by Dave Brockie
But he could not do things with metal and mineral that he could with flesh. He could not give birth to a gun. So he would create the creatures that would create the hate, inspiring the legions of already living victims. So they would begin with primitive weapons, the weapons at hand, their brains slowly warping into the condition required for the insemination of the new death technology. My Father taught you war, your most monumental and useless skill. Before his arrival on Earth roughly 6,000 years ago, the humans had lived in a paradise. You had been animals; or rather you knew you were animals. My Father made you want to become gods. War gods.
The production of weapons of mass lethality was an alien idea my Father had implanted into you by defiling your corpse pool and then sending those soulless creatures out into the world to destroy your lives. I was one of them, and there were many others like me. Your resistance to these attacks from within had helped prevent my Father from achieving his goals. But within the course of this century he had known his greatest success. Three millennia worth of his corrupt influence had worn you down. Now you possessed the means not only to destroy yourselves but also to obliterate all life on the planet. Except for him. I didn’t even know if you could kill Father. After all, he was several miles across.
I should stop calling him Father; after all he was a giant baby-making machine. But I suppose his war-like nature obliterated any feminine qualities he may have possessed. Perhaps I should just call him “it,” but he had always addressed me in a masculine tone and called himself my Father. He was proud of his son. And I must admit, I had enjoyed the affection. He had created me, and up until the point of our first meeting I had thought I was an orphan. And the one thing I was desperate for was any sort of a family.
***
I can no longer make even the most basic decisions in life. The merest of complications reduces me to tears. I’ve been in the house, apertures cloaked from the sun, staring at my guns and weeping. I can’t go outside, because the war has started and they are screaming for a leader. My father is calling me to lead the army of the damned. But I don’t want to go.
Even Maug has deserted me, though I sense his presence nearby. I must have scared him as the visions are in full swing. I have chained myself to a huge boiler, which I am tearing out of the floor. Knowing full well the consequences of the action before it is committed, I raise the pistol to my head and pull the trigger in one motion, blowing off the side of my skull. My body drops, sitting down hard in a spray of thick droplets, and then slumping to the side as blood empties from my shattered braincase. This ends my pain for the moment, but I’ll be back.
Days later I awake to a dull, continuous pain in my face that is still sharper than the groaning throb that encompasses my skull. My head is re-knit, my brain re-constituted. Maybe it took two days for me to fall again into the mode of life, and during that time I had dreamt—dreamt the malformed dreams of an annihilated mind. My senses converge on my center and I hear screams, and shots, as the cops go block-to-block with the National Guard and kill anyone that won’t submit. And their underworld minions provide help from below as they finally find me.
I see a black shape rushing towards me, engulfing me in a suffocating embrace. Drugged, shot and confused, they almost take me. But I fight, I fight hard, tearing and straining at what feels like a wall of inflatable skin which attempts to surround and subdue me. My claws rip into its flesh, tearing out holes that I work my body through. I’m covered by the creature’s fluid and numbness assails me. It’s poisoned me. I stop trying to escape and just try to kill it, splitting the muscle blanket with a gristly pop, writhing through its mass. It retreats with a squeal, flopping towards the hole, spewing droplets. Pursuing it proves impossible as paralysis grips me.
Then a swirling, gaseous form comes into view, holding a rod with a glowing crystalline orb affixed to the end. Like a wraith it floats towards me as its servant flops into the floor behind it, wretchedly gibbering its agony. Desperately I strain against the drug as the pulsing globe draws closer, its gaseous tendrils oozing across my convulsing form. They’re gonna get me.
But then an explosion of black motion leaps into the midst. A snarling mass of rending claws and jaws, just back from a two-week jaunt through doggy heaven. The specter reforms briefly as a mass of writhing gristle as Maug rips through its vapor into the throbbing flesh core, which is just big enough to sustain its power and support the artifact. It cannot defend itself and the attack is too sudden to retreat from. The thing has no mouth so it makes no noise as it is destroyed, save squishy ones. Maug tears the thing apart as I fight against the drug, finally gaining enough strength to stumble to a spider hole and observe the street outside, as I attempt to gain control of myself.
