Tentacles lunged for the KV-1, coiling around its hull like serpents. Vapor rose as their rows of suckers, apparently secreting some sort of acidic enzyme, started melting through, trying to get at the helpless crew trapped inside.
With blinding speed the thing also turned on the Germans, engulfing four of the Mark IIIs in a storm of flailing tentacles. Langer’s tank, farther back, was ignored for the moment.
“Open fire!” he ordered. “Machine guns only!”
The bow and coaxial machine-guns erupted with buzzing roars as Koch and Meyer slashed at the tentacles entwining the other vehicles. Lines of green tracers streaked across, 7.92-millimeter bullets shredding pale rubbery flesh and splattering sticky blood, ringing and ricocheting off the smoldering steel. The desperate voices of the other tank commanders flooded the radio. The thing, whatever it was, grew new limbs as fast as they were blown off. The voices disintegrated into screams.
Langer’s crew cursed helplessly as the other four German tanks were reduced to corroded, entangled hulks. Hatches were thrown open on a couple, but no one emerged. The radio fell silent. The KV-1 still fought the creature, but tentacles were inexorably dissolving through even its thick armor. The running gear on one side had already melted and collapsed, immobilizing it.
The thing turned its attention to Langer’s tank next. He dropped into the turret and slammed the hatch closed as the Mark III was seized.
“Schultz, get us out of here!”
Schultz shifted into reverse and floored the accelerator pedal. The 300-horsepower Maybach engine bellowed like a bull, but the straining Mark III could not move. He wrenched the steering levers back and forth, desperately trying to wrestle the tank free.
“I can’t break loose!” he said.
The metal around them began to bubble and hiss. More tanks rattled out of the gloom. Through the visor Langer recognized the silhouettes of the T-26, a light Russian tank considered easy meat for German anti-tank gunners. They had destroyed untold numbers of them in battle. Three raced up in what looked to Langer to be a suicide charge, a brave but futile attempt to divert the thing’s attention.
Their gun barrels were shorter than normal. A moment later he realized why when their stubby muzzles aimed upwards and long yellow-white streams of fire jetted out. These were KhT-133 tanks, a flamethrower variant of the T-26 designed for assaulting fortifications.
The slimy tentacles ignited instantly, recoiling as fire flashed along their length and wreathed them in orange flames. Langer’s tank and the KV-1 were released. The blazing, writhing limbs shrank back into the crevasse and disappeared from view. Oily black smoke rose; Langer gagged on an even more horrible stench.
“Burn, you bastard, burn!” said Koch.
Russian infantry, engineers judging from their equipment, jumped down from the tanks and hurried forward to the edge. Langer guessed they would set demolition charges to turn the lair into a tomb, burying the horror forever.
The KV-1’s turret began rotating back towards him.
Langer jerked a cable repeatedly. In rapid succession smoke canisters mounted on a rack at the rear of the Mark III dropped to the ground.
“Back us up!” he said.
Schultz reversed into the thick cloud billowing up. The tank’s front armor was the thickest so he kept that towards the enemy, but he also tried to face it at an angle, giving them a chance that an incoming round might ricochet instead of penetrating.
The KV-1’s cannon boomed and a loud clang deafened the crew. Meyer and Hoppe cried out; hot pain stabbed Langer’s leg. The shell had glanced off, but the impact sprayed spall across the compartment like shrapnel. Moments later a second screeched past, missing entirely, the Russian gunner’s aim spoiled by the smoke screen.
Schultz kept going backwards until they were behind the cover of the hill, then slammed the levers to spin the tank around, the tracks ripping up the dirt. He shifted into forward gear, stomped down the accelerator, and roared off at full speed into the night.
Gritting his teeth against the pain of his wound, Langer watched for signs of pursuit, but saw none. The KV-1 was disabled and the flamethrower tanks were still finishing off the creature. The Germans drove on in silence, shaken by the vision of the nameless thing they had stirred up, thinking of the comrades they had lost – and for what?
As Hoppe opened a first aid kit, Langer sourly reflected that Heinrich Himmler would have to concoct a new scheme to impress the Führer.
