by Dave Brockie
Ahh . . . to burn to death inside a tank. A tank is basically a rolling bomb, heavily protected but a bomb nonetheless. A bomb which four or five men might live within, packed alongside ammo and gas. You get a tank and train in it for months within the closely monitored confines of the armored proving ground, working with your crew well in advance of their deaths and forging a rude yet elaborate empathy with them. It seemed that perhaps it was not totally meaningless. You went to war on a train, your tank lashed to a flatcar. You and your men, drunk, gambling. Camp life in a strange country. Blubberingly asinine revelations, twisted by drink. A local girl who gave not one shit about nations. Rumors. Then orders. Movement, always at night. Thousands of people moving around you at all times, yet unseen, from the homey confines of your tank. Doodles would sprout across the walls; stashed food and dirty socks would transform the metal edges. You could cook potatoes next to the exhaust duct.
I stand beneath an unyielding expanse, a canopy of sky. I could turn 360 degrees and still see the same thing, endless blue sky broken by flat brown plains. Springtime in Russia, and only a few clouds dot the infinite vista. The steppe land rolls away in all directions, alive with scrub and the occasional copse of trees. There is warmth upon my clammy face, a pleasant feeling which would sometimes bring back unwanted emotions like pity, or fear. But the breath becomes a diesel fart as my Panzer section rolls by. We are fielding PZ-IV’s, and I hoist my demo charge, trotting behind. Other elements in the Battalion are fielding the new “Panther” tank, which looks like a heavier version of the Russian T-34, a beast we all fear. But they say the Panther’s gun is better. We do not know because these machines are untested in combat. Rushing these tanks to the front may have been a mistake. These “wonder weapons” seem to belch flame out of their exhaust every time you start them. Several have broken down already, and one’s engine has caught afire.
Many idiotic details are discussed as our section takes lunch. Water trucks come up and a field kitchen is organized. We can see elements of our division and others fanning out on our flanks, and the men cheer as a formation of Stukas thunder over, their wings sprouting “tank-buster” 37mm cannons. It’s quite a show. The shattered legions, which had reeled back from the winter’s debacle, had been quickly replenished by new formations. Mine was one of them. By spring, 1943, OKW was ready to resume offensive operations in central Russia. And now, on the plains surrounding the city of Kursk, our armored fist stood poised to smash.
“How quickly can all this go to shit?” I say to Kepler, who is scribbling in his book.
He looks up and smiles.
“Scary, sit . . .” he says, re-arranging objects on his ground roll. They call me “Scary,” for lack of a better name, “they” being the few men in the battalion who would dare talk to me. I sprawl out next to Kepler, staring outwards into oblivion.
“Murder, murder, murder,” I muse. “Why can’t we have some rape?”
“High Command has decided that we fight better if our balls are full.” Kepler says.
“Seems like a waste of good sperm. We should organize a company circle-jerk.”
I liked Kepler. He was perceptive, humorous, and not intimidated by my grotesque appearance. They called him “the poet” because he was constantly scribbling in a black sketchbook, which he would suffer no one to look at. Because of this, many in our outfit considered him odd and anti-social. He was actually quite talkative; he just didn’t like talking to stupid people. One time Big Carl, an ex-circus strongman from Essen, stole his book. Two days later Carl was dead, apparently murdered by partisans. Three days later Kepler was scribbling away again. I don’t know who had killed Big Carl, but Kepler was my friend.
***
We sit in silence and gaze at the parade of steel, which surrounds us. It is a huge operation; the biggest since Stalingrad, and we’re really amazed at how fast the Wehrmacht has bounced back. But what really is amazing is that as morale soars, and as this awesome juggernaut crawls forward, everybody seems to have forgotten that the Russians are out there.
We are ordered into platoons and then addressed by our squad leader, Sgt. Pitz. He is a bear of a man, fearless in combat, inexplicably violent away from it, qualities that doom him to die. A decomposing Russian head adorns the front of his half-track, and someone has put a cigarette between the moldering lips. Pitz grabs it, and the guy’s lower lip falls off. Lighting the stub, he turns to the men.
