The transcript, p.8
The Transcript, page 8
He paused to catch his breath, the elevation here was over 6500 feet. His lungs could feel it as his heart beat heavily in his chest. It was also much colder at this elevation at sunset. Every breath he took sent a cloud from his mouth into the air. Dan shivered beneath his meager “winter” clothing. Before he continued, he looked around. The landscape was covered in the black and grey blanket of cool-ed lava. To the unknowing, this place was nothing more than a wasteland. But not Dan. He knew better now.
The sky was getting dark, and Dan was starting to get nervous about having to find his way. But soon he scrambled up the slopes to the familiar maw of a tube.
The warrior stood before him at the mouth of the lava tube, arms crossed and scowling. Waiting patiently for the deed to be done. Out of the corner of his eye, Dan spied glowing orbs peering over the boulders; little figures darting out of sight before he could look.
This was the place.
He stood before the hole in the ground and couldn't help but reflect on that fateful decision three months ago. He stood frozen, thinking. A bark snapped him out it and he saw the white cur run into the darkness of the tube.
“It's now or never,” Dan heard himself say.
The beating of the drums was almost ear splitting as he descended. He dug a flashlight out of his pack and shined its light into the darkness.
He hurriedly paced the length of the tube until he came upon a familiar sight: the obelisk of black stone and a frozen deluge of hardened lava.
The white dog came up behind him, nudging him along with a wet nose as he nervously stepped towards the throne formed in the center of the cave.
As Dan approached, he suddenly sank to his knees in exhaustion, his self-inflicted burden was almost done.
Dan took off his pack and fished out the stone. He in-ched closer as his hands began to shake, and he held his breath as he returned it to its welcoming home.
As it began to touch the volcanic rock, Dan could feel the slightest tug.
He could feel the concussions of the drums now; the chanting overwhelming. Tears flowed from his eyes.
Dan no longer held the stone.
Silence. The drums had stopped, the chanters had gone. Dan remained, sunken to his knees, surrounded by silence and the flashlight he hadn’t even known he’d dropped.
He felt a rumbling in the earth, like a wave on the ocean had passed underneath him. The walls of the tube shook and debris started to from the ceiling. Dan turned around, grab-bing his flashlight and shining it on the white dog who was still with him. It was whining. Dan decided that he wasn't ready for this place to be his tomb. He began moving back the way he’d came.
The dog ran ahead of Dan, and in the darkness the ground continued to shake. Dan scrambled up and out of the tube, resting on his knees at the top. He stared into the now dark, black sky. It was much colder now; he could feel it in his bones as the wind cut through him, causing a spasm of shivers.
The ground shook violently as the sound of cracking earth exploded forth, and a red glow appeared at the top of Mauna Loa. Dan looked in horror as lava spewed from fissure vents and volcanic ash was sent into the sky. The night was chased away by the awesome glow of nature’s fury.
The dog trotted beyond Dan and sat beside the feet of the woman. A Hawaiian woman in flowing white robes; imposing, beautiful and radiant. She was the power beneath Dan. She was the rage beneath the earth.
“Pele,” escaped from his mouth, and he whispered it softly. His eyes filled with wonder and fear.
She smiled. Now, he understood.
The stone was part of her. Just like this entire island was nothing more than a part of her. Part of her anger and joy flung from the deepest part of the earth. Which now had awakened once more as it raged, creating new land as it destroyed the old. Her destruction and creation. Each piece of stone was a reminder of her, part of her. But the odd stone he’d snatched from beneath the earth was her.
Dan returned the smile as his face was lit by the glowing of lava now flowing like a river down the slopes. She walked towards him, once again placing a hand on his cheek as she looked into his eyes. She turned and observed her work, a white dog by her side.
Dan slowly laid down, embracing the forgiving forces beneath him, and closed his eyes. The ground was warm and he no longer felt the cut of the cold mountain air. The vol-cano didn't worry him, nothing did. Not anymore. He welcomed the deep, comforting sleep that came next. In its embrace, beneath an ancient sky on sacred ground, he dre-amt of lava and raging gods.
