by Peter Rawlik
The first of the injured to arrive presented the most common of war wounds, and I was soon patching up hands and shoulders that had forgotten to move out of the way of the bullets of the enemy. The enemy forces were still too far away to inflict serious injuries; their shots at this distance were meant to hamper the installation of our defenses so that we could be overrun, not to kill or maim, but with each passing minute they trudged forward and soon the forces would engage, the feints would end, and the battle would be to the death. There was no doubt in my mind of the outcome.
Sheltered as best I could be in the depths of the fort, I was not witness to it, but somehow the remaining French and American troops were able to install their guns and begin a full-fledged defense. The single shot retorts of rifles and pistols were suddenly replaced by the horrible droning of machine guns, and the tinkling fall of wasted shells. A minute or so of this and I was shocked to hear the strangest of sounds, for within the walls of our position a sudden and unexpected roar of excitement rose up. Distracted, I dashed to the wall and climbed the ladder to a small break in the upper wall through which I could see the fields of war below. Suddenly my death was not so assured and I, like all the others around me, saw more than just a glimmer of hope.
The enemy had reached our trenches, but the thousands of shells they had rained down upon these dirt fortifications had made them all but impassable. The thousands of troops streaming across the land were suddenly forced into a choke point maybe a hundred yards wide and nearly dead center in front of the fort itself. As the enemy troops forced their way through the gap, they found themselves at the mercy of two machine guns and supporting riflemen. The Germans were being cut down by the dozens each minute. I smiled, not out of joy for the death of so many of the enemy, but rather out of pride, for the soldiers who were manning those guns were the men of my own unit, American soldiers whom I had treated and worked with for so many months now. I was proud of them, for they had given me a taste of what they had given the world: hope.
Then, in an instant that seemed to last longer than it had any right to, things suddenly changed. There was a pause in the rattling scream of the machine gun to my left, and I saw the men scrambling to wrench a miss-fed tangle of ammunition out of the smoking weapon. The other gun sped up, trying to compensate for the temporary loss, spraying metallic death across the front of the oncoming enemy. In an instant three German troops slipped past the now-deficient crossfire, and into one of the cross trenches that still remained. A tick of the clock later, all three rose up out of the trench, and in a coordinated effort fired at the still-incapacitated machine gun. The gunner, a Texan named Rick Williams, and his assistant, a boy called Hammond, tumbled backwards out of the tower nest and plummeted down the side of the wall to the ground below.
There was no time to mourn their passing. Instead there was yet another mad dash by brave men to occupy that position and get that gun going again. Three more men were shot from the wall trying to make it to the tower before Nick found his way into the position. The gun cleared in an instant and soon was chattering away once more. As the gun kept them pinned, a pair of hand grenades were lobbed into the occupied trenches and the trio of enemy snipers were silenced.
The wholesale slaughter of enemy troops at the single pathway through the trenches resumed, and this time each team was fortified by a second set of guns as well. However, in the minutes that the crossfire had failed, the enemy had been able to scatter even more soldiers into the cratered trenches. Sudden desperate communications ricocheted like bullets. One observer had estimated that in the confusion, two hundred men had slipped over the top of one crater and were now likely winding their way through the labyrinth of trenches. Dismayed, I retreated to the infirmary and did what I could for the wounded as they trickled in.
Not long after my return, the broken bodies of the unfortunate gunners Williams and Hammond were brought in. Having personally witnessed the event that wounded them, I waved the orderlies off, directing them to consign their charges to the area set aside for the deceased. I was unprepared for their adamant refusal and assertion that both men were still alive. I was even less prepared when Williams rolled his head over and stared at me with weeping eyes and begged me for help. Stunned, I directed the two to the central tables and chased the two orderlies out.
Williams had taken a shot to the right shoulder that had shattered several bones before leaving through a much larger hole in his back. The fall and subsequent impact had dislocated his hip and, as far as I could tell from the near 180-degree rotation, broken his neck. Under normal circumstances such a condition would have resulted in his death, but despite his injuries he was quite alive, and talkative. It took me a moment, and a consultation with my notebook, but I realized that Williams was indeed one of the many I had inoculated with my reagent. Here was my first true example of its ability to prevent fatalities even in the face of major physical trauma.
Hammond, who was also an experimental subject, had suffered a more serious wound. Apparently, Williams had cushioned Hammond’s fall, for there were no impact injuries from the fall to the younger man. Unfortunately, Hammond had been shot in the face, and although he maintained some semblance of life, the gaping hole in the back of his head and the missing brain matter made me wonder if the boy would ever recover any semblance of consciousness. As it was, he apparently could do little more than kick against the restraints and claw at the air.
I turned back to Williams and examined the shoulder wound from both sides. Amazingly, though the wound was only minutes old, it already showed signs of scabbing over and healing, though not in a manner consistent with normal anatomy. Indeed, it was as if a cancerous mass of flesh and bone was desperate to fill the hole, regardless of the actual anatomical need. Distressed by the uncontrolled and rampant growths of bone, muscle and skin, I did what I could to guide the tissues into their proper paths and hoped for the best. Unable to do much more, I jerked his hip back into place and quickly built a crude brace to hold his neck upright. Within the quarter hour since he had been brought in, Williams was suddenly mobile enough to carry a gun and return to the line. I suggested he wait and recover, but nothing I said could dissuade him from returning to the battle that raged above. Indeed, I had little time to argue as more wounded suddenly poured into the infirmary begging for my help.