“Today we will strike a death blow to the Red Army! Due to our recent successes in this area, the Russian line has bulged out in a great salient around the city of Kursk. We stand upon the southern edge of this salient.” He turns and takes the severed head in his hands, holding it at waist level. Flies follow.
“Today we attack!” he says, delivering a drop kick to the head, sending rotting chunks of flesh and dislodged maggots into our ranks. The head flies into a nearby gully, where a dog pees on it. The ranks roar with laughter.
There follows more inane chatter as the men take heart in foul jokes and meaningless maps. The general point is to drive north, destroying all in our path, until we link up with the units driving south. This will cut off thousands of Russians and restore stability to the front. The prisoners will be herded to the rear and processed into a more manageable form. This is the plan anyway. Regardless of our success or failure, death will triumph.
Finally, we mount up on half-tracks and crowd onto the metal benches. We smoke, and I pass around a flask of vodka. As we drink the fiery stuff, we hear the first rumblings of far-off artillery fire. The armored plates are folded down, effectively blinding us. We bounce along in our darkened box, and the noise of the barrage grows steadily louder. Each report rouses us all the more until they sound very close, and the sharp crack of our tank cannons can be discerned. Pitz is at the door, trying to anticipate the moment that they will unload us. Dirt clods and spattering steel rain upon our rolling coffin, which suddenly drops down a steep grade and slews to a halt, as we bounce off each other in a clatter of weapons and equipment.
The doors screech open—a gush of cordite pours in as we pour out, Pitz screaming at us. We are at the bottom of a gully; smoke all around but covered from enemy fire, which lashes across the sky above. We advance down the defile as the MG section sets up near the lip and the tanks take position in the shallower areas of the ditch, with only the great turrets exposed.
How do I feel? Like I’m on my way to score drugs. I’ve been cooped-up for weeks and haven’t been able to feed. I need to do so in a manner that will leave me with enough strength to be comfortable until my next action. I need to kill as many men as possible, just in case the next battle was not for some time, though on the Russian Front that usually was not the case. I grind my teeth and move faster, sensing a great slaughter coming. I have lived in shadows since my last transformation, and now I feel it falling away from me like vapor. I sense the enormity of this happening and howl, sending my sense out, feeling the shape of the battlefield and the positions of the enemy.
We have reached the first of Ivan’s defensive belts. It stretches directly across our line of advance, first consisting of mines, then wire, then anti-tank ditches. Amongst and beyond are trenches and tunnels, dugouts and revenants, and worst of all pillboxes made of concrete reinforced with steel. The approaches to this area are well-coordinated with the gunsights of the Red Army artillery and the bombsights of the Red Air Force, and of course the entire place is infested with Red Army ants.
The lead element of our battalion is already engaged. I hear small arms fire and grenades exploding from around the bend in the defile. There is a strong point here and the first assaults have failed as is evidenced by the groaning men with their guts hanging out. I move to the assault position with several others, Kepler amongst them.
“Stick close,” I say.
Our tanks plaster the fort with high explosive and smoke and we move out to destroy it. The man ahead of me suddenly explodes as he steps on a land mine, plastering me with
scraps of flesh and cloth. I blink away the blood and take off, knowing exactly where not to step. Swirling smoke clouds, rent by orange bursts as they fire blindly through it, obscure the fort. Its good enough to kill the man next to me, and I suck in the fume of his death as I pause to prime my demo charge, bullets kicking up dirt around me. Hurling a 40-pound charge at my tormentors, I eat earth.
WHOOM! It is an appalling soundtrack.
In the seconds following the explosion, anyone within 50 meters is knocked senseless except for me. But I’m up at once; blood streaming out of my nostrils and ears, moving through the huge gap in the wire my charge has created. I run past the firing apertures and around the back of the pillbox, ripping the door off the hinges and leaping within. I use my shovel.
