The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 6

MAJORLENA Jane Jakeman

She scared the hell out of me.

We never did find out where she came from, before she found us.

After the explosions, three of us scrambled out, away from the road, over the ridge. There was a rocky overhang on the other side. I had the map they’d showed us still in my head. We were bang in the middle of real thick hostiles territory, like jelly in a doughnut.

“Fuck it, man, we stay right here,” hissed Leroy.

“You ain’t in charge,” said Schulz.

“We stay on the ridge,” I said.

The explosion had taken out the lead trucks. If we hadn’t been straggling, we’d have been gone as well.

There was no movement on the road except for flames. Then came black smoke and a stink. Strange, I knew what it was right away. Like in my mom’s kitchen when she made us taffy, stirring away in a boiling-hot saucepan.

“Man comin’ up!” shouted Leroy. Then he added, “Jeez, maybe it’s a female!”

A helmet outlined above the ridge, then a small figure, hands high, coming up slowly in regulation desert boots, skidding on the sand and shale. People think the Iraqi desert is smooth sand like the beach, but there’s places where it’s all little stones slipping under your feet. When I think of Major Lena now, and I try not to do that, it’s what I remember: the air full of black smouldering stuff and the smell of burning sugar.

We hadn’t thought anyone else was alive, but she came from the direction of the road. She was dead cautious, waited, lay on the ground, let Schulz take her rifle and fumble all over her.

“Clean!” he shouted.

She had dog-tags, ID, but it was her voice, more than anything, that was ranking US female military. Though, like I said, we never did find out exactly where she was from. She had a kit-bag and Schulz pushed his hand in it.

“No weapons here,” he said.

This was just after dawn and we was stuck there in the desert. Go back down onto the road — no way! A beat-up old wagon came along the road as we were sitting under that ridge; it was full of rag-heads, their rifles all sticking out at odd angles. They didn’t spot us. We might have taken them, four of us now, all armed. But something a damned sight more powerful had taken out the trucks — a rocket-launcher, maybe — and whoever fired that might still be around.

This bunch nudged through the smouldering debris with their rifles. It looked like the metal was still too hot to touch — one of them put a hand to a door and drew it back like he’d been scorched. They didn’t hang around.

We took a good look at ourselves. Two privates, Leroy and Schulz. Me, the sergeant. And the woman, Major Lena. I guess she had a surname but I don’t remember one. Whenever I think of her, which is as little as possible, it’s all run together like it was one name — Majorlena. Sounds like a fancy name someone might give a girl. Anyway, that’s what we called her. “Yes, Majorlena! Sure, Majorlena! Show us your boobs, Majorlena!”

No, not that. We’d never have dared.

“I’m taking charge here, Sergeant,” she said in that voice, slow scraping on steel, flashing her white teeth (that’s another reason we was sure she was genuine US of A) but not in any real smile.

She had brown eyes, huge, but not pretty.

“Yes, sir!” I said.

“We’ll assess the situation.”

We assessed.

Stuck in the middle of a fucking desert surrounded by terrorists, that was our situation.

And no food or water.

Choppers circled above the roadkill like great buzzing flies, and I said, “Sir, we could spread out our shirts or wave something at them.”

“Yeah, they’re bound to see us,” said Leroy. “They’re real low.”

He ran to the top of the ridge of rock, pulled his shirt off and waved it. There was a burst of machine-gun fire. They had lousy aim. Leroy came running back and we all crowded under the overhang.

“Private Leroy, you take your orders from me,” said Majorlena. “Don’t move without my say-so. We have to sit it out under the ridge till nightfall. Then we can go down and maybe find some water and ammo.” I saw she was eyeing Leroy’s bare chest as she talked. He was a good-looking guy, one of them tall, slim blacks.

I forgot about sex. By noon, my eyes felt like they was eggs frying in a pan. I felt like I’d never been in the country before, though I’d been in Iraq for two months. But never really in it, if you see what I mean. Never like this, without iced drinks or showers. I found out you don’t rightly sweat when it gets that hot, if you ain’t got no water to sweat out of you. Any little trickle off your skin dries instantly. Kind of comfortable after a while, except your head feels like it’s in a furnace. Schulz had a shaved head, like a lot of the Pennsylvania boys, unprotected.

We got some shade from the overhang. But my mouth was parching like it was full of sand and when evening was coming I knew we had to get water or we was going to die right there.

Majorlena had been assessing the road situation.

“Sergeant, you and I will go down to the road,” she said. “The third truck hasn’t been too badly hit. There may be some water, or even a radio.”

“That the one you was in, sir?” No one could have survived from the two front trucks. They was nothing but metal frames with charred lumps in the drivers’ seats.

“Why, yes, Sergeant,” she said. “That’s right. I’ve been travelling with this army.”

