by Dave Brockie
***
It is that beautiful time on the battlefield when most people try to catch some sleep, right before the dawn. Of course, attacks still occur and I often hunt. But tonight I am happy to slip past the guard and return to my vault beneath the battered factory. Piled with weapons and body parts, it is my home, though scaly flesh-mongers felt free to steal from me. I shoo them away and the loathsome creatures scuttle off into the walls. I slump in the corner, popping my joints and reflecting on what I have learned.
The Germans are in bad shape. Lack of food is the biggest problem for them. First they eat the dogs, then they had eaten the horses and mules, and finally they eat the rats that had grown fat feasting on the detritus of war. When the rats were gone, they begin to eat each other. Bands of starving soldiers ruled the night, lurking, armed with clubs and shovels. They were cut off, surrounded, already sacrificed by their leader. It was perfectly natural for them to resort to cannibalism. I pitied them in the way you would a cow.
But their fate is not to be mine. I am their death in flesh. I process the matter of their souls and feel my strength return. Later, in the death camps, I will know more of these things, the harvesting of souls. And we will go there together.
***
New York. Not the nice part, the theme park, the glittering lie. The shit-hole.
I roam the streets, gazing at the ruined lives, and I wonder why. How can they live like this? The city is beyond management, out of control, rotting from within. People contemplate garbage as their children scream, restless eyes scanning crowded pavement as they pray for peace, perfect peace, and not a burgundy Chevy full of homicide. There was a heavy gunfight on the block last night, and the cops never came.
The people who live here are black. Much like millions of others, they are slowly being destroyed. I am black, but merely for appearance’s sake. But I am aware of their position and empathize with their hatred. Uprooted, enslaved, they too have been sent sprawling, fatherless, into a world they didn’t make. They are much like myself. And in this world I have lived and moved amongst them and can feel their growing hatred. But I find it difficult to interact with them. I don’t know their slang or their customs, even though I am as black as any of them.
I don’t like meeting people, I like eating people.
But tonight is special. I am out, and have to be careful of the cops. One of my biggest fears is being imprisoned. I’d live forever in solitary. After about sixty years they would start to wonder what the fuck was up with prisoner 137, the one that calls himself Whargoul. Yeah—the one that wouldn’t die. Then the experiments would start. They would slice me into sandwich meat and put me in a museum. But no. The world will be dead before then.
I fly by the cubicles filled with other people’s lives. Acutely aware of their contents, I don’t think about it. I’m in the Riviera, my current favorite car. I motor, savoring the wind until it brings the sound of shrill cries—children screaming. The cries rend my ears, my face pulsing like boiling rubber. The engine throbs, traffic surges anew, and there is nothing to do but move forward, towards the sightless corner where the screams come from. There are others behind me. They want to see. There are bulky men in uniform, trying to control the crowd, draping children about a smashed structure of steel and glass. How close the dark is to the light. Hoses wash blood into the sewer and I turn my face away, appalled. The children are being machined into food, which is distributed to the crowd.
I’M THE FUCKIN’ WHARGOUL
I’M—THE GHOST IN MINAS MORGUL
I DESTROYED YOUR LIFE
I RAPED YOUR WIFE
I AM WHARGOUL
I AM UNCOOL
I wrote those words to make myself feel strong, to exult in the evil of my actions. But it didn’t help. I had become a beast with a conscience, addicted to and sickened by what gave me my ghastly life. Acts of mad murder, sexual gluttony, my life was a tapestry was both. Some humans know the utter mastery of the bloody blowing of chunks. Murder. Physical and mental orgasm, attainable godhead. Oh, but the price. Anyone but a monster would be horrified. But you know that the world is full of monsters.
Have you ever felt a human die? Feel the thing best called a soul slip to the ether? I feel them die. I feed off their deaths. Countless beings have died beneath my blows, my orders, my uranium-tipped bullets. Bullets that tear through steel and stone, flesh and bone. On the “Highway of Death,” and the day of the dog. You do remember the Highway? I mean, everyone is so proud of what we did—but do you know what we really did?
The Gulf War. Biological weapons, oil fires, massed mechanized carnage in the name of a devil with the face of a man. Still, Stalingrad made Desert Storm look like a weenie-roast. And that’s what we did. We roasted ‘em up and we ate ‘em alive.
