by Various
A man held the other end of the rope, dressed in a long coat, black boots and a gas mask. His body was riddled with twitches and spasms, his hairless head snapping back and shaking as if he was having some kind of a fit. He steadied, fixed his piggy eyes on Donnie, clawed in a choked, wheezing cry of delight.
Not a man. Donnie realized his mistake, seeing the twisted emotion in the creature’s face, rancid glee that dripped from its eyes over pasty, bloated flesh. Not a man at all.
“Donnie,” said Eddie, his face still hidden from sight. “I’m scared.”
That last word, too soft to make out properly.
“It’s okay, kiddo,” said Donnie, his voice booming in the quiet. But it wasn’t okay. How could it be? Eddie’s neck was wrung, his spine spun like thread around a spindle. He couldn’t be alive. “I’m here.”
The creature wheezed, then pulled, hoisting Eddie into the air. The boy began to turn, slowly, the rope making machine-gun pops as it ground against the wood. Donnie stood, torn between making a run for the kid and saving himself, feeling as though he would rip himself in two, thinking, I don’t want to see his face, I just don’t want to see his face.
Eddie turned, his body facing backward now, his face swiveling into view, sagging, the color of wet parchment, his veins pumping black as though ink ran through them—flüssige Dunkelheit, thought Donnie, liquid darkness.
“No,” he said, wake up wake up wake up wake up. And yet he knew this was no dream, even as Eddie’s lips sliced into a smile.
“Donnie,” he said, a whisper that seemed to feed straight into his ear. “I’m saved.”
Then the boy’s eyes opened, two fathomless pools of darkness that Donnie could feel crawling over him long after he had fled, screaming, into the trees.
0759
He was lost, surrounded by needled fingers that poked and scraped, the giant pines uttering creaks of mocking laughter as he crashed between them. He was lost, the panic swelling in his throat as he imagined himself running into a wheezing figure in a gas mask, feeling puffy-fleshed hands around his throat. He was lost; at least he thought so until he tumbled from the dense, unforgiving foliage and saw the others there, a hundred yards away, awake now and startled by his sudden reappearance.
“Donnie,” said Joan as he collapsed. She was by his side in an instant, her hands on his head, Mike and Henry close behind. “Where have you been? What happened?”
He told them, as much as he could remember anyway. The memory was already fading, as though his conscious mind was trying to extinguish its flame before it burned right through him.
“Eddie’s alive?” said Mike. Donnie shook his head.
“It was a trick, he was dead.”
“And talking to you?” Mike snorted. “Come on, Donnie, if he’s alive we gotta go get him.”
“He’s not alive!” Donnie said, almost screaming. “He’s gone, he’s one of them.”
“One of who?” Joan asked, but nobody answered. They didn’t need to; they were all thinking the same thing.
One of the night children.
Donnie stood, feeling the welts on his face from running through the pines, feeling the weakness in his legs, the gaping emptiness in his belly. The forest seemed vast, the nearest camp a million miles away. They would never make it.
“They’re following us,” said Stefan, walking over from the makeshift camp where Andreas and Gyorgy sat next to the stove and Kreuz lay bound and gagged. Stefan stared into the depths of the forest. “Why don’t they just attack if they know we’re here?”
“It’s a game,” said Henry. “They’re playing with us. It’s what you do, isn’t it? You heartless Nazi bastards.”
“Henry,” said Joan. “It attacked them, too. Whatever they are, they’re not on our side or theirs. None of us is safe.”
“I don’t know. Looked like a Nazi uniform to me, that was a German gas mask anyway. SS maybe.” Donnie narrowed his eyes at the German soldier. “I think they’re keeping something from us.”
“Like what?” Joan said.
“You tell us,” he said to Stefan. “Maybe you were planted here, maybe you’re giving away our position, making sure we don’t escape.” Even as he spoke he could hear the hysteria, the paranoia, in his voice. He swallowed it down, started again. “We need to go. We’re harder to get if we’re on the move. You reach anyone on the radio?”
“No, sir,” said Henry. “Still nothing. Like the whole world’s gone quiet.”
