by Various
“There’s our bags,” said Mike, walking to three backpacks clustered around a tree. They had been emptied onto the ground, but Mike lifted a can of bully beef with a victorious grin. He keyed it open, using his fingers to scoop out a chunk of the corned beef. “Best grub on the planet,” he said through his second mouthful.
“Gonna share that?” Henry asked. Mike rummaged, lobbing a pack of Arnott’s to the other man. He ripped them open, stuffing three biscuits into his mouth and crunching them so hard they must have been able to hear the noise back in Jersey. Mike held up a pack of Steam Rollers.
“Any takers?”
“Mints?” said Joan. “Sure, I won’t say no.”
She caught them, tipped a couple into her hand, then passed the packet to Stefan. Kreuz watched them eagerly, a dog waiting for scraps.
“Take a good look around,” Donnie said as Henry handed him the Arnott’s. “Collect anything that looks useful. But we’re not stopping for long, just until we find the trail.”
The others muttered their agreement, spreading out. Donnie walked to Kreuz and crouched down beside him.
“Hungry?”
The kid nodded and Donnie pulled down the gag.
“These taste like bricks,” he said, snapping a biscuit in half and feeding it to Kreuz. “And they’ll probably break your teeth.”
“Danke,” Kreuz said, then swallowed noisily and took the other half, looking like he was seventeen going on eleven.
“So how did you end up here?” Donnie asked. “Uncle’s rich, in the party, you could have stayed at home, waited out the war.”
Kreuz stopped chewing, studying Donnie. There was still anger there, brewing just beneath the surface, the powerless rage of a child.
“Waited out the war?” he said finally, spraying biscuit crumbs. His English was halting, so heavily accented that it was barely comprehendible. “Missed chance to contribute to Reich? You Americans, you could never under—” He seemed to catch himself, his gaze wavering. “You not knowing my father,” he said, calmer. “He was hero from last war, legend, injured in battle after killing a hundred British soldiers. Died ten years later, just after I was born. I never knew him, but I never stopped hearing the stories of this great man, der Löwe—the lion—von Passchendale.”
“So your family, your uncle, sent you out here to fill his boots,” said Donnie. The boy nodded, and Donnie felt the mildest tug of sympathy for him. “Well, I know we’re enemies, I know we live a world apart, but I can tell you this, Kreuz, ain’t no man alive can fill his father’s boots.”
For a second something passed between them, there and gone before Donnie could make any sense of it.
“I don’t want to die here,” Kreuz said. “Not like this. Give me a gun, let me fight, like my father.”
“How do I know you won’t shoot us the moment our backs are turned?” Donnie said. “Your own men don’t even trust you.”
“Schwein,” he spat. “All of them, jealous of the lion’s reputation, my family’s wealth, because I am an Oberleutnant and they are nothing. They would happily see me die. But I am not stupid, Corporal. I would not kill only people who stand between me and…and those Unmenschen out there. Please, let me fight as a man, not cower here, tied like animal.”
Donnie chewed his lip, trying to fathom the emotions that writhed and churned in Kreuz’s watery blue eyes.
“Sir,” said Henry. “I’ve found it, we’re ready to roll.”
Donnie stood, rubbing the blood back into his legs.
“Please!” hissed Kreuz.
“Just give me a minute,” he replied, then jogged over to Henry. Joan was there, sucking on a mint. Mike and Stefan were, too. “You find anything we can use?” he asked them.
“There is nothing,” said Stefan. “We were lost, too, ja, almost no food, almost no ammunition, just like you.”
“But this is the way we came,” said Henry, pointing at a broken branch. Donnie saw a smattering of red beneath it, realized that this was where he’d been smashed in the nose. That’s my blood, he thought, and for some reason it filled him with horror. He wanted to scoop up the crimson snow, stuff it into his pockets so that they couldn’t find it. He didn’t want to leave a single trace of himself here for the freaks to nuzzle and sniff and lick. “Cuddy’s just up there.”