The highway runs north from Kuwait City, all the way to Baghdad. It is the main invasion route for the legions of Saddam, and after the Allies liberated the city it became the principle route of retreat. The highway is jammed with every conceivable type of vehicle jammed with every conceivable type of merchandise, including human beings. They could have surrendered but the temptation to loot out-weighed the instinct for survival. Planes attack the head and tail of the column, immobilizing it. And then the real killing begins.
I am flying an A-10 Warthog. Really a nasty piece of work. Heavily armed and armored, it is the ground-attack aircraft. At least that’s what they called it on the Discovery Channel. It really is a hellish device, an infernal machine that has no place on your Earth. Inspired by devils into the minds of the privileged “clevers,” as they call the humans who bargain with such beings. It is designed to rip apart flesh, spilling your soul into the maw of the harvester—me.
My wing comes in low from the sea. I have just stolen this plane from an air base by rudely inhabiting the body of an American pilot. We tear past the dazzling breakers towards the fire, which engulfs the horizon. There is lots of radio chatter. Orders come in and are promptly ignored as the feast beacon calls. This won’t be like sucking brain stems—I can kill thousands!
Death, a natural process. Whargoul, the fate accelerator. I recall undead lords I served. My grip curls into the stick and our three ships bolt like moths to a bug-lamp. The bugs without wings scuttle on the surface of the earth, milling about in terror and confusion. They wish they could fly.
Instruments whirl, minds boggle, turbo-charged metal claws for purchase at the fickle wind. I am this ship, this pilot. Since my awakening in the desert, my power has soared. I do not need my controls to deliver the payload into a squabble of vehicles. Men die. Women die!
Shit! They are even stealing the fucking whores!
I throw my machine at the sky. The earth moans in a six-G swoop and again I come about, turning on my electric Gattling cannon and spraying them with uranium-depleted core ammo, the spent casings of which will later bring skin cancer to the victors. A truck, hung with colorful blankets, flares and erupts—quick flash apocalypse, all for naught. Details, obscure, obscene. Configurations of metal tracing 50 years of Soviet tank design—shooting at me!
For a 30-year old tank (T-72) with its turret cranked hard right, while barreling through the clogged artery (yes, barreling, giving no heed to lesser vehicles, losing speed only to crush and roll over things. This is the way of the tank), to fire and hit my plane, moving at over 500 M.P.H. (U.S. style), with its main gun (122 mm, Soviet-style) . . . well, it’s a million-to-one shot.
And he got it.
Now, years after the fact, I go back and replay, freezing frames of flame in torturous slow-mo. The event occurred with instantaneous force and glory. Such is the result when plane meets shell. I was up and out, glass disintegrating before the sound blew out my ears. Engulfed in burning jet fuel, I spun through space in my “titanium bathtub” (supposed to protect you) as the wasted column praised their god. My falling sun smeared into the highway, and a greater secondary explosion occurs, hurling my ignited form a mile away. The speed of my passage could not ki
ll the flame and I collided with the yearning earth.
And yes, I do feel pain.
Much later I became aware of the soft sounds and sensations creeping in from the fringes of my being. There was a bubbling, liquid sound. I was reforming, and was still incapable of movement. I felt wet and numb, unable to see and glad of it. Gradually I could discern a far-off sustained roar, like great engines. It was very cold around me but great heat was emanating from within my regenerating carcass. Even in this early stage of the resurrection process I was curious as to my new being, and the space that it occupied. There was a swaying movement, translating to the orientation of up and down. I was lying on my back in a confined space, suspended in a frigid expanse of atmosphere. Sluggish alarm drifted through me but at that point I was powerless. I became one with the blackness again, passing from the world as I continued to re-form. Once again, I had survived.
That was in 1991. The year I came to America.
I was home, shooting junk. My last foray into the world of the living had been a good one, despite my encounter with the baby-killing machine. I had scored several small bags of different flavors of heroin, my substitute for morphine. I liked to sedate myself heavily and pass out in a black leather chair. It made me docile, even jolly, plus it took away my appetite. Lusting for the blood of the innocent was starting to lose its appeal. For the first time since the splendor of France, so many years ago, I did not have a war to fight. I was bored, and perhaps afraid to grapple with the curse of my future. So I stayed home and shot junk, and remembered . . .
