SNAFU: Unnatural Selection

CARGO B. Michael Radburn

The ship seemed to breathe, its steel hull groaning with every breath, every pitch and yaw heaving the deck beneath Corporal Gary Bronson’s feet. His stomach wasn’t exactly right just yet, but was a far cry from the constant puking he’d endured for the first three days at sea. For now, the fresh air on the June sea breeze kept him settled. He took his Zippo lighter from his pocket; rubbed his thumb across the inscription:

That was a year ago. He licked his dry lips. Strange, but whenever he looked at the engraving he could taste blood.

Bronson flicked the Zippo on and off in quiet contemplation. He was army, not Marine, and sure as Hell not navy, so he still wasn’t sure how he got this assignment guarding a cargo bay on a Cruiser heading to Okinawa. Hell, he didn’t even know what was inside. And what’s more, the USS Portland was crossing the Pacific without an escort. That was either sloppy, or the sign of a ship that wanted to keep a low profile. Sure the Japs were all but done, but there were still plenty of stray Nip subs out there looking for prey. Bronson shook his head at the thought, slipped his lighter back in his pocket, and looked out across the ocean’s swell, his eyes fixed on the horizon. He had an unopen pack of Lucky Strikes in his pocket, but his stomach remained too unsettled to smoke.

A hatch behind him opened with a rusty squeal, and Private First Class Gill Jefferies stepped out. Bronson knew Jefferies from the Mariana Island campaign, another small-town grunt finding his sea legs.

“Hey, you got a smoke, Corp?”

Bronson handed him his pack. “Keep ‘em,” he said.

Jefferies opened them, lit a cigarette, and leaned on the railing beside him. “Thanks,” he said slipping the pack in his breast pocket. “It’s your picket, Corp.”

They were pulling four-hour shifts and sharing the same windowless berth below the water line. “Already?”

“Time flies when you’re having fun.”

Bronson smiled, hitched his carbine’s sling over his shoulder and headed to the hatch. “You figure out what we’re guarding down there yet?”

Jefferies looked pleased, his gaze darting each way along the gangway before he spoke. “I think I do, Corp.”

“Oh?” Bronson paused in the hatchway.

“Well,” Jefferies said in a whisper. “I just heard a rumor from the cook that Uncle Sam has invented a bomb that can level an entire city. I bet that’s what we’re hauling to the airbase at Okinawa.” He tapped his nose. “Very hush, hush.”

Bronson smiled. “And so Uncle Sam decided you and I would be the best guards to keep this war-winning secret?”

“Think about it, Corp. That’s why we’re sneaking around out here on our lonesome without an escort. And as for you and me… Well no offence, Corp, but we’re the lowest common denominator in this man’s army. If the Japs got wind that a secret Cruiser full of Rangers is sneaking around their islands, we’d be dead in the water already.”

Bronson’s smile faded at the thought of all those whitecoated scientists coming and going down in cargo bay 3. And then there was Major Stanley, the only brassed-up uniform with a pass into the place. No ship’s crew – not even the Portland’s Captain – had clearance. Bronson shrugged. “A single bomb, huh?”

Bronson didn’t much like it below. It was smothering. He was cut from Iowa stock and used to cornfield horizons. Below the waterline the sea sometimes slapped at the sides. The sound wasn’t natural to an army man, and the sooner he returned topside the better. He stood at-ease by the cargo hatch, rifle resting on his boot ready to snap to attention should Major Stanley or any of the whitecoats show up. He listened for the approaching clang of boots, leaned forward and tried the latch handle, but the hatch was locked.

“You’ve got one fuckin’ job, Corporal,” was his brief from Stanley, “ensure this door stays locked!”

But… what would he do if he found it unlocked? Take a peek? Go inside? Or remain at his station and lock it as ordered? One fuckin’ job! He thought of Jefferies’s super bomb, tried to get his head around something that could take out a city in one blow. Bullshit. Ain’t possible. Probably nothing in there but… but what? He nudged the latch again, then heard heavy footfalls approaching and sprang to attention.