Waiting for us, Donnie almost said, managing to lock the words behind his teeth, saying instead, “What do we do when we get there?”
“Find your friend’s explosives,” whispered Joan conspiratorially. “Rig them up, then lure them in. Do you think they’re close?”
“They’re close,” said Mike, scouring the canopy. “They’re always close.”
And, as though waiting for a cue, a scream rose up behind them, shrill like a whistling kettle, so full of fear and misery that Donnie couldn’t bear to turn around, just screwed his eyes shut, praying for it to go away, to leave them be.
“Kreuz!” shouted Joan.
The scream, still rising. How could anybody have so much air in his lungs? Donnie swung round, opened his eyes to see Kreuz on his back, howling through his muzzle, being dragged across the snow by a creature in a gas mask. The beast glared at them with its coal-black eyes, warning them to stay away, and even though its mouth was hidden by the rusted contraption over its face Donnie knew what expression the monster wore: a smile, greedy and slick. It lurched away from them, black-gloved hands tight around Kreuz’s throat, dragging the boy as if he were a sack of meat.
“Kill it!” said Joan, firing her Webley. The shot went wide and the creature shrieked at them, its whole body spasming, its head snapping back and shaking wildly. It recovered itself, blundering between two trees and refusing to let go of its prize. Kreuz fought, his face an ecstasy of terror, but he was bound tight, helpless, disappearing fast into the darkness.
“Out of the way!” said Stefan, down on one knee, the Mauser aimed. He took a deep breath, then loosed a shot which thudded into the gas-masked freak’s shoulder. It cried out in anger and pain but still did not release its grip. Stefan fired again, and one side of the creature’s throat exploded outward. It blinked at them as if in disbelief, tugged weakly on Kreuz, then dropped to the ground.
Donnie ran over, the Luger at the ready. The creature lay where it had fallen, looking up. It tried to breathe, producing a rattling wheeze. Blood sprayed from the wound in its neck, as thick and as black as oil, bubbling into the hollows of the forest floor and causing the snow to hiss into water. And yet its eyes, although sunken and as dark as raisins, watched them with a curiosity that was utterly human. It raised a hand to its mask, scratching at it, trying to pull it loose.
“What do we do?” Donnie asked.
“Take it off,” said Joan, reaching down and grabbing the mask, gently sliding it away. The noise it made was like a sink plunger coming loose, a wave of rot wafting up from the toothless, gaping mouth beneath. It stretched out a wide, white tongue, trying to breathe in once again, all the time watching them. Its skin was like wet pastry, lined with black, marble-like veins. Its nose was half gone, like a corpse’s. “Let it die like a man, not a monster.”
“But what is it?” said Mike. “It isn’t…It can’t be a man.”
Joan pulled the collar of the freak’s coat around its neck, laid a hand on its chest as it rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell, then lay still. It twitched once; then its eyes slid up, focusing on something that none of them could see.
“It’s dead?” asked Stefan.
Joan nodded. “I think it died a long time ago,” she said, standing and running her hands down her trousers. She looked at Donnie. “We should go, before anything else gets here.”
Donnie didn’t answer, just stared at the monster at his feet, at the black blood that oozed from its throat, at its insect eyes now full of peace. And he understood that even if he left this place, even if by some miracle he found a way home, he would never truly get away. Part of him would always be here, right here, looking down at t
his hybrid of madness and man; every single second, every single minute, every single day, for the rest of his life.
“Donnie,” said Joan again. He looked at her, then turned and walked to Kreuz. The kid was curled into himself and whimpering, and when Donnie reached out to him he flinched.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”
He pulled free his bayonet, sawed open the rope that held Kreuz’s wrists. He untied the gag, threw it away, then offered the Luger to him.
“You sure about this?” said Mike.
“I’m sure,” Donnie said, not taking his eyes from Kreuz’s. “It isn’t him and us anymore, it’s us and them. The more of us there are with guns, the better chance we stand of getting out alive.”
