.”
The radioman soon shouted back, “No response, sergeant!”
Vega stammered to Rayburn, “It doesn’t make any sense.” Vega stormed off to retrace their steps, looking at the map in shock.
“It doesn’t,” Rayburn said, further examining the cliff. But before he could examine any further, his hair suddenly stood on end as his brain blared a klaxon that bounced off his skull. Screams reverberated off the canyon walls imprisoning his platoon. A wet, terrible screech that was so unlike anything Rayburn had ever heard. The scream began to fade, and as it did a chorus of other throats bellowed in response from the dark forest behind the platoon. All around him, his soldiers gripped their weapons; uncertain with fear, stepping closer and closer together with their backs against the cliff face.
Vega turned to say something, but his shout was stifled as something pierced through his neck. An arrow.
Vega clutched at his throat as he crumpled to the ground, scarlet blood gushing from his severed artery. Rayburn lunged for his platoon sergeant as blood splattered on his body armor. He tried to stop the bleeding with his hands as he screamed “Medic!” and desperately reached for the Vega’s IFAK.
But, in the end, there was nothing Rayburn could do. Vega gurgled his final breaths as Rayburn looked up in horror to see the medic now take an arrow to the chest, sending him backwards. He scrambled away behind a boulder; the Kevlar plate of his vest having done its job.
“Contact front!” some soldier shouted. “They’re coming out of the wood line!”
Rayburn stood, stunned, staring at Vega. Someone yell-ed “Open fire!” and the sharp clacks of a platoon’s worth of M4s came to life as figures closed in. A burst from a M249 brought Rayburn back to reality, and he raised his own weapon.
Dozens of strange and grotesque figures rushed towards his platoon, while several more shot their arrows. Some ran on two feet, others galloped on all fours like animals, blending the line between beast and man. Screams that promised violence and death pierced the air. Rayburn shou-ldered his rifle, staring through his ACOG at the forms rushing towards him, and what he saw terrified him. Whatever was barreling towards him wasn't human. Some ancestral memory fired off in terror in the depths of Rayburn’s brain. It screamed in recognition and Rayburn realized he was staring at something unnatural, an aberration. A face stared back at him as a mouth full of fangs screamed for his death. Like something ripped from some biblical painting, what he could only call a demon bared down on him. Its form was nothing more than a twisted mockery of man: reddish skin glistening, stretched taught over an emaciated body. Broken horns adorned its elongated head and scars crisscrossed its body. Clawed hands clutched both a rusty sword and a spear. Yellow eyes fired pure malice into Rayburn’s eyes as he watched a purple tongue snake around dagger-like teeth.
Rayburn’s placed the red reticle of his ACOG on the chest of the demon and he squeezed the trigger. His M4 pumped three rounds into the thing, and he watched rust-colored blood spray free. The demon stumbled onto its knees. It quickly regained its footing and continued its char-ge with a renewed rage. Rayburn exhaled and pumped two more rounds through the demon’s skull; disintegrating half its face. The demon dropped its weapons then as it folded in half, slamming into the ground and skidding to a halt. As it twitched in the dirt, more descended from the hills; besieging the platoon, closing in for the kill.
Arrows and rocks rained down. The platoon tried to dodge and shoot. “Fire at will!” Rayburn screamed as he dropped to a knee, taking aim at the archers. He calmed himself, countless hours behind the gun began to pay off. Each figure he sighted in on was dropped with headshots. Rayburn burned through his magazine before he slammed in another, he and his M4 killing several more archers after. As the last one he saw fell back with a mouthful of 5.56mm, Rayburn took a look around.
The horde had encircled the platoon, cutting off all avenues of escape. With their backs against the wall, the soldiers were still firing. Demons sidestepped and scrambled past their dead. They soon reached their prey, falling on their victims with a violent fury, overwhelming several of his men.
Rayburn watched as Ali stood his ground, firing an M9 pistol in a futile effort as a demon bore down on him. The rounds blossomed on the demon’s flesh, but its yellow eyes were locked on the kill. Wrapping a clawed hand around Ali’s neck, its strength betraying its emaciated form, it lifted him off the ground with one hand. It screamed as it slammed the doomed man’s body over and over. There was a sick-ening crunch Rayburn could hear over the gunfire as Ali’s skull cracked like an egg. The demon bent over and scooped the man’s brains off the ground. Rayburn fire three rounds into that creature, cutting its celebration short, avenging Ali. He pulled two grenades from his kit next, pulling the pins and throwing them towards the growing mass of bodies. The grenades landed in the demon’s midst as they ran oblivious. Rayburn hit the deck as twin “thumps” sent shrapnel flying, dismembering, and scattering several enemy. It made the others stumble back in surprise. Rayburn took the oppor-tunity.
“Machine gunners on me!” he cried, waving them towards him. “Get those fucking guns up!—Fall back behind the 240s!” he screamed to the rest of the platoon, many of whom repeated his command. “Form a firing line!”
His men fell back behind him, up against the cliff as the M240s came to life. The machine guns sent a hail of 7.62 in a thunderous roar, ripping into the twisted bodies that bore down on them. The rest of the platoon followed suit as a concentrated wall of fire erupted. Some men lobbed gre-nades and fired their underslung grenade launchers, scatt-ering and tearing the demons apart.
Over the staccato of the Americans weapons, Rayburn began to hear the distinct clacks of AK-47s. Several figures rose up on a hill to his right, firing into the wave of demons and throwing their own grenades. He saw two figures crouch, and the distinct whoosh of two RPG-7s fired at once, the explosions adding to their firepower. This new opponent was enough to surprise the demons, who were cut down en masse. The horde began to break apart and scatter back into the hillside under the combined fire of both parties.
