The transcript, p.9
The Transcript, page 9
This creature that peered out, around the corner and eyed the marines, it gave them the faintest smile, then it vanished around the corner.
The marines stood in stunned silence before one of them blurted out nervously, “Ugh, did anyone else see that weird fuckin’ dog?”
“That wasn’t a fucking dog, bro.”
“Then what the fuck was that, dude?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know what the fuck that was,” Cpl Martinez whispered.
Was it a man? Some fucked up animal? An escaped monkey maybe? Martinez’s mind began to wander. But Marines didn’t long to sit around and ponder what they had just seen. All of them wanted to get the fuck away from this place. They still had a mission to do, too, freaks running around Fallujah or not.
The squad leader called out for the marines to rally back up together.
Third Squad rejoined the rest of the platoon and Martinez was called up with the other team leaders.
“Listen up,” the squad leader said. “Command is calling for a change of mission. Scouts spotted some activity in what looked like some ruins on the outskirts of the city. Looked like mortar teams setting up, and two squad-sized elements. Oorah, Marines?”
Most of the marines growled out a sharp “Kill!” and “Get Some!” in institutionalized motivation. While others responded with a soft “Oorah.” desperately trying to distract themselves from the borderline demonic event they had just witnessed.
“Rah,” Martinez let out, rolling his eyes in the dark, thinking, Whatever you say, Big Sarge.
Part III
The marines were up and moving through the city. Between the sounds of war it was eerily quiet, save the jingle of equipment and their own bootsteps. This part of the city was a ghost town. No more ambushes challenged the marines, but Cpl Martinez couldn’t help but feel that they were being watched.
Then at one point, if he didn’t know any better, he kept seeing a figure running along the rooftops just almost out of sight. A slender figure, not unlike what he saw before, run-ning on all fours and leaping across the gaps like some twisted mix of a dog and a monkey. As they barreled down the maze of Fallujah towards their objective, all the marines of Third Platoon caught a glimpse of that humanoid figure; peering at them from some corner and they felt a gnawing fear in their stomachs. They all were tired, war had taken its toll, surely it was all in their heads.
They came to a halt just outside their objective and cleared a two-story building. The marines quickly set up a well-defended patrol base, the last thing they needed was to let their guard down now. The night was still young and dangerous.
Martinez crouched just out of sight behind a window. He still peered cautiously at the rooftops, spying a pair of glowing eyes still peering down at the marines.
No one was shooting at them, no IEDs had gone off, no mortars had landed near them yet.
More dangerous things to worry about I guess, Martinez mused.
Whatever it was, it didn’t seem like it was a threat and was keeping its distance.
For now, at least, he thought. As if drugged-out insur-gents weren’t bad enough. Now he had to worry about monsters in the dark.
“Yo, Corporal, check it out. Got movement across the street.”
Cpl Martinez peered out from the window some one hundred yards down the street. An Iraqi man slowly crept across.
“I see him, I see one military-aged male. Any weapons?” Cpl Martinez asked.
“Looks wounded but I see an AK-47, should we smoke him?”
“No, let him pass. Let’s not give away our location.”
As Martinez watched the Iraqi, he saw that indeed he did clutch an AK, and that he walked with a noticeable limp. It was hard to tell if he was a civilian or an insurgent. Martinez had learned this conflict had a way of blurring the lines.
All of a sudden, the man began firing into the dark. The marines tensed up, holding their fire as they watched. The gunfire wasn't directed at them, but something behind the man.
The man fired wildly, until a blur blitzed across the street. The shadowy form seized the man, whose AK-47 went flying. The shadowy form had been joined by two others; who’d leapt from the roofs, down onto the street.
There are three of them.
The three figures had the struggling man, each grabbing a limb. The Iraqi screamed hysterically until each was rewarded with a different prize.
“Fuck this,” a marine said, then he aimed his rifle and begin firing.
“Hold your fire!” Martinez shouted at the marine, and to no avail. “Hold your fire!”
The rounds flew over the horrors. Six glowing eyes stared back for just an instant then the figures scattered into the darkness. They left a gurgling torso, minus three limbs.
