The Sharp End (The Great Undead War prequel story)

by Joseph Nassise

  Instead, he craned his head around from side to side, huddled against the rushing wind, searching the sky below for the fighter cover that he knew had to be present. The opposition never sent the balloons aloft without the fighters.

  They had to be here.

  And they were.

  Both aircraft, Pfalz D.XIIs by the look of them, were approximately a few hundred feet below and to the south of the balloon, drifting lazily along as though they didn’t have a care in the world.

  Freeman waggled his wings, getting the attention of his fellow pilots. He pointed downward at the balloon and then tapped the side of his head with two fingers. He then pointed at the escort aircraft circling below and then at his men.

  They understood. It would be their job to take on the opposition’s aircraft while Freeman went after the balloon.

  They all circled back around, staying in the cloud cover until they could bring their planes into position with the sun at their backs. Then as a group they fell into a rushing power–glide designed to bring them up on the enemy as swiftly as possible.

  Freeman watched the balloon grow larger and larger in his field of vision, his comrades forgotten as he focused on his attack. He covered more than half the distance to the other craft before its crew noticed his presence. He could see them floating beneath the wide bulk of the balloon in their wicker basket, frantically calling the ground crew on the field phone. Those on the ground were equally desperate, rushing to the mechanical winch in the hopes of getting the balloon and its crew pulled out of the sky before Freeman could reach it.

  With his Vickers guns thundering in his ears, Freeman closed in. Even in the weak sunlight he could see the incendiary tracers arcing away from his aircraft and slashing into the fabric of the balloon. Before he got too close he pushed hard on the stick and banked his Spad, sending it around the edge of the balloon just as a bright arc of color danced along its surface. Seconds later the sky around him was filled with the glare and heat of an explosion as the gas inside the balloon ignited.

  He looked back to see the observers jump out of the now falling basket, taking their chances of surviving the fall rather than burning up with their craft. He roared in exultation as he watched the flaming balloon crash to the ground atop the moving forms of the ground crew, trapping them in the blaze.

  That’s four more of the bastards that won’t rise again, by God!

  For the first time since he began his dive, Freeman noted the whine and crack of the machine gun bullets coming from the troops below. He pulled back on the stick, taking his Spad up and out of reach of the weapons that were trying to claim his body for their masters.

  When he was safely at altitude he surveyed his chariot, finding a good number of holes in the fabric of his wings and several splinters gouged out of the leather–wrapped wood surrounding his cockpit area, but nothing that would suggest he needed to return to the airfield.

  Satisfied, Freeman looked down once more. Now only one German biplane occupied the sky and even he wouldn’t be up for long. A thick stream of black smoke was pouring out of the engine and Samuels was hanging doggedly on the Pfalz’ tail, firing as he chased it around the sky. As Freeman watched, the enemy aircraft suddenly collapsed on itself, falling away in pieces to the ground in a graceless ballet of destruction.

  The flight regrouped, smiles on the faces of the younger pilots. Even the veteran, Freeman, couldn’t help but feel that this was going to be a good day. Both the balloon and the two Pfalzs had been downed in full view of the other pilots in the squadron, so there should be no quibbling with headquarters about credit for the kills. That made for an auspicious beginning.

  They spent the next forty–five minutes edging their way farther into opposition territory without sign of another aircraft. The cloud cover had retreated a few thousand feet but was still pretty thick so the squadron took advantage of it, hiding their aircraft up among its lowest reaches.

  It was from this lofty position that they first spotted the damaged aircraft making its unsteady way across the sky below them.

  It was a lone Fokker Dr.1 triplane, painted a bright red, the black Iron Crosses easy to see. A thin stream of black smoke was pouring out of the engine and the pilot seemed to be engrossed in maintaining control of his aircraft as he fought to keep it moving along a straight path.

  Freeman knew that only one man in the entire German air force flew a red Fokker triplane; it could be none other than Baron Manfred von Richtoffen himself.

  Flush from their earlier victories and excited at the chance to down the legendary ace, the less–experienced pilots reacted without thinking things over. As if of one mind, they banked over and swept downward at the opposition aircraft!

  Freeman stared after them in shock. What did they think they were doing?!

  Holding the stick steady with his knees, he snatched up the radio mike with his left hand and cranked hard on the handle with his right, but he saw right away that it would be no use. The radios were not designed for emergency use. It took time to build up a sufficient charge and the squadron would come in contact with the enemy aircraft before he’d be able to get a message out.

  He had no choice but to follow them down.

  Freeman watched as the Allied aircraft closed in on the Fokker, their Vickers' guns winking in the sunlight. They opened up as soon as they came within range. The opposition pilot continued to ignore them, a large mistake, and it wasn’t long before Freeman’s squadron–mates blasted the plane right out of the sky.

  It was at that point that the other side launched their carefully planned surprise.

  From the west, out of the sunlight, came seven Albatross D.III fighters, their guns primed and firing before the others knew they were even there. Samuels was taken down in that first pass. One moment his Spad was there and the next it was not, replaced by a cloud of inky black smoke and small pieces of fluttering debris. James followed suit only moments later, though he did manage to take one of the enemy with him.

  From there it became a tenacious duel in the sky; the opposition forces swarming around the two remaining Allied planes in a choreographed dance of death and destruction. Freeman and Walton managed to give a good accounting of themselves, taking three more of the enemy aircraft out of the fight in a dazzling display of marksmanship.

