by Damon Alan
The dead were far too many. Another eighteen. Plus all the carts were out of service.
“Cut trees. Cut the carts up. We’ll burn our dead here,” Irsu ordered.
“What if they return?” Coragg asked.
“I think the last thing they’ll expect is for us to stay in the same place,” Irsu responded. “But we won’t be long.” He turned to the soldiers around him. “Burn them in their armor and burn any supplies we can’t carry.”
Coragg grinned, pleased with the order. He turned to urge the soldiers onward. “Bolts, food for a day, some spare armor parts. Hammers, chisels, and rock working tools go. Move it! You have five minutes.”
Irsu grabbed one of his soldiers, Habbas. He remembered the man was an iron worker. “Warrior, I need your help. Find some tools, get this plate off my arm.”
He showed Habbas the damage. The rerebrace covering his upper arm was ripped open, skin and some muscle mixed in with the shredded metal.
“That’s bad,” Habbas said.
Irsu kept his patience. “That’s why I need you to get tools and get the plate off. We’ll wrap the wound. And we leave in five minutes,” he gestured with his hands toward the shredded supply wagons. “Go now, please.”
Habbas came back with Coragg. Together they removed the plate from Irsu’s arm as the commander bit down on leather to silence his pain.
Coragg spoke to distract him. “When you joined us, I had doubts. We all had doubts. But Irsu, nobody can call you The Fainter now. You will have songs sung about what happened here today.”
“If we live,” Irsu reminded him. “And all I care about is getting home to Iron Mountain.”
“But we may be coming back here anyway,” Coragg said. “This will be our home now.”
Irsu glared. He was only a few weeks from finishing his hearth if his mother hadn’t resold it by now.
“Like it or not,” Coragg said, “you’re not the king. You don’t decide where we live.”
“Yet,” Habbas said. “But a few more stunts like that and you’ll be royalty for sure.”
Irsu pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. “That’s the last thing I want.”
“Let’s get to Nollen,” Coragg said. “It’s time.”
“We are leaving the road, now that we have no wagons,” Irsu ordered. “In that regard, the humans may have done us a favor. Cross country we will be unseen.”
The sound of air machines echoed in the distance.
“Let’s get moving, we can assemble our lines once we’re under cover of the trees,” Irsu said.
Iron Company disappeared into the pines, leaving their dead burning on the road. It was the best they could do until they scribed the fallen onto the Wall of Heroes back home.
Chapter 21 - Between the Grave and the Sky
May 29, 1940
The plan to return to the evacuated areas was risky, Harry knew. The reason they were evacuated was either the Germans, or more probably, the dead were seen in close proximity. Raiding such places was, however, the only way his squad was going to eat and stay supplied.
Timothy and Wilkes brought a dozen chickens into the farmhouse they were occupying for the night. Garrett and Jones, both the newest privates in the squad, were digging graves.
Whether by pact or the decision of the husband, the people who lived in this house didn’t evacuate. Gathered around a Bible at the kitchen table, the man had used a WWI service revolver and did his family in. There were four dead including himself. Each shot in the head, effectively ending any chance they’d join the legions of the WWI dead.
Maybe they believed the stories of the apocalypse. Maybe they thought the Germans were committing atrocities. Either way, this French family was no more.
The men stacked the bodies outside, where the family waited to return to the soil from which everyone came. And everyone returned.
“I’m glad we dropped off the French woman before she saw this,” Timothy said. “You think she’ll be okay?”
Harry rubbed the bump on his head. “She’s a survivor, that one. Best she moved south, not along with us.”
Timothy sighed.
“We best get on with it,” Harry said, gesturing toward the back door.
Other than Miller, who stayed in the house because Harry demanded he look for information on the wireless whenever possible, the men gathered around freshly dug graves to inter the corpses.
Harry wasn’t religious, he hadn’t been since his early teens. But the men were expecting him to say something. Since he’d cared enough to order the family buried instead of tossed in the barn, he should probably have words to go along with that.