Ptearing All Before Us
Steve Ruthenbeck
Five men on horseback rode through a sea of grass.
And then there were four…
A sun so hot it might have been the devil’s eye fried Grant’s face. Sweat turned his blue uniform black, and the yellow gloves tucked into his belt flopped with each step of his horse. Grant couldn’t tell which smelled worse, him or his mount.
Grant tried to take his mind off his discomfort by reading a newspaper. Headlines included: Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for an invention called a telephone; Dakota farmer discovers a dinosaur skeleton in wheat field; Morgan Bulkeley elected President of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs…
Success stories everywhere, so why couldn’t it happen to him?
Envy raised Grant’s temperature further. He removed his hat to mop perspiration from his brow, swallowed the last gulp of tepid water from his canteen and turned back to see how the rest of the party was doing.
Breckenridge slept in his saddle. Stubble covered his cheeks, and dust turned his sunburned skin to the ashen tone of a corpse.
Webster rode behind Breckenridge. Webster had been overweight when he joined the Third Cavalry, but two years of living mainly on beans and hardtack so tough it could double for bricks, if a mason was desperate enough, had turned him into a wisp.
Paulson scanned the horizon for threats. He didn’t bother with surveying the immediate area. If Indians were within killing range, a person wouldn’t see them until the bullets started flying.
Bringing up the rear, a roan stallion plodded along with something like supplication in its manner. It saddle was empty.
“Whoa,” Grant stopped his horse. He tucked the newspaper under his saddle and waved a swarm of buffalo gnats away from his face before their bites could swell his eyelids.
“What is it?” Breckenridge jerked awake. “What’s wrong?”
“Where’s Jack?” Grant asked.
Jack was short for Jackrabbit Otter, an Indian scout who helped the white men due to a longstanding feud with the Cheyenne. Grant once saw the man divine the nature of an Indian party from the position of the urine puddles left by their horses (war parties seldom used mares). Such skills were unnecessary in this campaign, however. The Indian trails they had come across were over half a mile wide. The ground looked like a plowed field from all the lodge poles dragged across it. Area wildlife was also stirred up by the multitudes passing through. Grant and his party had come across a mountain lion even though the Bighorn Mountains were fifty miles away. These sights compelled Jackrabbit Otter to sing Amazing Grace, which he had adapted as his new death song.
“He was here a minute ago,” Paulson answered Grant.
Guns came up and eyes scanned tall grass – a high-stakes Indian Button Game. In the Button Game, one team watched another team pass, or pretend to pass, a button back and forth. If they guessed the man who held the button when the passing was finished, they won. Now the button was potential targets and guessing was guns.
Grant calculated. If they were in the middle of an ambush, Jack was as good as dead, and they were next in line. However, if Jack had succumbed to heat exhaustion and fell off his horse, he’d disappear in the tall grass, and they’d have to backtrack to find him.
Breckenridge revealed he was thinking the same thing. “Jack wouldn’t have gotten sunstroke. He was Sioux.”
“What’s on his doggy?” Webster slid his hand along the shoulder of Jack’s horse as it sidled past him. His pa
lm came away red with blood.
“Ride!” Grant shouted.
Grant spurred his horse before the order fully escaped his lips. The wind of passage dried the sweat of his brow. Hooves beating against the soft soil of the Montana plain sounded like fists pummeling a man to death. Grant knew he didn’t dare push the animal long. It’d burn out in this heat – all their horses would – and they’d be overtaken. He figured they were midway between the Tongue and Powder Rivers, which would intersect with the Yellowstone thirty miles ahead. That’s where they hoped to rendezvous with old ‘Hard Ass’ himself. In the meantime, the terrain left little options: nothing but grass to the north, too many Indians to the west and what looked like a rock formation to the east.
“Come on, Cerberus!” Grant urged his horse toward the rock formation, swatting its rump with the flat side of his saber for that extra motivation. Grant turned back to make sure the others followed. They did, riding low in their saddles. Blisters burst on Grant’s thighs as he faced front once more. They had been pushing hard since coming out of Fort Fetterman and harder still since the Indians turned back the rest of the Third at Rosebud Creek. Grant volunteered for leading the detail to warn the Seventh Cavalry. The Seventh had to know that General Crook would no longer be coming up from the south to support them.
