Salvador by Lucius Shepard (F&SF, April 1984)1 opens with a scene that will be familiar to anyone who has seen any of the many Vietnam War movies that were released from the late 1970s onwards2—except that in this case the conflict is in Central America, and the soldiers use combat drugs to enhance their abilities and supress their fear:
The platoon was crossing a meadow at the foot of an emerald-green volcano [. . .] when cap-pistol noises sounded on the slope. Someone screamed for the medic, and Dantzler dove into the grass, fumbling for his ampules. He slipped one from the dispenser and popped it under his nose, inhaling frantically; then, to be on the safe side, he popped another — “A double helpin’ of martial arts,” as DT would say — and lay with his head down until the drugs had worked their magic. There was dirt in his mouth, and he was very afraid. Gradually his arms and legs lost their heaviness, and his heart rate slowed. His vision sharpened to the point that he could see not only the pinpricks of fire blooming on the slope, but also the figures behind them, half-obscured by brush. A bubble of grim anger welled up in his brain, hardened by a fierce resolve, and he started moving toward the volcano. By the time he reached the base of the cone, he was all rage and reflexes. He spent the next forty minutes spinning acrobatically through the thickets, spraying shadows with bursts of his M-18; yet part of his mind remained distant from the action, marveling at his efficiency, at the comic-strip enthusiasm he felt for the task of killing. He shouted at the men he shot, and he shot them many more times than was necessary, like a child playing soldier. p. 8
After this we learn more about DT (presumably the platoon’s psychotic NCO) and see his craziness at first hand when he throws a young prisoner (who says his father is a “man of power”) out of the chopper on the way back to base.
The next section sees Dantzler (whose anthropologist father did field work in Salvador) talking to his buddy Moody about the spirit world of the local Sukias (magicians). When Moody asks why the Sukias aren’t helping the natives, Dantzler tells him that they don’t believe in interfering in worldly affairs. However, after the platoon raze a village to the ground and kill all the occupants, Dantzler has a supernatural experience that proves this isn’t quite correct—as the men camp for the night in a cloud forest, a dark shape comes towards him and a voice says that Dantzler killed his son. Dantzler realises that it is the Sukia from the young man’s village, and he opens fire indiscriminately; the blackness disappears, and he sees he has killed several members of his platoon. Then he notices a girl in the golden light that has replaced the darkness and, after she speaks to him for a while, she asks him to “let them know about the war” when he returns home. Dantzler subsequently comes upon Moody and DT, shoots the former and drowns the latter:
Darttzler planted a foot in the middle of his back and pushed him down until his head was submerged. DT bucked and clawed at the foot and managed to come to his hands and knees. Mist slithered from his eyes, his nose, and he choked out the words “…kill you….” Dantzler pushed him down again; he got into pushing him down and letting him up, over and over. Not so as to torture him. Not really. It was because he had suddenly understood the nature of the ayahuamaco’s laws, that they were approximations of normal laws, and he further understood that his actions had to approximate those of someone jiggling a key in a lock. DT was the key to the way out, and Dantzler was jiggling him, making sure all the tumblers were engaged.
Some of the vessels in DT’s eyes had burst, and the whites were occluded by films of blood. When he tried to speak, mist curled from his mouth. Gradually his struggles subsided; he clawed runnels in the gleaming yellow dirt of the bank and shuddered. His shoulders were knobs of black land floundering in a mystic sea.
For a long time after DT sank from view, Dantzler stood beside the stream, uncertain of what was left to do and unable to remember a lesson he had been taught. Finally, he shouldered his rifle and walked away from the clearing. Morning had broken, the mist had thinned, and the forest had regained its usual coloration. But he scarcely noticed these changes, still troubled by his faulty memory. Eventually, he let it slide — it would all come clearer sooner or later. p. 20-21
The last part of the story (spoiler) takes place back in the United States, and the final scene sees Dantzler entering a night club with a knife after popping two combat ampules:
[He] felt a responsibility to explain about the war. More than a responsibility, an evangelistic urge. He would tell them about the kid falling out of the chopper, the white-haired girl in Tecolutla, the emptiness. God, yes! How you went down chock-full of ordinary American thoughts and dreams, memories of smoking weed and chasing tail and hanging out and freeway flying with a case of something cold, and how you smuggled back a human-shaped container of pure Salvadorian emptiness. Primo grade. Smuggled it back to the land of silk and money, of mindfuck video games and topless tennis matches and fast-food solutions to the nutritional problem. Just a taste of Salvador would banish all those trivial obsessions. Just a taste. It would be easy to explain. p. 23
This is an immersive story, an impressively descriptive and atmospheric piece which also manages, unusually, to combine its near future SF setting (the combat drugs, etc.) with supernatural events to produce an effective anti-war/revenge fantasy.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 7,450 words. Story link.
1. This story won the Locus and SF Chronicle (both SF news magazines) polls for Best Short Story; it also placed 4th in the Hugo Award for that year and was a Nebula Award finalist too.
2. Military Times’ 10 Best Vietnam War Movies.