Whargoul

by Dave Brockie

  Hailing a cab, I ride almost all the way home, staring at the back of the cabby’s neck but not thinking about sucking his brainstem dry. Instead all I can feel is the touch of the Chinese Man, a warm and lingering sensation that now permeates my being. I feel relaxed and composed as I enter the fort, feed my dog, and put on a movie (Old Yeller). Stretching out on the couch, my eyelids begin to grow heavy.

  I forgot to score drugs, and have also returned without beer. Oh well. It’s warm here, and I am weary. The TV sings sweetly. It’s comforting as it sifts visions into my mind, whispering of redemption, soothing my soul. Baby killing and brain-sucking seem far away as I slide gently towards a velvet abyss, a part of me that had been hidden but which had now expanded to swallow me. Did he drug me? The feeling is overpoweringly disarming.

  For the first time in my life, I fall asleep.

  4

  The Grinder

  I must tell you the story of Stalingrad, city on the Volga, “Papa Joe’s” showpiece, the communist dream realized in block and being. Hitler believed that to take the city bearing Stalin’s name would mean the end of Russia; just as the death of Berlin three years later would herald his own personal götterdämmerung. Of course Hitler would believe just about anything they fed him.

  Germany invaded Russia in June of 1941 (for about the hundredth time) and a year-and-a-half later they reached the limit of their advance at the industrial city of Stalingrad. Here the “greatest” battle ever was waged. This was the place of my birth, and my first death.

  Over 2,000,000 people were killed there in less than 8 months. What a momentous figure that was! For instance, once I heard of an elementary school where the students set out to amass 1,000,000 bottle caps. Hundreds of students collected every cap they could find for an entire year, and still could not reach their goal. They guzzled soda until their fat faces were glazed with fructose. They filled the gym with trash bags full of caps and finally gave up. But other humans at another time, my time, did succeed in amassing 2,000,000 corpses, all of whom met agonizing and terrifying deaths. A corpse was so much bigger than a cap. Now that was a pile.

  I must tell you what happened there, how I helped them reach their goal, tell you specifically how men will behave in the face and wake of death as devils drive them forward. The true story of war—not the lie you have been taught.

  But maybe you don’t want to know about it. The story of a pregnant woman with her belly flapping open, fetus glistening, is rather unappealing; how I ate it even worse. Trying to describe the sound of bodies being offloaded from a cattle car can conjure a vision unpleasant before dinner. Fine and good, but try to not be too torn up when your loved ones are reduced to gristle.

  The war would go like this: the Germans would come with their blitzkrieg and the Russians would defend to the last man, only retreating when they were dragged, boots first, to the mass grave dug by the victors. The survivors blew up or burned anything that remained, leaving the Germans nothing but scorched earth from which to plan their next attack. And so it would go—from line to line and town to town, assault, defend, retreat, falling back almost 700 miles until they came to Stalingrad. And then even the lowliest foot soldier could tell that there was nowhere left to fall back to except the trackless wasteland which stretched to the Ural Mountains and beyond. It was do or die, and most often both.

  We had been fighting for weeks around the gun factory. A perfectly ghastly place to have a war. The biggest factory in town (in a city of factories), it was over a mile long, and was made up of hundreds of rooms, both tiny and vast. There were great manufacturing halls, workshops and storerooms, metal lathes which could bore out guns built for battleships. Showers, vaults, great smelters and furnaces, dynamos and slag heaps, catwalks and subterranean tunnels, interior railways, all were joined together to create a behemoth of our modern world, a gigantic toad belching evil vapor, squatting over the city like a ravenous god, pumped with life supplied by the thousands of workers who dutifully appeared every day, summoned from the squalid wooden structures which surrounded the factory for blocks.

  Of course now it was blown to shit. The Luftwaffe had bombed it for weeks and then the artillery had begun to fall. The factory had gone from workshop to fortress to ruin. Three of the four gigantic chimneys had fallen, with horrific results. The workers, their houses knocked flat, had still come to work, and were given weapons to replace their tools. It was, after all, a gun factory.

