Slushpile Contest Entry - They Killed Like Men

Note: This is an entry in the Writing Wombat Slushpile Simulator Contest.  I am posting it to maintain the author's anonymity.  All rights to this content remain the author's as does all responsibility for the content.

"They killed like men."  Janine Hart didn't move from the fetal position.  She didn't look up.  I looked down at her, huddled under a cot in the one partially intact building in what had been a small Ugandan town whose name I couldn't pronounce.

"Concrete walls six inches thick but they still nearly got her."  Jake Smith, the translator touched the portion of the wall where the door had been.

"You know this wasn't really elephants, right?" I said.

"Elephants rampage and kill people," Jake said.

"That they do.  It happens more in India than over here, but yes they do," I said.  How many people?"

"At least one hundred and fifty," Jake said.  "Maybe more."

"And one survivor," I said.  "If they really thought it was elephants I wouldn't be here."

Jake made a gesture that took in a panorama of smashed huts and more substantial houses.  "No shell holes.  No shell casings.  No tracks from trucks or tanks.  Lots of elephant tracks up to the town and to the smashed buildings.  Elephants could smash things up like that.  Nothing else short of a bulldozer of a tank could."

I wandered around the wrecked town, looking for patterns.  "The Ugandan army's been in a lot of these buildings."

"They looked for survivors and got the rifles and pistols out before looters got them," Jake said.  "And the ivory."

"How many guns?"

Jake shrugged.  "A dozen—maybe fifteen."

"And one person got a shot off," I said.  "They might have hesitated because of the laws against shooting elephants, but enough of them were poachers that I can't see that stopping them.  So why only one shot?"

Jake said, "It might have happened too fast.  Might have happened at night."

"It happened within a two hour window around dawn yesterday," I said.  "See if you get me a map of where they found the guns."

 As Jake walked over to the Ugandan army detachment, I tried to make sense of the scene.  I've got to admit that I was baffled.  That got worse as I correlated where the guns were with the positions of the bodies.  "Just like the other three," I said.

Jake said, "Three of them, huh?"

"I'm not sure if you're supposed to know that," I said.  "Oh well."

"Any survivors?"

I said, "Not until now.  And she hasn't said anything else."

"How is this like the other three?"

I thought about how much to tell him, then shrugged and said, "If there were guns in the houses everybody died in bed or at most barely got out of them.  Not guns meant they got some warning—maybe five minutes based on the positions of the bodies.  This was systematic.  Planned.  Everybody dead inside of fifteen minutes—probably less."

"Elephants aren't dumb.  Maybe this bunch got tired of people shooting at them," Jake said.

"So they studied the town, pinpointed where the guns were, came in at dawn and got into position.  Then they charged in from five locations simultaneously, bypassing houses without guns until the ones with guns were taken care of."

Jake thought about that.  "That doesn't sound likely, does it?"

"A human army couldn't have taken this place down any faster or more efficiently," I said.

"Well, they say elephants are smart—"

I shook my head.  "This would take so many cognitive leaps that—well bigger than man versus baboon."

"So someone trained them?"  Jake shook his head.  "Why?  Why not just go in and shoot everyone?"

"If they're trying to scare people this is more effective," I said.  "But the resources it would take for this level of training—and African elephants aren't as easy to train as Indian ones—"

A helicopter had been making ever wider circles as I looked over the town.  I didn't any sign that they had found anything.  I said, "Tracks converge on town and appear to