Kreuz snatched the weapon, scrambling onto his feet and striding over to the dead freak. He screamed something at it in German, and looked as if he was about to pull the trigger before Henry grabbed his arm.
“It’s dead,” he said. “Save your ammo, there are plenty more of them still alive.”
The boy stood there for a moment, then let the gun fall to his side, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. Donnie ran over to their packs, found a couple of clips in the snow and fitted one into the empty Garand. Then he turned, saw the others waiting for him. Why are you looking to me, he wondered, when I’m a coward, when I don’t know what to do? And yet he felt strangely reassured, seeing them there—Mike and Henry, Joan and Stefan, even Kreuz, people he seemed to have always known; felt strangely reassured, knowing that whatever these things were, wherever they came from, they could be killed. He offered a smile, the expression so alien that it felt uncomfortable on his lips. But it must have worked, because they smiled back—all except the young Oberleutnant—weary and frightened but smiling nonetheless.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
And this time, he took the lead.
1041
The dead men were waiting for them, welcoming them back with loose-lipped grins and empty eyes. As Donnie entered the clearing something fat and black scuttled out of Cuddy’s mouth, shivering over his chin and disappearing into the nest of wooden ribs beneath. All three men looked on, seeming to say, You came back, thank you for coming back, because we can’t move and it’s so lonely here; you came back, and this time you won’t leave us, not ever, not ever.
“This is what happened to our men also,” said Stefan, his voice hushed, almost reverential. “Only, ours hung…” He put his hand to his mouth, but Kreuz finished for him.
“Upside down. Upside down and inside out.”
“My God,” said Henry.
“Not here,” Stefan whispered. “He is not here, not in this place. Not anymore.”
Mike scampered nervously across the clearing to where the squad’s bags lay in a heap.
“Be careful,” said Donnie. But Mike opened one without caution, delving into it before throwing it to the side. He tried another, pulling out a small brown block.
“This is more like it,” he said, removing another five to form a stack on the snow. He reached back in and found a line of fuse and a detonator, scooping up everything and carrying it over.
“Is that stuff safe?” asked Joan, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” said Mike. “So long as you don’t spark up a cigarette. Where you want it?”
Donnie looked at the clearing, at the silent sentinels who stood guard, who saw everything and nothing. But they wouldn’t work as decoys. These were, after all, the demons’ creations. No, they needed something else, something that their enemy would be drawn to.
“Could use him,” said Mike, reading Donnie’s thoughts and nodding at Kreuz.
“Prime the comp,” Donnie said, ignoring him. “Get the fuse ready, and make it long. I’ll be right back.”
“Donnie?” said Joan. “Where are you going? We shouldn’t split up.”
“It’s okay, I’m not going far.”
All the same when he started to walk she came with him, still holding the Webley. He led the way along the track they’d just made, heading for the German camp. It had taken them only ten minutes to get from there to the clearing, close enough for what he had in mind. The forest grinned down as they crunched across the snow, still holding its breath, still waiting. Donnie scanned the trees, knowing that other things were watching them, too.
“Do you believe Gyorgy’s story?” he found himself asking, just to break the oppressive silence.
“The night children? Of course not, Donnie. It was a fairy tale, a legend. No more real than…I don’t know, than Sleeping Beauty or Rapunzel.”
“So what are they, then?” he said. “If not demons.”
She didn’t answer immediately, her eyes on the uneven ground but seeing something else. They were almost at the camp when she finally spoke.
“I think they are broken things. But broken by us.” She looked up at him, her expression full of sadness. “Broken by us, Donnie.”
“Us?” he stopped walking and so did she.
“This war,” she said. “It’s not like the other ones. We’re not just fighting each other, not like we used to. We’re exterminating each other. The…” She faltered, chewing on her lip. “The weapons, I mean look at what they do to us, the guns and the bombs, whole towns, cities, destroyed in moments. All those lives, Donnie, we take them like we’re sweeping away dust. You, them and me. I’ve looked down and seen the world burn and called it my mission. But that’s not the worst of it, because we’re finding new ways to hurt each other. I hear that your scientists are working on something terrible, something that will change everything. We are, too. And the Nazis, my God some of the things we’ve found in their camps, their hospitals.”
