The January First Selected Writer is Michael Lindsay

You can email Michael at: team_lindsay@yahoo.com

THE SIREN
by Michael Lindsay

Three pairs of yellowy ovals materialize out of the night, dilating by degrees until they become snarling military cargo-trucks which slow to a stop on the trail running through our campsite. Engines are synchronously switched off. Doors swing open, cadre climb out. Each proceeds to the rear of his truck where canopies are flipped up and tailgates dropped.

It’s like watching a ballet, except the ballerinas look like linebackers.

The cadre from the first truck positions himself just off the trail while the other two stand by, hands clasped behind their backs. Fifteen shivering men gather around, eager to get started.

He turns on his headlamp; we follow suit. After briefly consulting his clipboard, he begins the now familiar process of calling out color-number identifications.

“Mancuso, Blue 14!”

“Leonard, White 33!”

“Estivedez, Topaz 71!”

“North, Green 43!”

I hoist my rucksack and double-time to my assigned truck. Tonight, I’m in truck three.

Between me, the other four “candidates,” and our eighty-pound rucksacks, it’s a tight fit. An expressionless cadre throws up the tailgate and secures the canopy flap so we can’t see where we’re going. The trucks come to life—in unison, of course—and creep forward along the rocky, uneven forest trail. I situate my rucksack between my legs and get comfy. These rides can be so damned long.

In my experience, nothing invokes deep thoughts like being sealed inside a pitch-black compartment. Without fail, I reflect on the path which led me here, auditioning for the world’s most elite military unit.

I enlisted in the U.S. Army eight years ago, a fresh-faced high-school brat. In my Alaskan town, guys are either farmers or vagrants. Neither appealed to me. As an infantryman, I served with the 101st Airborne and got trigger-time in Iraq and Afghanistan. I love my job. I love my comrades. I love serving my country, and I thought we did some real good things for people who hadn’t seen a whole lot of good in their lives. 

But in my heart, I knew I had more to give.

I was signing up for Green Beret Selection when a buddy floated the idea that I should try out for the unit: the one that doesn’t exist.

The Delta Force.

After weeks of cryptic emails, confidentiality agreements and stilted phone conversations, I officially volunteer to attend the “Advanced Land Navigation Course.”

The plane ticket they provid takes me as far as Anchorage, Alaska. Then I am packed onto a Greyhound bus with a bunch of other fidgety men and taken further north. Past Fairbanks, the road-signs stop. Two hours later, we turn onto an overgrown access road where a fleet of military cargo-trucks await. 

We are escorted into the mountains and dumped off with only a map, a compass, two canteens of water and a sixty-pound rucksack. The cadre, a hulking man who spoke only as many syllables as necessary, gave me grid coordinates to my current and next locations.

“Show me where you’re at and where you’re going,” he barks after I plot the coordinates. I do and he nods. “Move out.”

One thing quickly becomes clear about Alaska: if this is God’s country, as some insist, then He’s got one ugly sense of humor because this is the most iniquitous tract of land in all creation. Three weeks I’ve tromped back and forth across this state and I haven’t found a single piece of flat real-estate that’s larger than a campsite. I’ve made climbs so steep that I felt like Jack clambering up the beanstalk, and once I got high enough, I saw nothing but snow-capped peaks in all directions. It’s like counting treetops in a forest.

Most of the terrain is blanketed by mountain laurel, a loathsome combination of shrubbery and tree which looks like squids with their heads jammed in the ground. Hundreds of them will weave together into lattices thicker and tougher than a wall of sand-bags. I’ve spent hours fighting through them only to emerge exactly where I started, a bloodied and beaten mess. And apparently this entire area used to be a volcanic hot-bed because moss-covered obsidian juts from the ground, slippery as ice and sharp as a pickaxe.

Most of the candidates who “fail” Selection are carried out on stretchers. Sixty or so men hitch a ride on a Greyhound bus and just fifteen remain.

