Dantesque

(c) Copyrighted 1999 by Franchot Lewis

My navigator's, Flight Lt. Jim Carter's parachute failed to open. I saw him fall. He dropped below me like a rock. After my chute touched down, I went for Carter. The search didn't take long. I knew appropriately where to look. Carter fell into a small clearing.

No benefit to him that he avoided entanglement in the trees.

I found his body broken in to. He lay face-down, in running blood, in red mud. The blood flowed , and mud too seemed to flow, from a hole that the planet made in him, when he crashed, snapping his spine, popping his eyes, collapsing his lungs, crushing his rib cage.

I rolled his body over, more blood, and some ooze flowed out.

I took a breath of close air and said, "Pal,, the war is finished now."

Before I could close his eyes, cover him with dirt and say a prayer over him, or even retrieve his dog tags for his wife and child, I heard an enemy patrol approaching,
and I had to hide.

I ducked into the woods. I got down behind something just in time.

A patrol of twenty men whom were looking for us came directly to where Carter fell. The patrol weren't regular soldiers, but paramilitary, bandits, with shoulder held anti-aircraft missiles.

I knew they were bandits. I could tell common bandits in any land.

I was a high-tech pilot without a sidearm, with one option: to keep hiding. I hoped that my bomb man, Sgt. Dutch Reagan, was safe.

The training manual specified that flight personnel forced to bail-out were to set their portable radio beacons, hide and wait for rescue -- and to survive off the land. Well, the land was sh--. A Capital SH--!

The woods were Dantesque: dark, dense, a thicket, the sort of a place where one should expect to encounter wild beasts. But nothing passed by except the enemy patrol. The woods were too dead for animal life. The leaves on the trees were not green, but brown to black, from growing under a sky with more smoke than sun. The branches were not smooth, but twisted; the limbs, knotted, crooked-bent, contorted from the after shocks of too many explosions. The trees bore no fruit just prickly thorns. All the foliage looked just as Dantesque. There was nothing to eat but bitter tasting roots of the weeds on the ground, which I ate to stay alive.

I stayed awake the better part of twenty four straight hours. I took shut-eye only after making sure the enemy wasn't near. Then, I drifted, in and out of a nod, waking with a jump, listening for anything threatening.

The woods were darker after hiding in them for three days.

Three days in that dead looking place almost negated hope. I worried that the beacon didn't work, the batteries were down, the wood's denseness was blocking the signal, keeping even radio waves from getting out, and the dark, long shadows that were everywhere were doing some nasty things to keep me from being rescued.

Do you know I imagined people hanging lifeless from those black trees crooked limbs?

I feared what might have become of Dutch. He appeared in one of my dreams, dangling from a twisted branch, like a man condemned, executed, then damned.

Finally, on the third day, while I nodded off, an enemy militia man crept up on me. His bayonet was at my throat before I could jump. With gestures and grunts, and liberal use of the sharp point of the bayonet, he ordered me into the clearing where other militia men converged. I was questioned. The interrogator, the chief among them, exploded with rage and kicked me when I didn't answer. I couldn't speak his language. Dumb me. I was beaten and kicked by half dozen of them. Then I was blind-folded with duct tape. I was marched and marched, then thrown on a truck, where I fell on my face and stumbled about, helpless, bound and blindfolded.

When the tape was ripped from my eyes I was in a warehouse-like place. I blinked and slowly, as my eyes adjusted, a face from my college days appeared right out of nowhere. The face looked out of place. The person owning the face looked out of himself. He was not himself. He looked grungy. I gaped at him as he moved closer.

"Adu?" I asked.

Despite the shock, he shrugged. "Sammy?"

I'd met Adu when we both were students at Columbia. We were brilliant boys, party lights in the sun on the drab Jersey beaches. Those were awesome times. So magical, if not miraculous, far from now. Adu's lanky figure swaggered across campus. Every frat had to have him. He was a rich boy who drove a Porsche. He said his papa had billions in oil. And, for him picking up girls was as easy as picking green leaves from a juicy apple tree in August. Every little, hot skirt wanted to get into his Porsche's shiny bucket seat!

We befriended on the pledge-line, waiting to get our butts swatted.

During that pledge weekend, we drank heavily. We became close fraternity brothers. We spent our college nights bar- hopping, bright boys we were! We dated in foursomes. I was halfway to being his blood brother too before we graduated.

"What are you doing here, Adu?" I demanded.

He replied, "It is not your fault."

Suddenly, the smell of arm-pits, crotches and butts lay a strong assault on my nose. My sense of smell had been under attack from the moment that I was captured by this grungy, unwashed bunch, but suddenly their stench became almost unbearable.

