Scarecrow Gods Read Online Free PDF Page B

stood strong. Then they’d laughed and shaken hands. A strange bond had been born that day as the two had turned, and back to back, cleared the bar, turning vertical combatants into horizontal moaners. In the end, they found themselves the last two standing amidst an unconscious room of America’s best and bravest soldiers.
    Bernie was the largest white man Maxom had ever seen. A paradigm of Danish genetics from Wisconsin, the man stood six-foot-six with muscles to spare and a shaggy mane of blonde hair. Bernie sported a great handlebar mustache that he refused to remove regardless of anyone’s tight ass regulations. It was this steadfast refusal to shave that had driven him to join the elite green berets, an organization that prided itself on a man’s prowess rather than a uniform image.
    They’d been friends for three years when the shit had finally hit the fan, and it was this old friend who waited for him, now—only a thin veil of mist holding off condemnation. A breeze slipped into the clearing, causing the dreamy mists to swirl in ovoid patterns.
    Maxom was staring at the dreamscape ground as the thick bamboo base of the cross became clear. Bernie had been virtually unhurt in the battle. Other than an AK round through the meaty part of his shoulder, it was the concussive blast from a grenade that had allowed him to be captured.
    The mist cleared a little more. Maxom stared at the thick iron spike that had been hammered through Bernie’s feet—back when his friend had feet. Now only gristle and bone shards stuck to the bamboo where the spike entered the wood. Bernie’s feet would have been fine had the VC not coated them with boiled pig fat and unleashed the dogs. Maxom could still remember his friend’s screams as the animals chewed at all they could reach, consuming the great man’s feet and ankles in large canine gulps. The cracking of the bones as the larger mongrels gripped Bernie’s flesh-stripped legs in their jaws and wrenched, their mangy heads shaking back and forth like his friend was a caught rabbit.
    Maxom remembered himself, unable to shut his eyes at the gory scene, alternately agonizing with his friend and terrified he’d be next. A small shame-filled part of him had even been grateful that it had been Bernie.
    The rising sun crested the trees, its rays penetrating the triple canopy jungle. The mist evaporated and Maxom screamed. In both dream and reality, his throat grew raw as scream after scream after scream parched his throat and exhausted his lungs.
    Maxom watched as the scorched and blackened nubs of the man’s legs were revealed. The VC had applied torches to cauterize the raw meaty ends and Maxom relived the sounds of the skin burning, the blood boiling and the fat bubbling and dripping to the ground. Maxom remembered the tiny wide-eyed child that had sat at the base of the pole, silently dipping her fingers into the fat that slid down like melting wax. He remembered her bringing her tiny fingers to her lips…
    …tasting.
    He saw the arms that had been flayed, bones stripped of meat shooting from the fleshy body of his friend as if they were branches and he was a snowman. Several large crows sat upon these, their talons gripping the bone as they picked the tiny residues of flesh clean. Maxom tried to will them away, to send his hate across the space like sling shot rocks.
    Bernie hadn’t survived the flaying, his dying curses so loud they probably still echoed through the mountains. Maxom wouldn’t be surprised that even now, somewhere in a Tibetan Monastery, a hermetic monk heard the forever echoes of Motherfuckingcocksucker believing it to be the voice of Buddha and the pay-off for weeks of fasting.
    He saw the holes where Bernie’s eyes had been, glowbugs and bees making their nests within his skull. Bernie stared directly at him. Then, unable to avert his gaze, Maxom watched as Bernie’s mouth bulged, his lips turning up into a rictis smile as a green python exited through