There are tanks outside. And riot police, and soldiers. Helicopters swirl overhead, fires burn out of control, and shots go off like popcorn. It looks like they are getting ready to storm my block. I duck to the upstairs cupola, the fort’s highest point, with Maug at my heels. From here I can see the whole surrounding area as I rotate the turret in a quick 360. The drug is wearing off quickly as it is replaced by a surge of adrenaline, caused by my observance of the full vista of carnage.
There are armored vehicles moving down several streets at once in my neighborhood, and these advances are being opposed. I watch as a Molotov cocktail explodes on the front of an armored car, turning into a rolling torch that drives into a building. Shots are coming from everywhere, and people are hiding from them. I can see some National Guard men gathered behind a garage, waiting for an M-60 tank to suppress the block before they continue their attack. The tank opens up with a 50 cal., tearing up the fronts of buildings and knocking down porches. The N.G. advances and is met with a hail of lead that sends them scrambling back for cover, leaving a man in the street. He gestures for help that he cannot receive, as a helicopter appears overhead, framing him in their spotlight.
Holy shit! It’s a fucking Apache! And it opens up with its Gattling cannon, punching great holes in brick, destroying unseen flesh, and just ripping up the joint. Things must have been bad for them to have brought in air support so soon. The creature goes about its deadly work, darting in and out of shadows in its quest for victims. They clear the block and begin to converge on mine, approaching my structure from all sides, save the track. The copter hangs back, observing.
I run to the basement, turning on CNN as I rush by. Then I’m in a tunnel that puts me in a dugout about 20 meters outside my garage door. I’d stolen this weapon from an armory in Buffalo on one of my many road trips. Its where I got most of my hardware, from the drunken and drug-addled soldiers who were more than willing to trade things of death for the things I offered (usually drugs). I would have stolen a tank if I could have gotten away quietly. But I did get this Stinger.
It’s a complicated weapon that can blow up in your face, but I understand it instinctively. It’s a ground-to-air missile, perfect for dealing with the helicopter. I pop up like toast, acquire my target and loose the missile from my shoulder in a flaming rush that annihilates the hovering death machine in a beauteous eruption of reds and purples. The mangled mess crashes into the earth scarcely 20 meters in front of me. I run back down the tunnel as bullets tear up the dugout. Then it’s back upstairs to the cupola, where I man the 50 cal. and wait for the next attack.
For a while nothing happens as they realize that one of their 30-million dollar helicopters just got toasted, and that in general this operation was going considerably over budget. All over the city people were fighting back with skill and cohesion. The tactic of “the bum rush,” 20 or so guys armed with Uzi’s and RPG’s, appearing from nowhere, attacking rear areas and then disappearing seemingly into the street is most disconcerting. My Father has prepared well. Of course, it helps when you sponsor both sides.
When they come back they come back strong. Apparently, my house has been targeted as a small plane flies over and drops a bomb on it. Luckily the device, an incendiary one, has missed and deton
ated out back, setting my “bum-maze” aflame. Unluckily this will probably set fire to my house. But this seems to be a common tactic employed by the enemy—burn them out. Just ask the Waco survivors. Not like in Stalingrad where the Germans at first tried to save certain buildings they wanted, for use as shelter later on. Soon they realized there would be no “later-on,” unless they could destroy the entire city. Unless they could erase it from the map by grinding the very stones to dust and boiling its blood into the air. In the ghettos they used this tactic from the get-go, much like the SS had done in Warsaw under the command of Stroop. I had been there, too, and again I had found the underworld.