It was Major Stanley, his narrow eyes unblinking, and a permanent sneer etched into that tanned, weathered face beneath his cap. Bronson saluted. “Major Stanley,” he said in a firm voice.

“I know my goddamned name, Corporal,” the man spat in his gravelly voice without so much as a glance. He pressed the intercom by the hatch. “Doctor Klein? It’s Stanley, let me in.”

The hatch sprang open, and a whitecoat with round, black-rimmed glasses let the major in. There was nothing to like about Klein. Wiry thin and tall, stooped from a lifetime of masking his height, he had stringy black hair greased down over his balding top. Word was he was snatched from the Nazi’s pool of scientists when Berlin fell. Maybe one of Hitler’s bomb makers.

Klein looked at Bronson for a moment, held his stare, eyes – coal-black – showing no emotion, no feeling. What has he seen, Bronson wondered, to stop from feeling? The hatch closed, and Bronson heard their murmured voices disappear on the other side. Then… a faint click from the latch. He glanced down to see the hatch swing back a half inch or so. The lock hadn’t engaged.

You’ve got one fuckin’ job, Corporal!

Bronson grasped the handle and was about to nudge it closed, aware the lock would engage, only accessible from the other side or by security key from this side. That’s when he noticed just how cold the steel was. The Portland was in the Pacific. It was always hot here. So why the cold storage?

“To Hell with it,” he whispered, and eased the hatch open.

He moved his carbine’s sling over his shoulder and leant inside, the cool air bracing his face. Stanley and the Kraut were gone. Bronson looked around. This was nothing like any other part of the ship. He stepped inside, edged the hatch closed, and listened for any sign of the major or Klein. It appeared to be another hallway running adjacent to the one on the outside. There were muffled voices, but distant; dim inside except for a pale green light coming from a window to his left. Above him was a honeycombed catwalk he could see through to the bulkhead above. Empty. Bronson stepped cautiously in front of the window; thick glass held back a body of water. It was some kind of water tank. Huge. A thermometer beside the glass read 36 degrees Fahrenheit. He peered inside, could see something small, fish maybe – wrigglers he would have called them in his fishing days. They swam in wavering schools deep in the tank.

The catwalk began to tremor above him – two whitecoats carrying something heavy between them and walking this way. He couldn’t risk running back to the exit; that would take him right under them.

“Shit!” he hissed, glancing around, escape paramount. Over there! Another door beyond the tank. He ran, opened it, and entered. It closed behind him with a soft thud. The darkness embraced him; the cold wrapping around him like icy fingers. He stepped warily away from the door until his back pressed against the opposite wall… and he waited. The smell was familiar, and took him a moment to relate. Then he remembered his after-school job cleaning old man Beattie’s butcher shop. His heart slowed with his breathing, and when it was clear no one was following, he reached inside his pocket for his Zippo. The frigid air hurt his throat to breathe. He flicked the lighter; the flint sparked, but no flame. He tried again. The same. Shook the fluid inside, and this time it worked… and he wished it hadn’t.

Eyes, frozen, had taken on a marble stare. Cradled in their gray flesh, they appeared fixed in time, perhaps in the moment of their death, like a washed out photograph of their mortality – perhaps even recognizing Bronson’s own as they stared into his. He shared this frigid charnel house with a host of dead hung naked from hooks around him. Bronson pressed himself harder against the wall, his frosted breath almost blowing out the lighter’s flame, his khaki shirt freezing to the steel wall. The fabric peeled away as he stepped aside, desperate to shun those staring eyes. He shifted the Zippo from face to face – all Japanese, no doubt battlefield fodder by the bullet holes and torn flesh that marred their bodies.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. I can’t stay here!

He stumbled forward, nudging a hanging corps in its torso, pressing stale air from its hollow lungs into his own face. He wanted to puke. It smelt like battlefield gut-shot… and you never forget that smell as long as you live. He threw himself against the door, and for a moment thought it was locked. No! No! No! He’d dropped the Zippo with a clang, its flame extinguished. Now that he knew what was in here, the darkness seemed tenfold. Another blind heave and the door seal relented with a crack. It swung open as he spilled out into the hall. Bronson drew in the fresh air, rested against the far wall, and watched as the freezer door eased itself closed again.