My first life had begun in Stalingrad, 50 years ago. I have memories of other lives before then, but they are ancient and fused with murk. I think I had been dead a long time. Maybe they didn’t need me, or maybe they had just forgotten about me. But Stalingrad brought me back. The “greatest” battle in the biggest war ever fought was too much of a summons for any self-respecting ghoul to ignore. I assume we returned from the dead in droves. I know because I have met some of my relatives.
I came from the river, drifting from the womb to the surface, trailing discarded scraps of placenta. I didn’t know what I was. I didn’t know I was supposed to know. But I do remember that slow ride to the surface as the only truly peaceful feeling I had ever known. Birth.
A Russian patrol found me washed up on the banks of the Volga, blue, swollen and frozen stiff. I was naked, and I later found that the only reason they had taken any notice of my corpse was because of my giant prick, which was hard as a rock and pointing straight up. Apparently it was so funny that they carted me back to headquarters to take a photograph. By the time we got there, I had thawed out enough to move. Boy, were they surprised!
But they didn’t think it was funny anymore. They threw me in a cell underneath the NKVD prison. They thought I was a spy. If only I had been, then I would have known what I was. As it was, I didn’t have a clue. I was just a hairless, naked guy with a flat, broad, face and a prick that had finally thawed out.
I sat in the hole for days and listened to the guards talking down the hall. I didn’t say a word or move a muscle, even when they brought me thin gruel, which I never ate, so they stopped bringing that. I did start to grow hair. And as the days went by I heard the battle coming closer.
I came to recognize the dry rattle of the machine-gun, the banshee scream of the rocket launchers, as if they were something I was already familiar with. Like the words of my guards—I understood them perfectly. I heard my captors fret about the growing prospect of being sent to the line. Creatures known as “The Germans” were close to the city center, and threatened the district that housed the prison. The inmates were to be moved out of the city. I didn’t want to leave.
That night, planes flew over and dropped bombs on us. One hit the prison and blew the roof in. My cell collapsed into the street in a jumble of smashed men and stone. After the dust had cleared I remained sitting in the middle of it all until survivors started to stumble out of the wreckage. Some prisoners slipped away—some were shot. I saw one of my guards had also survived, and he made his way towards me. Suddenly I leapt up.
“Comrade!” I yell, moving to embrace him.
“ Huh!?” he says, stepping back, raising his submachine gun. “Hey, hold it!”
I look about, apparently baffled. “Where am I?” I say, “Comrade, please tell me . . . my unit—where is my unit?” I speak in perfect Russian, if slightly slurred.
“Now wait you,” growls the guard, leveling his gun at my chest, “What unit?”
I grow more composed and step back, raising my arms. “Of course Comrade,” I say loudly. “I could be lying. I respectfully request the presence of a political commissar to take my full report. The bomb blast seems to have restored my memories, and I have information vital to the high command!”
He seems unconvinced but then an officer walks up, having heard my shouting. Before he can speak I snap to a perfect salute.
“Request permission to report, sir!” I practically scream.
He visibly flinches. “For God’s sake shut up, man! Are you deaf?”
“A little sir, the bomb and all . . .”
“What information were you speaking of? Where does this man come from?” he says.
“They brought him in last week. Said they’d found him by the river, near Rynok. A deserter or spy they said, but they never came back for him. Killed, no doubt. Anyway, he came in naked so we gave him a uniform. He hasn’t said a word the whole time. Looks Mongolian, if you ask me.”
“Yes, that’s right, I’m Mongolian,” I blurt out.
“Silence!” barks the officer. “ All right, quickly give your report.”
“Sir! I am Private Yorgi Stalyonavich of the 57th Rifle Division, 43rd Army. I was engaged in the defense of Rynok and killed many Huns. During the fighting I found a leather map case on a dead Nazi. I could tell it was important so I hid it in the sewer before the fascist scum overwhelmed our position. Then something big blew up and knocked me into the water. That’s the last thing I remember.”
