Whargoul

by Dave Brockie

  “You’re late…” he gurgles, collapsing.

  No more vodka rations for him!

  Bullets cleave the air above and I pull a sheet of corrugated metal over me. Batyuk sputters and dies, fingers clawing at my leg. A shudder of pleasure runs through me as Germans toss smoke grenades into the room. They burst around me, cloaking me in chemical mist. The first soldier who enters the room sets off a booby trap, filling his face with nails. Then a squad of Russians charges from behind me, stomping across my position and mashing me into the bloody floor. A large shell detonates amongst them, right in front of me, wiping their lives out in an eye blink and hurling tattered chunks of their bodies and possessions in all directions. From the other side of the wall I hear the clanking sounds of the monster tank, nosing about in the rubble and looking for new targets. No barricade can stop this beast—it must be killed.

  I look about through the rubble, knowing at any moment that the Germans could come spilling through the door and fill me full of lead. But before that happens I find a demo charge in the death grip of an amputated Russian arm. I pick it up on the run and charge towards the door, the amputated arm still dangling from it, at that moment not knowing that I am the only soldier holding up an entire German battalion.

  Their vanguard reaches the doorway just as I do, bursting from the smoke and through their ranks, leaping for the tank which is lurking just a few meters beyond them. It is a gigantic thing, a model that I do not recognize, and I become a blur of motion, so quick they cannot fire. I clamber up the front of the machine before they even know what is happening. I prime the demo and wedge it beneath the gaping maw of the main gun—it emits an angry hiss and a column of smoke as I turn back towards the safety of the shops, hurling myself into space, surrounded by beckoning death on all sides while never having felt so alive even as gunners get their range and send a whizzing swarm of bullets after me. One strikes my left shoulder, spinning me around in mid-air and passing out the front of my chest. As I rotate, I see a German trooper atop the tank where I had just been standing, bending to the demo, trying to scoop it up and throw it away from the friendly monster but without luck as the charge detonates in his grasp.

  WHOOM! The charge, the man, the tank and all the ammunition aboard explode at more or less the same time. Shrieking splinters and lashing flames pulverize the area and for a moment people stop shooting at each other to behold the unleashed chaos of my making. I am grabbed and hurled by the force which slams me back through the northern brick wall, shattering numerous bones and propelling me into a whirling vortex of scalding dust and down a collapsing stairwell. Clothing aflame, I pass out.

  When I come to, I sense a large black shape next to me. It’s a tank! No, it’s not trying to kill me. There are black metal pipes protruding from it at all angles and it is surrounded by shadowy figures that in turn surround me. I’m flat on my back, lying next to a boiler. I feel my head lifted from behind, as a cool and slick object is placed between my lips. Fiery liquid spills from it, reviving me somewhat. I cough and sputter, raising myself to a sitting position. I’m in a darkened cellar, Russian soldiers around me, staring down at my nude and blackened body. My wounds itching, I lie still until I have summoned the strength to speak.

  “I need a weapon,” I mumble through smashed lips.

  I pass on several until I find my favorite, a submachine gun. Somebody gives me a greatcoat with a moist hole in the back denoting its former owner. We are huddled in a boiler room underneath the shower level. The men found my charring body half buried in a heap of bloody rubble and dragged me here. Since then, more explosions have sealed the entrance and we are now trapped. From above I can hear the dull rumble of continuing combat and I search about for a way to return to it. My wounded shoulder is throbbing with the pulse of it’s healing and I stretch out my arm, cracking the joints into place and relishing my body’s necrotic power. I am healing fast, the proximity of death giving me new life. The dying wounded in the corner do their part. They die. They die and I take their strength.

  Apparently, many observed my defense of the room and they babble excitedly about my exploits. I ignore their praise and glug the rest of their vodka. They seem quite happy to stay here, as it seems rather safe and that is a rare quality for any place in Stalingrad. There are about 20 men in here, a mixed gaggle of survivors from a variety of units forced together into this space by the tides of war. They sit about and do their best to ignore it as they trade stories and rations. How strange that we should all end up here, in this miserable hole, facing death together. How strange that I should look upon these men as a living deli-tray.