There was a repetitive clanging from atop the catwalk. Whatever those whitecoats were doing, it had masked the sound of his busting out. He clutched his carbine to his chest and moved under the walkway, pressing himself close to the wall as he slipped beneath them. The clanging carried on, and when he passed the tank window it seemed the wrigglers were attracted by the sound. He watched the schools swivel and swirl in grey clouds toward him. A lone wriggler swam closer to the glass, no more than the size of his thumb. It was a crab, but not like anything he’d ever before seen. For its size, the claws were huge, and its shell, serrated along its spine, was a strange steely black. Bronson paused, tilted his head. Is it looking at me? He then heard the substantial splash from above…

… and the frozen eyes of one of the dead Nip soldiers was looking at him again, the body submerging on the other side of the glass. Bronson’s breath caught, startled, as water splashed over the edge and ran down his side of the glass, distorting the image. “Feeding time,” said one of the whitecoats above. The other chuckled, then they moved away down the catwalk.

Bronson breathed a slow, steadying sigh. He looked at the corpse, met its dead stare, and for a moment he thought it was… dancing.

The ravenous crabs swarmed over it – through it – tearing it apart into a pale cloud of fibrous flesh and splintered bone.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

Then, from the flesh-cloud, one of the crabs slammed against the window, its oversized claws scissoring at the glass. Bronson stepped away, swore it was looking right at him. He turned to the exit, saw that the whitecoats were gone, then made his break. The hatch opened easily. He stepped outside, back at his post, then pulled the hatch closed, testing the latch handle three times to ensure it was locked.

“I’m done,” he whispered, then checked it one last time to be sure.

It was an hour before Major Stanley came out.

Bronson snapped to attention. “Major Stanley,” he said firmly and waited for the Major’s usual gruff wisecrack, but it never came. Instead, Stanley stood opposite, his eyes a little less harsh than usual, bordering on human.

“You served with the seventy-seventh in Guam, didn’t you, Corporal?”

Bronson’s jaw clenched. Perhaps due to pride; perhaps due to the landscape of dead GIs he remembered from that battle. “Yes, Sir.”

“You’ve seen some things in your time, huh soldier?”

He was about to answer when the major held up the Zippo Bronson had dropped in the meat room on the other side. The 77^th Infantry – Guam – July 1944 inscription just eight inches from his eyes.

“We need to talk, Bronson.”

Not a word was spoken until the door to Major Stanley’s quarters closed behind them. Stanley turned and Bronson halted to attention.

The major took off his cap, placed it on his desk, and then sat on the edge. “At ease, Corporal,” he said with a dismissive wave.

It was unnerving. Stanley looked at Bronson without speaking for a long time. There was no sign of the steely stare or rock-jawed barking of abuse.

He tossed the Zippo to Bronson, who caught it. “You want to tell me what you saw in there?”

As Bronson adopted the at-ease position, he considered lying to the major, but the weight of truth in his lighter made that futile. “I’m not sure what I saw, sir.”

Stanley sighed, took a cigarette from the box on his desk and lit it. “You’ve put me in a difficult situation, Corporal. One I could probably have you shot for.”

“Shot?” The word squeezed up through Bronson’s throat.

“Relax.” Stanley stood from the desk and walked toward a film projector set up before a row of chairs in the center of the room. “We’re about twenty-four hours from disclosing the Portland’s mission to her captain and crew anyway. HQ prepared a film for my briefing.” He turned on the projector. “To dodge that bullet I need you to keep your mouth shut until then.” He pointed at the screen on the wall as grainy images of white-coated scientists filtered through a stream of Stanley’s cigarette smoke. Except for the clickety-clack of 8-millimeter film that spooled through the reels, the film was silent.

“I can do that, sir,” Bronson said.

Major Stanley spoke as the corresponding pictures filled the small screen.

