by Dave Brockie
“How did a nigger get out here, anyway?” whispers one.
***
July 12th, 1943. Operation Citadel has been going on for almost two weeks and in that that time, Das Reich had fought hard for the twenty-mile breach that we have torn in the Russian line. But for every defensive line that we breach we find another just beyond it, packed with a seemingly inexhaustible number of men and machines all bent on destroying us. Everyday we kill hundreds, sometimes thousands. We blow up many scores of tanks of which the Soviets seemed to possess a limitless number. Most of the men are at the point of madness, sustaining themselves on schnapps and speed. I am particularly worried about Kepler. He has been awake for days, scribbling away in his book, occasionally looking at me and grunting. His face looks drawn and haggard; his eyes glitter and the features on his once handsome face jerk spasmodically as he feverishly pours himself into whatever it is that he is working on, which he will never show me. He doesn’t talk very much but always stays close, observing. When we do speak, the conversations take on the quality of an interview. He wants to know everything he can about my origins and memories.
Again we find ourselves on the forward edge of a great assault wedge. All night they have been bringing up tanks of every variety, forming them into vast wedges of steel. We are brought up behind these machines in our half-tracks. Before the dawn, a huge barrage begins. Rocket launchers and artillery of all shapes and sizes began to rend the skies above us, challenging the dawn with their own fire. We cheer as locomotives thunder across the sky, causing havoc in the Soviet positions. The Russians begin to return fire in a valiant attempt to silence the German guns. In some cases it is successful, and a fierce artillery duel erupts. As the dawn begins to break we mount up, just as the first flights of Stukas streak in to wreak untold carnage in the enemy sectors. The horizon boils with their bombs; it is our last sight before we are locked in our rolling coffin. We lurch forward and I search my pockets for cigarettes, finding none. I bum one from Kepler, whose face is gleaming with sweat as he scribbles madly, eyes darting about the half-tracks cramped interior as if already seeking escape.
I strike a match just as a shell crashes into our vehicle. The blast punches us backwards in a great slamming of bodies and gear. One man is killed by another’s rifle—it’s sticking in his eye. We roll out of the stricken transport as flames shoot out of the front of the vehicle. The men inside are burning alive with a chorus of high-pitched, yelping screams. We try to help them but the heat is too intense. I grab Kepler and the rest of the squad and we run from the scene, towards a passing Pz IV. We manage to flag it down and mount our infantry on the rear hull. The sky above is rent with flame and shells as we roll towards a small series of hills that the lead tanks are just beginning to crest. As they do so a horrendous barrage drops upon them. One of the tanks explodes outright with an immense KLUNG, its turret, momentarily weightless, swirling into the air. The tanks around it scuttle about like confused bugs, snouts questing, set against a wall of black smoke which rises from the valley beyond—a valley that unbeknownst to us is crawling with a sea of Soviet tanks, streaming like rats towards our tanks cresting the hill. The first T-34’s, Soviet infantry riding them in dense packs, burst out of the smoke bank a mere 100-meters away from our battle-line, which we have just joined.
We spill off the rear deck and leap into a shell hole, watching in growing horror as tank after tank emerges from the clouds. We open up with our small arms, peeling the men from the hulls with bursts of lead. Our tanks take similar action, and rattle MG fire against the surging Soviet battle line. The main guns open up and the effect is instantaneous and catastrophic. At such ranges it is impossible to miss. I watch as a Tiger fires its 88mm main gun at a T-34/85 a mere 50 meters away. The shell rips through the turret entirely, passing out the back of the tank and exploding on the face of the tank directly behind the first one which explodes in crimson disaster. But it’s impossible to stop the surge of Russian metal and flesh that is barreling up the slope. They slam into our positions and are quickly amongst the panzers, cranking their turrets around and firing at point-blank range, tearing up the ground around our haven. In our hole, we stay as low as we can to avoid the spattering steel which rips the air above us, as the noise of battle becomes one sustained roar of hatred. Kepler’s face is white with terror, his eyes bulging from his sockets as the ground rocks around us with the violence of the tank battle. Then he jumps up, screaming something at me that is impossible to understand. He waves madly past me and I turn to see a T-34 burst into view over the lip of our hole. The monster rears up above us like a tidal wave, blotting out the sun, and we leap for life as the front of the tank falls like the sky. I can’t get away and it lands on me.