  Sudden knocking sounds come from above. Twenty necks snap upwards as one. Germans are searching for us in the hollow spaces beneath the floor. They know these unseen chasms could be full of Russians just waiting for the right moment to make their presence known in a murderous manner. They begin to pour gasoline down the broken pipes into our sanctuary causing immediate panic amongst the men. They throw themselves onto the mound of debris blocking the exit, hurling bricks aside as they try to escape the death trap. I leap to their aid, caring only about myself. Above us, and unseen, a German assault pioneer hoses the area with a flame-thrower, and the gushing gas becomes pillars of flame, igniting several men who blunder into the other men, setting them on fire as well. The smell of burning flesh fills the air as I clear a gap big enough for me to squeeze through. I fall down a pile and into a corridor, then jump back to the opening. A soldier is trying to squeeze through the gap that only a Whargoul could manage, behind him the men are screaming in terror and agony and he reaches to me for help. I grab him by the face and twist his head around, snapping the bone and ripping the cartilage with a sloppy sound. I do it without thinking, forgetting they are on my side. He dies quickly with his head on the wrong way and I bite him in the back of the neck. His body plugs up the hole and the rest die behind him in the inferno. He becomes the conduit for the soul-suck and I take them all, glutting myself on the energy of the harvest, finally falling back to the opposite wall, intoxicated and swooning with the unholy power of death’s making.

  It has already been a busy day but I’m just getting started. My shoulder wound has totally healed and more—I am at the height of my ability. Barely a month old, today I will kill a thousand years of life.

  The corridor I’m in runs the length of the building and I rush down it, sensing an opening ahead. It sounds like a tank roars above me but then all is wiped by a shattering explosion somewhere close ahead. The corridor collapses in a shower of burning block that I run through at top speed, bricks bouncing off my head. I almost make it to the end before my legs are trapped behind me. Squirming like an eel, I writhe to daylight. When my head pokes free of the rubble I see I am entering a gigantic shell hole about halfway up one of the crater’s walls. The area is blanketed with thick smoke and small fires burn what they can find. In the center of the crater is a German tank, a Mark III with a 50mm gun. The tank is on its side thrashing like a crippled dinosaur, one length of steel track unwound from the sprockets, hanging limp and useless. It has crashed into what used to be the building above, setting off a huge charge left by the Russians who have abandoned this area. Still falling chunks of rubble are testimony to the force of the explosion that has left this fine piece of German machinery helpless, treads churning. I watch, mesmerized by the spectacle, as the front and turret hatches clank open. From one crawls the tank commander in his black panzer uniform. Swearing, he moves to the front hatch. A bloody arm flops out. By now he has been joined by another crewman who has exited the tank from its belly hatch. Together they inspect the vehicle and remove the mangled driver as the battle rages unseen around them. Apparently, a stray shell has struck the vision slit, killing the driver and sending the tank careening into a building which has set off a hidden charge. The survivors are lucky to be alive. The vehicle is not too badly damaged and will fight again once it is righted and repaired.