“Pele’s curse can last for days, months, and even years after picking the lava rocks. It’s believed that the only way to rid your-self of the curse is to return the “stolen” item to the island. This explains why numerous tourists write letters to the [Hawaii Volcano] National Park begging the rangers to return the rocks on their behalf”
—Hawaii Guide
A Feast Unseen in Ages
Part I
In the cradle of civilization, a city burned.
Gunfire and explosions echoed through the night, a perfect camouflage of chaos and madness in a city that had turned itself into a veritable inferno. It was the end of day two, and the Second Battle of Fallujah burned. Tracer fire lashed out at coalition aircraft overhead, resulting in rocket and cannon fire that silenced the source permanently. Pre-cision bombs were dropped from high flyers, impacting onto the foreheads of the unlucky insurgents below. Somewhere in the distance the distinctive “thump-thump-thump” of a 40mm cannon raining down from the heavens above, revealed that an AC-130 “Spooky Gunship” swung its scythe over the Fallujah night.
Such a field of death ready for harvest. Shouts of men in combat echoed across the urban sprawl, the ghostly wails of the dying and suffering competed with the sounds of abject violence. Dark shadows with malign intent crawled just out of sight. All the while, foreign fighters with a death wish lay patiently in snipers’ nests, and local boys prowled the alley-ways and rooftops with RPGs at the ready. The civilians who hadn’t fled the city desperately huddled together; praying to make it through the night while bombs fell and dark shadows scratched at their doors.
Cpl Martinez and the marines of Third Platoon were part of the effort to put the fire out. It was the battle for Fallujah, the second one, and the task would be daunting.
Operation Phantom Fury had been launched to secure the Iraqi city, which had been overran by insurgent forces led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The drums of war had been beaten in the city for weeks, and the extremist sects had succeeded in staging a full on uprising. Foreign fighters had flooded the city from all corners of the Islamic world; some five thousand of them had spent the last several months turning Fallujah into a veritable fortress. The insurgents knew the Americans couldn’t allow them to hold such influ-ence (especially before the Iraqi elections) and had been making the preparations to welcome them. Tunnels had been dug, buildings turned into death traps, ambushes set, and thousands upon thousands of weapons and even more ammunition had made it into the city. If the Americans wanted to take it, the followers of al-Zarqawi would make them bleed for it.
It was night two of the battle, and it was far from over. The Coalition forces were taking the city street by street, house by house, and room by room. A machine gun nest or a child’s nursey sat just behind the corner. It was tedious as it was deadly. Fallujah had quickly become the most dang-erous place on earth. The horror of uncertainty and the unknown ran rampant for the men and women tasked to walk gun’s up and liberate.
For all the technological advances that the Western armies had, men like Cpl Martinez needed to get their hands dirty to root out the enemy. Insurgents could literally be anywhere, anyplace, waiting to blast men like Martinez in the face when he least expected it.
Third Platoon had been tasked this night to do what they did best: kill. Conducting what was known as “search and destroy,” their task was to push past the current line of troops and kill, or destroy anything of use to the enemy. That meant looking for staging areas for the insurgent forces, weapon caches, and any command-and-control nodes. It was a grunt’s dream, a genuine, free-fire search and destroy. It was the Wild West.
There were threats that the marines needed to find. Enemy mortar teams had been peppering Coalition forces and MANPAD teams laid in weight to shoot down any medevac chopper they could get the drop on. These enemy used the terrain to their advantage, firing and slipping away into the maze of buildings before counterfires could wipe them out. These threats needed to be dealt with the old-fashioned way: Cpl Martinez and the marines of Third Squad were on the hunt.
Martinez and his platoon rounded a corner, and shots immediately rang out. Across the street, a machine gun opened up from what appeared in the darkness to be a small building. Additional muzzle flashes from AK-47s then eru-pted; probably from its windows. The distinctive noise of a venerable RPG shrieked into the fray, and the rocket propelled grenade sailed towards them.