In an hour I was knee-deep in the blood and gore of war, and my casualty rate was surprisingly low, for indeed those whom I had subjected to my experiment in inoculations against death seemed superhuman in their stamina and ability to heal. Even those who had taken instantly fatal wounds showed some semblance of recovery, though like Hammond those who had suffered traumatic brain injuries seemed unable to properly function as a conscious human being. These poor individuals soon became problematic. Though undeterred by their wounds, they were not sufficiently functional to obey directions; thus I found myself forced to come up with creative ways in which to restrain them, including lashing them to stretchers, timbers or any other large object that would keep them from wandering about. A good number of victims showed violent tendencies, constant attempts to scratch, rend, or bite, and reminded me of the revenant rats from my early experiments. For these individuals I quickly devised a set of restraints and a bit that would keep them in check.
The day turned into night, and then into day again. The battle raged on, with the Germans throwing their forces against our fortification in a desperate but nearly futile attempt to defeat my unit of undying soldiers. I say “nearly futile” because as the conflict raged on, it soon became apparent that although my experimental subjects may have been resistant to injury, they were not immune, and slowly, the number of those who had suffered traumatic brain injuries was growing. It was a matter of slow attrition really, and as one by one my experiments joined the ranks of the uncontrollable, the diminishing ranks of those retaining their faculties faced an ever more daunting task. As our numbers waned, the fall of our position became inevitable.
I will not defend what I
did next. Decisions made during the madness of war often appear perfectly logical; it is only in retrospect that their nature as heroic or cowardly can truly be evaluated. My actions seemed to me a logical manner in which I might turn the tide of the battle; it was only afterwards that I realized the horror of what I had done. The inspirations for my acts are a mystery; the idea came upon me and I acted on it. It was as simple as that. Grabbing my medical bag with my supply of syringes and reagent, I quickly prepared twenty double-strength dosages of the formula. Then with great care, I used a length of rope to lash twenty of the more violent cases together. With some effort, for although they did not resist, nor did they help, I led my small cadre up the walls of our position and to a point directly above the main gate of our base. There, sheltered by a pile of sandbags, I injected each of them with one of the prepared syringes, and with several swift slices of my knife to their bonds, sent them one by one over the edge of the wall.
Such actions must have confused our enemy, for each one fell to the ground below without coming under fire. I cowered there for a moment, and smiled viciously as I made out the sounds of those twenty things scrabbling to their feet and breaking loose from their restraints. There was an animal sound of movement, not unlike that which I had heard so many times from my rats. They wandered away, slowly at first, but then they stopped, seemed to focus on something, and then scrambled off as fast as they could, an angry, breathy growl trailing in their wake. This was followed by a sudden, almost incredulous pause in gunfire, both from our defensive positions and from the attackers. Then there was screaming, the gunfire became frantic, and I dared to raise my head above the wall to see what I had wrought.
The twenty were wading through the attackers like reapers through wheat, leaving a trail of carnage in their wake. Limbs were torn from bodies, heads were shattered like clay pots, and blood ran like ink over the pages of the landscape. Bolstered by the reagent overdose, my patients shrugged off wounds from bullets and bayonets alike. Indeed, for a dozen or more the dosage I gave them was apparently too high, for as they cut their way through the enemy, and the enemy cut them, I could see the green luminescent fluid leaking from their wounds. I was sadistically gleeful at my success, for I knew that it was I who had turned the tide of this battle. The enemy was not yet routed, but our victory was assured. So blinded was I by my apparent success that I nearly failed to see the horror as it crept up out of the abattoir I myself had created.
As I have said, several of the twenty were leaking reagent from their wounds, and this must have been sufficient to infiltrate the bodies of some of the dead they were leaving in their wake. As I watched, some of the more intact of the German soldiers were shuddering, convulsing and rising up to live again. Within minutes the number of resurrected things battling across the war-torn landscape had doubled. Thankfully, the newly inoculated seemed to have no particular memories of their allegiances, and indiscriminately tore into whatever caught their attention, at least at first. It took some time, but they seemed to learn that battling against each other was ineffectual, and soon focused their attention only on the more vulnerable living.
The dead tore through those German troops in minutes, and it was only when they reached the choke point through which the Germans were pouring that they were suddenly stopped. Some bright Hun officer must have realized what was happening and after pulling back what forces he could, he let loose with grenades and explosives and closed off the gap completely. As the smoke cleared, I watched as the undead slaughtered those trapped on the wrong side of the gap, and German snipers took up positions on top of the rubble. Mercifully, the first acts of these marksmen were to put the still-living soldiers out of their misery. Afterwards, the long-range weapons were turned on the shambling hulks of my creation.
