The Military Megapack

by Harry Harrison

  He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—he saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies’ wings, the strokes of the water spiders’ legs, like oars which had lifted their boat—all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

  He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.

  Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.

  A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking at the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning’s work. How coldly and pitilessly—with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquility in the men—with what accurately measured interval fell those cruel words:

  “Company!… Attention!… Shoulder arms!… Ready!… Aim!… Fire!”

  Farquhar dived—dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dull thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.

  As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther downstream—nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.

  The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning:

  “The officer,” he reasoned, “will not make that martinet’s error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!”

  An appalling splash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, DIMINUENDO, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken an hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

  “They will not do that again,” he thought; “the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me—the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun.”

  Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round—spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men, all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color—that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream—the southern bank—and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of AEolian harps. He had not wish to perfect his escape—he was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

  A whiz and a rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.

  All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman’s road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

  By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famished. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which—once, twice, and again—he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

  His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue—he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!

  Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene—perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forwards with extended arms. As he is
about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon—then all is darkness and silence!

  Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.

  WHISPERING DEATH, by Laurence Donovan

  We’re down on our bellies in the whisperin’ grass, “Plug Ugly” and me and the looie.

  How come that bunch of stalks had survived down there in the narrow bottom of that ravine, I don’t pretend to know. But it had kept on growing until it seeded and dried right in the nose of a three-months rain of hell.

  Every time the grass tops, no more than a foot over our heads, sh-sh-sh-ed and whispered like, I scrooched my face into the dirt.

  I was scared. So was the looie. And Plug Ugly? He was, too, but you couldn’t pick out a smooth spot in his miscellaneous assortment of features to discover if he was pale.

  Beside that, Plug Ugly’s mug was all mud-caked where he’d been chewin’ wire. And he had a lot of blood dried in his beard from where he’d left a sizable chunk of one cauliflower ear hangin’ on that last bunch of inch-long barbs.

  Whisper! Whisper! Whisper!

  Until I felt like screaming, what with the swooshing death callin’ from the big ones rushing by high up and the tops of the grass bendin’ and swayin’ under the clip of that machine-gun barrage from the Heinies’ double nest up there in the cottonwood stumps.

  Slap that rim of machine-gun fire down on a hard road and it would sound like men walking. But there in the grass tops it only swished and whispered like.

  Talkin’ to us and hissing, “Come up! Come up! Come up!”

  What with the numbness passin’ and the fire risin’ up from the hole in my right knee, where it had been drilled by a piece of shrapnel or a bullet—they were comin’ so thick back there I couldn’t tell which—I was afraid I might listen too long to that whisper and, “come up.”

  Just stick my old bean up once. That’d be all. No more pain, no more ice on my chest, chillin’ and chokin’ me.

  Maybe the Heinies knew we were there. Maybe they didn’t. But they’d spotted us, eighteen of us, Plug Ugly and me, and Rafferty and Spink, chewin’ their wire and lettin’ the looie and the other thirteen through the gap.

  Before we got onto our bellies down in the grass, they had the thirteen piled up. Whether the looie was behind them, or where, or how, I don’t know, but he come crawlin’ back to the gap in the wire.

  By that time there were only Plug Ugly and me; and Plug Ugly had been all for going ahead after the others. I admit I hadn’t any enthusiasm for it.

  But Rafferty and Spink were gone. Rafferty lookin’ at me like I’d know what to tell his girl back in Beloit where we’d both come from. He couldn’t speak, and his face turned green in the flare of a star shell that come floatin’ down just then.

  It was that star shell that played hell with the looie and his bunch. I still don’t know how the looie missed out on the show and come wormin’ back to us like a snake on his stomach.

  I got it in the old prayer bone about that time, and for a minute or two I was so sick that all I knew was that Plug Ugly was draggin’ me. And the looie was coming along, kind of whimpering. Guess Plug Ugly thought the looie was mournin’ for the boys he’d led, or pushed, into that slaughter ring under the gun nest. Plug Ugly was sold on the looie. I never saw the like of it before, and I don’t suppose I ever will again.

  The pain reached a jumpin’ off place at the end of my toes. I got sick at my stomach for a minute. Then that passed and I could look at Plug Ugly and the looie and think.

  Nothing to do but wait. Probably the Heinies would ease up pretty soon, and we could sneak back over the ridge and through the wire. That would be the only chance. F company was down to its last thinnin’.

  We’d known, when we started on that raid that we had to roust that machine-gun nest or Captain Jack would have to slack off on the point of his push. There’d be no more men to spare for a rescue. The thirteen that went with the looie and us four wire chewers had understood that.

  * * * *

  I looked at Plug Ugly and he was looking at the looie. The smoke was getting gray in the east, and light was coming. We knew what that meant. If we didn’t shimmy out of there before daylight, it was going to be just too bad.

