by Dirk Patton
Had the creature sensed the oncoming dawn? Was it afraid of the sun just like Bram Stoker's creation? He could hear the roar of planes approaching, and Falkner’s smile widened. If the creature was averse to daylight, it was about to get more than it bargained for. Then a stray thought pierced his mind. Why did it stay in that house? A being of that magnitude shouldn’t be contained by mere bricks and mortar.
As the aircraft unleashed its deadly cargo, Falkner recalled the pentagrams and other strange symbols on the walls. His smiled faltered. What if Burley and those other cultists had summoned the monster by accident while playing around with the supernatural. He remembered in his briefing, Burley had abandoned the estate back in the 1950s but refused to sell it. Had instructions left in his will to ensure the property remained intact but untouched. Folks at the time assumed it was his ego, a desperate attempt at enshrining his legacy. What if it was something else entirely?
Each bomb hit their mark. All detonated with devastating effect. The mansion imploded, over a hundred years of brick and mortar reduced to rubble in an instant.
When the dust soon cleared. Troops returned cautiously to the remains of the house. There was no sign of the creature. Falkner breathed a sigh of relief. Let it rot.
The ground shook. He thought he'd imagined it but a nearby soldier was staring at the ground. “Earthquake?” he said to no-one in particular.
The ruins of the house suddenly exploded outwards, sending soldiers scrambling for cover. Several men caught in the upheaval disappeared under a pile of rubble. Falkner looked on with a growing sense of dread as an enormous hand emerged from the wreckage. A warped version of the creature shook itself free of the wreckage. Its anatomy shifted at incredible speed. A transmogrification of thousands of different beings every single second.
The creature swelled to twice its original size and showed no sign of stopping. Some soldiers fired weapons, others ran. Falkner heard sobbing. It took a few confused moments before he realised it was him. Wiping his tears, he saw his fingers covered in blood.
Beyond the perimeter, a journalist was broadcasting her latest report. She tried to maintain a professional demeanour, but her quivering voice betrayed her fear. Turning to point to the creature, she made the fatal mistake of looking directly at it. She screamed, then proceeded to gouge her eyes out live on national television. The camera stayed transfixed on the scene. It captured the chaos. Some soldiers mutilated themselves, others turned on their comrades. Most stayed transfixed on the being, their eyes bleeding, their hands clenched so tightly they snapped the bones in their fingers.
Falkner's sanity teetered on the edge of madness. He didn’t want to die but he didn’t want to be trapped in an undead state. The very thought of being eaten alive and becoming part of that thing was too much to bear. He didn’t know how the creature kept its victims living but he hoped it required physical contact to do so. This seemed to be the case with his men anyway. He prayed he was right.
The ancient being stepped forward, causing a tremor that surely rattled the breadth of England. Falkner felt some sort of connection to the being. Images from other times and other places flooded his mind. He also felt subtle links to billions of other terrified beings. Together, the human race bore witness as the being strode across the world consuming the dinosaurs. A blink of time later, it devoured the Mayan civilisation, followed by the Cahokia, the Göbekli, and a myriad more civilisations Falkner had never even heard of. He felt the vast, all-consuming desire to feed. He witnessed the culling of entire species across different timelines, different dimensions and different planets.
Finally, it brought him back into the near past and the people it had consumed within the house, his men, to absorb all it needed about modern man. They had forgotten the old ways, the true ways, and posed no threat. Now that it was free from its makeshift prison, nothing would stop it.
Now it would feed again.
With a silent prayer that this would be his last thought, a thought that was his alone, Falkner drew his pistol, put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
How Zeke Got Religion at 20,000 Feet
John McNichol
Poppa used to say: when a man says he’s scared, he usually ain’t lying. He could lie about how many gals he done the hokey-pokey with, how many guys he beat down in a bar, how much money he’s got, or anything else. But when a man says he’s scared and he says it to other men, well, he ain’t lying.