The front right tread catches me on the pelvis and pushes me into the ground. I try to flatten out with the force but it crushes me—crushes my pelvis, my lower organs and my legs. The driver guns it and the treads chew me for a good 20 feet, finally spitting me out like a bloody rag.
I don’t pass out but go into something like shock. I lie there in the mud, staring at my entrails strung out in glistening ribbons. Bits of my clothing, smashed equipment, and mangled hunks of flesh litter the trail of my passage. I lay there, noting sluggishly that I can no longer breathe or hear. Almost all of my guts have been torn out. And I think maybe this is what can make me die.
My vision blackened as I sunk into the soil. I’ll die, and no one will miss me. Maybe Kepler would. He was my friend, even though he had been acting strangely since discovering what I was. We talked of things together, and protected him. I could see his face above me, bending to me, weeping over my sundered form, trying to push my guts back into place. And in this dream I see my own hands come to him and grasp him by the throat.
I watch my actions as a disconnected observer as I kill my friend. I turn his madly struggling body over in my arms and attack the back of his head with my questing tongue. He is strong, and very much in possession of the materials I require to re-make my body. And I take these things.
***
The old men have been on the green for 20 minutes and I’m getting pissed. Without a single acknowledgment of our presence they have been three and four-putting with aggravating leisure. They are trying to piss me off and it’s working.
“So you murdered your best friend to continue your own life?” Cheng asks.
“Yes, and I felt really bad about it. After I came to, I went kind of crazy. I guess you could have called it grief. I’d never felt it to that extent. I couldn’t accept what I had done. I went mad with self-hate.”
“What did you do with this feeling?”
“What I’m about to do is drive this golf ball into that guy’s head.”
Hitting off the tee was the best part of my game, and I fantasize about the results of my violence. The ball flies on a low trajectory, burning towards the green where the old racist fuckers are finally picking up their balls. With a resounding “crack” the ball strikes one of the baldies in the side off the head, knocking him to his ass as a bloody torrent blorps from his skull. The ball drops to the surface of the green within five feet of the hole. I calmly walk to the green and line up my putt, knocking it in for a birdie. To make this daydream a reality is deliciously tempting.
“Control your violence and use the energy elsewhere.”
I clear my mind, breathing deeply as the spasm passes, feeling a rush of conflicting emotion. The urge to hurt others has been the strongest and most consistent feature of my life. And for some reason hanging around with this wrinkly old man, playing this stupid game, brought a calm to my soul that I had never felt. I wait with my club in hand until the oldies are done with their flail-fest. Then I calmly address the ball, feeling the glorious sun on my skin and the leather in my grip. Can this silly game really be an outlet for the murder that is my essence? Can this old man really help me to save my soul?
Can I trade golf for dope?
I knock the ball a good 20-meters p
ast the green, deeply into the woods. Cheng smiles blissfully.
“Good, good . . . no one died,” he says.
Maybe he can save my soul, but we have a hell of a lot of work to do on my golf game.
***
I reel in my guts and wait for them to settle in more or less the same place. It takes about an hour until the pain has generally subsided and I can begin to heal again. During this time the battle continues to rage around me. My hole changes hands several times, and I feed from these bloody hand-to-hand episodes. Within two hours, I’m feeling well enough to get up and move and I wait for a quiet moment to do so. When I do, I see the drained and mangled corpse of my friend lying at my feet.