“He’s lying, sir,” says my captor. “ He’s a deserter who should be shot.”
“Sir, my commander is Captain Gulchuk. I beg you to return with me to my unit so he may verify my words!”
It’s a good lie, pieced together from bits of information I’d been hearing all week. The growing drone of more approaching planes speeds his decision.
“All right Private,” he says, casting a nervous look at the sky. “You certainly don’t look German. You can ride with my unit to the Northern District. Come with me.”
Luck, lies, and unseen designs had steered me well. I was in the Russian army, holding on to the battered remnants of Stalingrad. And I was happy.
***
I wake again, definitely in a box. I move my hands to my face and feel smooth skin, breathe deeply with my newly formed lungs. I’m back.
It’s happened before and you can’t kill it. And every time, it gets stronger. Who knows where it came from, but its not done evolving.
It’s me! But something bad had happened, something that made me unclean. And now I hear the low piping tones of an organ, playing a sonorous dirge . . .
U.S. Air Force Captain John Crinkle had enjoyed an illustrious career until I caught up to him. His only combat action before the gulf had been in Grenada, where his squadron had attacked and annihilated a colony of monkeys. There were medals all around. I don’t like killing animals. How can humans claim they are superior to “beasts” that routinely see in the dark, run 70 M.P.H., and fly?
Once he dropped that cluster bomb he was hooked for life on the deadliest of highs—combat. That nauseous-on-adrenaline feeling was too good to resist, as if landing 20-ton jets on pitching carrier decks wasn’t exciting enough. Drug-free (didn’t even drink coffee), Crinkle was a junkie with a weapon. His jet-boy dreams turned into a full-on career, and he threw himself into his NATO training, relishing the “collapse” of the Soviet Union. Other grim tableaus were enacted, we wanted
a war, and Crinkle ended up in Desert Storm.
I got him when he was out jogging in the pre-dawn mist. He was so gung-ho that he would trot far past the sentries, Colt .45 slapping the small of his muscular back. I came out of the deepest desert, my “awakening” behind me, gorged on the souls of 20,000 men. Formless, black and crackling, I moved like ball lightning towards my next encounter with fate, and he saw me coming.
He actually stopped, drew his weapon, and emptied the entire clip into me. Or rather through me. After two bullets he should have realized that the legends were true. Hot lead cannot reckon with necrotic madness, and I bore down onto him, into him, violating and invading his being, crashing into it, pushing through the pest and gristle, finding the heart and claiming it as my own.
Yet the crust was intact. I had captured good material and calmed myself within it. And when John Crinkle jogged back past the sentries it was just another day in the air war against our buddy Saddam’s crummiest cannon fodder legions. I should have known—earlier that day I’d been one of them.
I collected my men, skipped breakfast (strange for the Captain) and was on my way to a rendezvous with a tank shell. Two hours later I was a blob of burning meat beside “the highway of death.” Four days later a U.S. Graves Registration team scraped me up. One week later I was attending my own funeral.
But in what form? I touch my face, and the features are unfamiliar. A feeling of amorphous rage builds within me and I lash out against the coffin lid, smashing my fist through the thick wood. I immediately feel the terror around me and it makes me stronger. Grunting, I rip the lid off and sit up, taking quick note of my surroundings. The coffin sits on an altar in the midst of a medium-sized church. My funeral is well-attended by a lot of white people who are, to say the least, surprised to see a total stranger jump out of the coffin, which is supposed to contain a lump of burnt meat—“Really Mrs. Crinkle, there is no need for you to see your son.” I barely notice my new skin is black as I am instantly sick from the fluids they have pumped me full of, and I shatter the box in a flurry of wood chips and vomit. The coffin awkwardly teeters and then crashes to the floor, spilling me down the stairs. It’s all a blur as I lurch towards the aisle, the people screaming and parting, bumbling over each other in a mad panic to get away from the burbling maniac who has just ruined their funeral. Trailing splinters, I reel across the carpet, bellowing obscenities. A red-faced fool blocks my path—in an instant he is grasped by face and groin, groaning into my palm as his genitals are crushed. The stampede becomes frantic as men stomp their wives into the floor in their haste to escape.