An ambush. A sloppy one.
These insurgents were determined, but luckily for the marines, this group was not some of the battled hardened fighters from the likes of Chechnya and Al Qaeda. They were just young, but fanatical men who answered the holy call to kill the infidel invaders.
The machine gunner fired too early. His long burst aimed at Martinez’s point man went high, sending tracers over the point man’s head while he dived for cover. Tracers lit up the dark street in bursts of green death. Then a loud “clack!” sounded as that dirty weapon jammed.
The others inside the building fired and fired. Like their man on the machine gun, they probably only had the faintest idea of how to use their weapons. Everything in the night air was struck but the marines. The RPG gunner fired at them, impacting against the corner the marines were rounding, sending rubble everywhere but having no other effect. Unlike the Americans, these attackers lacked night vision. They used flashlights to try and illuminate the marines. Hopped up on drugs and fanaticism, these fighters may have botched their ambush, but they were still dangerous and looking to win at any cost. As the Americans spread out, the insurgents redoubled their fire.
However, unlike the insurgents, the men of Third Pla-toon were beyond lethal.
The marines remembered the training that had been drilled into them, repetitions beyond count. Hand signals and shouts communicated, the marines took cover and set up a base of fire. Their M16s barked in three round bursts and gunners fed their M249s; sending a hail of 5.56 towards the insurgents.
Two marines let loose with their M203s; sending 40mm grenades into windows where they exploded in a flash.
At this point, Martinez would have begun maneuvers to close with and kill the insurgents.
But just like that, the battle was over. The enemy fire just stopped. Like a switch had been flipped, the gunfire was simply gone.
A cease fire was called, and the marines began to cau-tiously move toward the enemy position. In the green light of their night vision, they saw they were approaching what had once been a restaurant.
Part II
It was possible that the marines had killed them all, but the gunfire falling that sudden? Martinez and his men had all been briefed that their foe was made up of diehards willing to fight until the bitter end. The more seasoned marines’ hackles instantly went up, their foe was also not afraid to play dead. This could well be a tactic to draw them into yet another ambush.
Trap or not, the order was called to clear the building. First Squad moved in on the restaurant. Cpl Martinez bounded with his team with his finger on the trigger and eyes weary for movement. It was impossible to know what the enemy would do next. The marines also had to be aware that there were civilians still in the city. A shadow behind a window could easily be a child or a curious grandfather.
Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, Martinez reminded himself. Getting sloppy could mean disaster for him or his marines.
Martinez and his team took cover behind a car that was in front of the restaurant. So far, the insurgents hadn’t opened fire. Could mean they were dead, could mean they had run, or they could be playing possum. The marines had been briefed that insurgents were likely to play dead or wounded to get as close as possible to drop a grenade or pull a fast draw.
Martinez scanned the building with his NVGs. No movement. Besides the gunfire and explosions of the battle off in the distance, it was silent.
He scanned his sectors with his team…something caught his eye in the darkness. Beyond one of the large open-air windows of the restaurant, there was now move-ment. A shadow rose. It resembled a person for a split second, but it registered with Martinez that it seemed thin and lanky; it was too dark to get much more detail. Maybe it was one of the insurgents ready to get the fight underway again? Cpl Martinez stared through the hazy green of his NVGs and the shadow seemed to turn its head to then stare in his direction. Martinez felt his hair stand on end.
The figure was staring at him, through the darkness, and he somehow knew it. Worse yet, the figure’s eyes glowed bright, like a predator’s eyeshine. Before he could even consider squeezing his trigger, who— or whatever it was, turned and moved out of site. Despite the humid night air, Cpl Martinez felt a chill surge through his body.
He suddenly felt as if he saw something he shouldn’t have.
“What the fuck was that?” He heard himself say.
“What was what, Corporal?” whispered Lance Corporal Barnes, still staring down the barrel of his M16.