Warsaw was one of the oldest European cities and had suffered severe damage in the first months of the war. The Luftwaffe had bombed it repeatedly, killing tens of thousands. Many old and beautiful buildings which had stood for centuries had been destroyed. When I came there the city bore its scars under the harsh boot of military occupation. The Germans, with their customary disdain for the achievements of other cultures, had stripped the city of itself in its transformation into the major staging point for Germany’s upcoming invasion of Russia. They also used the city as a round-up point for Jews from all over Poland, who were walled up in the ghetto. When the Death Camps began to run, they took their victims from these urban pens. They began training the Jews out in ‘43, and by ‘44 the operation was going full swing. Apparently the record was 40,000 gassed and burned in one day. Stories like that had brought me here, to ancient Poland.
After the failure of Operation Citadel, the Russians began their inexorable advance that would not climax until the fall of Berlin. I fought innumerable battles in a vain attempt at stopping it. And the closer the Russians got the more frantically Germans tried to murder everybody, as if they could save their own lives through the deaths of others. It was a misguided concept for the millions of common soldiers who died believing. They received nothing but death for their sacrifices. But others did gain—the harvesters, like myself.
How could I be German when I wasn’t even human? And apparently many of the Germans believed the same thing, displaying little in the way of humanity.
So the order was given to liquidate all the ghettos of central Europe. Liquidation through extermination. No “revision” needed here—it happened. But that’s not to say that the Jews were the only ones to die there—quite far from it. Everybody died there, even the guards. And most of the victims clung to pathetic shreds of hope right into the death rooms, making their deaths all the sweeter to the taste.
But the Jews of Warsaw fought back, fought back with guns and bombs, battery acid and rocks. They knew the truth about the trains and they resisted their eviction with deadly force.
It was almost laughable that they brought in an SS panzer division to suppress their rag-tag uprising. The accepted explanation for us was that it was “practice.” As if they needed it. We were members of one of the most experienced combat units of the SS, under the command of Oberstgruppenführer Johann Stroop, a famous and awful man. But the truth was that members of OKW (high command) had no confidence in the Wehrmacht’s ability to rout out the bastards. So the SS was sent in to crush this rebellion in the most violent and destructive way possible, to send a clear message to any that might be considering similar action. Disobedience meant a quicker death. But the real truth was that the master received a higher return rate on corpses when the SS killed them. They were just a lot more efficient than the regular units, and more of their members were ghouls.
***
I stare at the smoldering horizon and listen to the men snicker nervously. They are glad the Whargoul has joined them but they are still scared of me. I have befriended no one since the death of Kepler, and I miss my friend.
The fact that I had killed him didn’t help.
It was wise not to make too many friends during a war like this. They died too quickly. And it had hurt me to watch Kepler die. I hadn’t meant to kill him. Besides, most of these men were boorish louts, idiots at best. It was true—armies attracted vast pools of scum, lost and violent men who had come to the end of their collective rope. The army promised redemption, or death.
I had no time for their banter. They asked stupid questions, like where I was from or what I planned to do after the war. That in itself was a revelation of sorts. I had not known the war would “end.” I just assumed it had been going on forever and would continue to do so. Inquiries as to my family were likewise in vain. I told everyone I thought that they were dead, but that perhaps my Father was living in the caverns beneath Auschwitz, and that I planned to visit him soon. Their orders I ignored, their officers I despised and avoided. I rode from place to place in my armored car, attaching myself to battles. I was never challenged and all were fearful of my presence. My only guidance was the strange and sometimes annoying creatures that whispered to me.
We wade into bloody block fighting as brutal as anything Stalingrad had offered me. The Jews have turned every street into a death maze, every sewer opening a potential pillbox. They fight with desperation and fanaticism and as the battle progresses they gain a measure of our respect. They catch us in clever crossfire’s, using expert fire control. They don’t shoot unless they know they are going to hit something German. They hate us so much, and they fight so hard, going hand-to-hand and refusing to surrender, knowing that they would have been shot anyway. But they can do little as 30-ton tanks belch shells into their houses. We blow up block after block, entombing the residents beneath tons of rubble and then dousing them with flame-throwers. Days of fighting merge into a bloody smear that finally reaches a climax at ZOG headquarters, where the leaders of the insurrection have holed up to make a last stand. It’s an old police station and makes a great fort. Orders have come down to try and take some of them alive so they can be publicly flayed. I am there for the attack.