The marine’s platoon sergeant came over to berate the breaking of noise discipline. “Who the fuck fired their weapon?” he hissed.
“Gunny, there’s some fucked shit going on down there,” Martinez whispered back. “We just watched some haji get taken apart.” He then pointed to the dying man down the street “Check it out.” Through their NVGs, they all watched the man wiggle pathetically with his one arm before succumbing to his traumatic amputation.
Even in the darkness Martinez could see Gunny’s eyes narrow as his face suddenly hardened. Maybe he saw something out there that the junior marines didn't. Maybe Gunny had thoughts running through his head that he dared not say aloud. “Had to be some drugged-up insurgents going psycho,” Gunny eventually said. “Just some fucked up shit.”
Distinct “thumps” sounded off and Martinez saw the tell-tale flash in the far-off ruins. Explosions went off around their building. Their patrol base was under attack. Gunfire had alerted the enemy.
“Mortars! Martinez yelled out to his fellow marines. “Three hundred meters to the south!”
Part IV
The marines quickly fled the building and started moving towards the ruins. The order was made to evacuate before the insurgent forward observers could fully dial in. The last thing the marines needed was to be trapped in a building while mortars rained down on top of it. As they put in some distance, on que three mortars impacted the roof. The marines spotted on their thermals where the indirect fire had come from, and now moved quickly to close the distance.
A group of insurgents had set up two mortars about three hundred meters away. The insurgents must have thought that the fallen, collapsed structures provided enough cover, firing off their mortars into the darkness. A sudden staccato of gunfire and muzzle flashes proved them wrong.
Mortar impacts well behind them, Cpl Martinez and the rest of First Squad were moving. Approaching the ruins, they were closing in for the kill while the rest of the marines were setting up a deadly base of fire.
The insurgents returned fire in a panic. Caught off guard, they scattered across the fallen stonework as their mortars fell silent. The clacks of M16s and M249s contrasted with the metallic slams of AK-47s and a PKM.
Cpl Martinez took cover with his team behind a wall, hostile tracers shooting overhead and ripping into the old stone. Despite the chaos and under the glow of the tracers, Martinez noticed the stone looked like it was straight out of a textbook. For a fleeting moment he remembered the word “Mesopotamia,” some ancient country he pretended to learn about in high school. A sudden shower of stone fragments as rounds impacted just above his head snapped him back to the fight at hand. The insurgents had to be around fifty feet away. He could hear their shouts as the insurgents barked at each other. Martinez looked at two of his marines, nodding as they all pulled a frag grenade off their flacks. They pulled their pins and all counted to three, then they let them fly. The distinct “thumps” of fragmentation grenades sounded shortly after, followed by several screams of pain. The incoming gunfire died down, and Martinez heard frantic shouts fading away. It sounded like the insurgents were falling back. Martinez peaked his head over the cover and caught sight of men indeed falling back deeper into the ruins.
Then he saw it.
The glowing eyes: three peering heads, poking over the rocks far to the left. Three sets of eyes looking right at him. Then they suddenly turned towards the fleeing insurgents. Then three forms bolted from their cover, bounding over the ground. Like a galloping dog mixed with a gorilla, they scrambled over debris; pursuing the insurgents with star-tling speed. A strange shrieking bark sounded. It reminded Martinez of the coyotes he would listen to back home as they hunted. It sounded like predators closing in for a kill.
“Corporal, what the fuck.”
“Bro, I don’t want to know,” Martinez said, his heart pounding in his chest.
Gunfire and strange shrieks exploded. Screams of men soon joined the fray in a violent opera. An alien yipping filled the air. Then silence.
The marines glanced at each other.
A squad leader gave a shout and a hand signal to move forward.
A marine next to Martinez started to stammer, “No fucking way, man. I’ve seen how this movie ends, man. We should fall back and just call in fires on this place.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Martinez hissed.
First Squad moved cautiously forward, rifles at the ready, in the now-silent Fallujah dark. Signs of the battle started to appear at their feet. Shell casings littered the ground. Blood was evidence of the effectiveness of the marines’ rifles.
