Brains

  BRAINS

  by Jaq Wright

  For Candy

  Prologue

  Vietnam, 1970

  “Snipers up!”

  PFC Augustus Overbridge hustled forward, while his spotter, Benje, jogged two steps behind. Satch and Sam were already hunkered down next to the lieutenant.

  “Point saw something in the tree line across the paddy.” He pointed at Satch. “You two up and left. O and Benje, up and right.”

  The platoon flattened out as the sniper teams melted into the forest. Benje muttered, “We were practically home. Must be less than three miles.” O said nothing. They crept forward, Benje leading out, silent in the jungle. Twenty minutes later, they were in position on their bellies, five hundred meters forward and just at the edge of the trees to the right of the rice paddy. Benje swept his gaze along the edge of the field with his 9x50 binoculars, his movements as unhurried as a sloth. O waited patiently, the big Remington 700 held almost lovingly at the ready. Come on, Benje, work that Filipino jungle magic.

  A shot rang out on the far side of the paddy. Benje swung his field glasses smoothly around to where Sam and Satch were set up directly across from them behind a fallen trunk. Satch's right arm hung awkwardly, but he had his binoculars up, and he and Sam were both intent on something up ahead. Benje followed Sam's sight line to a small rise at the far side of the paddy. At first he saw nothing, then jabbed at O. “Check out that knoll. There's a patch.”

  O focused through his scope at the small hill. There was indeed a rectangular patch of ground, slightly dryer than the surrounding foliage. Just where I would have set up. His rangefinder showed eight hundred meters. “Got it. Check out the same spot on our side.”

  “Nothing there,” Benje reported. “The ground slopes down on this side, no good for set up.”

  O waited, breathing slowly, his scope fixed on the leading edge of the hide. Breathe in, breathe out, melt into the ground. His pulse slowed and all the tension drained from his body. The patch of ground tented up and the tip of a muzzle showed, followed by a telescopic sight. O fired at a spot a foot back from the sight, and chambered his next round immediately. A second later, a cloud of pink mist erupted and the covering tarp blew up into the air, exposing another man. He started to squirm back, but O's second shot was already on its way, aimed center mass. It caught the second man in the right shoulder, sending his detached arm careening into the air. O turned to Benje. “Did ya get that? That's 77 brains and 54 bodies. Put that in the book! Who's the best damn shot in the Corps!”

  Benje grinned and started to pull out his notebook, but a bullet ripped through his helmet from their right, covering O with a gory shrapnel of metal, brains, and bone. O scrambled around on his belly, and spotted movement barely two hundred meters forward in the trees. He grabbed Benje's M16 and fired two shots into the back of one man, knocking his body into a tree. A second man melted into the jungle. O slung his Remington over his shoulder and went after him, adrenaline pumping him up so tight he thought his head would explode. “A solitary marine is a dead marine,” floated into his consciousness from basic training. He pushed that thought down, and followed deeper into the jungle, no longer interested in rules or tactics or safety or anything other than killing.

  He ran hard, following the noise of a man who was clearly more interested in speed than stealth. After a few minutes, he started to slow. There was something wrong with his right leg. He looked down. Blood was spreading from a tear in his pants, adding to the blood and bits of Benje spattered over his fatigues. He stopped long enough to tear away the fabric, revealing a jagged gash in his thigh. A splintered piece of white bone poked out of the wound, and for a moment he felt cold, sure that his leg was broken. Like I could run on a broken femur, he mocked himself. He grasped the bone and pulled, ignoring the pain as it came loose. It was about three inches long, with a couple of teeth in it. Benje. He tossed it aside, pulled tape from his pack, and strapped it across the torn flesh, slowing the bleeding. No time for pain, he thought. Focus. He listened intently. His quarry was still crashing recklessly away through the jungle, best guess three hundred yards ahead.

  Three hours and several kilometers later, the adrenaline was gone, and his thigh screamed with every step. The noises of the fleeing Viet Cong had become slowly more distant, and the sun was low on the horizon. I'm going to lose him. But then the trees were gone and the world opened into a plowed field which sloped gently down to a hut village. O stopped short and squinted in the sudden light. His quarry was in view, running hard, getting closer to safety with every step.

