The explosion.
Captain Allen Farrow heard it again and again.
Pieces of flesh splattered against his face. A dismembered thigh hurtled through the air and smashed against the back of his neck, knocking him unconscious.
"Kawhump!"
"Kawhump!"
The haze cleared and he opened his eyes. The black figure standing before him laughed loudly. Its foot lashed out and caught him in the jaw, knocking him to the ground.
Again and again the foot crunched into his body, sinking into his stomach, bouncing off his spine, the back of his head. He could taste the blood dripping into his mouth from his injured lip and feel the contusions growing like eggs over his body.
There was silence.
Farrow groaned as he rolled to his side and felt the bonds tighten around his wrists and ankles.
"Skipper? Skipper?"
Sergeant Monroe's voice filtered through the pain.
The sergeant's gaunt, bloody face wavered into focus beside him. Blood caked in a blob where his left eye should have been, his shoulder was ripped open and flies roosted on the exposed, raw flesh like tiny, black, iridescent vultures.
Monroe coughed, blood pouring from his mouth as he tried to speak. Voices jabbered behind him and Farrow looked up.
Three Viet Cong women stood looking down at him, laughing. AK-47 assault weapons were slung over their shoulders and hand grenades dangled from the thin, black belts pinching their waists.
A young-faced girl pointed at Monroe and jabbered rapidly. The other women laughed and drew knives.
"Jesus Christ," Allen Farrow muttered as he watched the women yank Monroe's head back and plunge the blades into the man's throat. Farrow shut his eyes and waited for the knives to pierce his throat.
A stinging blow to the back of his neck sent him sprawling.
They carried him as they might a dead beast, bound to a long tube of wood, his back bouncing off the ground, his wrists and feet tied above him.
He awoke, tasting the flies clinging to his blood-soaked lips. His body ached and blood trickled down his arms from his wrists.
Dumping him by a slow-moving stream, the women pulled their black pajamas off and splashed into the water, laughing and giggling.
Frantically eyeing the untended rifles laying a few feet from him, Farrow began to twist his hands, sawing them along the wooden shaft's ridge as he felt them loosen.
"Boum-boum."
He stopped and looked up. The women were standing naked above him, their breasts dripping water down onto his peeling face. The young one's raven hair glistened as she yakked at the others.
"Boum-boum," she repeated, reaching down and grabbing his penis. He screamed as the pain tore through him. The girl yanked his cock, stretching it as she snapped it like an old piece of rope she was trying to break. For a moment, Farrow screamed, afraid the appendage would rip out by its roots.
"Bitches! Filthy whores!" He spat the words through clenched teeth as the girl yanked his prick again. She relaxed her grip on his pole and began yelling commands at the bystanders.
Giggling childishly, the fattest of the trio waddled over to a box near the rifles and squatted over it. The young one slapped Farrow's face and spat betel nut juice at him, distracting his attention from the heavy one.
The fat woman returned, pinching her heavy legs together as she lumbered his way. She positioned herself above his face and squatted so that her cavernous vagina hovered inches from his face. He watched with gelled eyes as her snatch shut out the light and covered his nose and mouth. He opened wide, trying to suck in a breath of air.
First one, then another dropped from her gash into his mouth. They were hard and brittle, scampering across his tongue, pushing their feelers against his cheeks.
Farrow gagged and shut his mouth, feeling the roaches squash between his teeth as he fought for air.
He pumped his arms madly up and down and felt them connect with his tormentor's face. A bright splash of sunlight smashed against his eyes as her body rolled off. Without thinking, he leapt to the left, where he had seen the rifles gleaming in the sun only moments ago.
Fingernails clawed at his face as he scrabbled for the weapon. He swung back over his shoulders and knocked the woman to the ground. He grabbed the rifle and leveled it, pulling the trigger point blank as the two women rushed toward him, knives in their hands. As if in slow motion, their advance slowed before his eyes, their heads jerked back, their shoulders sloped forward, red holes dotted their faces, chunks of flesh exploded from their foreheads and cheeks as they fell in a bloody mass at his feet.