She wiped the tears from her eyes and Donnie reached out to her, wanting more than anything to hold her. But she stepped away from him, folding her arms across her chest.
“And this.” She looked around her at the trees, at the snow. “What else can it be? What else can it be but science. Someone has taken those children and broken them, broken them so badly that they can never be fixed. All for this…this stupid, awful war.”
“That isn’t possible,” he said. “Science can’t do that to somebody, can’t change them like that.”
But he could see the monsters in gas masks, full of greed. He remembered the way they had strung Eddie up like a specimen, the way they had pulled Kreuz into the trees. Gyorgy, too, snatched from under their noses. They were the youngest, he realized. Eddie, Kreuz, Gyorgy, not one of them older then eighteen. They were our children.
“What if it doesn’t end here?” Joan asked, seeing the horror on his face. “What if it spreads out of this forest?” She put a hand over her mouth. “What if it happens to my children? To George, to Grace.”
“It won’t,” Donnie said, and this time he did draw her close. He pressed his face into the crook of her neck, into the rough fabric of the parachute, the feel of the silk taking him home, and it could have been Betty there, her arms locked tight around his back, her small frame shaking uncontrollably the way it had when he’d said goodbye to her back in Indiana, when she’d whispered to him that she was pregnant and his heart had almost snapped clean in two because he could never get her back, not now, and it was as much to Betty as to Joan that he said, “We’re going to stop it, I promise. I promise you.”
They stood, entwined like tree limbs, like vines, and when they finally let go of one another Donnie thought that even the forest seemed to view them differently, its light softer.
“I promise you,” he said again.
“With more violence,” she said softly. “We blow up those poor, broken souls and we call it victory.”
Donnie had no answer for this. He turned away from Joan, searching the space between the trees until he saw the corpse. Its head was now completely surrounded by blood, a perfectly round, perfectly black halo. He crouched down beside it, startled by the heat that rose from its desiccated corpse, as if he were sitting next
to the stove again.
“What the hell are you?” Donnie asked sightless eyes as small and shriveled as raisins. Its mottled skin reminded him of curdled milk, and the smell of the thing was overpowering, the stench of grave pits and ruptured guts. He covered his mouth with one hand, used the other to peel open its coat. Underneath was a suit worn thin by time, surely never washed. A leather pouch was strapped over it, a single syringe inside. Donnie pulled it free, holding it up to the light. It was empty, save for a smear of black fluid on the inside of the glass.
“Morphine?” Joan asked.
“I don’t think so,” he replied, thinking of Eddie strung up and back-to-front, his veins pulsing dark. He tossed the syringe away, took a deep breath, then grabbed the freak and hoisted him up. The body was surprisingly light, felt hollow-boned and bird-like, and Donnie slung it over his shoulder.
“I take it that’s our decoy?” Joan asked.
The forest answered her, a chattering cry from the treetops followed by that same innocent, childish laughter that had haunted them for what felt like a hundred lifetimes.
Joan looked at him, both of them about to say the same thing and neither of them needing to: They’re coming.
They placed the stiffening corpse in the middle of the clearing, propping it up with stakes of wood. It stood limply in between the murdered soldiers, its chin against its chest, looking like a guilty man before a towering jury. Cuddy and the others stared down at it, and Donnie wondered how the scene could seem so real, so alive, when there was only death there. He felt as though he was conspiring with the night children to make a mockery of his species, turning flesh into some macabre, nightmarish sculpture. And amid the numbing horror there was some small spark of satisfaction, the sick delight of revenge: How does it feel to see one of your own set out like a doll, like a plaything?
“That should do it,” said Henry, wedging another prop into place to stop the corpse leaning to the side. It looked like a spider, two real legs and six wooden ones, ready to scuttle off into the undergrowth, to join its friends who still called out from the trees.
