Back in the day, I was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. My time in the military is not something I like to think about too often. I like to think about how it ended even less. A few months before the end of my military contract, we were scheduled to head to the field for training for about two weeks. For those not familiar with what the field is, it’s basically two weeks of weapons, tactics, and equipment training at a designated spot picked out by command. A lot of soldiers don’t like the field since you’re cut off from all commodities like cellphones, bars, and most importantly, showers. I personally enjoyed the experience in the past and enjoyed the training with my battle buddies. The last time we went to the field, it was a month long affair, so two weeks was not the end of the world for me.
My alarm clock woke me up around 0330. The weapons draw would be at 0430, which gave me an hour to wake up, take my last warm shower for two weeks, and have a proper homemade breakfast. Living in the barracks had its perks sometimes, and being within walking distance of the company was convenient on days like these. When I got to the company, a group of soldiers was already sitting around, barely awake, some downright asleep, and others chugging down energy drinks as both their breakfast and to stay awake. I felt completely out of place here as I was in my 20’s, considered a fossil in the military, most of the other soldiers in my platoon weren’t old enough to smoke, not that the laws stopped them. We lined up to sign out our weapons and blanks for our training. Most of us carried both M4’S and m17’s into the field. I pitied the m249 gunners having to carry those heavy bitches around.
Once everyone had arrived, gotten their shit and geared up, it was around 0545. We horse shoed around our platoon Leader who gave us a simple mission brief: “Just follow my truck and keep your distance just like you learned in training for potential IED’s on the road. Gunners, let me catch you not covering your sectors of fire and I’m going to smoke the shit out of you once we get to our training area.” Everyone got to their respective Humvees and were ready to roll out by 0600. With my luck, I ended up being the Driver on Humvee 01 were our fearless platoon leader decided to ride shotgun with.
It took us about an hour of driving until we reached the training site. The spot was far away from base, heavily wooded area where we would make our home for the next two weeks. We parked the Humvees in a large open field and spent the next several hours setting up tents where leadership would hang out and give classes in. by the time we had finished setting camp up, dusk was setting in and the Firewatch roster was already being worked on. Luckily, we had enough people in the platoon that anyone getting a turn at guarding the camp only had to do it for one hour. I drew the short stick and ended getting woken up for my guard shift around 0300.
I was given night vision goggles by the last guard, and I made myself to the makeshift guard post on camp. The “guard post” was a Humvee located in the middle of camp that was good for 360 security. I hopped on the roof and dropped to the gunner’s nest. Most of the shift Most of the shift was uneventful as most fireguards are. I mostly tried out the NVG’s to see my surroundings at night.
The dark woods were as clear as day with a green tint to them, I was able to see so well that I saw two privates breaking away from camp to do a little fraternizing. They were both married, by the way. I decided to give them some privacy and look elsewhere, and as I did, I noticed something creepy. I was barely hanging on to consciousness when I spotted something in the woods. Directly in front of our camp, maybe a hundred meters away, there was a figure by the tree line. From where I was, it looked like a man was observing me, no way he could make out much in the dark from such a distance away, but I felt like he was staring right into my soul. My wristwatch alarm went off, and I almost shit my pants. By the time I looked away to turn my alarm off, the figure in the woods was gone.
I didn’t dwell on it too much as I was extremely tired, and my eyes were probably playing a trick on me. I left to wake up the next guard per the roster, and I slept inside my Humvee in case my eyes weren’t deceiving me. Wake up was around 0800, and after chow, it was time for our first class in Land NAV. Luckily, no lieutenants would be in charge of any maps. We broke off into groups of three and set off into the woods. We received various coordinates we would have to travel to in the woods, were probably some sort of item would be waiting for us.
The woods were untouched in most of the area we traveled through, which meant we had to keep an eye out for uneven terrain and venomous snakes. A few miles into our hike, we reached our first coordinate location where a lone cone was waiting for us in the middle of the woods. On it was a photo of a young soldier with only first and last name to identify him. I decided to pull out my cellphone and take a picture, so we had evidence we made it to each and every coordinate. Before we knew it, we had hiked half a day in those woods, and by the time we had made it to our last coordinate, the sun was beginning to set. “We better start heading back before it gets dark, I don’t want to be lost in these woods.” I said while taking out my flashlight to light the way when night fell.
We had started making our way back to camp when not ten minutes in, night had engulfed the woods. One of our group, Carreon, had a disturbing comment to make. “Guys… I think we’re being followed.” The mere thought sent shivers down my spine, but I tried to ignore the feeling. We made a quick stop, and I replied: “What makes you say th—” before I could finish talking, I heard it, and I think everyone else heard it too.
Somewhere away from us, maybe thirty meters in the direction we had just come from, was the sound of leaves and grass being crushed by something walking on them. Whatever was making the sound must have seen us stop because the steps stopped abruptly. I didn’t want to seem too concerned to keep my other two battle buddies from falling into some sort of panic. “Come on, enough rest.” I signaled for them to keep going.
The other soldier, Diaz moved up next to me: “Do you think it’s some sergeant fucking with us?” He quietly whispered, not to alert whoever was following us. “Whatever it is, its not an animal. It stopped when we did to not alert us.” Carreon moved up to join the conversation. “Should we make a run for it? I’m sure we could make back faster if we ran.” No one among us wanted to run in the dark with heavy equipment in an unknown land. I shut the idea down almost immediately.
“We don’t know what we are dealing with. If it’s a predator, running might provoke it. Keep your bearings and if it gets too close fire warning shots. It won’t know we are just packing blanks.”