“We call them Shintos, the Japanese god of water. They are a hybrid created by our Nazi friends, something they were working on for Adolph before he opted out of the war. They’re basically a Japanese Spider Crab injected with the fetal cells of the carnivorous Coconut Crab. They were experimenting with a range of species, but the crustaceans seemed the most responsive. The Nazis radiated their bloodstream to strengthen their dominant blood cells and bred them to what you saw down in the hull. The radiation seemed to be the kicker, the mutation it created being way beyond our expectation. The Shinto’s are extremely deadly and strangely intelligent in their interaction with each other. Particularly in the way they hunt their prey.” Stanley smiled; it was predatory. “The things are ordered and calculating. They have one overwhelming motivation… to feed.” The man glanced at Bronson to gauge his reaction as the pictures flickered across the screen. “Your thoughts, Corporal?”

“What are you gonna do with them?” He forgot protocol and stepped closer to the screen. “I mean they’re so small.”

The flickering light reflected in both their eyes as they watched the feeding demo on screen.

“We condition their nourishment habits with the Jap carcasses curtesy of Uncle Sam’s island hopping campaign across the Pacific,” said Stanley. “And they’ve acquired quite a taste for it. This shipment of Shintos is bound for Okinawa where they’ll be packed into a custom airborne delivery system and dropped off the coast of Tokyo from a B29.”

“Seems like a lot of effort to kill a few beachgoers, sir.”

“Watch the film, Corporal.”

The progressive images were the stuff of nightmares. Worse under Stanley’s matter-of-fact voice.

“Ohhh, shit,” muttered Bronson when he recognized their potential.

“Worst case of crabs this man’s army will ever see,” said Stanley, his grin cold. “You see, the low forty-degree temperature of the tank keeps them in the pigmy stage. Forty degrees and they’ll fit in your hand. That man-size one you see on the screen was transferred to a tank just ten degrees warmer.”

The film showed one standing on its back four legs, claws raised as it circled a Jap corps, still in uniform, propped up on a metal frame. When the black-armored creature struck, both flesh and steel yielded like butter.

“H-how…” stammered Bronson. “How big do they grow?”

Stanley walked to the projector and turned it off, and Bronson felt an immediate sense of relief.

“Well, that’s the question. We just don’t know,” said Stanley. He gestured toward the screen. “That specimen from the fifty-degree tank grew that size in a matter of minutes. The waters off Japan right now are seventy-four degrees. We believe they will grow quite large. Kick those Nips where it hurts.”

“Kick them?” said Bronson. “It’ll wipe them off the map.”

Stanley smiled. “Better still.”

The deck shifted beneath them in a violent lunge. A metal roar pierced Bronson’s eardrums as he met the steel wall and the lights flickered out.

The wash of sounds was a dull cacophony through the ringing in Bronson’s ears as the red lights of the general quarters flared on and the battle stations siren sounded. Bronson found his rifle and stood, sensing a slight list to the portside. Major Stanley was in the corner and Bronson knew by the angle of his neck the man was dead.

The port-deck hatch took some effort to open against the warped bulkhead, and as he stumbled outside he was met by a blanket of gray smoke and a rush of clambering sailors. One of the seamen nudged him as he passed. Bronson staggered through the smoke to the railing. A submarine surfaced a half mile out, close enough to see the red rising sun insignia on the conning tower.

“Shit,” spat Bronson. He clutched the railing, knuckles white, as the Portland listed another inch or two toward the surface.

The sub’s crew had scaled topside now, manning its deck gun, traversing its barrel slowly toward the Portland. Bronson was lost, his CO dead, his one fucking job seeming irrelevant under the circumstances. He aimed his carbine at the sub, realizing how futile an act it was when the Portland’s 6-inch bow gun boomed and a pillar of seawater rose five yards short of the submarine. It boomed again, short again, and Bronson realized the heavy list denied the main guns enough elevation for the short distance.

Bronson lowered his rifle, and with it, all hope. This is gonna be a turkey shoot for the Nips.