So I’ll say it: I was scared. And so was Tex, Wrenchie, Sharkey, Booger, Preacher and the others. You’d be scared too, if you was in a giant metal tube flyin’ in the dark waitin’ to get shot at while the engines hummed, the wind whined through the chinks in the Belle, and all you can think about is how far from home you are. It don’t matter how many times you get in a bird or make it back. Every time you go off to drop some on Fritz, you’re hoping you don’t roll snake eyes.
Heck, Preacher already knew what was waiting for us on the other side, and still kept them beads around his neck, his Saint Christopher medal pinned under his web belt and said a Hail Mary each time a Mister came out of the clouds. But there was one of us who waren’t scared, and that was Zeke.
If he was scared, he hid it good. Zeke was from New York City, which maybe explained a lot. He was good at talking, and he and Preacher would go at it for hours ‘til the rest of us was tired and went to bed and put the pillows over our heads so we wouldn’t hafta hear Zeke say why there warn’t no God and Preacher say there was.
Zeke said he didn’t believe there was nothing but what we could see, that there wasn’t no Heaven to hope for and no Hell to be afraid of. So why worry? If you’re gonna die, it ain’t gonna hurt or help.
Well, I saw that as plumb foolish. I didn’t know if the Devil wore red pajamas like he did in the Sunday School pictures, or flew around on black bat wings like those in Preacher’s book about Paradise being lost. I’d known enough bad folks that was gonna get theirs, here now or there later. It’s something you just know inside. But for some reason, Zeke never got those inside-eyes.
We knew something was up when they gave us, and only us, a bunch of coffee and candy bars and a movie. When anyone out here is that nice, and you ain’t no officer? Means they’re gonna drop you in something, and it might as well be a big bucket of the ole’ warm-and-brown.
Sure enough, a half hour after the movie was done, the call goes out over the speakers. Usually that’s enough to make your insides turn to water, but we was hyped up from John Wayne and good coffee and everything else. So we jumped to it and was formed up on the square in under five minutes.
Then some Major came by with two guys in suits and glasses.
“Let’s go, ladies,” yelled the Major once he got to the doorway of one of the meeting tents.
Another officer waited in the room. “Gentlemen,” he said. His voice sounded rich like velvet but cold like ice. I got prickles on my neck just knowing he was talking to me. He also talked like a Brit, and that was different. We got to sit, and that was different, too.
“I won’t mince words,” the Brit said. “You don’t have the expertise we need to make sure this mission is a success, but right now you’re all we’ve got. Tonight, you’ll be going into Germany. Normally, Americans don’t do night missions, and almost never as a single bomber. But this is different.”
He looked at each of us in turn. “You’re going to bomb a church,” he said, and his voice dropped almost to a whisper when he said it. Made my skin go all prickly again, and my mouth went dry. “Jerry’s got something inside it important enough that Command wants us to drop a bucket load of Black Betty and her fat ugly sisters on it, tonight. You’ll have fighter support part of the way, but then you’re on your own. Any man who has a problem with either of these two points can withdraw now.”
None of us backed out.
They’d been getting the Belle ready the whole time we’d been watching the movie. We double-timed it back to the bunks, dropped our fatigues, got our fli
ght-suits on and double-timed it again out to the tarmac.
“You ready?” Preacher asked me as we got in line. I looked at the nose of our bird, how beautiful the blonde gal looked on it, smiling at me in a WAC uniform shirt that was just a little too tight and shorts a bit too short as she leaned against the cracked bell waving at me. The ‘Liberty Belle’. She was a good seventy-four feet o’ pure, B-17 Bomber death with wings, and I got scared to death each time I walked in her, and happy as a horse in a field o’ green grass every time I stepped out after we was done.
“Yeah,” I said to Preacher. “I’m ready. You?”
“Always,” he lied. Same as me. “I can’t wait to drop a bomb anywhere in Fritz’s backyard. Even if it is on a church.”
“You got any idea why they got us doing this one?”