Suddenly besieged by gunfire and with no one to conveniently attack, the monstrosities slowly worked their way back to our position. Shambling and stumbling they came toward our walls, grey lifeless things with twisted broken bodies and gnashing teeth. Still draped in uniforms that marked their allegiance, our own snipers proceeded to take shots at those still identifiable as German, though I had realized that such distinctions were at this point likely moot. It took several shots, but eventually the horrified gunmen learned that the only sure way of putting one of the things down was a headshot that destroyed a significant portion of the brain.
With the German infantry too far to threaten us, the soldiers remaining in the fort soon lined the wall to jeer at the horrid actors that milled about looking for a way in. It took a few moments, but soon my comrades realized that all sixteen of the things wandering around were Americans. As this dawned on my compatriots, I quietly tried to slink back to the infirmary and distance myself from any possible association with these things and the horrid atrocities they had committed. Imagine my surprise when a strong arm suddenly wrapped itself around me.
“Well, Dr. Hartwell,” it was the righteous Nick who was now gripping me tightly, “perhaps you should do some explaining.”
There was no trial. The French Commander, and Nick Charles, who assumed command of the American forces at Fort Souville, forced me to confess everything, and I think perhaps they would have liked to have thought me mad. But in the killing fields outside the fortifications wandered things that could not be denied, and in the infirmary were the men who had been wounded, mortally wounded, who had become misshapen mockeries as the reagent tried to keep their bodies alive. There was no denying what I had done, and there was no denying that my actions had turned the tide of the battle. For that my life was spared.
Do not misunderstand me, I was punished. It was I who was sent outside the gates with a pistol to dispatch the sixteen things that were once men and now were monsters both less than and more than human. It was I who was beaten by Nick Charles when he learned that like many others he too had received a dose of my reagent. He forced me to lie there and watch as he burned my notes and remaining reagent, and he cursed me as a new Frankenstein. As word and exaggeration of my deeds spread, I became ostracized, and soon my only companions were those eight soldiers who had suffered the most severe reactions to my reagent, but had maintained some semblance of rationality. These disfigured wounded would never rejoin society, for how could one explain the absence of a lower jaw, the back of one’s head, or a gaping hole in the chest?
I lived with these poor creatures, my creations, and they lived with me, and we cursed each other. It was inevitable really. There was so much vehemence that it finally erupted in flames. After nearly a week, my companions turned despondent and wandered out of the infirmary, and in full view of everyone, slowly went about building a rather large mass of wood and cloth from scraps scattered about the place. Then without a word they set fire to it. The flames burned bright and licked at the night. Everyone came out to watch, fascinated with morbid curiosity. Then, still as silent as the grave, the eight men, who were now something else, doused themselves with kerosene and walked into the consuming flames.
I tried to turn away, but Nick Charles, that damned righteous Nick Charles, appeared out of nowhere and held me fast. Greasy smoke filled the fort as those burning shapes staggered around in horrid silence. Charles held me and made me watch. A few men grabbed blankets and buckets, but they froze in their tracks when Charles cried out, “LET THEM BURN!”
It was then that the morality of my actions finally took hold. As I have said, I am not a spiritual or godly man, but there must be an innate standard of right and wrong, of good and evil, and if anyone was to judge me, why shouldn’t it be Nick Charles?
“Is this what you wanted, Doctor?” he whispered from behind me as the living finally succumbed to the cleansing flames. “Those men couldn’t live with what you had done to them, they thought death was better. Would you trade humanity for immortality?”
I fell to the ground, for I knew that the answer could only be no.
Chapter 17.
THE PLAGUE ANGEL
In the spring of 1918, forty-
two months after I had left, I returned to Arkham, weary of war and of my pursuits of perfecting the process of reanimation. My home was like an old and trusted friend, warm and inviting. Wilson had maintained our practice, and I was pleased to discover that he had even expanded it, taking on an association with Dr. David Schiff of Kingsport, who needed some relief from his workload as he entered his seventieth year. Schiff’s practice was smaller than ours in Arkham, proportional to the differences in the size of the towns, though Schiff was the only professional in that sleepy seaside village. There was something about the pace in Kingsport that was appealing, and when in April Dr. Schiff announced that he would prefer not to return from his next winter trip to Deland, Florida, Wilson and I agreed to take on his practice full time.
The arrangement was rather elegant; Wilson purchased Schiff’s home and office, a four-bedroom affair that sat behind the attached street front offices. His wife Mary moved into this home, and Wilson became the primary physician in Kingsport, while I would visit weekly and assist on more difficult cases. I hired Miss Soames, a woman who could function as both a receptionist and a housekeeper to help me in Arkham. Her son had been Dr. Halsey’s houseboy all those years ago. Though we resisted it, we also hired a young man fresh out of his residency, Dr. Randolph White, to help both of us, with the full understanding that he would travel to either location depending on the needs of the day.
As for my studies and the secret lab beneath my house, I resigned myself to the fact that I would never again pursue such things. I made sure that my notes and samples were secure, and changed the sheets that covered the equipment. The war and my experiences in it had taught me that there were worse things than death. Who was I to play God and decide who should live and who should die? As for the motivating force behind my research, the vengeance I sought on West and Cain, I left that behind as well. The war it seemed had changed me forever, and I was content never to unlock that door again.