We roam the wilderness like misshapen phantoms; we barely eat or sleep and have regressed into cadaverous versions of our former selves. My body, the framework which my entire profession hinges upon, is showing its mileage. Every bounce of the truck sends rockets of pain from the bottoms of my feet. My knees are as puffed up as water-filled balloons. Rucksack straps have eaten clean into my shoulders; an outsider might think I’ve been beaten with a stick.

Yet for all that, I’ve avoided major injury. I’m still in the game.

The truck slows to a stop. I check my watch. Almost an hour. The others pick their heads up and look around. One guy we have to wake up. I’d kill to be that mellow.

We follow the cadre’s footsteps as he gets out and walks around the back of the truck. An eye peers through the canopy flap. “Green 43, secure your gear and report to the front of the vehicle.”

“Moving, Sergeant!”

I’m first up, which is an encouraging sign. It’s borderline torturous sitting in the cramped truck waiting to hear my number called. Plus I really need to piss.

The other candidates shift so I can squeeze through. I hop off the tailgate and sling my rucksack over my shoulder. The chilly breeze is a welcome comfort after being locked inside the truck. I go to the driver’s window.

“Green 43, Sergeant.”

“Your coordinates are on the hood. Plot them and report back to me.”

I turn on my headlamp on and do as instructed. The movement doesn’t seem too bad; only a few kilometers and no major shifts in elevation. But then again, we never know how many movements await us. Could be four. Could be fourteen.

The cadre double-checks my work. “Move out, Green 43.”

I take extra time to properly adjust my rucksack. The key to hauling an eighty-pound hunk of shit through the mountains is getting a fit so clean it’s like an embrace. Then I check my compass bearing and take off.

A few hundred meters in I stop to piss, exhaling loudly. No need to be tactical way out here. At least a pound lighter, I begin my journey.

I hate navigating at night, even with a headlamp. Outside of its puny radius of light, darkness consumes all. Marrying the map with what I see on the ground is virtually impossible, so that jouncing compass needle is my lifeline. Out here, alone and possessing only the most basic survival tools, a lot can go wrong, which is why it’s so damned exhilarating!

The movement to my first point proves fast and uneventful…until the siren. It cuts into the soundless night like a shriek. I’ve heard its kind before. Downrange, when mortar-fire or RPGs are inbound, you hear a sound like that. It means get under cover or they’ll be using calipers to police up what’s left of you.

I’ve been the caliper-guy. It’s a transformative experience.

I stop and conduct a map check. Lots of streams and slopes and trees in the area; nothing man-made. That’s inconclusive, of course. Half the places the Army has taken me didn’t make it onto maps.

After two minutes exactly, the siren stops.

In its absence, the night grows three shades blacker and takes on segregative attitude, as if I’m quarantined inside a pocket of shadow. The meager sphere of light spiraling from my headlamp is choked into submission. It’s probably just nerves, but I begin to hear things: heavy footfalls in the distance, and a labored, almost dilatory breathing, like two burlap sacks being rubbed together.

To regain some mastery over myself, I re-check my compass bearing and increase my pace. Shortly afterwards, another headlamp appears out of the gloom.

“You hear that, man?”

“Fuckin’ weird,” he replies. “I thought nothing else was out here in the boonies.”

“Me neither,” I say.

Conversations in the wilderness usually aren’t any more extensive than that so we nod and part ways. I’m still a kilometer from my point, roughly thirty minutes given the terrain. That’s not far, but the siren has filled me with a peculiar dread. Gone is the equanimity I normally feel when I’m on my own, trekking beneath a star-filled sky. I’m constantly checking behind me, though I see the same trees and bushes everywhere. Night cinches about me like a noose.

My imagination is running wild. I sip from my canteen and remind myself of what I’m trying to accomplish. This is The Delta Force, the highest echelon of military bad-asses. A case of the heebie-jeebies won’t shine too brightly on my assessment.

