It was raining nearly to the point of zero visibility when the gargoyles started appearing in the jungle.

We all thought it was someone in the company playing an elaborate joke. Ugliest damned things I've ever laid eyes on.

They had the shape of angels, but their faces were hideous, glaring at us between the trees, lurking in the bushes.

I grabbed Bud, the nearest G.I., pointing off in the direction of the statues.

"Will you get this shit?" I said. "How the hell did they pull this one off?"

Bud shrugged and lifted up a joint, about the only this that would stay lit in this torrential downpour. "Beats me."

He gave me a smirk, but a prank of this magnitude was a little out of his price range.

I slapped a mosquito. Even heavy rains were no deterrent to the endless swarms of biting insects taking up residence in the undergrowth.

After taking a drag and staring for a minute, Bud added, "By the way, if you wanted K-Ration stew, you're S.O.L."

Our little campground had no cover, other than the leafy branches and vines hanging over our heads. We'd left our previous encampment in a hurry after a horrific VC blitz that killed half the platoon, so only one of us had a poncho.

Kiowa.

And the big Navajo was using it to fill up canteens.

Jackson, a buzz cut black man, was taking off one of his boots, dumping out about a gallon of water. "Hell, we should camp out under those things," he said.

"We can't," I said. "Remember that sniper up on the ridge?"

I frowned. "Speaking of which, did you see something move?"

"It's those statues, man," Bud said, puffing his reefer. "They're moving!"

"You should stay off that stuff," I told him. "We're low on MRE as it is."

"No, man, I'm serious," Bud laughed. "They're moving! Just watch them! They change, man!"

"Bullshit," I said. "You're high."

Lightning flashed in the distance, and I heard a murmur of thunder.

For a moment, it looked like the statues had crept forward a few inches, but I chalked it up to an overactive imagination.

The lightning flashed again, and a closer boom shifted my focus to other worries.

Miles ago, a few miles from the first helicopter drop where I entered this war, a storm struck one of the overhead trees, dropping a giant fiery torch into the foliage ahead of us. I'm not exactly sure why it happened, but that torch created a ten foot high wall of flame that took us an entire two days to circumvent.

I prayed this would not happen again. There's nothing worse than wading through a lichen infested bog and finding something squirming in your jockey shorts.

I picked up one of our pup tents, the kind you can only lay down inside, then thought against it. Half of our encampment was swampy mud.

"We should make those into ponchos," said Jackson. "As it stands, I'm certain I'll make it to the end of this war drinking nothing but water from my shirt!"

The sound of machine gun fire interrupted the relative stillness of the sodden jungle.

Kiowa rose to his feet, loading his rifle.

Jackson slapped his booth back on with a wet sucking sound. "The fuck?"

"Sound like VC," Kiowa muttered in his usual monotone.

The lightning flashed, and there was a statue standing right at the edge of our encampment.

It flashed again, and, after a few bursts of semiautomatic fire, Jackson was a bloody pulp in the mud, the statue frozen over him, claws clamped around his neck. It reminded me of the slow strobe lights people used in haunted houses, how the burst of light would appear to freeze the masked ghoul in time when it really was moving the whole time.

I didn't think. I just leaped over a log and ran into the downpour. I didn't even think to bring my gun.

I heard loud pops as Kiowa fired at the things again and again, alternating between swearing in Navajo and swearing in English, then there was silence.

I kept running.