by David Moody
He heard something in a brief pause between shots. He looked over at von Boeselager who’d clearly heard it too. There it was again. A wolf whistle. The high-pitched sound cut through the chaos of everything else. Von Boeselager spotted the source and pointed up. Coley peered through the mist, struggling to concentrate as he divided his attention between looking for a way out and keeping more of the dead at bay. ‘Over here,’ a voice shouted. It sounded miles away, but it wasn’t. Coley eventually saw a figure at a top-floor window, waving furiously. A corpse lurched angrily at the lieutenant, wrong-footing the soldier and getting far too close for comfort, but it was dispatched quickly with a single sniper shot. The back of its head exploded outwards like a balloon filled with crimson-red paint.
Now it was von Boeselager’s turn to take the lead. ‘Come on,’ he said, and he dropped his shoulder and ran headlong into the mob of bodies which had filled the space between their current position and salvation. Coley followed closely, but his legs were tired and each forward step was an effort. He could feel every pace through the worn out soles of his boots, and though it seemed a way out was close at hand, the nearer they got, the farther they seemed to be.
‘Over the wall,’ a voice shouted to them, and Coley was relieved to hear a Brooklyn accent. The thought had struck him that he might be about to put himself at the mercy of a lone pocket of Nazis, but even living Nazis were better than the foul dead things which swarmed around them. Everywhere he looked he saw their horrific, bloodied faces glaring back at him. It was only their comparative individual slowness which allowed him and von Boeselager to get through. Their reactions were dulled somewhat. Maybe the longer they’re dead, the harder it is for them to keep functioning? he thought to himself.
There was someone down at ground level to help, thank God. Coley could see him straddling the low wall they were running towards, his legs tucked away on the safe side. He reached out for von Boeselager and helped him up and over, and Coley was about to stretch his arms up when he felt dead fingers clawing at his back. Several of the creatures grabbed his tunic and he was pulled backwards, deeper into the decaying crowd. A spray of gunfire came from up high, thinning the crowd out sufficiently so that two more soldiers could vault over the wall and help the lieutenant to safety. One of them carried a bowie knife and he moved from corpse to corpse to corpse, grabbing each of them in turn by the scruff of the neck, plunging the blade into their temple, then dropping them down again. ‘Don’t know how the hell you do that so fast, Escobedo,’ his colleague remarked.
When sufficient numbers of corpses had been beaten away, the men helped Coley over the wall and into the ruin of a building in which they’d been hiding. Coley climbed the rickety stairs without question or hesitation, figuring that whatever was waiting for him up top couldn’t be any worse than what he’d just escaped down at ground level. He caught up with von Boeselager at the top of the steps. The German had his arms raised in surrender. ‘It’s okay,’ Coley said, breathless. ‘He’s with me. He’s on our side.’
‘A damn kraut?’ an older-looking soldier asked from across a spacious, but largely empty room. The man lovingly cradled a Remington M1903, no doubt the weapon which had saved Coley’s bacon a couple of minutes earlier.
‘Yes, soldier,’ Lieutenant Coley said. ‘A damn kraut.’
‘Now let’s not get off on the wrong foot here, fellas,’ another man said from the opposite corner of the room. He stepped forward and saluted, then made a point of shaking both Coley’s and von Boeselager’s hands. ‘I’m Jim Parker, late of the 101st.’
‘Good to see you, Lieutenant,’ Coley said. ‘Joe Coley, 99th Infantry Division.’
‘Good to see you too.’ Parker gestured at the sniper by the window. ‘This here’s Kenny Gunderson, and these young fellas who escorted you upstairs to our luxury abode are Escobedo and Johnson.’
‘The help was appreciated, gentlemen,’ Coley said. ‘We got ourselves into something of a spot out there.’
‘That you did,’ Parker agreed. ‘But it’s no great surprise. Take a look from our birds nest up here.’