Cerberus began to flag. Grant cherished the horse, once punching a man in the jaw for trying to ride him without permission, but he gave the animal no quarter in this race. Cerberus was a fine mount, and the Indians would surely keep him if they killed his master. Hence, Cerberus could rest once they reached their destination.
The rock formation was approximately twenty-five yards in circumference. Its western side was taller than the rest, with sheer walls nearly fifteen feet high. If the four of them could get to the top, they could hold off a large number of Indians. All they’d have to worry about was running out of ammunition, which shouldn’t be a problem. Indians typically didn’t lay siege, and each man carried a Spencer rifle with one hundred and forty rounds and a Colt revolver with thirty.
Grant pulled back on the reins as Cerberus reached the rocks. He flipped his leg over the stallion’s neck, grabbed his rifle and supplies (which were rolled up in a blanket) and clambered up onto the formation. He found cover in a shallow crevasse and aimed his Spencer back along the way he had come. Paulson, Breckenridge and Webster weren’t far behind. They jumped off the horses, gave them slaps on the hindquarters to get them out of the line of fire and joined Grant on the rocks.
“Webster, cover north side!” Grant ordered. “Paulson, east! I’ll watch south! Breckenridge, get up top!”
Grant surveyed the southern expanse through gun sights. No Indians pursued. The grass swayed with the wind, and clouds moved across the sky. A thin haze of alkaline dust made the horizon appear indistinct. The only thing that moved was Grant’s newspaper, which had fallen from his saddle and drifted on a breeze to nowhere.
Maybe they were in the clear, but Grant didn’t believe it. His sweat-soaked clothes felt clammy despite the day’s heat. The feeling in his gut was something he had never experienced before, even though uneasiness was the state of being for a cavalryman. Forty miles a day on beans and hay, wishing one would never come across an Indian, yet half-hoping one would, have it done with and go home.
“Oh hell!” Breckenridge cried from atop the rock formation. His bass voice sounded on the verge of cracking into a tenor.
“What is it?” Grant pressed.
“It’s Jack!”
Grant squinted to the limits of his southern view, trying to make out a distant rider. “Where? Is he being chased?”
“Not out there! Up here! Jack’s up here!”
Confusion replaced Grant’s unease. Jack couldn’t be on top of the rock formation. Wherever Jack was, he was without a horse, and he couldn’t have outraced the four of them at the pace they had set. Grant didn’t doubt Breckenridge saw someone on top of the rock formation, however. Maybe it was a trick; maybe Jack turned turncoat; or maybe another Indian was up there in disguise, playing possum, waiting for Breckenridge to get closer so he could pop up, screaming and swinging his tomahawk…
“Watch my side!” Grant ordered Webster and scrambled up a cleft to the top of the rocks. Grant pulled himself onto the formation’s summit, which was flat as a plate and as wide as two chuck wagons. When he saw what was up there, what felt like a shot of whiskey came up from his stomach, and he forced it back down. Grant had seen bad sights before: men bristling with so many arrows they looked like pin cushions and men mutilated because the Indians believed they’d enter the afterlife maimed. But this was the worst case of such brutality yet. This victim wasn’t just missing eyes or organs. He didn’t have his tendons cut or muscles split. His body was strewn.
“It’s Jack,” Breckenridge said helplessly.
“How can you tell?” Grant asked.
Breckenridge kicked a head out from behind a rock.
“Holy—” Grant averted his gaze upward. He saw a low-flying bird – a heron, perhaps – with puffy clouds high above it. Then the bird disappeared, and Grant closed his eyes, thinking he was close to passing out if he was hallucinating birds like a punch-drunk boxer.
“What’s going on up there?” Paulson called.
Grant bit down on his composure. This excursion was his chance to shine, after all. If successful, an officer’s commission was sure to follow. “You and Webster get up here!” Grant managed.