The melted sugar had poured down the sides of the trucks. There was all kinds of flies and insects there, drawn to the sweetness, I guess. You don’t usually get those big fat things in the middle of the desert. It’s mostly hard little flies that choke you up when the wind blows a swarm in your face. Majorlena and I were brushing juicy ones off as we got to the third truck. I didn’t like the way they flew into my mouth when I opened it.

“Check the tanks and see if you can find some containers,” she said.

She climbed up into the cabin. The driver hadn’t been burned to cinders. I could see the fire hadn’t hit so bad here, though his hair and face was scorched.

Going to unscrew the caps, I went round the side of the truck and looked up. She was there right next to the driver, with her head bent down towards him, when she realised I was watching her. She made a sudden jerking arm movement. Getting down out of the cabin, she showed me something in her hand.

“Got his tags. Give his family closure.”

Poor bastard had closure all right. But I still wasn’t sure what she’d been doing.

I managed to drain water from the radiator into some big cans, US army property we found in the truck. They was full of coffee. We emptied it into the sand, where it blew away like darker smoke against the dusk.

Before we got back to the top of the ridge, we heard shots.

Schulz was dragging Leroy back up.

“Stupid asshole tried to make a break. They got night-sights.”

Majorlena put her hand over Leroy’s mouth to stop his screams. They gradually went down to whimpering. He died near dawn. We scrabbled a place for him in the sand and tipped it over him with our hands, then Schulz said some prayers.

The hunger was like real pain. We had a little water left, tasting of metal and coffee.

“We got to figure a way off here.” Schulz was clutching his belly as if he were trying to press it smaller.

“We stay near the vehicles,” said Majorlena. She was walking ’round. She didn’t look sunk-eyed, not like she had spent the night out in the open with no food or water.

“Yeah,” I said, “I know that’s official. But there’s exceptions.”

“There may be some of that melted sugar we could break off,” said Majorlena, like she was making a concession.

“I’ll go down to the trucks when it gets dark,” I said. Just the thought of filling my mouth with that real sweet taste near drove me crazy.

They let me go alone. I figured I would be entitled to extra sugar.

The driver’s body was stinking. Stars and moon were bright as electric, so I was afraid I’d be seen by snipers. But nothing. Got to the back of the truck and there was like smooth icicles hanging down. I broke one off and took a suck. Damn me if it wasn’t as sweet as candy at a fair. I felt the sugar running through me, its energy coming up in my blood.

When I scrabbled back to the top of the ridge, sending some shale skidding under me, the Major was waiting.

I gave her a piece of sugar.

“Where’s Schulz?”

“Getting some sleep down there.”

But he was next to Leroy’s body and when I shook him he didn’t wake up. I called softly for Majorlena to come down.

“What is it?”

She rolled Schulz over towards her and his face was cold and still in the moonlight, his eyes staring up at the stars.

“Jesus! How the hell? — he was okay when I went down.” I looked across and saw that Leroy’s body was partly uncovered, down to about the waist. Saw what had happened to that smooth skin.

“You reckon Schulz did that?” I said.

“Must have, unless it was wild dogs or something, but I’ve been keeping watch all the time you were down there. I didn’t hear anything.”

“Maybe Schulz went a bit crazy, didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Yeah, sunstroke, heat exhaustion.” She sat back. “I’ll have to make a report on it when we get picked up.”

It was the coldest night I have ever spent. There was no cloud cover. I didn’t sleep any, just sat up with my back against the rock. Majorlena was a little ways off, kind of hunched over. I closed my eyes at one point and then opened them a few moments later. She seemed to have shifted a little towards me.

“I ain’t going to get no sleep tonight,” I said.

Was I warning her or asking her? I still don’t know.

But I did go to sleep, and when I woke up, something was moving over Leroy’s body. It was a big mass of stuff, like a long beard trailing down from his neck. I stared for a few moments trying to make sense of it, rolling over so I could get a better look. There was a fluttering and crawling going on nonstop over Leroy’s chest.

I couldn’t see his face. It looked to be moving and heaving, and that was a big swarm of fat blowflies crawling over it and down his body. They glistened, their sticky bodies shifting and pushing, some flying a bit and then settling. In the wounds on his chest, there were flies right in the bloody furrows, twisting round and fluttering like whores in a jacuzzi.

Lying a few feet away, like she and Leroy was in a bed, was Majorlena. And then the flies was coming off Leroy in this black stream, climbing and hopping and flying towards her.

I took a step towards her, thinking she was asleep. I was going to warn her. Then I saw she was awake.

Worse than awake. Her mouth was open and the flies were crawling up over her body and she was saying things. I got closer and heard her whispering.

“Come on my little ones, Mamma’s thirsty, Mamma’s hungry. You know what she wants. She needs you now.”

And the flies were crawling into her dark wet open mouth, scrambling and fluttering over her lips, and she was chawing down on them.

The charred dead in their trucks down on the road was better than that. I sat there all night.

A patrol coming along the road picked me up next day. I told them to look for three more up on the ridge, but they only found two bodies.

I guess she’s still travelling with the army.