First comes smoke and plenty of it. It blinds them and us but is to our advantage as we set up our assault squads. Then comes the Goliath, a fiendish new machine—a remote controlled bomb that tears off the front of the building in a blast that scatters debris for blocks. Then we are up and out, pouring into the gaping fissure, guns spitting, searching for prey. They fire back from close range, toppling several of our men and wounding me through the chest in a manner that makes it difficult to breathe for several minutes. I spend this painful time clubbing and stomping madly, making short work of them, all the while blood spurting out of my chest. By the time the rest of the squad is up I’ve slain everyone, and I’m already making my way up the corridor. I fire through the walls with my Kar 15 rifle. Most people wouldn’t fire a rifle right at a wall, as fragments fly in every direction with skin-splitting force, but then again no one would innately sense the people directly beyond the wall, much less enjoy the pain. I pump three rounds through it, filling the air with smoke and deafening sound. A good kick busts a hole through it (solid stone), and I follow it with a grenade. To escape its power I simply turn around and walk three steps away, shrugging off the blast with little effect save the ruining of my uniform. Then I stride back into the wall and burst though its charring mass in a surge of muscle. To those on the other side I now give my pity.
Everyone is on the far side of the room, away from my attack. They don’t want to look at me as my hideous shrieking challenges the dying echoes of the blast. They begin to writhe about in the remnants of the command bunker as I stare at them, not understanding their action. Then I realize they are trying to kill themselves without the benefits of having any bullets left for their guns. So they gouge their throats with scraps of jagged metal, and the lucky ones throw themselves onto knifes. Two try to strangle each other. One of them stands on his head and lowers it into a bucket of water. I laugh at their suicidal little dance.
“Let me help,” I say, tossing a grenade.
They’re all dead.
***
I watch the man, a German, half a mile away. Is he sad? I bet he is. His family is thousands of miles behi
nd him, his future a tomb. Being a human must suck, knowing you had but one shot at life. One shot.
I watch him smoke. I watch him take a piss. I watch him eat a cracker. I watch him through the sights of my sniper rifle.
“I bet you think nobody can see you,” I think as I shoot him in the chest and then watch him die.
It was another ghastly night in Stalingrad. The sky glowed a lurid yellow against the clouds, heavy with snow, and lit by the pallid corpse-light of the leprous moon. Mangled facades leaned drunkenly in their death-throes, towering over heaps of rubble and soot. Black ice clung everywhere—and the snow was black too. It was cold, cold in a way that would freeze your lungs to crystal. No one moved, no one dared to. It was too cold and too light out. Everything was still but it was not a silent night.
Terrible screams were coming from the Black Temple. Horrific shrieks of men in agony, sobbing for their lives in German. And not just human cries—there were the wailing tones of some beast, a mournful hound perhaps, tones that would suddenly rise into a chorus of maniacal cackling, as the screams began anew. And this was played on loudspeakers so the whole city could hear its hellish din.
It terrified my men so I could guess what it did to the Germans. They cried out to their friends, their families. Their pleas were often cut short by brutish laughter and rattling iron. It must have been very loud as I could hear it clearly, even here, underground, in the tunnels beneath the battleground.
I was often here, searching the labyrinthine ways for secrets yet unguessed. I was drawn to the Black Temple from the throbbing guts beneath it—seemingly the whole area thrummed with a pulsing ebb, and my senses told me things are moving behind the walls. Through these passages would be my means of egress to the grim edifice, and hopefully its eldritch treasures.