The Ghosts of My Lai Read online

  THE GHOSTS OF MY LAI

  JC BRASWELL

  COPYRIGHT

  THE GHOSTS OF MY LAI is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 JC Braswell

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The Magothy Publishing Logo is a trademark of JC Braswell.

  First Printing, 2017

  ISBN-10: 0-9979909-2-9

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9979909-2-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  www.jcbraswell.com

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For the real ghosts of My Lai...

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This was an extremely difficult book to write, not because of the different twists and turns that a writer takes when drafting a story, but due to the subject matter. I truly hope that I did justice to those forgotten soldiers who fought in Vietnam. I also hope that I brought light to the horrors that those brave men faced, and sometimes the horrors they brought upon themselves. That is why I give all the thanks in the world to Dave Panuska, who told me his stories about the tragedy of Vietnam. Godspeed, Dave.

  I’d also like to thank Ron Malfi, my brother in words and beer. He’s been more of a mentor (and friend) than I could ask for in life. Thanks, brother.

  Thanks to my editor Ashley Davis. This was the book that convinced me to work with her. Thank you for your guidance. To my publisher of short stories, Mark Parker of Scarlett Galleon Publications, thank you or your faith in my work. And, of course, thank you to my guinea pigs who always find time to read my works: Scott Shaffer, Paul Drgos, Ethan Grayson, Marcy Arnold, and Vicki Johnson.

  To my wife, Mika, thank you for your continued support. And to my kids, Ayana an Hiro, you’re too young to understand what daddy does, but hopefully this will make you proud of me one day. Love to my family.

  FACT

  Studies show that approximately twenty percent of more than three million U.S. troops who served in Vietnam returned with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This condition left them with invasive memories, nightmares, loss of concentration, guilt, irritability, and depression.

  Although medicine was introduced to help combat PTSD’s waking effects, doctors have failed to develop something to alleviate the nightmares.

  The nightmares, they say, have roots that run deeper than combat.

  ONE

  Chris Williams climbed into the Huey, leaving behind a village of sorrow. He’d come to Vietnam to end it all, but not like this, never like this. Most of his platoon remained shaken from the weight of their orders, the whites of their eyes large against faces blackened with soot. The 49th were supposed to be there. Instead, they found innocents—women and children who held no place in the cursed war.

  Vietnam wouldn’t absolve them of their sins. They were damned to return to the jungle and its exotic birds, the meandering waters of untamed rivers, and the constant drone of insects.

  Then there were the others who haunted the land…

  TWO

  G-forces pulled Williams back as the helicopter plummeted towards the treetops, its blades whipping overhead. The engine buckled. Another train of smoke poured through the window, masking their free-fall. They stood no chance against the gunfire from below.

  He stretched forward between the pilot chairs, gagging, fighting past the hot smoke funneling through the Huey’s fuselage. His fingers nicked the handle. A little further. There was no time to pause.

  Their cries seemed distant, almost ethereal amidst the chaos. He wasn’t sure if it was his platoon or the people they’d slaughtered.

  “Brace yourself,” Williams ordered, his voice echoing against the exposed metal housing.

  Williams held his breath and blindly reached again, straining his muscles to the point he thought they would rip from bone. His eyes stung as he wrapped his hand around the control stick. Logic told him to pull back, and he did. But it wasn’t a movie. Last-minute heroics were just a work of fiction. And there were no heroes onboard.

  The Huey slammed into the treetops. His ribs snapped against the back of the seat, sending a shockwave of pain through his torso and spine.

  The helicopter’s metal body groaned as tree limbs battered its frame. They were going to die, all of them. Suddenly the descent stopped, but Williams did not.

  Williams hurtled through the cockpit window towards a palette of green and brown below. He screamed as something tore through his fatigues and sliced deep into his quadriceps. Nature held no mercy for the atrocities they committed against the villagers of My Lai.

  The first branch slammed into his already bruised ribs, knocking the wind from his lungs. He gasped for air that wouldn’t come.

  Darkness followed. He heard them again—the innocents they slaughtered.

  Consciousness.

  His body flailed like a ragdoll, hips smashing into another branch. He cried out in agony, wishing it to be over.

  Another moment of darkness.

  Impact.

  His body crashed into the unforgiving earth below with a jarring thud. His ears rang and his neck throbbed. He thought he found the vacuum called death. There was no sound, no feeling, no desire, just darkness. He wanted to embrace it, to join them.

  Air rushed into his lungs, causing him to gag then spit up. He could breathe, each exhale amplified inside his head.

  He couldn’t have survived the fall. There was no way.

  Williams leaned to his side and let a slight groan escape, opening his eyes. The jungle stretched out in front of him in every direction. The sun’s rays struggled to penetrate the ceiling of foliage. A layer of fog hugged the ground, pungent in its aroma, highlighted by burning debris casting its orange hue over the forlorn area.

  The world tilted to his right and then to his left as he hobbled to his feet, his movements fueled by adrenaline more than common sense. His right thigh burned as he applied pressure. His ribs ached, impeding his ability to breathe.

  Then he saw her in the distance.