“Tap,” he says to me, ‘cause Tap was my nickname. “You got me on that one. My best guess is that Fritz hopes we won’t drop one there ‘cause it is a church. They know we won’t run night missions. Maybe they’ve got something there really, really good. Something worth turning a church into a shield over. Last Limey I talked to saw something pretty weird behind enemy lines. Said Fritz took a cathedral and done some real bad things inside it. Painted stars on the walls and floor, blood, other things. Something weird, you know?”
No, I didn’t know. But I nodded just the same.
The inside of the Belle was lit up, and Cap and Eggs headed to the pilot an’ copilot seats and started their talk about numbers, oil pressure, oxygen levels an’ all that. Tex went in the belly gun and did all his checks, telling Wrenchie everything was A-Ok while he rotated the ball and made sure he had his ammo. Sharkey went up top, Booger in the nose, Preacher in the tail and Zeke an’ me went to the waist, all of us checking out .50 cals an’ making best sure they didn’t jam. Zeke an’ me, we made sure the ammo belts were straight and laid out zig-zag over the top of each other in the hopper and then loaded up for bear. Almost nothin’ feels quite so good as clamping down the lid on the feeder of a .50 cal Browning, you know? Makes you feel ten feet tall and ready to kick the Fuhrer in the balls. Now what warn’t so good was putting on the jackets, the gloves and the masks. See, when you’re a waist-gunner, you got more room to move but you’ve gotta wear jackets and gloves so thick you felt like you was wearing a live grizzly, and then you’ve gotta put on your mask, or you faint from how thin the air was up there. Try pushing the buttons on a .50 grip with thumbs that feel like bricks wrapped in cotton batten and you get the idea.
“Wrenchie? They still didn’t fix the right grip. I gotta push it twice as hard as the left. Can you take a look?”
“Love to, Tap, but I gotta check a dozen other things first. And I don’t think I can take it apart until I get back.”
Crap. It’s not life-or-death, but it is a pain in the ass.
A half hour later, the engines started. The Belle lurched forward, and my stomach made a little flip-flop like it always does, then we hit sky. Man alive, it was cold once you got all the way up. Colder than a snowman with an icicle up his ass, even with our heater vests plugged into the Belle.
But the cold ain’t your worst enemy; Fritz is. And even though we had a few jugs flyin’ alongside, you never get more’n half way before the fighters gotta turn back.
I took a bit while we still had the fighters at our back to look at the stars. We’d taken off in the dark, and there warn’t much to see this time. Usually it was light out when we flew, and while we was flyin’ Preacher’d be sayin’ his prayers, an’ Wrenchie’d be fillin’ out forms for the Engineering school he wanted to go to, or Zeke’d be looking at pinups of some movie-star gal he thought he’d get to step out with if’n he got enough Confirmed Kills on his record.
But since it was dark, most of us couldn’t do the things we did to pass the time. I heard Preacher prayin’ a bit, and Tex took out his harmonica and started playin’ it soft and slow in the belly. Somehow it made me feel a little sad and better at the same time- Tex could do that when he played, you know?
Then after a bit I heard the Mustangs’ engines turn as they did their 180 to leave us and head back home. The moonlight was bright – real bright. I could see the tail of the last Mustang disappear behind the clouds. And right after that, Booger yelled from his place in the nose gunner’s seat:
“Misters! We got Misters! Two and ten o’clock!”
“Shit!”
“Shitfire!”
You yelled. You hadda yell or your balls shriveled up an’ died.
“Two o’clock, Tap!”
“I see ‘im! Shit!” He was a speck on the moonlight, then a little flash.
Then the bullets started whizzing, whining and slamming on the Belle. Heavy thunks where they hit metal, sparks where they hit wire.
“Fucker! On ‘im!”
I opened up, trying to put that flashing speck in my crosshairs. Then it stopped flashing.
“‘Ja get ‘im, Tap?”
“Dunno! They still shoot—”
More flashes, moving back. More hits! Fuck! I felt hot beestings on the back of my head.