“West, then?” asked Joan.
West, toward the wheezing freak, toward Dead Eddie. Donnie shook his head.
“North, we keep heading north, sooner or later we’ll hit home.”
“That is your plan?” said Stefan. “Wander into the woods like Hansel und Gretel?”
“And what would you suggest, Kraut?” said Mike, standing toe-to-toe with the man. “Keep us here so your friends can come string us up?”
“They are not our friends,” Stefan spat back. “They killed our friends. Dummer Junge.”
Andreas ran over, trying to squeeze in between Stefan and Mike, muttering calming words.
“Ruhe, Stefan,” he said. “We are tired. And frightened. We should not fight.”
“Should not fight?” said Mike. “What did they tell you you were here for, huh? To sit around campfires telling ghost stories? We’re enemies, you and me, on the front I’d slit your throat just as quickly as you’d slit mine.”
“Mike,” said Donnie and Joan together.
“We’re here to fight,” he went on. “Shoulda killed you back there. Shoulda shot you all good and dead.”
He pulled a pistol from the pocket of his jacket, pointing it right at Stefan.
“Mike,” Donnie said again, firmer this time. “Calm down.”
“Screw you,” said Mike. “Screw all of yous. They’re Nazis, Donnie, remember? We kill ’em, remember? How d’you know it wasn’t this sonofabitch didn’t shoot Davey the other day? Or fire the mortar that got Will? Get on your knees.”
Stefan didn’t move, just locked his eyes to Mike’s. Andreas stood by his side, both of them defiant. Donnie could hear Kreuz squealing through his muzzle, foreseeing his own execution.
“I said get on your knees,” Mike said, cocking his pistol. “Don’t make me shoot you in the face.”
“Private Levy,” Donnie said. “Put that weapon down.”
“Screw you,” he said again.
“I’m ordering you, Private.” Donnie pulled his Luger from its holster, holding it up to the back of Mike’s head. “Put the gun down.”
“You gonna shoot me, Donnie? Gonna shoot me to save this piece of crap?”
“Jesus, guys, enough,” Joan said, Henry and Andreas, too, all of them talking at once while Kreuz screamed in the background.
“Gonna shoot me?” Mike said. “Better do it then, Corporal. Better do it quick.”
“Mike, please,” said Donnie. “It doesn’t have to be—”
“Sie sind hier! Sie sind hier!”
He was suddenly aware that Kreuz’s shrieks had become words. He looked past Stefan to see the boy worming his way backward, his gag hanging around his neck, his eyes two searing white suns of terror as he scuffed across the dirty snow.
“Kreuz?” Donnie said, pushing through the others.
“Sie sind hier!” Kreuz howled. They are here.
There was nothing there, nothing but the trees and the stove and the sky, and yet he kicked out at the ground relentlessly, driving himself away from an unseen foe.
“What’s wrong with him?” said Henry. “There’s nothing there.”
He was right. They all noticed it together—Mike lowering his Luger, Stefan cursing in German, Joan snatching in a soft, shocked breath, Andreas crying out—nothing there, no beasts, no men in gas masks, and no Gyorgy.
“What happened?” Donnie caught up with Kreuz, grabbing the boy’s shoulder and holding him in place. He squirmed on his back, surprisingly strong, his eyes still huge and
bright and unblinking. “Where did he go?”
“Gyorgy?” Andreas shouted, running into the trees and calling out in German.
“Go fetch him,” Donnie said to Henry. “We have to stay together. Kreuz, look at me! What happened?”
“They took him,” he said.
“Who?” asked Joan. “One of those things?”
Kreuz nodded, weeping now, kicking pathetically at the ground.
“Took him into the trees.”
“He probably just walked off,” said Mike. “I don’t trust a thing this rat says.”
“Walked off?” said Joan. “Mike, he was barely alive, his leg was shattered. He couldn’t have crawled, let alone vanished without a sound.”
“How did none of us see it?” said Donnie. “How did it take him so quickly?”
“They’re picking us off,” said Stefan. “One by one.”
