The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [330]
But each time the brief respite would charge his resolve again and he could toil upward a few yards more. He, too, had forgotten almost everything. The mission of the patrol, indeed even the mountain, hardly moved him now. He progressed out of some internal contest in himself as if to see which pole of his nature would be successful.
And at last he sensed that the top was near. Through the web of jungle foliage he could perceive sunlight as though they were approaching the exit of a tunnel. It spurred him on, yet left him exhausted. Each step he took closer to the summit left him more afraid. He might have quit before they reached it.
But he never had the opportunity. He reeled over a rock, saw a light-tan nest shaped something like a football, and in his fatigue he smashed into it. Instantly, he realized what the nest was, but too late. An uproar burst in it and a huge hornet, about the size of a half dollar, fluttered out, and then another and another after it. He watched dumbly as dozens of them flickered about his head. They were large and beautiful with great yellow bodies and iridescent wings; afterward he exhumed the memory as something completely apart from what followed.
The hornets were furious, and in a few seconds they raced down the line of men like a burning fuse. Croft felt one of them flutter at his ear, and he struck at it with a grunt, but it had stung him. The pain was maddening; it numbed his ear like frostbite, and traveled through his body with an acute shock. Another stung him and another; he bellowed with pain and struck at them frenziedly.
For the platoon this was the final unbearable distress. Perhaps five seconds they stood rooted, flailing dumbly at the hornets that attacked them. Each sting lashed through a man's body, loosing new frantic energies of desperation. The men were in delirium. Wyman began to bawl like a child, holding feebly to a rock, and swatting at the air in a tantrum.
"I can't stand it, I can't stand it!" he roared.
Two hornets bit him almost at once, and he hurled away his rifle, and screamed in terror. The shriek detonated the men. Wyman began to run down the rocks, and one by one they followed him.
Croft shouted at them to stop, but they paid no attention. He gave a last oath, swung impotently at a few of the hornets and then started down after them. In a last fragment of his ambition, he thought of regrouping them at the bottom.
The hornets pursued the men down the jungle wall and the rock ramp, goading them on in a last frenzy of effort. They fled with surprising agility, jumping down from rock to rock, ripping through the foliage that impeded them. They felt nothing but the savage fleck of the hornets, the muted jarring sensations of scrabbling from rock to rock. As they ran they flung away everything that slowed them. They tossed away their rifles, and some of them worked loose their packs and dropped them. Dimly they sensed that if they threw away enough possessions they would not be able to continue the patrol.
Polack was the last man ahead of Croft as the platoon poured into the amphitheater. He caught a quick glimpse of them, and the platoon was halting in confusion now that they had escaped the hornets. Polack threw a glance over his shoulder at Croft and burst among the men shouting, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WAITING FOR? HERE COME THE BUGS!" Without pausing he ran past them, let loose a scream, and the platoon followed him, bolted in a new panic. They scattered over the floor of the amphitheater, continued on in the same spasm of effort over the next ridge, and down below to the valley, to the slopes of the rise beyond. In fifteen minutes they had fled beyond the point where they had started that morning.
When Croft finally caught up with the platoon, gathered them together, he discovered there were only three rifles and five packs left. They were through. He knew they could never make the climb again. He was too weak himself. He accepted the knowledge passively, too fagged to feel any regret or pain. In a quiet tired voice he told them to rest before they turned back to the beach to meet the boat.