We kept making our way back to camp, our guard up every step of the way. With every minute that went by we were sure whatever was following us was not someone from camp fucking with us. They would’ve tried something by now, maybe some sort of ambush to teach us a lesson of some kind. But whoever or whatever they were, they kept their distance, the only evidence of their presence was slightly out of sync footsteps from our own in the darkness. By the time we were about a mile from camp, he made his move.
Something ran past us in the dark. Whatever it was, it was fast. Every time one of us tried to catch a glimpse of it with our flashlights we would only see the forest and its trees. We saw the glowing eyes in the dark first, watching from afar and slowly creeping closer. There were many of them, I counted half a dozen set of eyes until one got impatient enough to get spotted by one of us. Diaz was pointing his flashlight to a tree ten meters from us and hugging the tree trunk was a thin figure, patchy hair covering parts of its body, bony hands attached to what seemed like razor sharp claws and a grotesque ear to ear smile. Somebody fired a burst shot, sending the creature in front of us running on all fours to somewhere in the darkness. Pure panic had a death grip over us.
I barely remember sprinting in the other direction courtesy of adrenaline. I recall my heavy breathing and how out of breath I was running at top speed with full gear on. I remember shooting at glowing eyes in the darkness and the deafening sound that followed. I remember somebody screaming in the dark and me not even stopping to look back at who it was. I remember somebody yelling at me…then I realized it was a sergeant who was trying to get me to respond, trying to snap me out of my catatonic state.
“Specialist! What the fuck happened?!” He continued to yell as I was able to finally react. I didn’t say anything immediately. I realized I was back at camp; my platoon was staring at me in horror, and I noticed I was covered in blood. I was the only one of my group that had made it out of the woods. “There’s something in the woods, we need to leave now.” I instinctively pointed my m4 back at where I had come from, remembering the futileness of it as I was firing blanks. Suddenly I found myself being tackled to the ground and restrained by multiple soldiers who disarmed me and knocked me out. Turns out coming out of the woods all bloodied up and missing two battle buddies did not inspire confidence in my word.
When I came to, I was inside one of the tents that were being used by leadership as a makeshift prison for me. My hands and legs were tied up with zip ties, and there were two guards watching me who immediately told our platoon leader I was awake. When he walked into the tent, he was in full Vietnam mode, and I knew I was in for some torture. To my surprise, he just grabbed a chair and sat in front of me. “I’m only going to ask this once: Where are the bodies of Diaz and Carreon? I promise you, if you answer anything else than an exact location, you’re going to have a very bad day, soldier. We have a search party out in the woods right now, and your cooperation could make this move faster.”
I was in complete shock. He didn’t believe it yet, but he had just sent another group of soldiers to their deaths unnecessarily. “You gotta call them back here! They don’t know what’s out there—” My platoon leader decked me across the face then proceeded to kick my ribs while I was on the ground. When he was finished, the only thing I asked was for him to check on the group to see that I wasn’t lying. He seemed to consider beating me some more before he reached into one of his pant pockets and retried a walkie. “LT this is platoon daddy, come in.” The static and zero reply was deafening. “I told you. There’s something in the woods, and you just sent those men to die.” He kept trying the radio a few more times until both of us were able to hear faint gunfire in the distance.
The platoon sergeant ran out of the tent, and I was left bleeding where I was. They had taken my bullet-proof vest off and searched me while I was unconscious. I didn’t have enough luck left to find my multitool in one of my pockets. The guards came back into the tent and cut my restraints, helping me out outside. Everyone was in defensive positions around the camp, no doubt under some foolish belief that they could take whatever was coming for us.
I heard a deafening sound and realized soldiers were shooting at something in the dark. The guards that were dragging me across camp suddenly dumped me next to an equipment tent and ran off to join whatever commotion was happening. The tent had equipment meant for troop training, and I immediately recognized the box where they had stored the NVG’s. I quickly grabbed one and turned it on to see what the hell was going on outside. Soldiers were being attacked by the same creatures that attacked my group in the woods. Again, I could make up six creatures cutting through an entire platoon of good friends.
I used the NVG’s to low crawl across camp and avoid the creature’s attention. My plan was to get to a Humvee and potentially make it back to base with some luck. I tried to ignore the screams of terror around me after the gunfire died down. When I managed to crawl to the nearest truck, I saw the reason for the screams around me. Two creatures were holding a soldier down, one by his arms, another by his legs, while two others were digging into his belly and eating his intestines. The soldier, who thanks to the night vision, I could tell was our platoon leader was screaming in terror as they ate him alive. Once his screams died down like he had gone to sleep, the two creatures holding him down pulled on his limbs, ripping them clean off.
I managed to get to a Humvee undetected. Luckily, we don’t keep them closed, and no keys are needed to turn them on. I gently and quietly opened the door and flipped the switch to turn the Humvee on. It roared as loudly as an eighteen-wheeler, and when the lights came up, a group of those creatures were dining on another soldier ten feet in front of me. The soldier actually reached a hand out for help before finally succumbing. I shifted the stick to drive and was ready to run the fuckers over when I noticed light tapping on my window. One of those things was standing outside, lightly tapping the window glass with its bloody claws and smiling maniacally at me with its blood-stained mouth. I floored it.
I drove over the creatures in my way and drove for miles until I managed to reach the military base where I was promptly arrested and thrown in the brig for a while. After what I guess was their investigation into my version of events, I was released from imprisonment and medically discharged from service. I used the pension that the government gave me to move as far away as I could from those woods in North Carolina.