Adu noticed my distress. "Some of us stink?" he asked.

"Well, yes," I answered gingerly.

"Your embargo and blockade keep out the Paris perfumes," he said. Your bombing knocked out the water works."

"Adu?"

"These men are soldiers not college students."

"I am a solider. These men weren't soldiers but thugs!"

"Thugs? What do you know of these men?"

"Thugs are easy to distinguish in any land."

"I presume some of your bruises aren't the results of your crash? So you were interrogated?"

"My rights under the Geneva Convention were violated!"

"Please? Some of the men get carried away. Your war on my country has made us an underfed and starving people, short tempered now, because of our hunger."

I saw no starving people. The bunch that captured and abused me looked overfed.

Adu continued, "Our children are hungry; our babies have no medicine."

I didn't want to reply to this, but when he growled and then, even appeared to look self-righteous, I answered. "The embargo permits food and medical supplies. Your dictator choose to refuse to let the food in. These thugs, er, men are fat. Their plates don't miss a biscuit or gravy."

Adu shouted that he wasn't going to reply to my government's propaganda. He glared at me.

I took a deep breath, softened my tone, hoping to soften his, said -- "What gives, brother? These fellahs work for you?"

He cut me off. "Shut the hell up. You're a prisoner. There's no changing that."

I took a five count, relaxed my neck muscle, said , "Adu, we were a team. You know that. I thought we always would be."

"Sammy, you're the enemy. This is not school."

I tried to hold back. I blurted, "Don't let them mistreat me. The Geneva Conventions and all."

"Geneva Conventions," Adu sounded bitter. "You fight like cowards with technology, not man-to-man. You are afraid to face us."

"My government, Adu. You know my country? My government --"

"Your destructive barbarism is evil."

"Right?"

"Your long range launch systems --"

"Adu, I'm just a cog."

"You have the firepower. We are no threat. We offer little resistance, other than anti-aircraft fire. You do whatever you want because you have the power?"

"Adu, we both got gentleman C's in political ideology, remember?"

"You do enormous damage to my country's infrastructure and to human lives."

"We are not having a conversation, right?"

"You, people --"

"You're making a speech? Adu, when we were in school together, I chauffeured the B&W. I drove in the front seat with one sweetie while you were in the back with two honeys. The only times you made speeches were when you were getting ready to f--k the girls. Are you planning to f--k somebody?"

I remembered Adu returning from a date, at 5 AM that morning in our senior year, on the day of term finals. He stomped into our room in the frat house and opened a window. His noise and the cold air woke me. He shouted out at the sleeping campus:

"New York City, this nigger, euro-arab rammed three of your lily white, virginal daughters last night! Straight up! One after another! The sluts loved it!"

"Adu!" I sleepily admonished him.

"Sammy, they called me an animal!"

"Who?"

"Freaking pieces of sh--, New York City cops!"

"Brother!"

"Brother? I'm just a foreigner, sh--."

Adu called forth a fat thug, spoke to him, then said to me, "Hans, can speak English. He will watch you."

The thug smiled at me, sneered. "He wonders why I can speak his gutter language? I had time to learn. The others have families. I have no one."

I said, "I can tell."

"Smart-mouth!" Adu stared.

And so I stopped, went silent. I was bewildered. I'd half-- more than half believed that I could talk my way out of this. My college pal, a frat brother too, was running the show.

The thug smiled. "I had a wife and six children. They were killed in one of his missile strikes last year. "

Fatso led me to a door that he opened and a blast of terribly bad air rushed me. He laughed as I almost fell weak.

"Stay on your feet," he ordered.

He spoke to the guard behind me and I was slapped on the back of the head. I stumbled down stairs, into a dirty room that had a gangrenous odor. I saw Dutch.

He was chained to a wall. His feet stood in an old wash tub. Dutch's face had aged.

What was happening around him was so horrible that he'd begun to age by the second. He looked so vulnerable.

He looked at me as I was brought in.

"Dutch, " I gave him the "thumbs up" sign.

He didn't reply.

Though he was too brave to cry, his eyes were damp and prayerful. But, I just knew his character would carry him through. He couldn't speak, could only stare.

I was made to stand in the tub next to the tub in which Dutch stood, and I was chained like him to the wall.

Dutch stayed silent though out, even after the enemy left us. Dutch would not answer my questions, as to how he was holding up, and as to what he'd learned from our captors. The enemy had done something to him.

Hours later, Adu and his gang came down the stairs and made an announcement.