Cpl Martinez snapped himself out of it, replying, “Thought I saw movement at my twelve-o clock. Could be one of the gunmen. Get your rifle on that window.” The figure seemed nowhere in sight. He had to get focused again, any distraction could mean life or death.
Martinez’s squad leader called Third Squad forward and they began to stack up on a side door. Martinez took his spot as the third man in the stack, eyeing the wall of the restaur-ant. Those insurgents may have gone quiet, but the marines needed to make sure that they were indeed dead.
The lead marine moved forward and with three blasts of a shotgun blasted off the door hinges, after delivering a kick that sent the door falling, back into the darkness of the restaurant. The marines then surged into the breach. They moved with deadly deliberateness; drill after drill had made them adapt at maneuvering the long eighteen-inch barrels of their M16s in confined quarters.
They moved quickly, sweeping room after room, corner after corner. A staircase revealed the entrance to a second story. Slowly, up the stairs the marines moved. No insur-gents, but they found a nice sniper’s nest and a cache of weapons.
But no enemy. No bodies. It was like they had all just vanished.
Cpl Martinez found signs that the firefight hadn’t been in their heads. Before his boots lay a mess of blood and dirt and shell casings from an AK-47. No bodies, though. Weapons, yes; abandoned on the floor. Lots of blood, that too; on the ground, dark, warm, and sticky. The marines definitely had hit someone, but—
“Maybe they dragged him off?” another marine said to Martinez. “But where?”
The corporal looked around and it hit him—this was the spot he had seen that shadow. He suddenly got a bad feeling in the back of his head.
On the ground were a few prints, expected if someone dragged off a body. But in the blood, Martinez noticed the footprints were barefoot. Not too unusual, many Iraqis walked around without shoes. On the wall right then, dropping his stomach, something held his gaze.
It was a singular handprint. A bloody contour. And it was…wrong. It was much bigger than a man’s; its thin fingers as long as Martinez’s whole hand.
The other marines had stopped to stare at it too, all in silent bewilderment.
“Corporal,” Barnes said, “check it out. A blood trail.”
Down the hall towards another staircase was indeed a trail of blood, the kind smeared onto a dirty floor by a dead body dragged by eager hands. Guns up, the marines followed. It led them down the stairs, towards a back door that hung ajar before opening into the unknown night.
The marines crept closer and stared out the doorway, following with their night vision the gleams of the blood trail. It seemed to paint its way into a meager alleyway and then onto a backstreet. Past some trashcans, the trail stre-tched a bit farther and at its end lay a body abandoned around a corner. The white robe “man jammies” and soviet style chest rig gave the body away as one of the insurgents. The marines could see the glazy gaze of death. The body's jaw and nose were missing, too, its neck a ruin. Whatever life it carried was gone now, just a still mess of flesh.
Suddenly the body jerked around the corner and out of sight. The marines raised their rifles and got behind what cover they could. The insurgents could just be around the corner; it was rare for them to recover the dead, which meant they could be planning to come back once the marines left.
As they waited, a face appeared around the corner. Under the green hue of their NVGs, details were not always clear. But this face was clear enough. Hauntingly so. It looked like a man crouched on all fours, peering around the corner. He looked like the shadow Martinez had seen; thin and gaunt. He, no, this was no man.
Under Martinez’s green filter, its skin was still pale and sickly. Its head was humanlike, yes, but all wrong, like if a human’s face was removed of all its hair and then stretched over a skull that was too large. Its mouth seemed cavernous, hanging open as it stared at the marines.
Martinez at first thought it was drooling. Liquid dripped from its sharp, pointed teeth…but Martinez squinted until he realized what he was looking at was blood. Its hands, wrapped around the corner of the alley, had caused that hor-rid print on the wall, but what stood out most was its eyes. Set deep in its face, large pits glowed in their center.
Cpl Martinez had taken fire, been caught in explosions, even taking a round to his flak. War had never made him feel like he did now. He wanted to run, faster than his racing heart. He was afraid.