When the men formed a semicircle around the four holes, Harry removed his helmet, and so did they.
“Things have changed in our world, in ways I don’t think we’re fully aware of yet. Some, and I think that’s what these poor folks thought, believe it’s the work of God. He isn’t hearing our prayers anymore if that’s the case, because we’re burying two children here today. What sort of world is that?”
He was probably crossing a line, but the men didn’t say a word in protest.
“Or maybe they simply didn’t have the faith to see His plan through. We don’t know what the future holds. Maybe the emptiness will come for us tomorrow. Maybe a crossbow bolt, maybe a skeletal fiend will seize and destroy us. Whatever happens, I will not go this path.”
He gestured at the graves.
“All of you are good, strong, British men. You have families back home, Ma, Pa, or a wife and maybe kids even. I will fight for us to see them again. I will fight the Germans if I must, and I will fight the dead because I must. I will fight those short armored bastards that seem to be everywhere we go. Until my last breath leaves my body, I swear I will fight to get you home.”
He looked up to see some of the men nodding. Whether they were agreeing with the concept of going home or the fight to get there, he had no idea.
“Whatever motivated this family, they gave up. We will not. But we will respect their choice and put them in the ground.”
He waited as the bodies were lowered into the holes, then he walked a short distance away to speak to his men again.
“We can’t go south anymore. In the villages that haven’t seen the dead, we are cowards unworthy of aid. In the villages that have, no aid is spared. We are on our own. But there is hope. The way east, along the front of the dead men, we may find a path through to civilization. There is a truce. If we can meet up with the Germans on the other side of this line, maybe they’ll spare a plane to get us home. If not… can anyone here fly?”
Everyone looked at each other, nobody raised a hand.
“Maybe I’ll steal us a plane and fly us home myself. How hard can it be?”
The men laughed.
“Alright, that plan probably won’t work. But this narrow corridor is all we have. We will have a guard at all times. We will have Miller listen. We will stockpile diesel and food. We have a great lorry, reliable and stout. We’re intelligent British men made of the good stuff. So we will come through this if I have to drag every bloody thing that is coming through that gate down to Hell myself.”
He was quiet a moment. “Garrett, Jones, put the French family to rest. Use their tractor to fill the holes. We’ve spent enough time on the needs of others who quit.” He wagged a finger at the men gathered around. “That is not who we are. We are British soldiers. We do not quit.”
“We do not quit,” some repeated. Others shook their heads in agreement.
As he walked away Timothy stepped into rhythm next to him. “I’m not sure the men need their faith in God shaken.”
“I don’t need them looking to God for answers,” Harry said. “I need them looking to me. Or to themselves. Because this,” he stabbed a finger at his own head, “is where the answers are going to come from. One day at a time.”
“You’re in charge,” Tim yielded. “I have seen men do more for God and Queen than anything else so fa
r, however.”
“The Queen can go straigh…” Harry took a deep breath. “I doubt the Queen has ever slogged through dead WWI soldiers, mystical creatures knee deep, and French families that committed murder-suicide.”
“Probably not. Nobody has until now. Until us.”
“Damned right. Which is why we’ll deal with this as it comes.” Harry shook a smoke from a pack he’d found in the house. “Want one?”
Timothy laughed. “I’m still smoking the packs you gave me when all this nonsense started.”
They stepped into the house. Miller was in the kitchen with the radio on the table, along with some maps they’d found in an abandoned petrol station the day before. The Bible was on the floor. Harry would have left it, but Tim picked it up and sat it on the counter.
“Anything, Miller?”
“The Prime Minister gave a speech. It’s to be repeated in a few minutes.”
Tim went to the back door. “News on the wireless. Jones, Garrett, you have watch when you’re done with that tractor.”
Several men filed in. Harry and Timothy sat in chairs that a few hours earlier seated the dead. The kitchen was still a bloody mess, and the scent of blood lingered.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Prime Minister of England.”