Kepler appears at the door, as I’m finishing up. What can you say? I grin, bursting with vigor, and slip past him. We’ve broken into the defensive belt, and the Russians are beginning to abandon their positions. Some are running across the fields and others are surrendering. I amuse myself by shooting people from a position of relative safety. They run faster, terrified by my accuracy. I shoot them one-by-one and then have a smoke. It hadn’t been very difficult to crack this first belt. It was almost like they gave it to us, and I begin to smell a trap. Then Kepler is behind me.
“You killed eight men in there!” he exclaims.
“I most certainly did not!” I say, feigning concern. “Two of them were women” (Russian women often fought alongside their men).
He just stands there slowly shaking his head. He is a perceptive one and at that moment I think he knows what I am or at least what I am not.
“You better get down,” I say, pulling his legs out from under him.
There is a sudden, savage shrieking. Stalin’s organs, as we call them by the hideous music that they make. The pipes of hell blaze martial glory as our position is enveloped in 200 mm rocket projectiles.
The earth turns over in a shuddering tongue of soil, which buries me alive and just as quickly disinters me, slapped senseless by the concussions. My helmet is torn off, my body lacerated by flaming steel. When I come to I am being dragged by the heels towards a truck full of bodies, leaving crushed and bloody grass behind me.
“I’m not dead, you bastards!” I snarl, jumping up and weaving away.
Ivan’s reason for giving up this position is now obvious—they wanted to trap us in a pre-registered barrage. As soon as we had taken the place, they pulverized it, caring not if they killed their own men in the process. The rocket attack is over but shells are bursting all around us. Men stagger about as if drunk, missing pieces of clothing and occasionally limbs. The landscape is covered in dead dogs and scraps of ragged flesh, burning equipment and scattered personal effects. We’ve been hurt, and I can’t find Kepler or Pitz. Luckily our tanks have escaped damage and are now moving up. It takes about an hour to consolidate our position and during this time I grow almost frantic as I search for Kepler. I see Pitz squatting in a trench, only his head visible. When I get closer I see only his head is remaining, propped against a rock. The rest of his body is nowhere to be seen, though I can smell it. But I do finally find Kepler sitting next to a slew of dead Russian prisoners, scribbling madly in his book, which he snaps shut at my approach. I thud to the ground next to him, smiling stupidly.
At this point I am bubbling with glee, eyes glazing over as thousands draw closer to the point of their deaths. The battle is raging all around us for hundreds of square miles. Above, the Luftwaffe is striving to keep the air clear of Russian Sturmovik ground-attack craft. We sit in silence with each other, listening to the roaring maelstrom, which surrounds and threatens to engulf us. Finally orders come to move out. We load again into the half-tracks, and button up.
“I give up!” exclaims Kepler, his features assuming a bemused and livid look. “We have just lived through a scene most unprecedented in the annals of carnage. I can’t figure out what the hell I am doing here, why I became a part of this madness, but you—you seem to enjoy it!”
BLAM! A shell, close, rattles our armor. Kepler begins to laugh hysterically, tears of blood rolling down his face from a small scalp wound, and he removes his book from his tunic, thumping its anonymous black cover. “I just can’t do it justice—its really quite insane! A story about some sort of ghoul who feeds on war. The fucking Whargoul!”
We cringe as we hear Russian engines above. The vehicle twists violently, weaving to avoid attack, sending us sprawling into each other.
“You are the new squad leader!” Kepler screams.
For an answer I leap to the cupola and unbutton the steel hatch, wrenching the MG around in time to see a group of Sturmoviks being chased off by a flight of ME-109’s. There is a burning half-track alongside of our own and men spill out, aflame. My tongue sprouts out of my mouth like an erection, a divining rod whose length crawls with delight. Around me, all rushing forward, are more armored vehicles than I have ever seen. It’s truly magnificent, surpassing the legions of Pharaoh, or Caesar, or the mighty Khan. Everywhere are Tigers, Panthers, PZ-IV’s, armored cars, half-tracks and hulking assault guns. Endless infantry, some mounted, some afoot. The sky, so clear earlier, is now black with smoke as we move towards what appears to be a sea of flame blocking the horizon. We are approaching the second defensive belt. The Russians have dug huge pits filled with logs, which they have set aflame, thus channeling our advance into their killing zones. We are already running afoul of mines and tank traps, as the air battle above us increases in ferocity. It is impossible to determine who is winning, so darkness takes the day, before we can begin to assault the second belt.