The room in which they’d gathered was on the third floor of a block which had been so badly battered by artillery fire that it felt like it was swaying in the cold winter wind. Coley realised that was an illusion, perpetuated by the fact that all the windows in this place had been blown out, allowing every gust and breeze to blow straight through. Although desperately cold and inhospitable up here, its height, combined with the fact that many other buildings in the centre of Bastogne had been flattened in the fighting, gave the men a panoramic view of the devastation in all directions. But it wasn’t the ruination Coley was interested in, rather it was the scores of vicious bodies which filled the square below and spilled out into the streets in almost every direction.
Von Boeselager was visibly shaken by what he could see. ‘It was enough of a battle to get up here,’ he said. ‘I cannot imagine how we will ever get out again.’
‘Yep,’ Escobedo said, sitting in a corner and drawing his legs to his chest to block out the cold as he cleaned his knife, ‘that’s about the short and the tall of it.’
‘Why d’you think we’re perched up here like this?’ Johnson added. ‘If we coulda gone, we woulda gone.’
Coley looked down into the town square from which he and von Boeselager had just made their desperate escape. The amount of dead flesh down there appeared endless, and with the rest of Bastogne all but abandoned, there was nothing else left to distract the infernal army. They weren’t going anywhere fast. ‘It’s like hell on Earth,’ he said under his breath.
‘That it is, that it is,’ Parker agreed. ‘I’d like to say you get used to looking at it after a while, but that’d be a lie. You don’t. I figure things like this we’ll carry to the grave. We’ve been stuck up here a couple days now and, tell you the truth, I’ve pretty much stopped my men from looking out. See, the deeper you look, the worse it gets.’ He put a hand on Coley’s shoulder and pointed down. ‘See what I’m saying? Those two down there, they’re nothing more than children.’
Coley quickly spotted the two dishevelled creatures he’d been pointing out. Small and blood-stained, they’d clearly failed to escape the fighting which had consumed their town.
‘Man, the little ones creep me out,’ Escobedo said from down on the floor. ‘Ain’t no difference between them and the krauts out there.’
‘He’s not wrong,’ agreed Gunderson. ‘Don’t matter how big or small they are, kid or no kid, find yourself facing one of those damn things and you need to move fast. They’ll rip your heart out soon as look at you.’
‘There’s thousands of them,’ Coley said. The scale of the undead army had been apparent from down at ground level, but being up here added a whole new sense of perspective. A sense of perspective he decided he could have well done without.
‘And our boys too,’ Parker continued, pointing into another part of the crowd where a pack of figures milled in tattered and dust-covered, yet instantly recognisable uniforms. ‘Our boys fighting alongside kids and Nazis. I never thought I’d see the day.’
‘You must put your preconceptions and prejudices to one side,’ von Boeselager said. ‘These creatures are on no one’s side but their own. Men, women, Americans, Germans, British, young, old... once the effects of the serum have been passed onto them, there is no hope. We are all standing at the very gates of hell. All of us.’
3
THE FOREST OUTSIDE BASTOGNE
When Lieutenant Robert Wilkins came around, he was hanging upside-down from a tree. He remembered the drop from the plane – him and many other scouts bundled out of the back of a Dakota in the midst of a massive supply drop, using the falling ammo and other supplies as cover. He remembered his parachute opening, and the rush of air as the rapid descent was arrested. He remembered the wind and the snow and the uneasy panic of being blown wildly off-course and left hanging prone in the air with all hell unfolding on the ground far below him..
. and then the memories stopped. He was now hanging by his knees over a branch, head down and legs up, blood rushing in the wrong direction. He recalled a viciously swirling gust. A sudden blizzard. Ice pricking his skin like someone was hammering in nails...
Got to move.
It was still snowing, and the uncomfortable angle at which he’d come to rest in the tree made it difficult to move. He considered dropping down, but it was hard to accurately estimate how far it was to fall. The white blanket covering the ground appeared deceptively soft and inviting, but Wilkins knew he couldn’t afford to take any risks. Chances were it wouldn’t have been anywhere near thick enough to cushion his fall, and there could have been anything beneath the pristine virgin snow: tree roots, a chasm, rocks... anything. He couldn’t risk it. He knew the importance of his mission. He knew how much was riding on the success of him and others.