Time passed, and the scratch of a phonograph needle started.
“I stand before you, flummoxed. Last week I thought our greatest enemy to be the Hun. Now, while I don’t know our enemy, I do know we face a threat like none we’ve ever seen. I know there are enemy ground forces I have no information about, and not the Germans. We’ve had reports of serpents in the Channel. Sea serpents, mind you, not garden snakes. Dragons in the sky over Canterbury and Manston, something our RAF has been struggling to deal with at great cost.
“I can tell you now, my fellow citizens, that I wasn’t about to lay down for the Huns, and I’m not about to lay down for these invaders from beyond either. We have our soldiers scattered all over France by a wave of the dead which have risen up from WWI graveyards. We have limited and dwindling numbers of Spitfires and Hurricanes. We have ships being ravaged from beneath the water. But I assure you, oh England, that we have not yet stood to our full height! Our factories are tooling up to spit out aircraft in numbers like we’ve never seen. Our Navy will protect our ports, if that is what it takes.”
Several seconds of silence.
“There is good news. The United States as agreed to help in our fight against the supernatural, and I’ll tell you that was a story to sell the American President. If, and I tell you this to prove it can be done, we hadn’t shot down one of these dragons, I wouldn’t have had any proof. But I sent the head of that beast to Franklin Roosevelt and upon receiving it he came to see things were as I said. Add in the truce with the Germans, who had the sense to assassinate that madman Hitler, and I think we have a chance.
“This is good. American industrial might and the numbers of their men will help us make short work of these invaders. Together, we of the Commonwealth and citizens of the free world, we will fight back those who would take what is ours. Stand firm, stand proud, stand tall, but most of all, stand.”
The radio announcer returned. “Now the weather—”
“He has no idea what’s happening,” Wilkes said, sneering.
“I don’t know, mate, he sounded like he had at least a clue,” Miller rebutted. “I think he’s got much of the picture, he’s just not sure how to deal with it yet. Who would be?”
“Just another bloody politician, that’s what he is,” Wilkes spat out. “What would he know of what we’re doing?”
“Don’t know if you know who the man is, Wilkes,” Harry said, “But that’s Churchill. You have two more wars to fight after this one to catch up to the man. He’s seen his share.”
They argued for a bit longer, it was the stress. But in the end the decision was it didn’t matter. No supplies were coming. No reinforcements. No air drops. They were on their own until they found a solution to their situation.
“What if we went to this gate and, you know, flipped a switch or something,” Parker suggested.
“Flipped a switch?” Wilkes scoffed.
“Maybe we could just turn it off,” Parker replied.
“I think it’s a grand idea,” Harry said. “We’d be heroes to the world. But how do you suggest we break through the lines of dead along the Maginot? As soon as those codgy sorts see us, we’re rightly screwed.”
“We must cross it somewhere,” Parker replied. “Who’s to say where?”
“And don’t you think there’ll be more of the types we’ve been seeing? The red and black armor fellows?” Timothy asked.
“Not all bad,” Jones said in response. “The red ones practically gave us kisses.”
“And the black ones?”
Jones’ eyebrows furrowed. “Yeah. Those ones. We need to find a way to kill those blokes.”
“Tomorrow is a new day. Standard watch, we’ll leave in twelve hours. It will be light, we’ll be able to see.”
“What’s the village we’re moving toward?” Wilkes asked.
“Esnes.”
“What’s there?”
“We’ll know soon enough. It’s not like I live here, Wilkes,” Tim said. “Get some sleep, you have middle watch tonight.”
Harry watched Wilkes leave the room, headed to find something soft to lay his head on.
“They’re under pressure,” Tim told him. “Each day a bit closer to the edge.”
“Then we push them back from it, Timothy,” Harry said. “We push them back.”
Tim looked at him like he’d asked for the impossible.
