THE GATES OF HELL
CHAPTER 2
Author's note: It may be a couple of days before my next update because I am going to be moving to a new apartment this weekend. Please review. I'd really like to hear what you think of the story so far.
It was almost two days before they finally stopped trudging through the jungle and reached the hidden camp. David and the other prisoners were totally exhausted and seriously dehydrated. David could feel his exhausted muscles trembling as he struggled to remain on his feet. Their hoods were ripped off and the ropes around ankles and wrists were finally untied. David blinked against the sudden glare of the sun, the light cutting through his head like a knife. He stole a furtive glance around and realized that Charlie and four other men from his unit besides himself had been taken prisoner. His stomach twisted as he realized with a sudden clarity that the rest of his unit was probably dead.
One of their captors waved a gun at the men and ordered them in broken English "You strip now…."
With trembling fingers, David starting removing his clothes along with the other men around him. When the six men were standing naked in front of their captors, one of their guards walked in front of each man and ripped each set of dog tags from around their necks. Another guard threw each man a pair of ragged pants with a drawstring waist and a loose fitting shirt with long sleeves. Both articles of clothing were threadbare, a red and gray striped cloth that had faded to a pinkish gray color. David pulled on the dirty ragged clothing as the other men around him did the same. The first guard quickly gathered up their army issued clothing and hurried away with it.
When the first guard returned, the men were ordered to walk across the compound to a run down building not much bigger than the room David had shared with Nicky back home in New York. One of their captors unlocked the heavy padlock on the door and the six new prisoners were shoved inside, the door securely locked behind them. The shed was crowded with other prisoners. Even though there was no light in the building, there was enough sunlight creeping in through the cracks in the walls to be able to see clearly.
The stench in the room was almost unbearable. A combination of blood, stale sweat, vomit, rotten flesh, dirty unwashed bodies, urine, feces, and a variety of other unpleasant odors that David didn't even try to identify. The smell made David gag and he had to force back the bile that burned the back of his throat. Most of the prisoners in the building didn't even look human anymore. Their bodies were wasting away from a lack of food and their eyes stared vacantly, empty and dead. Most of them were covered with sores or open seeping wounds. Some of the men were injured, holding amputated body parts against their bodies, trying to ignore the pain. The air was heavy with moans and the sound of grown men crying softly.
Reeling with shock and exhaustion, David and the other men from his unit made their way over to a corner of the room and slumped to the cold hard ground. David drew his legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his knees. He let his eyes close, partly to rest and partly to block out the horror all around him. But he could still hear the sounds of the camp, the yelling of the guards, the screams of prisoners somewhere outside, coughing and gagging, the sound of men around him vomiting. David knew that he had stepped through the gates of hell. He was tired, he was hungry, he was thirsty, and he was scared out of his mind.
He jumped when he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. He jerked up his head, regretting it immediately as his stomach rebelled, the muscles cramping as a wave of nausea swept over him. A man was crouched beside him, long stringy hair falling over a pale gaunt face. With a start, David realized that the man couldn't be that much older than he was even though the other man's ragged appearance made him look considerably older. The man held out a tin cup of water which David accepted gratefully. The water was hot and stale with a sharp metallic taste to it that made David gag, but he drank it anyway, desperate to soothe his dry parched throat. His stomach churned uneasily but he forced the water to stay down. Before David could thank him, the man grabbed the cup and scurried away, disappearing into the crowd of bodies in the room.
He must have dozed off because the next thing he knew someone was shaking his shoulder gently and whispering his name. David forced his eyes open and looked into Charlie's frightened face. He wondered if he looked just as frightened to his friend. "Hey, Charlie…." David said his voice dry and raspy to his own ears.
"Hey, buddy." Charlie said with a thin smile. "Looks like we're really in a mess this time, huh?"
"Yeah, looks that way." David agreed as he leaned back against the wall behind him, exhausted and weak from his long trek through the jungle and the lack of food or water for two days.
"I'm scared out of my fucking mind." Charlie admitted with an awkward chuckle, voicing the silent thoughts in David's own mind. He slumped down on the ground beside his friend and they both fell into an uncomfortable silence.
"Don't worry…." Another man called to them from across the room "You'll get used to the smell soon enough….then it'll never go away." The man's voice broke off into a maniacal laughter. David closed his eyes again and tried to block out the horror surrounding him.