While looking away from the mess, something else caught Grant’s eye – petroglyphs carved into the rock formation. Indians must have used the site as a camp during their hunting trips, or while passing through on their annual migrations. Many of the tribes were nomadic, only stopping in semi-permanent camps during the winter. This was a huge disadvantage in their fight against the white men because they had no industrial base to support a war. In effect, the Indians retreated even when they won because their supplies were exhausted. Furthermore, the military forces rooting them out knew this and ruthlessly attacked the Indians’ winter encampments, destroying whatever surplus they managed to squirrel away and leaving the Indians weaker with each passing year.
A buffalo, deer, fish, thunderbird, rabbit and wolf – Grant ticked off the animal drawings that made up the petroglyphs. He considered the Indians savages, but he respected their ability to live off the land and hunt the animals that shared the territory with them. The Indians used wildlife for everything from food, shelter and clothing, to boats, tools and, in the case of buffalo chips, fuel for their fires. Grant admired the practicality of it, to get rich off what one could pluck from the earth. Too bad it wasn’t that easy in white-man world. Money and reality were all that counted there. That’s how Grant knew the Indians were doomed. They still believed in birds so large their wings could create thunder. But how could that compete against people who believed in the bottom line?
“Holy Jesus!” Webster exclaimed when he got to the top.
Paulson followed and went white, despite his leather-like tan.
Webster considered the parts of Jack that remained recognizable as human. “But how? The Indians would have had to grab Jack, throw him on a horse and ride over here… all without us seeing.”
“Then that’s what happened.” Grant saw little point in questioning the horsemanship of the Indians. Ever since the Spanish introduced the animals to North America, the Indians had taken advantage of their benefits, which changed their whole culture. Horses enabled Indians to trade with tribes hundreds of miles away, uproot entire camps and hunt with greater efficiency. Grant had seen cavalrymen ride their own horses to death trying to keep up with Indians who didn’t want to be kept up with. “We don’t need to worry about how they did it,” Grant said. “We need to worry about whether or not they’re still out there. We’ll stay here for the night. If any Indians are still around, they’ll have a hard time getting to us.”
“We should keep moving,” Breckenridge disagreed. “We’re just four me
n, and the Indians got bigger fish to fry with more blue coats coming in from the east and west. The ones that hit us are probably happy they got Jack and already hightailed it out of here.”
“You sure about that?” Grant asked. “What if they get a bee in their bonnet about us? We aren’t going to outride any Indians the shape we’re in.”
“If we stay, more might come,” Breckenridge argued.
“I’m with Breckenridge,” Webster chimed in. “You’ve seen the trails, Grant. Too many redskins around for my taste. We need to link up with the Seventh as soon as we can.”
“Who’s in charge here?” Grant reminded them.
“Jesus wept,” Webster shook his head. “What do you think, Paulson?”
Paulson stood with his back to the group, staring off into the distance. “I think you should stop taking the Lord’s name in vain.”
“And what’ll you do if I don’t?” Webster challenged.
Paulson turned. “Ask you again.”
Webster grinned despite the tension.
Grant watched their easy camaraderie with irritation. He could never find his niche among his fellow soldiers, even though they were an eclectic bunch: book keepers, farm boys, dentists, blacksmiths, salesmen ruined by drink, ivory carvers, Bowery toughs, some out to escape women and some in the army to learn to read and write. Grant knew there had to be others like him, who joined up to get famous, but he never came across them in his travels. Grant had visions of single-handedly defeating a superior force, coming across a mother lode of gold while chasing Indians through mountain passes or rescuing the grateful daughters of homesteaders snatched by raiding parties. Something. Anything. Then he would ride the results to fortune and fame. Instead, all he got was riding here and riding there under the summer sun and winter sky. Plenty of Indians died, to be sure, but what was that worth? Even the market for scalps had dried up. Sadly, promotion had become the best option. Grant figured if he could achieve a high enough rank, maybe he could acquire the status to join a stage show as a trick shooter. Entertainment was the ticket these days.
SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror Page 28