  In front of the factory was the devastated city. It had taken years to build and weeks to annihilate. Behind it was the river, the Volga, depthless and beginning to freeze. Existing in the city were the Germans, wondering why the hell they were there but knowing only further carnage could deliver them. They had paid in blood for their real estate, and now sought to complete their investment by driving us into the river from whence I had arisen. Standing against them were the Russian army and I, bled white by months of savagery, and pushed into a tiny section of the city dominated by the factory. We’d been beaten and abused, shelled, shot and mangled, resigned and confirmed to death or glory. This was my place, my life, and my stomping ground. At that point in my existence, these events seemed a perfectly normal way to behave.

  I rise from my vault before the dawn, greeting the corpses I have dragged here to suck dry. They are strewn about like broken dolls, heads smashed, limbs charred, lives ruined. I really have to clean up in here.

  I arm myself with a submachine gun, grenades and finally a foot-long trench knife with a spiked lead ball for a pommel. My boots leave sticky imprints in the coagulated blood which carpets the rough floor as I take my leave of the feasting chamber, gorged on death and ready for another day of killing.

  I had only been alive a couple of weeks and had yet to meet Batz, or Eurich, had yet to experience the first of my many deaths. I knew I was different, knew I could survive fatal wounds, but still respected the power of war, because I did not know at that point that I could return from the dead. Plus it hurt to have your arm ripped out of the socket, even if it did grow back.

  Appearing through the mist like a lonesome wraith, I felt the bitter cold of another winter’s day in Stalingrad. Of course, surface cold couldn’t hurt me, but it played hell on my men. I’d make the rounds and find people I’d just talked to frozen stiff. Between that, the lack of food and of course the Germans, this was the most dangerous place in the world if you were a human being. Still, civilians clung to life amongst the rubble. That had been Stalin’s idea. He wouldn’t evacuate the city because he knew the civilians would help fight for it.

  I scuttle up Chimney #2, our highest observation point, surprising the guard who lurks on duty there. Stupidly, he is smoking, his brazen cherry blazing through the night. It doesn’t take much for the German snipers to draw a bead on you, and I thrash him quickly, covering his face with my clammy hand and forcing back a desire to snap his neck, quickly gorge, and then throw his body down the chimney shaft. But no . . . we need the men and besides, I have just fed.

  “Idiot!” I hiss. “You want to get your head blown off?” I take the field phone and move a little way back down the circular metal stairway, half expecting a fullisade of German lead to tear it up behind me. The guard, regaining his composure, follows me at a cautious distance. I slowly peer over the railing and feel the vastness of the city around me. I send my senses out, through the swirling pre-dawn mist, out towards the Germans and the dull brown embankment, which marks the beginnings of their lines.

  I was anxious. It had been too long since we had faced an attack, and the Germans wanted our factory so very badly. They had already lost thousands of men trying. It was not like them to leave a bill half-paid. Plus there were other evil signs. At night low-flying German planes would deafen us with their screaming engines. The Stukas had whistles in their wings which terrified the men, often sending them streaming out of the best of cover, only to be mown down by a pre-sighted MG. The Germans did this to mask the sound of their heavy armor moving around s
o we would not know where the next assault would come from. But they didn’t know how good my ears were. I think I knew where their armor was.

  A bitter wind suddenly whirls over us like a specter of the terror to come. It sends my companion into a shivering fit, his equipment rattling. But I am unmoved, sending my being out to the wind, and the mangled chunk of crust that was this place. Out to the brown mound of the railway embankment, tunneled and burrowed by the gray-clad soldiers that live and lurk there, waiting to come across that shattered expanse, waiting to strike. Our factory had become a symbol of all they hated, and they believe if they wrest it from us, if they can achieve victory, that somehow they can reach salvation from the white and icy death that threaten to consume them. Every morning I come up here to see if they are coming.

  Through the pallor of yesterday’s destruction and the doom of today’s dawn I seek them with my eyes. In this moment, right before the sun, they would be at their starting points, waiting for the barrage to begin. Atop the railway embankment I see dark smudges, squat and grotesque forms that emanate unyielding solidity. Behind them I see small dots moving, men swarming to their assault positions.