  “What?” Williams groaned. “Baby? Is that you, baby?”

  She remained still. The same long hair he used to run his fingers through every Saturday morning flowed down her shoulders and out into the swirling mist. It couldn’t be her. Not here.

  “Baby?” He fought past the pain. “Karen?”

  He blinked several times, hoping it would clear his vision, but the fog remained, creeping around his ankles. Williams limped forward toward the silhouette, clutching his abdomen and grinding his teeth. He hadn’t seen her since the accident. He needed to hug her, to hold her tight.

  The apparition faded with each step. Then she vanished. But something else remained.

  He heard the noise from behind—a ill-fated growl blended with a purr, which seemed to shake the ground upon which Williams stood. It couldn’t be.

  During his time in Vietnam, he felt the beast’s presence twice before, camouflaged by Vietnam’s natural beauty. As rare as they were—most of them cleared out by the war—tigers existed. Now the beast stalked him, waiting for its chance at retribution.

  No, he thought. Not like this.

  Williams could barely stand, let alone defend himself. He took another step, this time shifting his weight on his injured leg, groaning as it failed him.

  The ground came up to Williams fast, his face smacking against an errant root with a wicked thwack. He rolled to his side, clutching his jaw. Even
through his distorted sight, he saw its shadow circle him, blending in and out of the mist. The eerie glow of its platinum eyes breached the veil, its breath smelling of its latest kill, its massive paws displacing earth with each step.

  “No,” Williams begged, reaching up to ward off the imminent attack.

  The beast leaned back on its hind legs, ready to pounce. Williams knew what was to come. Its claws and sabre teeth would tear into flesh, finishing what the Viet Cong had started.

  He dared to move, to peer into oblivion, and closed his eyes.

  He saw downtown Annapolis, the harbor bell, waves crashing against the dock, the way the evening sun accented her auburn hair. He wanted to be back there, to be back with his love and unborn child.

  But the attack didn’t come. The first chirps of the jungle’s mutant insects greeted him as he opened eyes to see the mist dissipating. The beast was gone, absorbed by the jungle herself.

  Williams lay there, fighting to stay conscious from whatever fate would take him. He thought about Karen. He thought about what punishment he would suffer for failing to stop the attack on those who did not deserve war.

  This would not be the end.

  THREE

  Williams wiped away the thin layer of mud crust on his eyes. His head throbbed with pressure as he gazed up at the yellow sphere filtering through the jungle canopy. The sun radiated a different heat in Vietnam, a brutal heat far from the soothing rays he remembered while fishing for rockfish on the Severn River near Annapolis.

  He took a moment to study his surroundings. He had grown accustomed to destruction, plant life burnt and trampled upon, torched husks for trees. This was unusual. The area where they crashed remained foreign to him, untamed in its growth, almost primitive. The war hadn’t tainted this part of Vietnam.

  Then he remembered—her silhouette, the tiger.

  A burst of energy coursed through his body, forcing Williams to sit up, sending his head into a tailspin. A wave of nausea washed over him, causing his headache to intensify. He immediately regretted the sudden move.

  Where am I? Williams thought, rubbing his temples.

  He glanced down his chest to see a smattering of dried blood across his torn fatigues. Memories of the actual accident, of artillery from the jungle floor, of the helicopter descending and his subsequent fall, were little more than clips from a movie strung together. There was no way he could’ve survived.

  “Cobb. Harris. Jones,” he groaned, forcing himself to speak despite his parched throat.

  Williams knew he had to move. Staying in the same place would mean certain death. He pushed himself up to all fours in spite of his body’s protest, grimacing as his fractured ribs and his punctured thigh contracted.

  They have to be close, Williams thought, staggering to his feet. As much as he wanted to find his platoon, he knew the Viet Cong were out there—savages waiting for the perfect time to strike.

  He froze, noticing a long shadow waver on the ground in front of him accompanied by a screech of metal above. He looked up to see the helicopter’s steel carcass entangled in the jungle’s primitive weaponry of vines and branches, hanging like some macabre Christmas tree ornament.

  Jesus.

  A twig snapped at his side, causing Williams’s heart to stop as he turned to meet the potential interloper.

  A petite silhouette, about the height of the child, leaned against a tree about ten yards away. Williams’s chest thumped as he realized it might be one of them and not his platoon.

  “Hello?” he called against logic, barely able to recognize his own voice through the ringing in his head.

  It shifted position, somehow able to avoid disturbing the vegetation. The figure remained silent as it observed Williams’s movements. His only hope was for it to be a local villager. Then again, they were all Viet Cong in the end. The whole damned lot of them.

  “You don’t want to answer me. Not like I can put up much of a fight.”

  He blinked once then refocused on the shadow. The heaviness clouding his head began to clear, allowing rational thought to return. Instinct tempered by two years of combat took over.

  My gun, he remembered.

  Williams reached down. Wet steel greeted his prodding fingers. By some miracle his Colt Commander had survived the fall and remained fastened in the holster. He unsnapped the leather cuff and drew the weapon up with one sweeping motion. His trigger finger trembled, and he aimed as best he could through the lingering mental haze.

