Horror Story and Other Horror Stories by Robert Boyczuk

Author:Robert Boyczuk
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Horror
Publisher: ChiZine Publications
Published: 2009-11-14T21:00:00+00:00

We’d drawn recon patrol again, another hot spot in the foothills of the Laurentians.

Why us? Why always send us into the worst possible shit? We drew this kind of stuff twice as much as any other squad. It was like somebody back at HQ had it in for us. But if it troubled anyone else in our squad, they didn’t complain. Instead, they seemed to like it, to savour the opportunity to raise our kill ratio.

We were strung out in a ragged line. I caught sight of Shika about ten metres ahead and a little too far to my left, so I picked up the pace, edging back in her direction. Occasionally I could see Angela between us, flitting in and out of cover, pale and wraith-like, difficult to spot, bending tree and shrub to her will, folding them around her like a cloak. Behind me there was Cash, then, in the middle of the pack, Sarge with his little dog, Tremblay. I could never quite figure out what Tremblay’s story was, a clean-shaven regular army guy, betraying nothing, not really part of the unit, an observer, as Sarge called him, always scribbling in those little blue notebooks he carried around, attached to us in some way that was never made quite clear, observing God knows what, as he hunted his own people. It gave me the creeps whenever he was behind me, like he was observing me personally, even though there wasn’t a goddamned thing I could think of that was worth observing.

We moved downhill, and the tree cover thinned a bit, then turned into a stand of birches, branches arching overhead to form a canopy. We broke into a copse. It was quiet and beautiful, flanked with thick undergrowth that looked like it had been cultivated, the duff soft and yielding under out boots, a shaft of sunlight slanting through the gap in the tree cover and into our eyes. . . .

Nice spot, I thought. For an ambush.

Then Pierre hit us.

I was knocked off my feet the instant they opened up, half a dozen slugs hammering into my flak jacket, their AK-47s making an awful racket. I rolled on the ground, wheezing and gasping, trying to catch the breath that had been hammered from my lungs, fighting off the sharp pain of what I figured was a broken rib or two. Beside me Cash lay on the ground, blood oozing from a hole in his throat, eyes open, dead as dead can get. I heard shouts over the gunfire, some I recognized, some I didn’t. Heavy boots stamped on the ground, crashing through the underbrush, then the muffled thump of low-yield ordinance, mostly smoke it seemed, to confuse and hide. But I wasn’t scared; I didn’t even care if I’d been hit. The only thing I felt was anger, anger at being on the ground, at the incompetence of Pierre not killing me when he had the chance. I wanted to make the bastard pay for his mistake.

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