Finally I spy headlights and happily break into a trot. The cadre rolls down the window and sticks his head out.

“Color and number?”

“Green 43, Sergeant.”

“Show me your route, Green 43.” I do, and he says, “Roger. The coordinates to your next point are on the hood.”

I hesitate. “That siren a little while ago…what was it?”

He doesn’t reply. I put my headlamp on his face and see that his eyes search the darkness and he’s wringing his hands so hard that his knuckles crack.

Eventually he says, “Focus on your training, Green 43.”

Maintaining an illusion of self-possession is essential to my line of work, but never has it been harder than now. I plot my coordinates and return to the cadre. He barely spares me a glance. “Move out.”

Now I’m really worked up. What could possibly unnerve a guy like that? I conclude that he recognized the siren, so whatever it means, it isn’t good. Part of me, the same part that gets butterflies every time the shooting starts, wants to drop the rucksack and hold fast. Something’s wrong, and when it officially goes cattywompus, I’d rather be here than in the middle of the woods.

But I’m not going to do that. Not in a million years. The other part of me, the much bigger part who’s captaining this vessel, would rather die than quit.

I adjust my rucksack and move out.

After settling into a comfortable rhythm, I try to let my mind wander but the siren indiscriminately erupts in my head. For some reason, it makes me think of Chernobyl and all the empty buildings sitting out there like the leftovers of a lost civilization. Those sad sacks must've heard a siren, too, right before absorbing enough radiation to melt a steel girder—

Screaming!

That’s not uncommon out here, especially when guys are lost or caught up in mountain laurel, but this is different. This is an articulation of rage and pain that my soldier’s mind cannot fully process.

It doesn’t even sound human.

Not knowing what else to do, I squat and sip my canteen. The scream dies out and Alaska is back to being soundless and empty. Maybe that’s all it ever was and my head’s screwing with me. I’ve humped these mountains for weeks with no break; I'm exhausted, malnourished and stressed-out.

Yeah, that’s it.

Just to be safe though, I flip off my headlamp. I’ve gone some ways before I realize that I’m running—

Another scream!

This one is human, and it’s much closer. It twists into a call for help, and then a plea to God. Neither answers. At its highest timbre, it's sheared off and there’s a flapping noise like a guidon beaten by wind.

The rucksack slips off my back and now I’m sprinting. Hulking shadows spring out of the darkness; I bounce off trees and slabs of rock like a rubber ball. Not even mountain laurel slows me down.

I’m climbing out of a ravine when I trip and slide face-first across the ground. Something sticky coats my hands but I don’t linger to investigate.

I soon arrive at an intersection between two dirt roads and find an Army cargo-truck parked there. I’ve no idea how I’m going to explain my missing rucksack but I’m too relieved to care. I’m actually smiling when I walk up to the driver’s door…

…until I see that no one is inside. On the seat is the cadre’s hand-held radio and clipboard, which they’re never without. I look in the back of the truck. No candidates. With panic beginning to reassert itself upon me, I recon the area by moving in concentric circles around the intersection, calling out as loud as I dare, “Anyone here? This is Ben North. Come out!”

Nothing.

I grab the radio. It’s still on but the volume is turned down. As I rotate the knob, a mishmash of hysterical voices scrabble over one another: 

“—can’t see it! Somewhere northeast—”
“—candidates are all over! No way to—”
“—I fucking see it! Coordinates seven-two-four-niner- wait…it’s turning! Oh god!”
“—two bodies floating in the creek—”
“—Thorne! Thorne! Do you copy?”
“—DYING OUT HERE—”

I call for help but my transmission is overridden by all the cross-talk. I listen for another few seconds, then turn the volume back down and lock the truck. The only idea my rattled brain can muster is defeated as the engine sluggishly turns over but doesn’t start.

I turn on my headlamp and gasp. The sticky stuff covering my hands is blood, so much that it looks like I'm wearing red gloves. My shirt’s covered, too. That thing I tripped over...