Getting down safely was going to take some skill, and right now Wilkins felt anything but skilful. This time yesterday, he thought, I was back in Blighty with Jocelyn. He knew he’d so far been fortunate in comparison to so many other people, particularly those here in mainland Europe, but that didn’t make the pain of being away from his love any easier to stand.
Wilkins carefully anchored his legs around the thick bough to make sure he didn’t fall, then began to swing gently from his hips, weighed down by his pack but hoping to build up enough forward momentum to grab another branch and use it to haul himself upright. The bark dug into the backs of his knees, the discomfort increasing with each upward movement and backwards swing. Arms outstretched, his fingertips brushed against another branch, and then he swung harder again, not knowing how much longer he could keep this up for.
Contact.
He caught hold of the branch with his left hand and held on for all he was worth, stretching his body as far as he could – almost too far – to grab hold with his right. He moved hand over hand to manoeuvre himself closer to the trunk of the tree, then used the trunk to guide himself upright and secure his position.
The biting cold was unbearable, and he felt uncomfortably precarious up here like this. Wilkins wrapped his arms around the tree trunk and hugged it like a long lost friend. Shaking with cold, he clung on for dear life.
Alone in the backwoods of war-torn Belgium in the middle of winter. The dead of night. The sounds of fighting nearby. He was hard pushed to think of a more wretched place to be, and yet it was better to be up here than down there. If his parachute wasn’t enough of a giveaway, the trail of footprints he’d inevitably leave in the snow as he ran for cover would lead the enemy straight to him.
Whoever the enemy was.
He’d heard things during the mission briefing which had seemed more at home in that Frankenstein versus the Wolfman picture he’d caught last year than in the reality of modern warfare. Dead soldiers walking. Fighting. It was like something out of the ghost story books his mother had forbade him from reading in his formative years. For now, however, he tried to put all thoughts of ghouls and monsters from his head and focus on staying out of sight and alive.
Wilkins slowly stood up again and rebalanced himself on the bough. There was a more sturdy-looking branch just above and to his left, and despite his aching bones, with considerable effort he managed to haul himself up and wedge himself into a relatively safe place. He took the slack from the parachute cords and tied himself into position.
Sleep was fleeting and light. The noises of the forest kept him awake – birds and animals, the wind and snow, a stream trickling somewhere in the nearby vicinity (which left him with an almost unbearable urge to relive himself from his branch). And in those few moments when the natural noise subsided, other sounds took their place. The rumble and thump of distant explosions. More planes. Gunfire. Cries for help...
It never stopped. The fighting never bloody well stopped.
Shortly before six, still a couple of hours before sunrise, Wilkins heard something different. It sounded like footsteps, though they were slow and laboured, like those of a wounded animal. Perhaps it was one of his colleagues, he wondered, who’d been less fortunate in their landing than he? Wilkins remained perfectly still on his windswept perch, moving only his eyes to try and see through the miserable shadows of the pre-dawn gloom.
The brightness of the snow seemed to partially illuminate the scene from below. The figure which lumbered into view was a Nazi, that much was clear. The man, perhaps six feet tall and with a stocky, muscle-bound frame, walked with a presumptive arrogance, almost as if he was daring anyone to confront him. Dressed in a white uniform covered with dark patches and stains, he had an extremely pronounced, sloping limp. His good right foot crunched through the inches-deep layer of snow, whilst he was dragging his mangled left foot behind.
Wilkins noticed that the stumbling Nazi left behind a trail of glistening dark liquid which could only have been blood. He’d clearly been injured in battle. Physically wrecked, bleeding profusely... just how was he managing to continue to function in this bitter winter cold? Wilkins was finding it enough of a struggle just trying to sit still and stay warm up here. The enemy soldier (who was now just a couple of feet away from the base of the tree in which Wilkins was hiding) appeared impervious to it all. Wilkins wondered if he was in shock, and whether it was sheer adrenalin which kept him moving forward?
