Pandora's Box: Book 3 of the Crystal Raven Series
Chapter 16

Cambodia was a country of great beauty, from its jungles and their riot of colours to its ancient architecture and the wonders of its people’s artistry. It was also a country of great tragedy. Its killing fields had left many swatches of the country underpopulated. Years after the civil war had ended, the writ of its government still did not reach to every corner of the country. And in these wild areas, these frontiers of civilization, there were those who took advantage of this governmental lapse for their own gains.

General Pok was one of these men. Short, even by the standards of his nation, with a barrel chest and round face, he wore a uniform that might once have belonged to a Khmer Rouge officer. General Pok had no delusions – at least no political delusions. He was an opium grower and smuggler plain and simple. Profit from this and sixteen other plantations helped pay for a lifestyle that often saw him in the gambling dens of Hong Kong or shopping in downtown Tokyo. It was a lifestyle he had grown accustomed to and had no intention of losing, no matter what it took.

In the jungle, he always wore a uniform. One must maintain appearances, especially amongst the indentured peasants who laboured in his fields. He insisted his guards, a ragtag collection of bullyboys, smugglers and deserters from every side of the civil war, wear uniforms too. It leant them a certain authority and legitimacy that made it easier to control the local populace, and control of the local populace was a must in his business. It not only allowed him to keep them in the fields and processing plant twelve to fourteen hours a day, but it also gave them protection from government interference.

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At the moment, he was looking over his fields, where men, women and children laboured in the hot sun to bring in the poppy harvest. From the desk in his office, where he sat with his feet in the windows, he could see half a dozen bodies bent over the poppies. They worked hard, as they should – but it wasn’t always enough. In three days, a major buyer was coming for a shipment, and they were light on the load. It was not enough to get the poppies off the field, they needed to be processed into opium and that opium packaged. Tonight the last of the poppies would be harvested if he had to keep every man, woman and child in the fields until dawn. It was not that he wanted to be hard on them, or that he was a cruel man, it was merely the way it was in this business, and if he was nothing else, he was a businessman.

This was becoming too much of a habit. He would need to talk to his factor for this village. Always it was excuses. Bad water, poor food, illness making the workers weak and lazy, or too much rain delaying the harvest. His buyers came miles downriver by boat at great risk. He could not fill their holds with promises or excuses, and if they went away unhappy, the loss of face would be incalculable. And with the market going soft ahead of a Chinese crackdown on opium growers in its sphere of influence, such a loss of face would translate into a major loss of income.

A bamboo cane snapped across someone’s back in the distance, and General Pok nodded in satisfaction. If they would not work to earn their keep, let them feel the cane. Lazy workers dishonoured their master, and General Pok would not be dishonoured. The shipment must be complete!

He turned back to his desk, considering if making an example of a few of them might outweigh the loss of productivity. Maybe after the harvest was in….

In the 1970s, the killing fields of Cambodia had witnessed the brutal deaths of thousands of men, women, and children. Almost twenty percent of the population had watered these fields with their blood. Like flies to honey, the vivid scar on the psyche of the land attracted the darker denizens of this world and the one beyond. Combined with the deaths through the long, bloody decades of civil war, the flavour of the psychic energy attracted so many of the minions of the darker plane that the boundary between this world and Hell weakened.

And a bubble of evil broke through the surface. It would be the first of many in the days to come as the hungry hordes of Hell pushed against the boundaries between this world and the next. A mere ten miles from the poppy plantation, it burst, spilling a horde of eyeless man-like creatures into the surrounding jungles. With grey leathery skin, long-dangling arms that ended in claws, and mouths that were a barbwire fence of mismatched teeth, they fell upon anything living that crossed their path. Monkeys and deer, tigers and elephants, spiders and lizards, snakes and insects – flesh and bone ground beneath the voracious appetites whetted through eons in Hell.

Near nightfall lights mounted on poles were placed amongst the poppies, an ancient generator groaning and grinding itself into the ground. The noise and light attracted this swarm of evil. Shambling through the undergrowth, they scattered small creatures before them in a seething blanket of fur and scales. A guard who had stepped into the jungle to relieve himself met this avalanche of panic, and then its cause. The voice of his AK47 broke the stillness of the night. As every head turned towards the sound of the gunfire, a long drawn out scream sewed confusion through the poppy harvesters.

They waited, the guards anxiously rubbing their guns like worry beads. A sharp voice barked an order. Two guards broke into a trot, slipping into the nearby jungle, and another three moved in a hesitant crouch directly towards the source of the gunfire. Those left behind grew more anxious. These three had barely stepped into the jungle when the sound of their gunfire lit the surrounding vegetation. An inarticulate cry rose above it all, and then silence.

Everyone froze. The workers were edging out of the fields, and the guards were crouching in an uncertain firing line. General Pok stepped out of his office to take control of the situation when a gristly missile came flying out of the jungle. It landed on the porch of his headquarters, rolling to a stop at his feet. It was the head of one of his guards, his mouth still moving to a scream that had been cut off in mid breath. Eyes looked up at the general, accusing.

“Fall back to the camp!” General Pok ordered, but it was too late.

A thousand grey bodied demons burst from the cover of the jungle. Amidst the sudden riot of gunfire and panicked screams, General Pok watched his world fall apart. Automatic fire did not even slow this carpet of teeth and claws. It fell on his men and the fleeing villagers, rending flesh from bone in an orgy of blood and violence. His precious poppies were a trampled carpet of red that slowly disappeared beneath the darker puddles of blood. Lights began to fall, exploding in showers of sparks as the darkness slowly flooded the scene.

Sensing that his men would not stop them, General Pok began thinking about his own survival. In the compound lay his private helicopter, a small two-man craft capable of making the short hops between plantations. He had his own licence, if maybe not as many hours flying as his regular pilot. But the general wasn’t going to stick around to find the man. It was time to run and worry about his honour another day.

He made it to his helicopter ahead of the carpet of flesh that was even now reaching the perimeter of the camp. His panicked pre-flight check was the shortest in history. Every fevered glance he threw towards the compound brought him a new horror. Three nightmares grabbed a girl, pulling her apart like a wishbone. As her visceral flew up onto the windscreen of the helicopter with a wet plop, the general nearly pissed himself. And beyond, in the darkness, the lights of fires and flashes of gunfire brought him darker and more lurid horrors. His bladder let go.

The rotors started spinning with a wheezing whir. He really should have invested in a new helicopter, but there were always other things to spend his money on, and now it was too late. As they slowly stuttered into speed, he hauled back on the stick. The first pontoon lifted off the ground. The wave of death crashed into the compound. The second pontoon lifted off the ground, and he was in the air. He struggled with the yolk, fighting for enough altitude to clear the first building. He threw a hurried look down to the ground, where the wall of flesh-eaters had halted to feed on the last of his guards. He was going to make it. He laughed, giddy with relief.

Dozens of grey shapes leapt from the roof of the nearest building. The helicopter was suddenly too heavy on one side and yawing badly. General Pok fought to right the craft as it spun in a circle. More of the creatures leapt onto the floundering craft, oblivious to the rotors that were cutting large wounds in their flesh. One and then three caught the helicopter’s tail. The spin was a wild gyro the general could no longer control. With a sickening crash of glass and metal, it slammed into the ground.

General Pok was still alive when the first of the demons pulled him from the wreckage and began to feed. His screams rose to fill the blood-soaked night. Around him, others of its kind fought over the remains of their own, the whole pack feeding on the flesh of their victims. And still, they hunted.

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