For a long while there is just numbness that overwhelms me. I feel physically assailed and I stumble as if I have received a blow. As the realization of what I have done settles upon me, I sink to my knees and hold the corpse of my friend. Great sobs wrack my meat-cage as I learn that Whargoul can cry.
For a long time I just sit there with him, drool running from my mouth and onto his tattered uniform. Then slowly, I muster the courage to remove his journal from his tunic. Slumping away from the corpse, I open the black leather jacketed journal, immediately coming to a page with a portrait of myself staring back at me from the pages of his sacred tome. He really had been an excellent artist, and his style echoed the dark expressionist sentiment of painters like Dix or Nolde. I guess that’s why he had tasted so good. The book is packed with his drawings and they are almost all of me—me attacking a pillbox; me drinking a bottle of wine; me staring at a far-off target, a pair of field glasses in my hands. There are notes as well, many pages of disturbingly precise notes, written in his crisp and almost microscopic hand. Notes where he describes my abilities and behavior, and his personal commentary on appalling things which he had witnessed. This is his legacy, to be passed down to the centuries. The proof of the Whargoul’s profane existence. I am not a spirit that will be forgotten.
So, filled with a soul-deadening guilt, I place Kepler in the shell hole and kneel beside him, noticing for the first time the thousands of wildflowers which are the only thing that outnumber the Russians. They grow up and around him; bloody flowers are on his face. I reflect on the beauty and the horror, the juxtaposition that was a quality of Kepler’s drawings. I sit there and explore the pages, forgetting the battle which is re-forming around me.
“Hands up!” a voice barks from behind me.
I have been very bad today. I have shamed myself in front of my infernal court. I let a tank sneak up on me. I killed my only friend and ate his soul. And now I was about to be captured. I do put my hands up, and also I begin to scream. Standing there, my skin is a mass of gristled paste. It writhes upon my frame. My hands explode into several questing tendrils of rocketing flesh, which stretches as taut as piano wire in half a heartbeat, rooted deeply in their beings. The flesh of my face pulps with agonizing life as my mouthed tenta-claws rip through bone in their search for the enabling fluid of mastery. I suck.
I leave Kepler behind and run towards a passing T-34, ripping open its large upper hatch. The commander looks up in terror as he is shot in the head. I snake into the vehicle. Firing at and killing the other crew members, I quickly feed until bursting, and then dump the bodies out of the tank. Settling into the driver’s seat, I turn the tank about and drive towards the main mass of Soviet infantry which is coming up the slope. During my necrotic reveries the Soviet armored strike has managed to push the Germans back a couple of hundred meters, dislodging them from the hill we had so recently acquired. But for now the two combatants have released their death grip on each other, and have reeled apart to re-group and attack again. The troops are hustling up the hill, shouldering their anti-tank rifles and hoisting up their pants, sweating and puffing in the bright July sun. My tank slews from its path directly into theirs, smushing into their midst with crushing abandon. They scatter but I pursue, oblivious to the shells which bounce off the hull of my monster. I fire the machine-gun, driving them away, chasing and destroying their flesh which melts at the touch of my heated breath.
Then a larger explosion rocks the tank, setting the rear compartments aflame. I have been hit by a German shell from behind, and only have seconds to escape the entire tank going up in a scalding inferno. I writhe to the escape hatch and force my body through it, rolling off the hull and onto the bloody grass. The infantry has run off for the most part, but several are still firing at me. I look back towards the German lines and see again the snouts of the metal beasts protruding above the ridge—the Germans have succeeded in retrieving the ridge and again their panzers stand proudly upon it. From this position, they rake the valley before them with fire—the advancing Russian columns are caught in the open and annihilated. I throw myself into the ground as the Germans lambaste the landscape. But the Soviets do not know the meaning of the word defeat, or even pain. The Germans had been taught that their opponents are less than human; ever since they have come to Russia they have learned on a daily basis that actually quite the opposite is true. The average Russian, when wounded, will not cry out. He can dig through stone and survive by eating dirt. After having close to a hundred tanks destroyed in this sector alone, the Russians can still manage another attack with a hundred more, which come churning up the slope in a maelstrom of dust. Soldiers are clinging to the tanks hulls, and this time they can enjoy a longer ride due to the lack of opposing German infantry. They grind closer to my hidden position, and I flatten myself deeper into the ground to avoid being raked with lead. I hear the German tank guns behind me cracking, and see the horrific results as Soviet tanks burst into flaming conflagrations of shredding configurations. Charred flesh rains down around me as I strive to become one with the earth. But then a sound reaches my ears through the cacophony of war’s glorious carnage—a harsh, metallic voice that brings back memories of death and a dream of a vengeance unfulfilled—the voice of Necrosov, ordering his followers, the Voiden into battle.