“Christ.” Donnie clutched the Luger, setting off after Henry and Andreas, shouting over his shoulder, “Stay here, make sure Kreuz doesn’t bolt.”
Then he was once again in the crisp darkness of the trees, hearing Andreas up ahead.
“Henry, get back here,” he yelled. “We need to stay together.”
The crack of a branch overhead, then a roar that had absolutely nothing human in it.
“Shhhh…” The whisper came from his side. “Don’t make a sound.”
Donnie lurched around to see Henry there, one finger to his lips, the other pointing at what looked like an empty patch of forest floor up ahead. Then Donnie looked up and saw the creature in the branches, squatting like some monstrous, hairless ape. It was the same beast that had attacked them the night before, the one that had gone to work on the Nazis. It still wore a bib of their blood, its hands and forearms stained crimson. Here, in the light, Donnie saw that its body was packed tight with muscle, veins pulsing black beneath the scarred and stitched skin.
But when it turned its head there was a child’s face, staring idly up at the sun. It blinked huge inkwell eyes, then wiped a bloodied hand across its mouth, yawning. And it was that yawn which turned Donnie’s legs to saplings, which made him want to cry out, because it seemed so human.
“Gyorgy!” Andreas, somewhere, still calling for his friend. The creature straightened, sniffing the air, its body hardening into a solid mass of rock. It opened its mouth and uttered a quick laugh, like a toddler chasing a ball; then it leapt from the tree, landing hard enough for Donnie to feel the tremor run up his legs. It bounded off on all fours, barking that same manic chuckle.
“Come on,” said Henry. “Before it finishes with him.”
Donnie didn’t argue, following him back to the others.
“Andreas?” asked Stefan, fumbling rounds into his Mauser. “Gyorgy?”
Donnie shook his head. “We have to go.”
“And what?” asked Stefan. “Let them pick us off one at a time while we run like cowards?”
“What choice do we have?” said Donnie, keeping his voice low.
“We do have a choice,” said Joan. “Stefan’s right. They’re following us, toying with us. They will take us all while our backs are turned. But it doesn’t—”
A scream cut through her words, stuttering gunshots, then silence. Stefan swore in German, letting the rifle hang limply by his side.
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Joan went on. “We can fight back. We can make a stand.”
“Yeah, because that worked so well for the Germans yesterday, didn’t it?” Donnie spat. “Come on, Joan. You saw what happened, bullets didn’t stop them, not grenades, nothing.”
“But what about Comp B?” said Henry.
“Explosives?” said Donnie.
“Yeah, Cuddy had about ten pounds of the stuff. They were going to use it to blow the German camp. It’s probably still back there, in the clearing.”
“It is,” Mike added. “I saw their packs. Who’s gonna stop there long enough to steal supplies?”
“You serious?” Donnie said. “So we get some Comp B. Then what? One of us holds those things down while the others strap it on? Come on, this won’t work, we’ve got to keep moving, try and lose them. If we make it back to an Allied camp we’ll have reinforcements.”
He realized what he’d said as soon as he’d stopped speaking. If. And when he asked himself, really asked himself, whether he thought they would make it out of this forest alive, the answer was no. They were right, all of them, if they took off like frightened birds then they’d get killed just the same, shot down one by one in their desperate, panicked flight.
And yet the alternative was to go back there, deeper into the forest, return to the clearing, that nest of wooden men with their leather faces and witch fingers.
“Donnie,” said Joan, putting a hand on his arm. “We have to do something, or we’re all going to die out here.”
He nodded, the fear frosting inside him, creeping through his flesh until his mind was as numb as his fingertips.
“Okay,” he said. “So what’s the plan?”
0823
Two Lugers, twenty-eight rounds. A Sturmgewehr 44 with half a mag. One Mauser, four rounds. Joan’s Webley and whatever she had in her pocket. One Garand that had been emptied the night before. A single grenade.
Mike kept the assault rifle, Stefan had the Mauser, Henry and Donnie took a Luger each and for a while they sat staring at the grenade as if somehow it could win this war for them. Because this was a war—not between nations, but between them and something rotten that had dwelled in this forest since its trees were saplings, between them and an ancient, unspoken evil that had crawled out of the earth to lay its eggs in the world of man. In the end Donnie snatched it up and dropped it into the pocket of his coat.