Sure enough, Cpl Martinez saw a body lying on the ground. A military-aged male was face down. When he began to move, a wet moan broke the oppressive silence. The marines stopped and got behind cover. This wounded enemy could have friends nearby, waiting, using him like bait; a hasty ambush always a possibility.
Cpl Martinez stared down the wounded man as he stood up clutching his ruined arm. The insurgent’s eyes were wide and filled with fear. He was covered in blood and Martinez saw long gashes that cut through his clothing and flesh. He frantically looked left and right before meeting Martinez’s eyes in the darkness. The insurgent dropped to his knees scooping up an AK-47 with his one good arm before turning it towards Martinez. Cpl Martinez snapped his M16 to target and placed three rounds in the insurgent’s chest. The man crumpled to the ground, a death rattle slipping from his lips.
As Martinez kept his eyes on the body, a sudden flutter of movement caught his attention. A figure dashed out from behind cover, sure as shit, on all fours. Before the marines could react, it had grabbed the body, and began quickly dragging it away.
This time the marines didn’t hesitate.
The sound of M16’s clacked after the creature and Mar-tinez watched a few rounds impact across its body. It shrieked and dropped the body as it stumbled onto the ground. It regained its footing and turned its glowing eyes. Martinez’s heart fluttered as he felt the hateful gaze of the creature, now on only him. But the thing didn't hesitate, grabbing the body as it leapt over some rubble and out of sight. The marines fired after it, but couldn't tell if they hit it again.
“What the fuck was that!?”
“Did anyone see where it went?!”
“Shut the fuck up and rifles up, marines!” Barked a squad leader. “Haji is still out there!”
“Staff Sergeant, that wasn’t a fucking Haji!” A panicked marine yelled back.
“I said shut up! Corporal Martinez, take your team for-ward. Sergeant Jackson, take your team and flank left into these ruins. We’re going to cover you here. You take contact: we will move up.”
As Cpl Martinez moved forward with his team he took a short glance towards his squad leader; a salty staff sergeant known for his almost goofy stoicism. Martinez saw his unmistakable look of fear under the hazy green of his NVGs.
As Martinez moved forward, he heard the shaky voice of his staff sergeant behind him say into the radio: “Atlas 26, come up on the net, we have a situation. Some…thing is out here with us. And it’s not Haji.”
Part V
The night was still and quiet. Nothing moved, except for Martinez. He crept forward, slowly. Fight-or-flight was firing off in his head, telling him to flee. But in the darkness he kept moving, kept seeing movement, just out of sight.
One of Martinez’s marines, a man named Barnes, tapped his shoulder. “Corporal,” he said, “check it out. Blood trails.”
Martinez turned and, of course, he saw the dark splot-ches smeared on the ground.
“You think Haji dragged off their wounded?” he asked rhetorically. “Or whatever the fuck that thing we saw did?”
“Do you really want to know the answer to that, Corporal?” Barnes said aloud.
“Something tells me we are going to find out,” someone else said. “It looks like the blood trails lead this way.”
Cpl Martinez paused, then reached for his radio mike. “Atlas 17, this is Atlas 13. We found some blood trails. Please advise.”
His radio chimed into his ear with a response, “Roger Atlas 13, follow them and make sure there aren’t any squir-ters. We saw some movement ahead of you, looked like someone dragging a body. Atlas 12 will cover your flank. The rest of us will move up behind you. Weapons free. Atlas 17, out.”
Fuck, thought Martinez. “Alright guys,” he said, “we’re following these trails. You see anything Haji or otherwise, fucking murk it.”
“Rah, Corporal,” a few said at once, then one followed it with; “safeties always off.”
The four marines followed the blood like dogs on a trail. Where they found more, they found signs of fighting: shell casings, abandoned weapons, torn and shredded clothing and gear. No bodies. They even found an RPG lying on the ground, totally abandoned.
Maybe they dropped their weapons and ran, Martinez thought, but he knew better.