The branch he was sitting on creaked under his weight as he shifted to get a better view. The noise had an effect on the figure below. The Nazi stopped walking and changed direction, swivelling back around and looking for the source of the noise. When the man looked up, Wilkins saw that his face had been badly mutilated in battle. His lower jaw was dislocated, hanging uselessly, and one of his eyes was hard to make out amidst a mass of blood and scarring. Wilkins held his breath and remained completely motionless, and was relieved when, after a few more seconds had passed, the injured Nazi trudged on through the snow.
He must have fallen asleep again, because the noise of an animal burrowing in a bush near the base of the tree woke him up. At least Wilkins thought it was an animal. It was difficult to be sure.
Whatever it was, it was hurt. It dragged itself through the snow-covered undergrowth with an awkwardness and lack of speed which indicated it was no longer in full control of all its faculties. He shifted around as best he could, thinking he should drop down and kill the beast and put it out of its misery. Also, if it loitered too long around the base of his tree there was a real risk it might draw unwanted attention to this place. Wilkins took out his clasp knife and cut the parachute cords, then carefully climbed down.
When the animal crawled out into a patch of daylight between the shadows of Wilkins’ tree and its nearest neighbour, he had to bite his fist to stop himself screaming out in horror. The creature on the ground was another Nazi, or what remained of one, anyway. The poor bastard appeared to have been brutally cut in two. How it had happened was of little interest to the British soldier – he’d seen far worse injuries before today and would no doubt see more – instead, he tried to understand how this poor bastard was still alive and continuing to move. Incredibly, when what was left of the Nazi lifted its head and saw Wilkins standing a short distance away, it actually sped up. Wilkins backed away, feeling his guts churn at this most horrific and inexplicable sight. Behind what was left of the mutilated soldier’s torso his severed spinal cord thrashed in the snow like a stunted tail. It looked vaguely comical, but the Nazi’s clear and vicious intent was no laughing matter.
Wilkins reversed, keeping his distance as the dead man reached out his arms and dragged himself along the ground, moving ever closer. His jaw was a constantly snapping maw. Wilkins saw that the flesh around the man’s mouth had been torn away, as if someone had taken hold of his top lip and peeled upwards, removing a painful-looking swathe of skin. He backed up against a tree. No where else to go. The Nazi kept coming towards him.
Realisation dawned. ‘What the hell am I doing?’
Wilkins cursed himself for allowing himsel
f to become distracted by the abstract horror of what he was witnessing. He’d heard the stories before he’d parachuted in. He’d known what to expect. He reached down into the snow and picked up a football-sized rock, then dropped it hard on the back of the Nazi’s unprotected head. And again. And again. And twice more until the foul creature stopped moving and was finally dead. Wilkins had cracked its skull like an egg, and had done more than enough damage to thoroughly mash and mangle everything contained within.
For a moment the lone British soldier contemplated climbing back up into his tree again and never coming down, but he knew that wasn’t an option. He and his colleagues had work to do here.
4
DEEP IN THE FOREST OUTSIDE BASTOGNE
The scars of war were everywhere he looked. Craters, bodies, burned-out vehicles... Wilkins came upon the remains of a jeep which had ploughed into a tree at such speed that its chassis had virtually wrapped around the trunk. Its driver and passenger remained trapped in their seats, pinned into position by the twisted metal wreck. Wilkins hoped for their sake they’d died on impact and not as a result of the fire which had overwhelmed the accident site. Little of the dead men’s bodies remained distinguishable; all traces of their history, rank, allegiance and military record having been burned away. And yet their skeletal, charred faces remained horribly readable. Both of their mouths were frozen midway through never-ending screams of pain. Their burned out eyes looked up to the heavens for an explanation which would surely never come.
It was uncomfortably quiet here. Unexpectedly so. No fighting. Nothing. A dead zone. Wilkins almost began to wish for an enemy encounter to prove he was still alive. Whether it was as a result of the bitter cold, the after-effects of being left hanging from a tree, the hideous creatures he’d seen since landing in the forest, or a combination of all three, he was beginning to doubt his sanity. Am I the one who has died? he asked himself. It made marginally more sense to believe that the grotesque, borderline surreal things he’d seen were as a result of serious trauma to his brain. He’d witnessed more than his fair share of unspeakable horrors in numerous places since the beginning of the war, but this was different. This didn’t feel right.