  Freeman had just begun to think that they might survive this encounter when both of his Vickers jammed. One minute they were roaring steadily, the next, nothing. Suddenly furious and more than a little bit frightened, Freeman clawed at the charging handles, trying to clear the mechanisms.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  Nothing.

  Knowing he would be no good in the middle of a dogfight without operational guns, Freeman broke away from the fight, climbing in an attempt to find time to fix the problem.

  The opposition let him go, choosing to gang up on Walton instead.

  From his higher altitude Freeman watched the enemy aircraft make short work of his lone surviving subordinate.

  Walton’s Spad suddenly dipped and headed for the ground in an uncontrolled spin, a clear sign that a well–placed bullet had ended the life of its pilot. Freeman could watch no more.

  When he turned his gaze away from the destruction below, Freeman recoiled in surprise to find a previously unnoticed aircraft sitting directly off his right wing tip!

  It was one of the new Fokker D. VIIIs, the “Flying Razor Blades” as the British pilots were wont to call them. The single–wing aircraft was the current pride of the opposition’s air corps and one of the most deadly aircraft in the skies. It could out–maneuver, out–shoot, and out–fly anything the Allied powers could put in the air. This aircraft was painted a bright red, like the triplane that had baited the trap, but the Iron Crosses on its wings and fuselage had been replaced with the double–headed eagle and skulls of the Richtoffen family seal, the insignia looking star and menacing against the brightly–colored background. The D.VIII wa
s so close that Freeman could see the other pilot clearly, right down to the missing flesh across the lower half of the right side of his face.

  Instantly, Freeman recognized the true nature of the trap to which his squadron had just fallen victim. The triplane his fellow pilots had exuberantly chased had been a decoy, designed to pull the younger pilots into the fray just as it had so brilliantly done. The flight of Albatrosses that had dropped out of the clouds to the rear of the Allied planes had been there to whittle down the Allied fliers, leaving Freeman isolated and alone.

  Ripe for picking by the commander of the enemy flight.

  Freeman did not wait around to see how the trap turned out. He stood his aircraft on its beam and whipped around in a turn that came close to pulling the wings off.

  Too good a pilot to be taken in so easily, the other chased Freeman into the tight turn so that the two aircraft were spinning around each other in a vertical helix. Looking directly ‘up’ from his cockpit, Freeman could see straight into the former German’s cockpit, where the other man was looking ‘down’ at him in return. They flew that way for several moments, getting closer to the ground with each revolution as they arced around each other in opposite directions, Freeman sitting hunched against the chill wind while Richtoffen ignored both the cold and the centrifugal forces created by their movement.

  A sudden change in the sound of his engine let Freeman know he suddenly had a bigger problem than the presence of the opposition’s most deadly ace. It was barely discernible at first, just the slightest change in tone and pitch, but he was too experienced a flier to not know that it represented a major problem. His eyes swept over the gauges where he immediately noted the change in fuel pressure. One of the attacks by the Albatrosses must have damaged his fuel line, something he hadn’t noticed before now. He was about to pay the price for his negligence.

  There was no way he could continue this ballet of motion in an aircraft with jammed guns and a faltering engine and he knew it. He waited another moment, watching, until his opponent looked away for a split second to check on his own aircraft’s controls, then broke out of the spin, headed east in a straight line, praying that the German pilot would take the bait.

  Like a cat with a mouse, the enemy pilot had been waiting for just such a move, and he pounced just as Freeman had hoped he would. As the enemy’s Spandua machine guns began hammering Freeman’s aircraft to pieces, the American launched his own surprise.

  With a sudden turn, Freeman arced his Spad over into what first appeared to be an Immelman turn. As the other pilot altered course to intercept his arc, Freeman abruptly turned, steering directly into the German’s path.

  The enemy reacted quickly, shoving his stick over in an attempt to get out of the way, but his reflexes were not quick enough. The edge of the Spad’s upper wing struck the Fokker’s bottom one. Cloth, leather, and wood flew in all directions as the two aircraft collided and then tumbled away from each other.

  Freeman fought the stick as it jumped in his hands, trying to get his aircraft under control, but with most of the Spad’s upper wing now shredded, his options were limited. He managed to get the plane into a flat spin, using the entirety of the aircraft’s surface in an attempt to slow his plunging descent, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the crash altogether.

  He could see a dark space off to his left and he did what he could to angle the aircraft in that direction, hauling on the stick and hoping that the shadow was a farmer's pond or a copse of trees, or hell, even a wide hedgerow, anything that might give him a bit of a cushion.

  As the ground rose up to greet him, he prayed the resulting fire would be hot enough to prevent him from rising again.

  There was a thunderous crash, a moment of agony, and then nothing.

  Continued in BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES now available from HarperVoyager

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Joe is the author of more than twenty novels, including the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles series, the Jeremiah Hunt series, and The Great Undead War series. He has also written several installments in the internationally bestselling adventure series, Rogue Angel.

  He’s a former president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror writers, a two time Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominee, and a founding member of SupernaturalInk.com.

  THE SHARP END

  Copyright © 2012 by Joseph Nassise

  Cover art by Brad Cooper

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Table of Contents

  THE SHARP END

  A TIMELINE OF THE GREAT UNDEAD WAR

  BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR