Southern Gods by Jacobs John Hornor

Author:Jacobs, John Hornor [Jacobs, John Hornor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novel, Fantays, Horror, Fiction
ISBN: 9781597802857
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2011-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

They landed on Tulagi in the Solomons in the dark of early morning. After hours of bombing from the Jap Bettys, each one streaking in screaming, wreathed in flak like bolls of black cotton, the deep foliage of the jungle was quiet and still. Deathly still. The heat enveloped his troops, causing their fatigues to dampen and cling to them, each face white and wide-eyed, each hand white knuckled on a rifle and sweating, sweating through the morning gloom, sweating into the Solomon heat. Through the fetid green wall they went, pack-heavy mules moving forward to the enemy.

Ingram paused to check his BAR, popping the magazine and inspecting the rounds. The men moved past him, swallowed by green, disappearing into the brush and palms and dark, their passing marked by faint clinks of weapons and the soft whisking of damp fabric. Ingram peered into the dark, looking to the sides and to the rear, making sure nothing was flanking or a beam. The dark had textures, rich fabrics and patterns. The sounds from the carriers and transport ships, the dull thrum of the ship’s diesel dynamos pushing the enormous screws, the .30 and .50 cals answering the screaming of the Bettys strafing in, Ingram felt lost without those sounds at his back. He turned in the dark, trying to find the direction of the landing, of the shore, and could hear and see nothing. He turned back to where his men had disappeared and moved into the dark green, deathly lush interior of Tulagi.

The bullets came then, making spluttering sounds as they perforated the thick, oily leaves. Ingram heard distant reports. Nearer he could hear his men, screaming into the dark, screaming into the green, firing.

Ingram ran.

His body felt slow, suspended in oil, the air around him thick with smoke and screams and sharp, hard trajectories of rifle fire, each bullets fttthing by, clipping tree and leaf and branch.

Ingram ran.

His body heavy, moving into the fire and the dark, screaming now for his men like Cap Hap, gone but not forgotten, Ingram moved further into Tulagi, further into the dark edges of stygian Guadalcanal darkness. Through the trees and brush and lush undergrowth, he ran. He heard his men shrieking in pain, men calling for their brothers, men calling for mothers, men calling for Ingram.

This isn’t how it happened.

Ingram ran and something snapped, the heaviness lifted. He moved forward with ease and burst through the undergrowth into a clearing. No more bullets whizzed past, no more screams or reports from weapons. Everything was still, and the smell of gunpowder floated upon the air, clouds of it obscuring the far side of the clearing, obscuring the ground.

Then came a breeze, and the thick fragrant smoke moved past him like a gigantic albino creature wrought of gauze and the evil of men. It moved past and through him, back into the green.

He saw the dead bodies of his men.

This isn’t how it happened! We took the airfield!

All around him were bodies.

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