What Adu said was horrible. I took a hard look at him, to see if this was really him. Having known him, as I had known him, his words were incredible. On every side of me, I heard his men voices laugh. I was a slow learner, for I still could not yet see what they knew was in him. Adu made a tiny noise in his throat, glanced across the room. It did dawn on me that he was trapped too. He was not able to be himself. But I couldn't let go of the past and give up on him. I was hopeful. I continued to try to get him to help me and Dutch.

"Where's your conscious?" I demanded.

He seemed to agonized for a moment, then decided to shut out his past. "My conscious is fine!"

When he said that I knew I was dead.

"We are not going to tell you any information, " I said.

"We don't want any information," he took a seat in the room's one chair. The chair was as dirty and as dusty, and as dung-fouled as the rest of the room.

"Name, rank and serial number, nothing more." I glared.

He smirked. He said to Fatso, "Gagged them."

Dutch and I were gagged with duct tape stuck to our mouths. I protested to no avail.

Adu said, "We should strip you naked to better tenderize your rumps, but your uniforms are a constant reminder of what you've done to us."

Our legs were chained and drawn up to our chests, exposing the seats of our pants to them.

Fatso took a heavy cat-of-nine-tails and flogged us together, a stroke for Dutch, then a stroke for me, then Dutch and so forth. He laughed as he cut into us.

"Your fat behinds will roast well in the oven and feed the whole hungry village." Fatso said in a laughing sneer, and as the tore whip into us, did a little jig, the dance of a fat pervert with a whip.

He beat us until blood ran through our uniforms, only then did Adu have my gag remove.

Blood

dripped

down my mouth.

I'd bitten clean through my lower lip to keep from screaming.

"You are freaks!" I shouted.

Adu's face was cold.

"When the village elders realized this war wasn't going to end and survival would require a special effort, I and my men were hired to provide for the village needs, " said Adu.

"Needs? To torture people? Are you still a human being?"

"I have no regrets. No guilty conscience."

"No conscience!"

"You have no idea of the depth of my conscience."

Fatso interrupted, "Boss, why are you talking to the food?"

Adu rose from his seat and headed for the stairs.

"You son of a bitch, you know me!" I screamed.

He said to his henchmen, "Finish with the thrashing."

"Let me go! Adu!"

"Out of the question -- besides, " he paused, as if taking time to ponder a thought. "Besides Columbia is one of the few building blocks in my life that I still do not know how to toss away. I am on an another path. For the sake of my head, I must throw off your country, It is destroying mine."

"Adu! We pledged the fraternity on the same day!"

He shouted as if he was on fire. "Sh--!"

He left, going up the stairs. I never saw him again.

Fatso snapped his whip on us twice more, then told us that the butcher would be in shortly. He grinned like a smug turd, the sack of sh-- . After a few minutes, he and the other scum left Dutch and me alone, hanging, chained, in that foul room.

Hours later, Fatso returned with the butcher. The butcher appeared to be a decrepit, harmless old man, nearly seventy, with a peasant's eyes and disposition. He smiled as though his heart held no malice. Tucked under his arms, he carried a package, wrapped in newspaper. I don't know what I was expecting. Not a swift execution.

Fatso grinned, "He's got his tools." Laughter bubbled up from Fatso's stomach, and out his ass too like fart-gas.

The old man unwrapped the newspaper on the room's dirty table. I saw a meat cleaver, a hack saw and a butcher knife, which he took from the newspaper and placed on the filthy table.

Fatso pointed at me. In their language, then in English, he spoke, "The great big boss' old foreign college fraternity brother, him not today?"

The old man nodded politely.

"Him, him's flying buddy?"

The old man smiled.

Fatso grinned.

"The old man is going to cut off your friend's dick with this knife and leave him to bleed to death. It will drain his carcass of blood. It will be good for the meat."

The butchering old man cut into Dutch's pants.

Dutch screamed.

To stop the screams, the fiend slit Dutch's throat. Then he cut off Dutch's penis and put it in a jar.

These men had human faces. They wore boots, so I couldn't see if they had clawed feet. Their hands looked normal. They had on trousers, so I couldn't tell, if they had tails.

"Delicacies," the fat thug laughed, holding the jar in my face. He was sexually aroused. "The monkey, stewed with a few onions, celery and potatoes, is delicious, but the stewed prick is hard to chew."

I screamed, "G-ddamn! G-ddamn! I said: G-ddamn!"

"The meat needs to drain," Fatso grinned. "Lights out for now; food doesn't need light."

The fat fiend and, ... and, the foul old one left.

When the light came on again, the fat fiend and the butcher- fiend had returned. Dutch's body was drained. How much time had passed, I don't know. Maybe three hours or four, five or six. Fatso looked into Dutch's tub.