“Dammit, Zeke! Hit those fuckers! I’m taking shrapnel.”
“You hit ‘em! Like getting flies with a fucking sledgehammer!”
“Sharkey! He’s goin’ up!”
“Shut the fuck up, Booger, I see ’im!”
A mister’s engine roared over us. Fuck!
“What the hell? Cap, you got the radar – he trying to ram us?”
“Just kill ‘em, Sharkey! Ask me later!”
Sharkey’d already done that, his .30 cals punching a Mister into a bunch of screaming, flaming metal pieces.
“Leave some for me next time, Shark!”
“Get your own Gawldarn CKs, Tex. Mebbe grow a foot or two an’ you’ll get outta th’ belly!”
“Where’s the rest?”
“Can’t see the—”
More flashes. The Belle rattled and cried. My hands were sore, my left thumb ached were I hadda push the trigger harder and my arms had started to shake.
No, fuck no! Can’t get the shakes now! Not ‘til we’re done!
“Tap! You see ‘im?”
“No!”
“Shit! Where’d he—”
The flashes came, so close we heard the ‘.30 mil pills drill into the wing.
“There you are!”
“Fuckfuckfuckfuck—”
I held the grip tight as I could though my hands screamed at me near as loud as Sharkey was screamin’ in the dorsal.
“Tap! You clipped him! There’s pieces of his ass on fire!”
Tex had the best eyes. I couldn’t hardly see – my goggles were starting to fog up.
All I needed was a flash and—
“Engine fire!”
When I heard Zeke yell that one, I tried to keep my eyes on the Misters. But you still hear the chatter and the yelling from the Captain to the rear to the Engineer and everyone else in the whole blamed plane.
“Number?”
“Two, Cap!”
“Wrenchie!”
“On it, Cap! Pulling the plugs!”
“Engine Fire, number one!” yelled Zeke.
“Wrenchie!”
“Already out, Cap! One’s out! Two’s out! Just oil leaking. We’re oka—”
Bullets slammed in the hull. Wrenchie stopped talking.
You know what that means nine times out of ten, but you keep pouring it on, waiting to hear from the other gunners.
“Tap!” Tex yelled from the belly. “Coming your way from below!”
“Shit,” I yelled. “On it!”
The Mister came up from under at six o’clock. It was the last mistake he was ever gonna make. When Tex yelled from the ball below I started pumping lead straight down before I saw anything. When Fritz flew out from underneath, I swear I heard his canopy crack even before my bullets started tearing the rest of his plane a new set of ragged metal armpits and assholes. I’d wanted to tear into a Kraut ever since we came back fr
om the trip where Whitey bought it.
“Got ‘im, Whitey,” I mumbled, watching the sky while I heard little pieces of the Mister shred and spin off into the night. I even thought I could hear Fritz screaming.
“That’s for Whitey, you fucker!” I yelled, seeing poor Whitey’s face gettin’ whiter, then yellow after he died slow in the ward.
We all waited a minute, and when we couldn’t hear any more fighters nor feel any more hits, the guys cheered. I’d unzipped Fritz and his Mister, and the cheer meant we could relax. And if they were relaxed, it meant there weren’t no more Misters either.
We breathed easy. I let the shakes come. While I’d been busy tapping away and blasting Fritz into whatever special hell God made for Nazis, the other guys’d been having their fun, too. Tex in the ball, Zeke at my back, Booger in the nose, Sharkey up top and Preacher over in the tailgun had ripped the other Misters apart. But that’s the way of it. You look so much at the Misters you’re trying to kill, you don’t hear nothing else. Zeke took a few seconds to grab a blanket out’ve the emergency kit and cover up Wrenchie, as much to soak up the blood so we wouldn’t slip in it as out of respect for the dead.
It was maybe five minutes after the Misters got sent packing before we started hearing the ack-ack. Someone really didn’t want this church to get it. None of it was touching us, though. Not right away. It sounded in the air like thunder, far off and away from us. The brass had finally made a right call by sending us in at night.