  Several other Germans c
lamber into the hole, which offers protection from stray bullets and shrapnel. They smoke and pass around a flask after they drag their dead comrade aside. The crewman seems shaken, the commander unmoved. I start to fire from cover, gun erupting in a geyser of flame, bullets, and spent cartridges. The commander’s face is torn off by the heavy lead, which rips into the crewman’s chest, blowing out his back in a geyser of angry red droplets. The soldiers scatter as I chase them with my bullets, mowing down two more as one escapes over the lip. I leap out of my hole and rush to the tank, stomping a head into pulp as I pass. A soldier appears, firing. I accelerate and leap for the closest cover, the open turret hatch of the crippled tank, squirming through the cramped interior until I sit in the blood-smeared driver’s seat. I am momentarily comfortable, though I feel somewhat claustrophobic. Fire ricochets off the armor as I enjoy the feeling of invulnerability. The main gun is pointed straight at the sky, and I wonder if I could use it to kill their god. Surely he must be watching the antics at Stalingrad, delighting in the torment, feasting on the death as did I, but harvesting on a much grander scale. I would enjoy putting a shell into his baleful eye. Maybe he would think twice before he again indulged in his murderous voyeurism. To feed on the soul of a god—now that would be glorious. But was it possible? Or would the missile harmlessly pass through the fabric of the being, and, trailing vapor, pirouette perfectly, and fall back to terra firma, re-entering the barrel of its birth to obliterate the sender, Whargoul.

  My reverie is rudely interrupted as the inside of the tank abruptly boils with flame. I am enveloped in agony and leap out of the hatch, screaming, a burning bolt of flesh. The Germans had expected me to die under the burst but I don’t oblige them—instead I shrug off my blazing coat and charge at them nude, my hair aflame. They are above me and I bound into their midst, grasping, clawing and rolling in a wretched and joyous fusing of death and redemption. I ram my gun’s barrel into a chest and pull the trigger, spraying bone and lead, finding and pulling the pin on a grenade, which explodes with flesh-shredding force amidst the fray, and now there are four more dead men to add to my hellish tally-sheet. I barely feel the wound I receive as the blast rushes over me, though I am pocked with shrapnel. There is a trench here, and more men charge from it. I block a blow from a spade, pivot and cleave the edge of my hand into a man’s dirty face. A bullet strikes me in the leg, passing through muscle and fatty chasm. It hurts but the leg holds as I hoist a man aloft and disembowel him with a sweeping stroke. His guts trail loosely, freed from their holy place, where they had controlled the release of shit for over 23 years. I am spattered with fluid. Two men grab my legs, and another crashes into my chest, knocking me off balance. We fall in a tangle of limbs as there is a brief writhing, generating a huge cloud of dust. Then I’m on my feet, killing with my hands as I smother another one between my legs, his teeth gnawing at my cock. It feels as if raw adrenaline is being pumped directly into my heart. Three men die in as many seconds and I notice the gunfire slacken for reasons unknown. I’m right in the middle of the German advance wedge and I’m ruining everything, exposing their assault positions. Our rolling ball of men flails madly about in the wreckage of our making. Torn belts trailing equipment are tossed about, and a mist of blood and spent souls surround us. And still they come, curiously drawn to the whirling maelstrom of havoc, though they see man after man slain and lain in the ghastly harvest of gore and guts which drapes the shattered landscape and flecks the spinning sky above.

  Boots, severed limbs, smashed weapons and teeth arc skyward and fall back to earth as I smash skulls, snap necks, tear throats and burst testicles. The shooting stops. The Germans won’t fire into the hand-to-hand struggle for fear of killing their own men, and the Russians just can’t believe what they are seeing. A muted roar fills my ears. Wielding a large iron pipe, I club madly. It slams into a man’s skull with a crack half the city hears, hurling his brain 20 meters where it lands with a wet plop. The upper half of his head is gone but he takes a step towards me, imploring me to bend to the pulped socket and have my fill, which I do. Somehow a SMG has found its way into my scabby hands and I fire until the clip is empty, hopping into a trench filled with deflating bodies. I move deeper into it, looking for more Germans to kill when suddenly I realize the sound I’m hearing is the Russians cheering for me.

  Cheering the blatant display of my murderous hell born abilities, like they would a star player at a football game. I pause in my grisly work, assailed with feelings I do not understand. I feel a lump in my throat as I stare back at the blackened fort, smoking and defiant on the horizon. I almost feel bad about killing men from my own side, but don’t know why.