I look up from my self-imposed tomb and see the form of my rival not more than thirty meters away, crouching behind the blazing hulk of a T-34/ 85. In that moment I lose it. It all comes back upon me; my murder at his hands, my murder of Kepler, the realization of the horror of my birth and life, the predicament of my present position, all that was me comes rushing in like a diseased tide, enveloping my being like a dirty rug and filling me with the broken hope that by killing my rival I can somehow erase my pain.
Oh, Necrosov! How the fortunes of war have thrown us together again. Maybe fate shall ordain that one day we will be boiled together in the collective flesh-pot, so that our beings will be turned into one even more murderous and indestructible scourge of humankind. In a way we are brothers, issued forth from the same diseased cunt that had doubtless spat out so many other killers of our ilk. Come to me killer, so I may murder you!
I run across the short expanse of mangled soil that separates us. I have changed much since my last encounter with him and his squads, but they had only glimpsed me for a moment anyway. I’d like to think that he knows who I am as I fly at him, arms telescoping into blades, blades which carve his flesh until they meet the steel beneath. It is as I suspected. Necrosov’s multi-limbed assistant, the one who had installed the rocket launcher into his arm, had also installed a metal exo-skeleton, which now stymied my blows. So shocked is he by the rapid filet of his meat that he merely gapes at me. His great metal jaw clangs open, yet no sound issues forth other than the escaping of some greasy steam. I have cloven a foot deep into each of his shoulders and we stare into each other’s twisted faces.
“It’s me, brother, your womb-mate. Let’s go visit Daddy.”
“You’re not worthy, yet,” he says in a rush of gears. “When it’s time, you’ll be summoned. Until then you just aaaaAAAAAA!!!!”
His face issues a verbal blow that is considerably more powerful than anything that I could muster. His machinations are deep and terrible, amplified by steel and wire, plasti
c and brain-juice. It blows off some off my clothes and sends me sprawling. He follows it with a satchel charge which I pluck out of the air and send sailing towards a group of Voiden who are just preparing to fire. It explodes in their midst with a scarlet roar, sizzling them. I leap into the explosion as soon as the main force has passed over me, moving through their life-fume and landing on the other side. Momentarily shielded by the dense smoke and escaping souls, I scramble to a crouch and search about for a weapon as my adversary sends a volley of bullets after me.
My natural shape has returned and I lack the power for any more full-scale transformations, like dicks to cunts or arms to saws. I need power and I need it quickly.
The Soviets are again assaulting up the slope towards the panzers. My adversary has momentarily lost track of me and I leap into a fissure of sundered earth, burrowing into it like a mole, elongating and telescoping my fingers into feeding tubes which snake up the slope, questing pseudo-pods, seeking purchase in pulpified flesh. And there is no lack of it as the Soviet supermen throw themselves into the breach. The machines and men are hopelessly entangled with each other and the venue of advance is severely limited due to the amount of blazing vehicles and piles of mutilated corpses. Their blood and ism oozes from their sundered bodies, their lives escape them and pass into mine with a sickening sound. I bloat on death’s harvest.