  I grab the phone and crank it up, calling Batyuk’s Tower. The structure stands at the furthest part of our lines, a battered stone building of impressive height in a generally flattened city. It is defended by a memorable collection of psychopaths under the command of Lieutenant Batyuk, a dark and swarthy Mongolian whom I enjoy drinking with. He lies all the time about casualties so he can receive the dead mens’ booze. It is rumored he once shelled his own supply lines when he had not received his vodka. They were going to court-martial him but he got a Red Star the next day for valor in combat. Now they send him double rations, and I do my part to help him consume them. I like getting drunk.

  “What?” comes a muffled voice from the phone.

  “Good morning fatty. Quit humping that dead nurse and listen to me.”

  After a short but noisy pause, his voice returns.

  “Ahh, pale one. Kill anyone lately?”

  “Only Germans, but who’s counting. Listen, did you get your AP last night?”

  “Ten shells only. Why?”

  “Now look out a window—see where the railway should be?”

  “I can’t see a damn thing,” he growls, not liking the sound of this.

  “Just keep watching . . .” I quickly stand and launch a flare in the direction of the tower.

  The effect is immediate and chaotic. As soon as the rocket launches across the battlefield, people begin shooting wildly. Tracers lash the sky. The flare goes off with a dull “pop” about 30 feet above the tower, suddenly bathing the whole area in harsh phosphorescent light while making a spitting and angry sound, globs of fire dropping to the ground. There is the edifice—once a stone office building, now a pockmarked ruin. And there are the tanks, hulking German monster tanks a mere 200 feet away, poised with muzzles agape to blow murder into Batyuk’s Tower. Tiny flashes erupt from the tower as the Russians fire at the suddenly scattering figures, which had been assembling behind the steel behemoths.

  “You have guests,” I say into the phone. I hear a series of muffled curses and then the first sounds of the German barrage, the far off cough of cannons, and then, much closer, volleys of flaming projectiles leap aloft with a rending roar—Nebelwerfers. They are rockets, and carry a huge charge. The blasts can make whole companies of men simply disappear. I hurl myself over the railing, leaping 20 feet down to the street, striving to hit the ground before the first shells do.

  I don’t quite make it as a charge airbursts close by, interrupting my flight with a concussive wave. It’s really quite nice for a moment—it feels like I’m flying—then I’m flying mouth first into a pile of rubble. Spitting teeth, I barely attain the dubious safety of a crater as the Germans lay a blanket of ruin on our beloved fort. Today the Germans were coming.

  I usually reserve my hate for things, not people. I hated artillery. There was nothing you could do but take it so I tried to be good at that, smashing my form into the dirt and broken rock, digging in as best I could, trying to differentiate between the various types of reports while keeping my mouth and nostrils plugged. An exploding shell could create a vacuum that would rip your lungs out through your mouth.

  Beyond hell there is the extended barrage. All my endeavors became useless as the individual explosions merge into a solid roar. Stones pound me and the ground begins to heave. A sudden and sharp pain lashes my ass, as my pants are torn open by a burning splinter. Ahead of me, next to the building, is a trench that leads to a bombproof tunnel, and I leap for it, hopping and scrabbling, dog paddling in mid air. I crash into the trench, bowling over a group of terrified men making for the shelter, crawling through their midst with judicious use of elbows and boots, and finally breaking free into a section of tunnel. Behind me the men are screaming, so entangled they cannot move, then the floor rushes up into the ceiling, then back down into them, hurling me down the tunnel which rotates 180 degrees as I fly into a metal door. Bracing my back to it I am plastered by the God of War. The only thing that saves me from being torn apart by shrapnel is the gigantic wave of dirt scooped up and rammed down on me with excessive force. For a moment, as I sit there in the cool darkness, I think the barrage must be over, then I realize I’m just deaf. The ground is still heaving like a fat whore. Then someone wrenches open the door behind me and I feel arms dragging me into a room. I can’t see a damn thing due to the dirt packed into my eyes, which I madly rub at as the explosions continue.