The sub’s deck gun flashed, and a heartbeat later the Portland’s bridge exploded, showering the area in metal and glass. A hot chard gashed his cheek and he could smell burning flesh. The radar tower leaned heavily toward Bronson, metal screaming as it tore from its base. He leapt at the open hatch as the twisted tower smashed amidst the cries of the ship’s crew. The deck vibrated violently beneath him. He rolled onto his back, patted his cheek and stared at the blood on his fingers. It appeared black in the red light, and made him think of the blood-stained Jap carcasses in the meat locker; made him think of those Shinto wrigglers looking for their next feed. If the ship was doomed, then so too were those things in cargo bay 3.

Bronson shifted with the heat of the fires behind the bulkhead at his back and suddenly imagined the tank’s thermometer rising as it incubated those wrigglers. How big do these things get? He stood and braced himself as the Portland rolled another few inches. That’s the kicker… we don’t know.

Bronson shook off the ringing in his ears. The Iowa cornfields never seemed so far away, and if those things escaped to the warmer waters, neither him, the Portland’s crew nor those Japs would ever see home again. “You’ve got one fucking job, Corporal,” he whispered. Those things needed to be locked below – needed to go down with the ship – before he could take his chances out in the Pacific.

The ship’s 6-inchers had stopped firing, but the .50 caliber machine guns were working overtime, shuddering the walls around him. The tide of men scurrying from below was thinning. Bronson was easing down a stairwell when another Jap shell hit amidship, rocking him to the floor. He counted the decks as he descended, recognizing his old post below the waterline. The ship was listing badly now, and he imagined all that ocean pressing at the hull.

… one fucking job…

He reached for the latch. Let it be locked. No sooner had he grasped the latch, than Doctor Klein’s voice pleaded from the intercom.

“Let us out!”

Bronson frowned, tried the latch.

“Is anyone there?” Klein cried through the static, his accent suddenly heavy. “For the love of God, you must let us out!”

Bronson pressed the intercom’s Speak button, paused ready to say… what? Klein pounded on the hatch. It could only be opened from his side or with the security key, so something was wrong. Bronson lifted his finger and stepped away. The hatch was probably jammed – not a bad thing under the circumstances. Klein’s voice cried louder, his broken English slipping into a guttural German as he became more agitated then… the banging and the screaming stopped. Bronson stepped closer to listen. There came a metallic drumming, then a loud axe-like clang sounded on the other side and Bronson jumped back, raising his rifle. Did the hatch move? He watched the hairline gap press a fraction wider, then close again.

The hatch held.

“Good enough,” said Bronson and ran to the nearest exit, realizing he was running uphill now.

When he broke into the daylight, the most assaulting force to his senses was the silence. No guns, no sirens, no engine, just a groaning ship, her bow plunging into the foaming sea. Two tenders and a scattering of rigid life rafts were rowing away from the ship, a handful of stragglers jumping from the railing and swimming toward the rafts. Bronson watched the deck slipping into the water. He stepped away, climbed, looking for a discarded life jacket. He used the railing to help with the ascent. An open sponson marked Vests was empty. If he had to jump without one, so be it. He could dump the carbine, boots and webbing, take his chances, but chance remained in the gunsights of the Japs right now.

The gun’s thunder echoed across the surface. Its shell hit at the waterline, exploded in a fireball, and threw him off his feet. The concussion pressed at his eardrums, deck splinters tore at his uniform as he slid toward the oil-fired surface. His carbine’s sling slipped down his arm as he lunged out, grabbed the railing, his shoulders straining with the force. He cried out in pain, could feel the heat, chocking on black smoke, when the tearing roar of protesting steel vibrated through the ship.

The Portland was ripping in half under its own weight.

Bronson closed his eyes and held his breath as he rode the stern section down. It collapsed into the sea, drawing water into its exposed belly. He was showered with seawater, the fires hissing into submission as the ragged hulk settled with a sway on her keel. His eyes flickered open, saltwater stinging, the sinking bow a blur as it disappeared into the sucking sea before him. Bronson exhaled and allowed his taught muscles to relax. Then the sound. Familiar enough to tie his stomach in a knot. A metallic drumming, like a cluster of steel legs striking metal.

No…

It was the same sound he heard down in the cargo bay.