At that point we did not know that there were twenty more beyond it. The Russians had known our supposed “secret” plans for months, and they had been busily preparing for our arrival.
Worse still, we knew that they knew, and we didn’t care. That was part of the plan.
3
The Mind of a Child
Walking through the city at night I search for a meal, and pizza just won’t do. I have a special need and a new plan, and am confident in my ability to pull it off. Usually I don’t kill this close to my fort but tonight I’m going to, for reasons I don’t yet understand. After all, there are murders every night anyway, and nobody gives a damn.
Slinking down a trash-strewn alley I see a group of young toughs approaching me. I have taken the look of a vagrant tonight and they spot me as an easy victim upon which to vent their hate. I let them surround and beat me, and fall to the ground laughing.
“Stop—you’re tickling me to death.” But then one pulls out a knife and I have to hurt him, whirling him around by his legs and using him like a human club.
“Go on, get outta here,” I say as I hurl him out of his sneakers and after his retreating companions, knocking them over like a set of bowling pins.
“Go beat up some white people!” They do.
Twenty minutes later I am slumped next to a rotting tenement from which the howls of a forgotten baby echo. Yet another broken life, sprawled out on the pavement, wrapped in puke-smeared clothing, drooling bile and stinking of excrement. Most people give me a wide berth and that is just how I want it. For it gives me time to settle into myself, drawing my life force deep into my chest, leaving my limbs cold and useless. Nothing moves except the trail of viscous barf running down my chin, but inside my guts churn as I begin to extend myself down the interior length of my right arm. Truly an uncanny experience to house your conscience in your elbow and sense your own head as a spectator would. But there was no time for reflection—my hunger beckoned and I continue the journey within myself until I had placed all that I needed in my right index finger, which no longer looked like an index finger.
I detach myself from myself with a crunching sound and begin crawling up the wall. I am a worm with six legs per side, ending in hooked claws with which I scurry quickly up to the third floor. Through a broken pane of glass I gain entrance to the baby chamber and then the u
rine-soaked cardboard box which serves as its crib. The baby’s cries become shriller as my lamprey-like mouth begins to bore into its skull through the ear canal, seeking the sweetness that only an infant’s brain can bestow. The sound of grinding cartilage fades into that of squishing pulp. The screams become silent as the child’s life force passes into me.
My surrogate container cannot handle the energy for long—I must return to myself and deposit my load. Squirming out of the brainpan through the bloody pothole I’d chewed, I scuttle back, across the room and down the wall to reattach myself to my hand. I transfer what I need to lurch to my feet and stumble from the area. In about twenty minutes I feel and look like myself again, basic black Whargoul. My hunger has abated, for the time being.
My experiment had worked better than I’d hoped, though it had taken over an hour. Transmutation was a useful ability to have, though it was often unpredictable. I was always learning new things about myself. Like how when I kill babies, I stayed sated longer. And when I stayed full, I didn’t have to go kill people. Generally speaking a baby, even a crack baby, is worth three or four adults. The younger the human, the sweeter the taste, the longer the high. So I was cutting the humans some slack. Besides, what kind of life did that kid have in store for it anyway?
Funny how you can rationalize just about anything . . .
***
“Did I dream it?” I wonder as I stare across the drifting desert plains, where I had been on station with my new unit for two weeks. Did I dream about my youth, like I dreamt about my death, and all the life in-between? Had I been a child, toiling on shining plains, working endlessly but not thinking it cruel? It was the way my village had existed for centuries, and I did not question the orders of my father.
I dreamt that I had a father, other than my Father.