  The bombproof is not all that. It is packed with men and filled with smoke, and shakes constantly. Occasionally it takes a blow as if from a giant sledgehammer and the men look quickly up, caught in the truly horrible state of potentially being reduced to bloody rags at any moment. Part of the ceiling curls up at the corner, and a cascade of sparks showers us. The noise becomes greater as men shrink away from the rent, knowing death was searching for such holes. One man grabs a log and tries to shove it into the gap. There is a sharp report and he flies back violently. He impacts with the opposite wall and his skull is smashed between it and the flying log. Despite all the noise, everyone feels his brain die, especially me. The hole is bigger now, and flames are right outside. The men are howling and jumping all over each other, fighting to get away. But I am the strongest, the most sinuous. I writhe into the bottom of the heap before the next shell explodes. And when it does, the curtain of flesh protects me. The men are sprayed with burning steel. Many are killed outright, others are crying in agony and bleeding profusely. The roof has fallen in and the broken block channels the red rivulets into a curving descent towards my gaping soul. I lurk beneath, grinning, shifting the corpse above me into a more convenient position. Shells burst all about but I feel secure, cloaked in bodies as I feast.

  It’s good to be able to hear so well. It’s made me really love music, and to be able to distinguish the individual reports of varying guns, the character of the different shell bursts, so as to know when to keep my head down. But that doesn’t matter now as the barrage continues without let-up—a martial symphony of impressive scale. They must have been saving shells for weeks, shells born in German factories, lovingly transported to the front by the million. They pumped in shells, we pumped out death. Supply and demand. I lay there with my face up and let the blood run over it, wondering what’s happening at Batyuk’s Tower. They are probably getting assaulted with flame-throwers and point-blank tank fire.

  I hoped Batyuk was still alive—I liked that fat fuck.

  I am buried at the bottom of a mass grave, between me and heaven is a layer of fire. Teeth are stretching into needles, drawing forth the life force I need to heal my ass. Soon I am singing sweetly, my soul alight. My butt glows from within and I grow impatient with the sustained abuse we are receiving. The instant I sense the barrage begin to slacken I leap upwards with all the force I can muster, through the corpses, tearing aside a large hunk of corrugated metal whil
e firing my gun into the air.

  “C’mon you bastards!” I yell as I stumble through the dust, colliding with a wall that yields an opening past a heap of burning bricks. I scramble over them and enter Manufacturing Hall # 2.

  Men are milling around in confusion, others are down, and some are burrowing into the ground like dogs. I kick several asses, urging the men towards the firing wall where the line of resistance is forming. There is a great red glare coming from the terrain outside, a great burning which bathes us all in bloody light. I peer through a hole and gaze out over the killing field. It’s hard to see much as smoke is everywhere, but in the direction of Batyuk’s Tower I see stabs of flame rend the fog. I hear guns stuttering and blocks collapsing. This is where the fight begins.

  I move to the tunnel that will take me there, rushing down its length straight into a group of retreating men.

  “The tower is down,” gasps one. “The Germans are in the shops!” Then he falls down dead.

  I snarl in disgust and duck up a shaft, which ends with an iron disc. I push against it and it yields slowly as a rush of thick red liquid dumps through the expanding crack. I squirm through and into the bottom of a slit trench stuffed with mangled flesh. I’m about thirty yards from the Great Hall and halfway to the tower. Tracers whip the air and I keep my head down as I duck around the corner straight into two Germans.

  “Hands up!” I bark. They do so, dropping their weapons. I open fire from a foot away, blowing their heads apart.

  “Oh sorry, I’m still fairly new at this.” I say as I stomp over the bodies.

  I keep moving, leaping out of the trench and running for the tower that I immediately see is now only a heap of blasted rubble. Germans now see me, as they are swarming over the embankment and tower ruins, voicing a many-throated yell of pure war-lust, assaulting towards the shops that are my goal as well. Bullets begin to strike around me and I run at full speed until a tank shell explodes directly behind me, lifting me with ease and hurling me into an iron-grilled window which rips out of its foundation with the impact of my 6’5,” 220-pound body, landing me directly at the feet of Batyuk who stands, half-naked in his underwear, firing a pistol at the squad of Germans attempting to enter the room through the shattered north wall. I lurch to a halt in a cloud of dust just as his bare and hairy chest erupts in a series of crimson divots.