The story: “Battleground,” collected in Night Shift. First published in 1972. Wikipedia entry here.

Spoiler-filled synopsis: After murdering his latest target—a toy company executive—a hitman receives a package in the mail… from the victim’s mother. It’s full of little G.I. Joe toy soldiers, who come to life and wage an extended battle against the hitman in his high-rise apartment.

My thoughts: Short, simple, and fun, “Battleground” isn’t the sort of story that invites deep reflection or discussion. There’s just something wonderfully appealing about the thought of a troop of little green plastic soldiers running around performing cute little military maneuvers. But let me point out a few things.

First, by an odd coincidence this is the second story featuring a hitman protagonist that I’ve read this month. I don’t think King does this especially often (King superfans, please correct me); but a hitman does have a few benefits as a protagonist in a horror story. For one, they’re usually armed and dangerous, so you can drop them into tight situations and expect that they’ll put up a good fight. For another, they’re by definition bad people—so while we might cheer them on as they face off against supernatural threats, we don’t mind when they inevitably die in the end. They deserve it.

Secondly, this story, short as it is, accomplishes something that many horror films and stories do not: it skips the usual extended sequence where the protagonist, confronted with evidence of the supernatural, spends a long time questioning his sanity and trying to explain away the situation rationally. When the reader/audience knows for certain that the supernatural element of the story is real, it’s tedious to wait for the protagonist(s) to finally catch up. In “Battlefront,” we get to jump right into the action because Renshaw, the hitman, always puts the practicalities of survival first: it might make no logical sense that he’s being attacked by toy soldiers, but he’ll ask the troubling questions after he’s taken care of the threat.

Unfortunately for Renshaw, he’s not going to survive this engagement. He puts up a good fight, taking down toy helicopters and dodging rocket attacks as he makes a fighting retreat into his apartment’s bathroom. After a humorous nod to World War 2 general Anthony McAuliffe’s famous “NUTS” letter, Renshaw comes up with a desperate plan to sneak around the outside of the high-rise and surprise-attack the toy soldiers with a homemade Molotov cocktail. Unfortunate for Renshaw, he underestimates the firepower at his enemy’s disposal; he is blasted to pieces when the soldiers detonate a toy nuke.

Although “living dolls” and other animated toys have a history of being utterly terrifying when deployed in horror stories and film, the animated soldiers here are not scary; I was cheering them on throughout and hoping they’d manage to take down Renshaw. It’s a funny story, and like “The Reaper’s Image” early this month, makes for a nice bit of filler to read in between more intense King short stories.

Next up: “Night Surf,” in Night Shift.

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