As night fell and sunlight no longer crept through the cracks in the walls, it became almost impossible to see beyond the blackness that settled around them. But the noise didn't stop. The moans, the crying, the sound of men getting sick somewhere in the darkness. Charlie and David stayed together, grateful for the comfort of each other's presence in their shared nightmare. Neither of them got any sleep that first night.
Early the next morning, the door to the shed was opened and two guards held guns on the prisoners as they crowded around the doorway. Charlie soon realized that food was being passed out, so he went to get some for himself and David. After a long wait, he returned with two small wooden bowls. The bowl contained a watery soup with a few scraps of boiled cabbage. Charlie told David as he handed him one of the bowls that another prisoner had told him that was all the food they would get until late that evening. It was barely enough to keep a man alive but it was all they had. A big tub of water had been set inside the building at the same time and that would be their rationed water for the day.
David tipped back the bowl and took some of the soup in his mouth. He started gagging almost immediately at the rancid taste but somehow he managed to force it down. He knew he had to keep his strength up if he intended to survive this hellhole. When the soup was gone, he sighed deeply and sat the bowl on the ground at his side. Leaning his head back against the wall, he closed his eyes. In his mind, he went home. He went back to Bay City. It was something he had learned to do early on as a way of relaxing and keeping his sanity in this insane place called Vietnam. At least for a while, in his mind, he could leave this place and return to the one place he felt safe and secure.
That day, two men died and their bodies were left lying on the ground in a corner of the shed where some of the other men had dragged them. One of the other prisoners told David and Charlie that the guards came in every couple of days and collected the dead bodies to be buried in a common grave. That is the bodies that hadn't already been eaten by the animals that crept into the building at night to feed on the dead and sometimes on the living too. Mainly rats, some of them the size of a small house cat. David had already felt them crawling over his legs in the darkness the night before.
Later that evening, Max, one of the other men from their squad, came down with a raging fever and by the next morning he was dead. His body was added to the growing pile in the corner. David was terrified that he was going to die here in this place and that his family would never know his fate.
Some of the other men in this place had obviously gone insane, their minds and souls destroyed beyond any hope of repair. Maybe they were the lucky ones. They didn't seem to care where they were. It was a better alternative than facing the reality of the situation. David could already feel his spirit starting to die inside of him as his body started to weaken even more from the lack of proper nutrition and the dysentery that he got from the only food they were given to eat. Most of the men got it within a few days of being captured. It was accompanied by severe abdominal cramps and a fever which only added to their general discomfort.
David and Charlie had become acquainted with another prisoner named Pete. He seemed to make it his mission to look out for the new men and helped to acclimate them to the conditions of the camp and what they could expect. He had informed them that they would more than likely be taken from their current location in a few days and placed in one of the wooden cages scattered throughout the camp that housed the other prisoners. New prisoners were always put in with the sick and the dying for the first week just to see how many survived the atrocious conditions. It was the Vietcong army's way of weeding out the weaker men who would never survive the more brutal conditions in the main camp.
"I don't reckon I'll ever get back home except in a body bag." Pete told Charlie and David in a resigned voice. "Who knows? Maybe one of you will be luckier than most of us poor bastards in here."
"How long have you been here?" Charlie asked, not really caring that much but trying to keep up his end of the conversation.
"Almost a year." Pete told him "Figure I won't last much longer….most of us don't…" David looked at the other man as he spoke, really noticing him for the first time and seeing his emancipated body, the open festering wounds and the flat dead look in his eyes. David couldn't help wondering how long it would take before he looked like that himself.
"You two watch your backs……cause nobody else here will." Pete said as he painfully shoved himself to his feet. "The guards around here like young bucks like you two. They like to see how long it takes to break you…make you beg." With those final words, Pete walked away to mingle with a group of men on the other side of the building.
"You think we got a chance in hell of making it out of here alive?" Charlie asked David, trying to keep the fear from creeping into his voice.
"There's always a chance." David muttered, not really sure if he believed that himself or not. "We'll just have to stick together and watch out for each other."
He was rudely interrupted as the door to their prison slammed open and a guard suddenly appeared in the doorway with a fire hose, spraying a blast of icy cold water at the prisoners. He kept spraying the water until all the men inside the building were soaked and shivering from the cold. As the door slammed shut once more, one of the other prisoners took the time to tell David and Charlie that the guards did that frequently. It was one of their favorite pastimes when it came to tormenting the prisoners. David huddled in his corner, soaked to the skin and miserable. And he knew this was only the beginning.