  Around me I feel the Germans preparing to renew their attack upon the factory and I swear that they shall fail. They will lose this day and they shall lose the struggle for this city of the damned. So I swear, the Whargoul, standing on a moistened heap of the dead. As much as I admired the Germans, at this point I enjoyed killing them more.

  One comes around the corner, gun leveled. I stare back, drenched in blood from head to toe, slathered in gore and emanating steam, my skin hanging from me in tatters. My face splits, displaying my set of dog-like teeth from which pieces of shredded flesh dangle. I reach out for him while making strange sucking noises. His face blanches in fear and he runs for it. I pursue him around the corner just in time to see him disappear into a tunnel into which I also duck. Then unseen hands push the plunger, which leads to the wire, which leads to the demo charge which sets off the blast I run directly into. I’m at the peak of my power and this is probably what saves me, for the blast is huge and close at hand. Timbers fly, the floor drops and the void below is exposed. An underground expanse of corpse-choked water rushes towards me, and in colliding with its surface I imbed myself into it, momentarily losing myself in the ecstasy of death.

  The mass of dead flesh rolls past the circle of light, debris draping its edges, rats scurrying over its gelatinous skin. I am stuck in it up to my knees, awake yet senseless, eyes spinning in my boiling skull. Many of the dead found their way into the sewers, and then to the river, and their skin crawls over my bones as we chug slowly along through the maze. Devious creatures note our passage and report below. The city has extensive sewers and all sides make use of them. Softly quivering, I return to myself, suffused with feeding-filth as the tunnel passes into the light, back to the Volga, the great river the city stood against, the river from which I had come. Here a large drainage pipe spews the rotting water into the river, right next to a ferry landing where many are gathered. They begin to look as my island of plundered flesh slugs into view. Imbedded to my ankles, I am nude, lit by the flaming sky. I wave, staring at them blankly.

  “The battle goes well,” I say without meaning. “Look at how many have died.”

  The large group of people pause in their various works and gaze at me in horror until a shell explodes in their midst. Agonized wails fill the air as I snap and dart at escaping souls.

  Some do escape, but where to? Why wasn’t I a part of that, or more accurately, who ate the souls that I could not?

  Birthing from out of my flesh raft I splash to the shore, calves yearning, pouncing at a dead man’s boots and uniform, and hurriedly dressing myself. I had learned to like clothes, and was sick of running around naked. My swinging dick tended to get caught on things and through comparison I had learned it was a rather large one. As I check the dead soldier’s weapon, a couple of officers come running up to me. I turn, taking a great breath, and bark at them. They fly backwards, knocked off their feet, hats flying. A beet-faced commissar is sent sprawling in the mud. Amused at the force of my verbal blow, I veer off towards the cliff which faces the river, releasing the bolt of my weapon which slides home with a satisfying click, gleaming with the fire. I run straight up the cliff wall and leap into a giant sewer entrance. Rats scatter as I land and wheel about, gazing back at the Volga and the many ships passing to and fro upon it. The Germans are attacking them with planes.
I am attracted to the designs the German pilots or their talented ground crews have painted on the cowlings. The shrieking birds drop like stones and release their bombs, then reverse themselves and claw their way back into the ether. At this point of the battle the Russians are still short of planes and can do little to stop the mauling. The bombs explode amongst the confused jumbles of ships. Men and women are thrown screaming into the river where they find their way to the bottom. There, a maw awaited them, sucking in water like a drain. Sometimes the maw would spit things out. The boats get wrecked, sunk and forgotten. A pity, that. Boats were pretty, and it took skill to make them.

  Behind me, the continuous roar reminds me of the battle that I must rejoin. I run up the pipe. It is a drainage vessel from beneath the smelter vats. I squirm through the wet stone and come out at the bottom of a coral-encrusted slag pit. There is a sharp report and a man sails through my sight, trailing entrails. Shells rain again, then tank cannons fire at a flat trajectory, bolts of thunder which crash through three walls and then explode. The Germans are shelling the fort anew and preparing their final assault.