  I said Plug Ugly was looking at the looie. I was trying to puzzle out why Plug Ugly’s face had seemed to become different from what it was when what was left of F company a month back had first greeted it.

  Except for this Lieutenant Simms, F company was long or short on looks, according to the way you took it. I remember old Colonel Bowling, the first time he reviewed the F outfit, tried to look like he hadn’t noticed anything unusual. But he shook his head several times, and put on his glasses, and took them off and wiped them. Sergeant Jock was a fair sample. He had a broken nose and was cross-eyed.

  It sure looked like F company had been made up of left-over parts after God got through creatin’ all the rest of the homely guys in the world. It was lucky for the colonel’s peace of mind that Plug Ugly wasn’t there then.

  “Pug” Hogan was his name. He was among the replacements after our first jam when we got back to the rest billet with forty-two men and a few pans salvaged out of the remnants of the field kitchen. Seems Pug had been a punching bag for years around New York’s lower East Side, and what nature hadn’t done to him, a bunch of second and third-rate pugilists had added.

  The first crack Lieutenant Simms made was “For Pete’s sake, let th’ Heinies capture ’im, have a look and end this war.”

  And Sergeant Jock, of whom there was no one more profanely qualified in the A. E. F.—all he could think of when he looked at Pug was, “My gosh—it ain’t possible!”

  Lieutenant Simms rechristened him “Plug Ugly.”

  I hadn’t explained about this boy Simms. He was F’s only misfit. He had curly black hair and big brown eyes a la Hollywood, a nice straight nose and even teeth.

  Right from the first Simms froze onto Plug Ugly. Seemed to like to have him around. Guess it helped set off more than ever what a grand gift to women the looie believed himself to be.

  And “Plug Ugly”?

  Would you believe it? That cross-section of everything that human facial architecture hadn’t ought to be, he falls for the looie like he was the world’s last kind word. He fetches and carries for him, and is always right in between the looie and trouble, whether it’s a jam in an estaminet or a pushover through the stinkin’ mud and wire.

  Pretty soon they began to make this Damon and Pythias affair look like those old days were a couple of hostiles. Seeing that I was messin’ with Plug Ugly, and had got so I didn’t mind his face much, I saw a lot of what was going on.

  * * * *

  Well, it went along like that and then the looie happens onto Jeanne. Knowing the looie, any one could see that Jeanne was just one of a whole series. The looie must have kept a card index on his sweeties back in Paris.

  But Jeanne wasn’t the soft sort. Haughty­totty, Jeanne was, and I found out it was on account of old Broullier, her dad. He’d come home, feeling his way with his hands.

  For all that they had only the loft of a stable that wasn’t anyways sanitary underneath, this Broullier had the makings of an aristocrat. And the girl had been taught.

  She didn’t savvy English, but the looie had a good smattering of French and they got along. Plug Ugly, you would have thought, would have been discarded, but he wasn’t.

  Seemed like the looie wanted him around. You’d have thought Uncle Sam had drafted him to play bodyguard and valet to the looie.

  It set the looie off, having Plug Ugly around.

  And Plug Ugly would sit by the hour and listen to old Broullier talking with his hands, while the looie played the white-haired boy to Miss Jeanne.

  Along about this time I noticed that Plug Ugly, for all of his
scattered countenance, didn’t have such bad eyes. Sometimes I’d catch him staring at nothing in particular, and his eyes would get blue and misty and wishful. I couldn’t figure it out.

  After a while, all of F company was wise. Plug Ugly had divided his hero worshipping of the looie. Not that it lessened his devotion to Simms, but he had added the girl Jeanne to his dreams.

  Oh, we all had them then, even that horse-faced Sergeant Jock. It’s something that comes along of listening to the damned guns and the whirring and the whispering, and wondering which whisper is packin’ your ticket.

  You betchu, it wasn’t long until I could see Plug Ugly was up to the eyebrows in love with Jeanne. But that didn’t make any difference. Guess he figured that the looie was the world’s prize draw for any dame, and he wanted Jeanne to have him. That’s the kind of love you read about in fiction, but you don’t stumble over it so often in real life—and not once in a million times in war where anything goes double.

  Just before this last push and this raid, the looie had given out that he was ticketed for a leave and he had let it be known around that maybe, if he went to Paris, Jeanne might not be seen around, either, for a few days.

  Not that the looie had any idea of making a double hitch—not him. And Jeanne wasn’t saying anything. But you could tell that Plug Ugly thought they intended to be married, and he looked sad and pleased all at once.

  Just before we went in this last time, Jeanne came running out with a lacy affair wound around her head, her face dark and mysterious in the rain. She talked a little to the looie.

  Then, as we was pushing off, Jeanne ran over to Plug Ugly, and said something that I know Plug Ugly took to mean that she wanted him to be extra careful of the looie, for he said, “Sure t’ing. Youse’ll git ’im back all K. O.”