“Every man on this team needs the others. We let nobody down.”
Tim nodded. “I’ll be up on the roof. There’s a chill in the air, maybe some rain. Maybe with first watch I’ll get the warmth back in my bones before my eyes open again.”
“Wake me when you come down.”
He watched Tim walk out the back door, then finished his smoke.
Rest never came easy. It wouldn’t be easier with the ghosts of dead children and desperate parents haunting him.
Chapter 22 - Mockeries of Men
May 30, 1940
As the new day began, Harry awakened as rested as he’d felt in a long time. Most nights over the last week he’d given the men the better beds in whatever place they occupied, but this time Timothy had insisted they save one for him.
He hadn’t argued. It was nice to feel free of muscle aches and stress.
This despite the horror that had occurred in the house sometime within the last few days.
Wilkes burst into the front room as Harry was tapping out his morning smoke.
“There are men approaching on horses from the north.”
“Cavalry? Do the Germans have cavalry?” Harry asked, looking at Timothy.
“Their cavalry clanks a lot and shoots bits at us,” Tim replied. “Hans would know.”
Harry wasn’t sure, Hans didn’t seem like he was all that thrilled to be part of the Wehrmacht. Why else would he be running around France with a British squad? “He’s searching the barn for anything useful. Wilkes, make sure everyone is under cover. We don’t want to engage if we can avoid it.”
Harry jumped up and grabbed his binoculars from his pack. He ran to the front of the house, then climbed to the roof. He dropped to his belly and slithered up to the peak of the house, which ran east-west. Well covered, the enemy shouldn’t spot him.
As his head crested the ridge just enough to raise his field glasses to view northward, he was surprised by what he saw.
About two dozen men on horses over a mile to the North, riding the most ridiculously decorated horses he’d ever seen. Enough ribbons, heraldry symbols, and pomp to make King George feel overdone.
Tim scuttled up next to him. “What’s the situation?”
“Men on horses, apparently having a parade.” Harry handed the glasses over to his friend.
“
Parade?” Timothy raised the binoculars, staring for over a minute. “If that’s not the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen, I’ll eat your socks.”
“My socks are safe,” Harry said, taking the glasses back. He raised them once more. “Get the men to the ready. I see bows, I see some pikes, and the lad with the most ribbons in his hair is sporting a sword of some kind. These aren’t men of our world.”
“Will do,” Tim said as he slid back down.
He heard the men shuffling below as they prepared their weapons, Tim ordered the Hotchkiss set up on the kitchen counter, which had a window overlooking the north fields of the farm.
The men on horses, if they followed their path, would pass half a mile north of them headed west-southwest.
He studied them intently as they moved closer.
Suddenly one of the men, who wasn’t a man at all, jogged her horse south straight toward him. His heart fluttered at how beautiful her face was. She was wearing what appeared to be some sort of leather armor, crafted as amazingly as the female that wore it. After forty yards or so she stopped, then stared right at him for a good minute.
He froze. Did she see him or one of the men?
She turned her head back toward the rest of her companions, who seemed entertained by her enthusiasm. Despite their smiles, they turned toward the farm.
The jig, as they say, was up.
“Tim,” Harry yelled as he slid down from the roof. “Get ready! They’ve seen us somehow.”
“Shall we shoot first?” he heard from in the house as he dropped to the ground.
“No, definitely not,” he replied as he ran inside to the now set up Hotchkiss. “The red people were friendly enough, maybe we shouldn’t risk a fight if we don’t need one.”
Timothy told the men to hold fire.
Several minutes passed as the horses slowly approached across the fields. Whoever these people were, they weren’t in a hurry. When they stopped, the one Harry believed to be the leader stood near the fence that separated the back yard of the house from the fields.
His ears were pointed, and his facial features were too slender. Also, his skull was not quite the right shape to be human. He was something else. Otherwise, at a distance and despite his apparent lack of nutrition, he was very humanlike.