  O sprawled at the tree line and slid back the bolt of his Remington, chambering a round. He felt the caress of the walnut stock on his cheek as he lined up the target. Almost nine hundred meters. He ran the numbers. Nine hundred meters. Just over a second. Running man, ten feet. No wind. He held off three feet above and ten feet in front of the target, still a hundred yards from the huts. Hasten slowly, he reminded himself, and invested four seconds in slowing his breathing. Breathe in, breathe out, melt into the ground. The trigger broke crisply at three pounds of pressure, and the .308 round sped at nearly three times the speed of sound into the back of his enemy's head, rewarding him with another beautiful spray of pink mist. 78 brains.

  After the rush of the kill, O suddenly came back to himself. He pulled a few feet back into the jungle and sat against a tree, watching the village. Nothing. He looked down at his leg. He grit his teeth and pulled off the tape. The edges were already getting red. He could almost hear his CO. “Third purple heart. Automatic ticket home. Sorry we had to cut off your gangrenous leg.” His aid kit had some antiseptic, which he poured into the wound and scrubbed hard with his toothbrush. A new personal high for pain. He shook his canteen. Not enough. Still, he poured a little in to rinse the wound, then taped it again, and took a sip.

  Night fell quickly in the tropics, and soon his world was an almost inky black. He put a patch over one eye, and continued to scan the village lights for movement with the other, as he moved laterally about two hundred meters through the jungle. Six silhouettes retrieved the body, but there was no other sign of extra-village activity. At night all the villages were Communist. He sat motionless against his tree, so quiet that the night creatures of the jungle went about their usual business, small bodies rustling along the ground or through the canopy above.

  The waning gibbous moon rose over the hill and he checked his luminous watch. Ten o'clock. He could now see dimly in the moonlight. And be seen. Good for moving, bad for hiding. Still no movement from the village. Home's gotta be south and west, but how far? he thought. Could be a dozen miles. He rose stiffly and started to move through the jungle, the moon behind his right shoulder. Hasten slowly, he reminded himself. Every hundred paces or so he stopped and listened, then moved on. At three, he came suddenly out of the trees and onto a well-worn dirt road curving to the southwest. He started down the road, but stopped after a hundred meters and shook his head. I must be getting delirious. He went a few feet into the trees and pulled his sniper tarp out of his pack. He spent twenty minutes weaving in some fallen branches and leaves, then lied down to watch the road from his hide. Hope the boys are out on patrol this morning. Preferably a whole armored division.

  Soon after sunup, some villagers passed by with an oxcart. No hurry, just a day in the life. O did not move. His leg throbbed. Next came a VC patrol, moving quickly and almost silently. Not actually on the road, but just inside the jungle on the far side. If they had been on his side they would have stepped on him. O's finger twitched, but six was about five too many for the Remington. It would have been different if he still had Benje's M16. They passed uneventfully.

  The pain from his thigh was getting worse, and after six motionless hours, it had stiffened up, even a
slight movement causing searing pain. He had to look. First, he listened. No human sounds, just the normal jungle noises which assured him that no one was near. He pushed back the tarp and sat up, examining his leg in the sunlight. Pus oozed from under the tape, and the surrounding redness was now wider than his hand. He listened. Still no noise. He dug at the end of the tape with his fingernail, and yanked it off. A strangled groan hissed out through his clenched teeth. Yes, definitely pus. He rummaged in his pack and found the remaining antiseptic, which he then dumped into the wound. This time, the pain was too much, and darkness closed in on his vision, accompanied by a loud roaring in his ears.

  He was awakened by the sound of the villagers with the oxcart, hurrying now, going back the other way. The sun was noticeably higher in the sky, and was beating down on his exposed face. His lips were burned and cracked, and his eyelids hurt with each blink. How long had he been out? He reached to pull the tarp back over his body, but stopped himself. They won't see me unless I move. They appeared intent on speed in any case, urging the ox along with cajoling cries and a switch. They passed, and he scrubbed the wound once more with the last of his water, and re-taped it.