Farrow pushed himself shakily to his feet and aimed the rifle at the unconscious young girl lying beside him. He pushed the barrel of the rifle between her legs.
"Cunt, you're going to die like a whore should." He pulled the trigger. Nothing. He snapped back the operating rod handle and felt it drive home. Smiling, he pulled the trigger again.
Thung.
The pin hit the empty chamber.
"Bitch," Farrow snarled, kicking at her limp body and falling to the ground. His feet were still tied.
"You'll get yours, cunt," he growled, crawling to the packs and slicing the rope with a knife he found. "I'll make you pay, you filthy whore."
Trembling, he picked up the woman's body, carried her to the slow-moving stream and dumped her in the water. She floated for a few seconds then stirred, raising her head and coughing out the tepid water.
Farrow reached down, grabbed a handful of hair and pressed the knife against her throat. Her almond-shaped eyes looked wildly up at him as she backed up onto the shore.
"You wanted to fuck me, bitch. Now you're going to get your chance. You hear me? You fucking, hear me?" The cords on his neck bulged as he slowly drew the knife across her throat, barely cutting the skin and making the blood dribble down her chest, forming worm-like wriggles down her cleavage.
She sobbed and wailed in Vietnamese.
"Shut up! Shut your fucking mouth, you whore. You murdering WHORE!"
He could still taste the cockroaches in his mouth as he spat out the words. His mind swirled and his eyes burned as he looked down into her pleading, childish face. For a moment he thought about home; the children in the streets; his wife; the ocean lapping at the shore; an orphan he had given five-hundred plasters to in Quang Ngai. His ears rang and he heard the explosion again; saw the faces masked in agony; felt the chunks of the bodies smashing against him, pinning him to the ground; saw Monroe's haunting eye and quivering lips warning him; saw the knife the girl had plunged into his sergeant's neck, dripping with blood; saw Monroe's eyes widen and his face turn livid as the blood gushed from his neck.
"On your knees, pig." He pushed the girl down into the duff.
"See this? See it?" He pulled his penis out and waved it in front of her. "You wanted this a minute ago. You're going to get it, now. In the ass, where you and fucking comrades deserve it. In the fucking ass, slut."
He dropped to his knees behind her, tears welling in his eyes. Sobbing, he shouted and stabbed at her anus with his limp penis.
"Take that, you bitch. Feel it." Again and again he pounded against her buttocks, but his penis wouldn't stiffen.
Pulling her hair, he snapped her head back and pressed the knife against her throat.
"Suck my cock until it's hard, bitch!" he screamed. "And don't try to bite it or I'll cut your throat." He chomped his teeth and ran his finger across his throat, then pushed her head down and stuffed his prick into her mouth. She didn't open at first and he grabbed her arm and twisted it until she shrieked.
He felt her lips close around it and her gentle suckings draw the staff to life as she sobbed and looked up at him, her eyes pleading, afraid. The dong was hard now, and he pulled it out and pushed her face into the dirt as he moved around her and lifted her buttocks into the air.
Spitting on his hands, he wetted the head of his cock and lunged into her ass, making her cry in pain as he viciously thrust forward, sinking the shaft to the hilt. His hands crept under her and grabbed a breast, squeezing it so hard she cried out again and beat the ground with her fists.
He jabbed into her and took his knife in his left hand. Pressing the point against her back, he slid it down and watched the razor line fill with blood as the blade sliced her skin.
She screamed and he picked a handful of dirt and rubbed it into the wound.
"Scum. You rotten scum!" His voice shook as he moved in a steady rocking motion, driving the tool deep into the squishy, ravaged tissues of her bowels. He felt the semen rising up from his balls, thundering through the small, expanding tubes, spurting deep into her ass.
She moaned and whimpered, her face resting on the dirt, her hands clenching dead leaves and twigs. As the last ounce of spunk shot into her, Allen Farrow pressed the knife against the girl's throat and drew it across her throat like a bow across a violin. He heard her gurgle and saw the blood spill out onto the earth, seeping into the dry soil as fast as it pooled from the girl's severed veins.
Screaming and throwing the knife away, he ran headlong toward the east.