“Ready?” he said. Nobody answered.
They marched west and south. Henry took point, leading them back along the trail they had made the night before. Donnie, second in line, looked at the footprints in the snow, the snapped branches, the scuff marks where they had fallen, and thought once that he could see himself running by, a phantom in the half-light.
Behind him staggered Kreuz, his arms bound tight and his gag back in place. He had begged to be freed, promising that he wouldn’t run, that he would fight alongside them if they spared him a gun. Donnie might have let him go—after all, they needed all the firepower they could get—if Stefan hadn’t shaken his head and said, “Don’t. You can’t trust him.” And Kreuz’s eyes had almost burned clean out of their sockets. Stefan now walked in Kreuz’s shadow, keeping his gun trained on the back of his Oberleutnant’s head rather than the surrounding trees. Joan followed him, with Mike at the back again sweeping the rifle in wide, uncertain circles.
Dawn seemed to have given up, as if the sun had seen what lay waiting for it here and sunk back below the horizon. Snow clouds had gathered, crowding overhead like spectators, as dense and as dark as the needled trees. Only the snow held on to its light, the forest as ethereal and otherworldly as midnight, still watching their imposition with an outrage that was as deafening as it was silent. And it was watching. It would watch until they all fell, and then they would be the ones lost in the shadows, ghosts forced to look forever out at the branches and the roots and the snow, crazed and hungry and damned.
It was insane, wasn’t it? To return, to think that they could face up to whatever waited there for them. Why weren’t they running? Better to be picked off in midflight, when your attention is fixed on escape, when the adrenaline makes you blind; better to never know, to spend eternity thinking you have fled; better that than this, offering yourself to your enemy knowing that they will make a mockery of you, turn your body to madness and your soul to night. Donnie flinched, every instinct driving him away, and he clamped down on it, biting his tongue, forcing his feet to take step after step after step, marching all the way back into the inner circle of hell.
Henry had stopped up ahead, was crouching down and digging his bayonet into the snow.
“What’s up
?” Donnie said softly.
“Not sure,” he replied. “This is our trail, coming from there.” He gestured into the trees with the blade. “But there are other prints here, human ones, converging from east and west. They were following us, I’m sure of it, because I’d have noticed them last night.”
“Troops?” said Joan, catching up. Donnie shook his head, thinking of freaks in gas masks, limbs twitching in deranged excitement, piggy eyes blinking. He saw no sign of them in the trees but he knew they were there, somewhere. Was Eddie there, too? Dead Eddie, and the rest of the night children, all with their huge moon grins?
“Come on,” he said. “We shouldn’t stop.”
They reached the German camp nearly two hours later, and the first thing anybody said was “Where are the dead?”
It was Joan, stepping cautiously into the place where the Nazis had held them just a few hours ago. It could have been a hundred years, thought Donnie, another lifetime. There were shell casings everywhere, as slippery as ball bearings, dark craters and blistered trees where grenades had detonated, crimson streaks melted into the snow. But no bodies, dead or alive. The scene made Donnie think of a theater stage abandoned after a show, the boards still warm, still resonating.
“They must have taken them,” said Stefan, his voice laden with grief. “Meine Freunde, forgive me.”
Mike gave Kreuz a shove, sending him sprawling onto the ground. The boy squirmed, beetle-like, trying to get up again.
“The clearing wasn’t far from here,” Mike said. “You remember which direction?”
“Won’t be hard to find,” Henry replied. “We were barreling through there fast enough. Give me a minute.”
“Do we even know what we’re going to do when we get there?” asked Donnie.
“Start praying,” muttered Henry. “Real hard.”
“Great.” Donnie shook his head, stepping over a puddle of frozen blood. There was a rifle next to it, but when he picked it up he saw that the barrel had been twisted around like a liquorice stick. He threw it back, wondering at the strength needed to do that, thinking how easily his bones would splinter under the same brute force.