He used his rifle to stumble to his feet and ran to the hull’s jagged edge. Below, surging through the wreckage was a legion of Shintos, some eight feet tall, their pincer claws cutting their way forward as they spilled into the warm Sea of Japan. Bronson steadied himself, cocked his carbine, and took aim. The rifle cracked – he winced – the recoil marring his already damaged shoulder. The bullet ricocheted off one of the Shinto’s armored back plates. The creature stopped, braced itself with its claw against a steaming pipe, and stared up at him. The eyes were like glistening black pearls peering so deeply into Bronson’s own that he felt certain it recognized the fear there.

He backed away, could hear the hammering of its spidery legs climbing the tangled metal, saw its claw arch over the verge like an axe to pierce the timber deck and lift itself over the edge. Bronson blinked nervously, tripped and fell onto his back. The Shinto had grown even larger under the sun’s heat, standing ten feet tall on its hind four legs. Bronson raised his rifle, fired another round into its exposed belly plate, heard the ricochet ping a moment before the same bullet splintered the timber next to his head. The creature raised its claws, paused ready to impale him to the deck. Layers of shell parted at its snout to reveal a wet pit of serrated plates, an ear piercing shriek raining down on him.

Bronson screamed back.

As futile as it seemed, he frantically worked the bolt action rifle and emptied the clip, hoping to find a soft spot between the armor. He stopped, exhausted, the last depression of the trigger delivering an empty click. It was the sound of death. Bronson rolled his head toward the sea, spent – it was over. He would imagine the endless horizon was that of an Iowa cornfield and pray the end would be quick…

… but there were no Jap submarines in Iowa cornfields.

Bronson saw the deck gun flash with a boom as the Shinto’s claw arched down toward him. Just inches to spare, and the creature exploded, showering him in crabmeat and brine.

He lurched away with a burst of adrenalin, stood, legs shaking so bad they barely held him. Something shifted inside the ship with a metallic groan and the stern rolled a yard or so portside before settling again. He dropped his riffle and it slid over the edge into the sea. Bronson clutched the railing, watched as the sub’s crew scrambled to reload, aiming at the crippled Portland. They had meant to sink her, and Bronson with it. “Fuck it,” he whispered as he wiped crab residue from his face. He raised his face to the warm sun, closed his eyes, and waited.

He could hear the ocean seething, and waited…

… could feel the ship moving under him, and waited…

… could sense the shadow cast cold over him and… opened his eyes.

Rising like an island behind the sub was one of the creatures. It towered over the scene, seawater falling in rivers from its armored body. Standing on the sea floor, half its torso exposed, its black eyes surveyed the submarine before it. If those whitecoats ever wondered how big their babies could grow, the answer stood there before him. It was a colossus.

Bronson could hear the Jap crew shouting orders, turning the deck gun toward the eclipsing monster. But too late. The Shinto’s claw lifted the craft like a toy, its other cutting its pointed bow section in two. The boat exploded in a flash of high explosives and fuel, no doubt having struck the torpedo racks, the searing heat reaching across the surface to Bronson’s exposed face. Metal and burnt bodies rained into the Pacific as a churning black cloud obscured the scene. Bronson hoped the force was enough to kill the beast, but as the breeze dispersed the smoke, the Shinto stood unscathed.

It raised its claws in triumph. Its nightmare mouth parted, its shriek shattering the air itself. Bronson had to press his hands to his ears.

Then, there was a great and terrible silence.

The Portland’s adrift survivors had grown quiet; the ocean itself gone quiet as Bronson lifted his hands from his ears. Then he heard it. A reply from the depths. A similar, dampened cry vibrating through tons of water. He peered over the edge, could make out the throng of large shapes swimming beneath the Portland’s keel. They were heading east, toward Japan.

Bronson stared up at the leviathan before him, peering into its soulless eyes – an eerie darkness that peered back at him. The creature surged forward, and the Portland rose on the swelling wall of water pressed ahead of it. Bronson closed his eyes. Death was better met in darkness. One thought played on his mind in that final moment. The Japanese are gonna wish it was just a super bomb we were delivering.