They had moved deeper into the ruins, fallen stone and toppled walls loomed like phantoms in the darkness. The blood trails led into a courtyard of some type; where the marines paused. Scanning carefully for movement, they saw that the blood trails ended at the base of a stone wall. Just ended, simply vanished. Martinez was considering calling it in that they had lost the trail.
Martinez and his men looked around. Ruined tomb-stones and memorials crowded the cramped area like crook-ed teeth. In the middle of these sat a large stone crypt. “We’re in a graveyard,” Martinez muttered, and he was sure his marines nodded. Despite the ruins around the crypt before them, it looked to be intact. Stranger still, it seemed like all the graves around it had been recently dug up. Piles of dirt and bones littered the ground. Bones littered everywhere like trash.
Why would someone dig up a graveyard? Could it have been a weapons cache?
“Martinez—,” a marine screamed as he let loose with his M16, “watch out!”
Martinez turned towards a blur to his right. One of the figures had launched itself off the crypt like a missile. Its mouth was open and wide, its mammoth hands were outstretched. It was bleeding from its wounds the marines had inflicted.
Martinez couldn't raise his rifle in time as his eyes widened in horror as the creature swiped his rifle away; mouth stretched unnaturally wide. Martinez could feel its long fingers grip onto him as he fell and the creature’s mouth as it began engulfing his head. But luck was on his side, and as the creature tried to crush his skull between its rancid teeth, it was caught by surprise.
Martinez, like all the marines, wore a Kevlar helmet. The damn thing was meant to prevent bullets but now stopped the creature’s bite dead. The helmet held strong as the crea-ture struggled to crush it. The creature’s eyes widened and it seemed to hesitate—just long enough for Martinez to act.
He reached for the issued K-Bar knife on his vest. He quickly unsheathed it and slipped it into the creature’s soft belly. Martinez screamed in terror as he stabbed and ripped into the flesh, he was covered in blood as the creature re-leased him. It screamed in pain, swatting Martinez away, but the pain on its face turned to visible rage. It took a step towards Martinez before it stumbled back, as two of Mar-tinez’s marines dumped their mags into it. Blossoms of blood grew across its body. It screamed in pain and terror as it scrambled away from the marines, seeking shelter in the crypt as it now left its own blood trail behind.
“Corporal, are you ok!?” Barnes screamed as he bent down to lift Martinez up.
Martinez was dazed and on the verge of shock; strug-gling to regain his composure and footing. Fear gave way to rage. The flight response in his mind was gone, fight was all he felt now. “Where’s my fucking rifle?” he growled. “Where the fuck did that thing go!?”
Barnes handed Martinez his rifle as another marine answered, “Over here, Corporal! It’s in that crypt…it’s not alone.”
Martinez and his team trained their rifles. From within the darkness of the crypt, three pairs of glowing eyes stared back at them. He activated his IR flashlight on the end of his rifle.
Washed in the illumination, two creatures stood in front of the wounded third as it heaved and struggled. The other two glared and hissed at the marines, baring their teeth in a disgusting but desperate grimace. Everything about them looked wrong, they were a crude mockery of nature. They were the ghouls that stalked man in his nightmares. They yipped and snapped their jaws at the marines in defiant defense, frightened animals backed into a corner.
“Fuck this,” Barnes growled as he began pulling a gre-nade from a pouch on his flak.
Martinez followed suit as he nodded to the rest of the marines. “Frag out!”
Frag grenades were tossed into the crypt filled with gro-wling creatures as the marines took cover. In that following silence, Martinez peeked from cover and shined down his IR. He watched as one reached down and picked up a grenade, it’s face contorted into a very human curiosity. Simultaneous explosions turned them into shredded flesh in the tight confines of the crypt.
Part VI
The marines hauled ass out of the cemetery. The marines pulled security some distance away, watching the darkness for more monsters. They panted as the adrenaline pumped through their bodies. Martinez reached for his bloody radio and began to try and call for help. “Atlas 17, this is Atlas 13. We have taken contact and need backup. Location to follow—”