"You foreigners don't have much blood." He spat into the tub. "A week ago, we caught a little government official, a bean counter from the capitol, he had more blood. The government's regular army guys fill the tub. I bet the dictator would make the tub overflow." He laughed.

The old man said something. He spoke softly. I don't know their language. I can't tell you what he said. But he wanted to get to work.

Fatso said to me. "You're going to be okay, for now. The old paw won't go slicing your little wiener. I have to dump your buddy's tub. I'll be a minute. We bury the blood out in the yard. We don't drink it. We're carnivores not vampires." He grinned. He took the tub and left, carrying it up the stairs.

The old man laid a paint drop cloth at Dutch's feet, took the hack saw, got up on a step ladder and started to cut into Dutch's head.

I yelled at him to stop. "In the name of mercy, stop this horrible thing!"

He didn't know my language, but I am certain he knew what I was saying. But to him my plea was just so much noise, nothing more than the squeal of an animal witnessing and waiting slaughter. Vainly, I tried to break myself from the chains. I wanted to knock that old man down. "You monster! You son of a bitch!"

The old man looked at me. He had no emotion, just a polite smile. He decapitated Dutch. The drop cloth caught the head and the little bit of blood left. The old man climbed down from the ladder, got his butcher knife and cleaver, then went back to Dutch's body and cut into it. He cut off portions which he let fall to the drop cloth. Later, he wrapped these portions and the head in newspaper. I was so angry. I was in tears.

I was left alone for hours, maybe for a whole day. I swore I wouldn't sleep. I would stay awake, to curse them, to continue to curse them, to scream and yell and call them the mother- fakers that they were. But damn, the body has limits. I drifted into sleep . . .

Suddenly, I woke with a start. I wasn't sure what snapped me awake. I knew something was amiss. There was no light. I couldn't see anything. My eyes had trouble adjusting to the darker room. The house was completely quiet. Then I heard a low hissing sound. I held my breath. A dread knot took form in my stomach. I heard the squeak of the floor board of the room overhead and a soft hush.

My first thought was to yell, to demand to be told what was happening. Right? Like they were listening to my demands! They were the enemy, and worse, fiends! I was alone. Then I heard a loud explosion that sounded just three hundred yards away. I heard more movement from the room above and a scream.

We were bombing them. "Bombing them! Bombing them!" I thought. "God, good!"

I smelt them upstairs, the stench of their sweat, the poop in their drawers, as they cowered. The cowards cowering in fear, as we bombed them!

When I was in my plane and we dropped bombs, there was no sound, but the bombs falling down near where I now was made an eerie sound -- a well welcomed sound.

I thought: "Thank you, bomb their A."

I tried to scream: "Bomb the bastards to hell!"

I wanted the fiends in the room above to hear my defiance, and wishfully, I thought I could make enough noise to attract our planes in the stratosphere to lob down a smart missile that would go up these cannibal-retards tails. But my vocal chords wouldn't work. I couldn't remove the lump- sore in my throat.

More movement upstairs and a wave of very loud explosions -- and chills that went through me -- bombs blasted into the woods, rocketing the hills. Then a terrific explosion that shook everything -- and screams and screams! Beautiful screams!

Objects in the room began to topple and to fly. I had to keep ducking to avoid being hit. A huge hole opened in the room's ceiling. A powerful force of air drew debris and stuff in the room upwards. The fact that I was chained to the wall and the wall wasn't blown out, prevented me from being drawn through the hole. I was hit by dust, dirt and small chunks of debris. I closed my eyes to keep from being blinded.

When the noise died down, I could still feel the air stirring. I opened my eyes and saw the night sky, black as soot, except for the flashes of lightning-like light from explosions in the distance, that lit, every few seconds, the dark, ominous shapes which were everywhere.

During the night I fell asleep. Irresistible fatigue overwhelmed me. I slept until the sun woke me at dawn. Dew had fallen on my face. The bombing had stopped. The sky was filled with smoke from burning buildings. A low-flying enemy helicopter approached from where the sun was rising and hovered directly over me. I could do nothing but sh-- in my pants.

At noon, I was led out of the death room on a stretcher. I saw the bomb damage with stark clarity. There were ghastly, burnt- black skeletons and bones, and bodies, with half charred flesh and gaping holes, strewn all around, above. Damn, the room where I was rescued from was in a gaping black hole!

An English speaking medic told me, "We taking you to the field hospital." He said I'd been lucky. He smiled cheerfully, "Your injuries ... mostly just slight."

Right, he didn't know beans.

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