My headlamp also shows me why the truck won’t start. The entire front end is sliced open, as if by a giant talon. The engine fumes sadly.

My options are few, and waiting here alone isn’t one of them, so I get my next coordinate from the clipboard and plot it with hands that are hopping around like goddamned crickets. Without double-checking my work I turn off my headlamp, jump out of the truck, and rush into the forest.

Not one-hundred meters in, a humpbacked figure appears ahead of me and I’m running too fast to stop. We go to the ground in a grunting and growling tangle and I’m certain that I’m about to be devoured by some nameless beast.

Then a light flickers on above me. Am I already dead?

“Holy shit, man! He’s one of us!”

Strong hands lift me from the ground. Instinctively, I rear my fists.

“Whoa man, take it easy! We’re candidates, too!”

I turn on my headlamp to find one man with his hands held up and another picking himself off the ground. I see why I’d mistaken him for a humpbacked thing: he’s still got his rucksack on. Blood streams down the side of his face.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought you were…I don’t know what I thought you were.”

“Forget it,” says the bleeding man. “We’ve got bigger problems. Something’s out here. Saw it awhile back. Fucking huge. It’s killing guys—what’s that?”

He’s pointing at my hands.

“I tripped over something out there.”

“Where you coming from?”

I show them on my map. “Nobody’s there and the truck’s destroyed. What did you see? What is it?”

“No idea. It ain’t human, though,” says the second man.

They glance at one another and a mutual terror passes between them. “We got to get out of here,” whispers the bloodied man.

“Let’s stick together,” I say. “We’ll move in a wedge and keep our eyes open. I’ll take point.”

“Sounds good to me,” he says.

“What about that?” I nod at his rucksack.

He looks back at it with total surprise. “Ain’t adrenalin a bastard? Forgot it was even there.”

“Shhhhh!”

We look wildly around; I’m painfully aware that our heartbeats sound like thumping drums. There’s other noises, too; wind whistling through mazes of branches, chirping insects, crackling deadfall—ordinary things which have taken on a sinister aspect.

An enormous shadow slides out of the brush and snatches him off his feet as though he were a weightless plaything. He screams for help but we are capable of nothing but stupefied astonishment.

“That’s it! That’s it! Gawd!” yells the bleeding man, pointing to where the other man was dragged away. He stumbles backwards and runs, disappearing into the night, his rucksack once more forgotten on his back.

“Don’t go! Help!” The doomed man reaches for me but I’m backpedaling, too. I watch him being dragged into the brush.

I’ve just conjured up enough wits to flee when there’s a sickening crunch and he goes silent. The monster roars and it’s so loud that my brain feels pinched in a vice. I know I’m screaming only because my throat burns. When it finally stops, I hear something else: a half-strangled whimper. It’s such an unexpected sound that I forget I’m supposed to be escaping.

Shoving aside trees like stalks of corn, the monster advances on me. My only defense is to gape in horror, utterly confounded that I should die in such a way. It enters the range of my headlamp and I see a long, scaly arm which sparkles like a sheet of diamonds. It reaches for me, not with a hand, but with a snapping pincer-claw.

Suddenly some nearby bushes rattle and out pops the bleeding candidate. In his terror, he’d run in a perfect circle, ending up face-to-face with the very monster he’d fled. It roars and scoops him up, rucksack and all.

Finally, I run for my life.

Dying screams hound me but there’s nothing I can do. I never see the fallen tree, or the drop-off beyond it. It bucks my legs from under me and once I’m finished tumbling down the hill, a gnashing pain radiates from my hip and my ankle’s swollen up inside my jungle boot like a turkey sausage.

C'mon, Ben! Push it! PUSH IT!

I fall against a tree, ropes of saliva dripping from my mouth, fire sweeping through my lungs. I manage another twenty meters before I collapse and puke. After my stomach’s emptied, I drag myself against a tree; I’ve never been what you’d call a praying man, my convictions rest solely on things that go boom, but I’m suddenly unleashing every skeleton in my heart to God—

Voices…human voices! They sound close.