  Barely two minutes later, he heard a rumble which got slowly louder. Trucks! Soon they came into view, two U.S. Army deuce-and-a-half's and about twenty soldiers on foot. He yelled, “Hey!” but only a harsh croak came out of his parched throat. The truck noise was enough that it would have probably masked a whole platoon of VC in any case. O pulled himself forward on his elbows the few feet to the tree line and started waving his Remington in the air. One shot passed over his head and then someone yelled, “Stop shooting, idiot, that's one of ours.” Moments later two soldiers grabbed his shoulders and started dragging, but were stopped by his screams and the irritated barking of the medic.

  “What the hell happened to you?” he asked.

  O was barely conscious, and was only able to rasp out a whisper.

  “78 Brains. 78 Brains. 78 Brains.”

  Chapter 1

  Barbuda

  Friday, September 23, 2016

  Frank awoke with a start. Somebody was pounding on his door, the sound barely audible over the drumming of the rain on the metal roof. He sat up in the total darkness, groggy with sleep. Who the heck?

  “Go away!”

  “Please, Dr. Frank, it's Constable Peters. It’s rather important.”

  Frank fumbled for the lamp. Still no power. With the storm shutters closed, the room was dark as pitch, and his flashlight had long since given up. The wind was still rattling loudly, but was no longer the screaming siren of the last two days. He rolled out of bed, tangling his leg in the sheets and falling heavily to the ground.

  “Umphf. COMING,” he shouted.

  He made it over to the door and opened it. The constable was standing in his yellow slicker on the porch. It was raining steadily, but to the east the clouds had cleared and the morning sun was blinding. In the glare, he could make out his neighbor's house, a hundred yards away and down the bluff. It was missing most of its roof, and had collapsed sideways off its stilts onto a wrecked thirty-foot sailboat, stenciled with the name Serenity. The pink sand beach was littered with debris and dead fish.

  Paradise. I’m sick to death of paradise. This week, particularly.

  “Hello, Peters. Here to tell me 'I told you so,' I expect. Fine, I should have evacuated when you told me to get out on Monday. There. You were right.”

  Peters did not even smile. “No, sir, nothing like that. I wondered if you might come give me a hand with something.” He peered through the door into the gloom. “I thought you said you had a generator.”

  “Yeah, something crashed into that side of the house about an hour into Hurricane Marge. It was not like I could go out and try to fix it. How can I possibly help you?”

  Peters shifted from one foot to the other. “I was hoping you could come with me. There's something, er, someone, I should say, washed up on the beach. I've got coffee in the Rover,” he added.

  “It's a little out of my jurisdiction, wouldn't you say? What's the urgency?”

  “Well, we don't have a coroner on the island, I doubt anyone will be able to come over from Antigua today, and I would really like some help moving it so as to keep it from floating back out. I was making the tour of the island when I saw some birds pecking at something, and, well, I would really like you to have a look, being a coroner back in the States and all. Please, sir.”

  “Assistant coroner. But hot coffee sounds good.” And he really did love dead bodies. He pulled on his tall rubber boots and followed Peters out.

  ◆◆◆

  They drove north and west about a mile and a half. Frank saw birds poking at something tangled in the seaweed that was up near the normal high tide line. They parked at the side of the road about twenty yards from the body, and sloshed over.

  Approaching the body, Frank started analyzing immediately. Bloated and green, he thought, but the skin hasn't burst. Probably between one and two weeks in the water. As he got closer, he could see a length of chain looped around the waist, cutting in deeply with the swelling. The fingers, toes, and genitals were partly gone and had ragged edges. Crabs, he thought. Tall, probably male. Then he saw why Peters had wanted help. The top of the skull was gone. Neatly. As if cut off with an autopsy saw. The brain was missing, of course. The scavengers of the deep would have eaten that soft morsel right away.

  “Did you take photos yet?”

  “No, um, I actually had a quick look and thought I would get someone.” Peters was nearly as green as the body.