“Cease fire! Cease Fire!” Rayburn shouted as he watched the last demon gunned down, abandoned by its brethren.
The figures up above began to approach. More than a dozen crested the hill and moved swiftly towards the platoon. Rayburn stepped forward and held his rifle up at the figures. He wasn't sure if they were friend or foe, but he wasn't about to risk his life or his men’s after what had just happened.
“Halt. Coalition forces! Halt or I will fire on you!” he shouted holding his rifle in one hand and trying to wave off the figures with the other. They were men. Strange men. One of them then stepped closer, surveying the carnage before looking up at Rayburn.
He said, “Я не говорю по-английски, может кто-нибудь привести британского ублюдка?”
Part II
Rayburn’s eyes widened—both in surprise and in recognition. Straight from a history book, the men in front of him, did in fact, resemble the Russians who invaded Afghanistan. They wore tattered uniforms of splotchy green and brown, but with blue and white undershirts. The blue beret on the man who spoke gave them away as paratroopers of the VDV. Rayburn counted: fourteen in all, each one of them clutching Soviet bloc weapons. Rayburn spied the RPG that had fired just moments ago, as well as a Dragunov sniper rifle.
The man in the blue beret studied him. His eyes rested on Rayburn’s right shoulder. He turned to his squamates, and spurted out in Russian, “Похоже, американцы решили вторгнуться в эту богом забытую страну. Думаешь, они понимают, в каком аду они оказались?” Rayburn had no idea what he just said, but the other Russ-ians began to murmur amongst themselves.
The man in the blue beret turned his attention back to Rayburn with an amused look on his face, “эй, американец, ты выглядишь так же, как тот американец, которого я помню. скажите мне, мы выиграли войну в Афганистане? или мы с тобой сейчас ссоримся? Не то чтобы это имело большое значение.”
Rayburn lowered his rifle slightly as he stared dumbfounded. His men around him glanced at one another nervously as they too struggled to comprehend what the Russian said. The Russian rolled his eyes. He spoke in a comically thick accent, as he pointed with a free finger at himself, “My English. Shit.”
Just then a man approached the group, as a loud cockney voice announced, “Oi—what’s all this then? Lower your weapons friends, there’s no need for that here.”
A man in a British redcoat jogged up to them. His uniform was distinct as it was tattered, too old to make sense; complete with a saber that dangled from his hip. But the Brit held his own AK-47. He halted in front of Rayburn’s platoon, sizing them up with the sharp eyes of a professional. He turned his attention to Rayburn and rendered a quick salute. “Major Benedict Masterson of Her Majesty’s 43rd Regiment of Foot. At your service.”
The man held his salute. Rayburn looked around, unsure of what to do next. Things just kept getting weirder. He decided to return the salute. “First Lieutenant Fredrick Ray-burn,” he said, awkwardly. “1st Platoon, Fox Company, 423rd Infantry Regiment.”
Major Masterson smiled. “You’ll have to forgive our comrades here. Leytenant Vortesky’s English and my Russian are both quite shit. Our mutual language lessons are ongoing.”
Rayburn eyed the major with suspicion, his eyes glancing between the Brit and the Russians. He looked behind him at the faces of his own men; those who had sur-vived the battle. He took inventory of the survivors, thirty-two of the platoon’s original forty-seven were still standing. Vega, Ali, and the rest lay dead in the dirt. Each of the survivors wore uncertainty and grim dread on their face. They were neck deep in whatever horror movie they had found themselves in.
Rayburn turned back to the major. “We’re not going anywhere until you explain to me what the fuck is going on.”
The major looked beyond the cliffs at the fading light of a dying sun. “I’m sure you have plenty of questions, Lieu-tenant, and I assuredly will attempt to answer them. But at the moment we are losing daylight and we do not want to be caught outside in the dark here…believe me.”
The major’s cheerful face suddenly hardened, “And if you don't want to die like the others,” he motioned to Rayburn’s slain men, “you’ll follow.”
Rayburn stared into the major’s eyes and then into the Russians’. He could feel his heartbeat with fear, but they needed to find someplace defensible. He sighed, “Alright, we’ll follow.”
The major nodded, “Good,” he said, “we will take you to the fort.” He pointed down again at the bodies. “ Your dead will have to stay here, they’ll only slow us down.” Rayburn started to object; he wouldn’t leave the dead here to rot. But the major held up his hand. “They’ll slow us down, and the more we daddle out here, our enemy will attack.”
Rayburn stared at the major before reluctantly walking to one of the dead, he recognized the dead man as a young private from Minnesota. He stared for a moment before bending down and grasping at the dog tags covered in blood in the ruins of his neck. He pulled them off, silent in thought as stared at them. He bounced the bloody tags in his hand before shoving them into a cargo pocket on his trousers. He stared at the young soldier, thinking about the insanity of what occurred. He heard footsteps in the dirt behind him as the major came to stand next to him. As if reading Rayburn’s mind he said, “Lieutenant, I know. Trust me, I know. The bones of my battalion litter this entire valley.”
He placed a hand on Rayburn’s shoulder, “I’d recom-mend grabbing whatever you need or want off of them. They’ll buy us more time as a distraction…there won’t be much left come morning.”
The Major walked away from the Americans with his rifle slung across his back, tapping his saber with the tips of his fingers. He stopped and turned to Rayburn as if remembering something. “Things get a lot easier in the morning. I’ll explain and answer all the questions you have at the fort.” He glanced down at a pocket watch he pulled from his coat, “I’ll give you ten minutes before we march.”