I stagger into a clearing where two cargo-trucks are idling. Cadre and candidates alike scramble into the backs of them. The drivers look like spooked animals ready to bolt.

“Barely made it, man! Get in! Get in!”

Without breaking stride, I launch myself over the tailgate of the first truck and land atop a pile of men.

“Go! Go! Go!”

The truck fishtails across the clearing and even though our flailing bodies hammer the sides of the truck. A chorus of cheers goes up. But then we screech to a halt and before any of us can asked what’s happened, we’re speeding backwards for too fast for the other truck to react. The collision is so violent that men are hurled into its windshield. Smashed bones and shattered glass make the same sound.

The other truck vanishes before our eyes, thrown in the air. There is a moment of eerie quietude during which those of us on the ground pant like machine-guns. Then yellowy ovals are flipping through the air and the truck crashes down, silencing the screaming voices inside. 

“Drive! Drive!” we yell.

A deafening roar silences us; it's the sort of ovation I’d expect in Hell.

Just as the truck lurches forward, something smashes into it with the force of a wrecking ball. The truck flips across the ground, somehow landing right-side up, but not before tossing us around like lottery balls. The man who lands on top of me asks in a dazed voice where his arm has gotten off to. Another man’s head is cracked open like an egg and leaks reddish sludge. I swallow several mouthfuls of blood before realizing that half my teeth have been knocked out.

The survivors ignite a stampede. Run!

Any notion of camaraderie is deader than those we climb over. I’m nearly the first one out but someone else jumps past me, his boot grinding my face into the neck of a dead cadre.

He’s snatched up so fast he doesn’t even have the chance to scream. The monster plunges its pincer into his chest, cleaving him in two. His still-kicking legs land on the roof of the truck; his upper-half is pitched into the forest.

Then the monster leans down and peers inside the truck. Our scattered headlamps flash upon a crustaceous face with five pulsating eyes set in a half-circle above a gaping mouth chock-full of bloody fangs. Two squiggly antennas protrude from its forehead and they probe the area as if picking up a scent.

I throw aside the ponderous limbs of the dead and climb out of the truck. I pray the monster doesn’t see me. I land in a heap, astonished that I have the presence of mind to begin removing my belt in order to make a tourniquet.

The monster turns on me and I see that much of its body is covered by some kind of exoskeleton. Just as it’s bending to scoop me up, a single gunshot rings out.

The creature roars from pain and a soupy sludge like old engine oil drips onto my head. The monster leaps over me and thunders through the clearing, flattening dead men beneath its feet. For such a massive and ungainly creature, it vanishes into the forest with astonishing quickness.

I finish tightening my belt around my stump of a leg and then drag myself back to the truck looking for survivors. There are none.

That’s when I see two men in suits walking towards me, one older and one around my age. Identification tags hang from their chests but it’s too dark to read them. They share a glance and then the younger one kneels next to me.

“What is your name?”

I spit out a glob of blood. “Sergeant First Class Benjamin North.”

“Benjamin, I want to thank you for your service to this nation,” he says. “I truly mean that. Thank you. But we have to keep what happened here classified.”

He squeezes my shoulder. I don’t see what's in his other hand until it’s too late. He buries the knife into my chest, all the way to the damned hilt. Most people think they’ll gasp when they die, but in reality air rushes the other way, as if evacuating any vestiges of life.

I’m not sure what he sees in my face then—rage, fear, disbelief—but he at least has the decency to look ashamed of himself. 

Michael Lindsay lives in Chugiak, Alaska with his wife and children. He has served seventeen years in the U.S. Army, mostly with the Special Forces. When not writing, he spends time with his family, exercises and hikes the great state of Alaska. He’s used Amazon to self-publish the first two parts of his debut novel Clockwork which is about one man’s desperate attempt to prevent America’s very first school shooting.