  “You have a camera in the Rover? Run get it, and I'll take the shots. You're right, we can't leave this here. Where can we take it?” But Peters had already bolted for the car.

  They decided that the only place would be the garage at the constabulary back in Codrington. Frank took about a dozen pictures, and Peters got a tarp and spread it next to the body. They rolled the corpse onto the tarp, which caused a large amount of noxious gas to bubble out of the throat, and a pool of brown fluid seemed to ooze from everywhere.

  “Rope,” Frank directed, and Peters fetched some from the car. Frank pulled up the corners of the tarp and secured it, and only a little fluid leaked out when they heaved it into the back of the Rover. Frank drove, Peters hanging his head out of the window like a dog to escape the stench. Frank laughed to himself. He was immune to smells of all sorts, after decades of exposure.

  The constabulary had a generator, and Frank found a couple of floodlights and illuminated his subject. Getting an ID on this body is going to be tough. The eyes, most of the nose, and the ears were gone, and he could not even hazard a guess as to the original skin color- certainly not the greenish yellow he was presented with. There were teeth, but in poor repair, and no sign of any dental work, so no help there. Frank was not really sure how much he should even do. After all, they have their own medical examiner in Antigua, and they probably won’t respond kindly to my meddling. I know I would pitch a fit if some foreigners touched one of my bodies. “I'll just look,” he announced out loud, “but not start an actual autopsy.” No answer. He looked back over his shoulder. Peters was at the far side of the garage, cleaning the back of the Rover with some bleach. Frank started to whistle cheerily.

  He looked at the chain. It had broken off a short length from the body.

  “Someone must have weighted him down and tossed him in the sea.” he muttered to himself. He laughed. He missed his morgue, with the bright lights, bright tools, and foot-operated dictation recorder. He would try to keep his musings internal. A couple more weeks and he would have been picked clean, he thought. Probably an anchor – the chain has that white corroded look that you see in the holds of small sailboats. Pretty generic.

  He then looked at the skull. Under bright light, he saw something very odd. “Take a look at this, Peters, look, here at the edge of the skull.” Peters was not enthusiastic, but he came over. “The bone edge is healed. He must have been
alive for at least a month after this was done.”

  “What, alive with the top of his head off!?” Peters had had enough, and went over to the sink in the corner and began to heave.

  Frank shook his head. Cops. The same everywhere.

  The pathologists' greatest joy was to torture the cops. Frank thought back to one Saturday morning when he was a student working part time in the Medical Examiner's office. They brought in a week-old suicide victim who had been discovered in his apartment due to the smell. His skin was dull green, and bloated with gas to the point of bursting. The smell had been unimaginable, and the detectives smeared mentholatum on their lips, wore masks, and stood as far back from the autopsy table as possible. Dr. Kovac was about 4'10” and 90 pounds, wrinkled like a gnome from smoking two packs a day. She had winked at Frank, and asked the cops, “Do you know why they swell?” Just some head shakes. “Methane,” she said. She then grabbed a large syringe with a giant needle, and with a sharp jab thrust it in the victim's chest. The force of the gas blew the plunger out of the syringe, and Dr. Kovac fished her lighter out of her pocket. “Look, it burns,” she called out, and lit the gas that was hissing out of the cadaver, making a fountain of flame four feet high. She doubled over with laughter as both detectives vomited into the sink. Frank decided then and there that Forensic Pathology was his thing. He laughed to himself and got back to work.

  He ran his finger around the outside of the skull. There were four holes in the skin, symmetrically arranged. He broke his resolve to not meddle, and used a box cutter to incise through one of the holes. The bone beneath had a neat, sharp hole drilled into it. NOT healed. Clearly he had had something screwed to his skull. He then looked more closely at the inside of the skull. There were tiny linear grooves, spaced about a quarter of an inch apart, all around the inside of the skull, with deeper indentations about a half inch down, where the other grooves ended. Frank closed his eyes and thought about it. The bone had an interesting erosive wear. Perhaps something metallic, like a screen or mesh had been attached all the way around.