  “We can make this real easy. You go ahead and move along.”

  A bead of sweat crawled down his nose and over his lips. The steady thump of his heart beat against his tender ribs. He didn’t care. Adrenaline masked the pain.

  “Go on.”

  He waited for it to move. It stood there, watching. Another bead of sweat trailed down his forehead and into his eye. He blinked, temporarily blinded by the sting from the salt-laden droplet. Without a sound the silhouette disappeared, allowing the jungle to swallow its form just like the jungle cat.

  There’s no way.

  He should’ve heard something, a leaf rustle, a slight footfall, but there was nothing.

  “He’s here, Garcia. Williams, Lieutenant Williams,” Harris’s post-pubescent voice broke the tension, reverberating across a small ravine Williams hadn’t noticed. It was as if the terrain shifted with each passing minute, the retreating mists acting like fingers spreading the earth like putty. “I can’t believe it. He’s here.”

  “Harris?” Williams whispered, holstering his gun and emptying his lungs in a long sigh of relief. He planted his hands on his knees, ready to empty the contents of his stomach. “Thank God.” He was never so happy to see the kid.

  As he went to move, Williams felt its eyes upon him again. The beast watched him, prowling across red earth and behind a curtain of oblong leaves. But it did not attack, choosing to remain on the perimeter, perhaps unsure of Williams’s new companion.

  “Please, Lieutenant Williams,” Harris pleaded. “You need to hurry. It ain’t good.”

  “I’m coming. Just…just wait up.” Williams glanced behind, thinking the tiger would strike at any second. But the tiger vanished once again. “Fine, then,” he whispered.

  Williams traversed down the ravine where one of Vietnam’s many narrow streams cut through the crash site. He took a few steps down the slope only to have his right leg betray him again. Gravity tossed him down, legs over body, his chest seized with bursts of pain, until water washed over his fatigues. The chill soothed his burnt flesh, but the relief lasted a second. The sharp pang in his leg returned.

  “Son of a bitch,” Williams cried, hugging his right leg close to his body as he rolled to the right.

  Water rushed up his nostrils and funneled to the back of his throat. Although it was welcome, he wouldn’t risk it, spitting up a mouthful as he lurched forward. He knew malaria and an assortment of other godforsaken diseases incubated in the piss-water.

  “Lieutenant, you ok?” Harris hollered, his unsteady footfalls bounding down from the top of the ravine. “He’s definitely moving.”

  Williams grabbed two handfuls of dirt and pulled himself up the mud-slicked bank. He clenched his teeth and rolled back over to find the root of his pain—a thin shard of twisted metal punctured his quad and extended out a few inches.

  “LT, can you hear me?” Harris yelled.

  The damned kid needed to shut his mouth or he’d alert the whole damn Viet Cong populace in the area.

  “Are you ok? Do you need help?” Harris yelled even louder, causing a flock of bright-blue chirping birds to dart across the sky. The kid had proved his ineptness, but Williams couldn’t do anything about it. It was the norm for newly minted grunts. They shipped boots over to Vietnam faster than they were sending them back in caskets.

  “Keep your voice down, junior. I’ll be up,” Williams yelled back at Harris’s shadow.

  “He’s said he’s fine.”

  “He’s alive. Dear Jesus, he�
�s alive,” another voice one called. Ernesto “Priest” Garcia exclaimed in his thick Mexican accent, but remained hidden from Williams’s view.

  Williams struggled to his feet, careful not to catch the metal rod in the ground, and bear-crawled up the slight incline, listening to their voices. He knew he’d pass out soon from blood loss, but Garcia would be his savior. He’d bandage Williams up all nice and good.

  “Answer me, damn it,” Garcia yelled again, panic laced within his words. “Come on, Longhorn.”

  Longhorn. Williams swallowed, thankful they had apparently found another one of his troops—Hank “Longhorn” Brewer. The native Oklahoman dubbed himself Longhorn for reasons most of them doubted, and he refused to prove.

  “I…I,” Longhorn slurred like a drunken sailor thrown out of a bar after an all-night bender in Austin. “Matilda.”

  Matilda? Who the hell is Matilda? Williams thought, pulling one leg up, fighting past the sting.

  “Is that your hometown?” Garcia asked.

  “Matilda,” Longhorn responded.

  “Ok, Matilda it is. Fantastic place. Really nice spot.”

  “Sleep. I just want to,” Longhorn begged. Sleep only meant one thing in Vietnam.

  “You ain’t sleeping, you hear me, Longhorn. No time for sleep.” Garcia’s voice elevated with his commands. “Harris, get me…get me whatever you can find out of there. I don’t even know. Gauze or something. Anything.”

  Williams summited the top of the gully and realized the source of the commotion: Longhorn lay paralyzed on the ground. Two bloody stumps framed by strips of torn flesh jutted out from where his calves should have begun. Longhorn looked as if he’d stepped on the same landmine that killed Davis a few days before.

  Williams remembered the West Virginian’s thick mustache that reeked of whiskey. Davis died in a painful manner, bleeding out in a field with half his leg on fire. Williams had failed Davis, too.