By the Blood of Heroes

by Joseph Nassise

  As expected, the shambler made no effort to avoid his blows, and it was starting to develop a considerable dent in the side of its head, but Burke was worried he wouldn’t finish it off before the rest of the shamblers managed to get that door open. Now that they’d seen how it was done, it might not hold them as long as it had the first time. He needed to solve this and solve it fast.

  As he levered another devastating blow to the shambler’s face, it occurred to him that while he might have lost his .45, he was still carrying a firearm. The Colt Firestarter Graves had given him to test was still in its holster on the left side of his belt.

  Without giving himself time to think about all the things that might go wrong with an untried weapon, Burke used his mechanical arm to push the shambler back a bit and snatched the gun out of its holster with the other, shoving the barrel against the creature’s chest and pulling the trigger.

  The shot tore right through the shambler, blowing a fist-sized chunk of flesh and bone out of its back before it embedded itself into the door behind them with a solid thunk.

  Burke barely noticed, for he was too busy staring at the shambler. The enzyme that coated the round went to work on the creature’s flesh, sending scorching trails of liquid lightning burning through its veins like fire following a trail of gasoline until open flames belched forth from the shambler’s eyes, ears, and mouth. Burke jerked his metal hand up over his face to protect himself against the sudden eruption of fire, managing to keep himself from being scorched to a crisp and coming away with only a few patches of singed flesh, and then shoved the still-burning corpse to one side where it was swept away.

  As the other shamblers lurched toward him, Burke opened up with the Firestarter again, causing those closest to him to erupt in blazing funeral pyres as flames tore them apart from the inside out. The sight of the walking dead dying so easily from just a single shot practically had him shouting with glee. When he’d cleared those closest to the door, he scrambled to his feet and climbed up onto the platform between the cars, knocking the burning creatures over the side with a quick thrust of his mechanical arm.

  A glance through the still open door showed more of them moving forward, those behind pushing against the backs of those in front as they clambered over one another in their desire to reach him. Burke had no intention of giving them the chance.

  He fired on the closest shambler, hitting it right in the face and sending the shot into the creature behind it as well. He then made use of the resulting confusion inside to leap for the door, intent on sealing the creatures back up again.

  Except the door wouldn’t move.

  A hunk of burning shambler flesh was wedged in the track, jamming it open and preventing Burke from getting the door closed. As he struggled with it, the shamblers inside the car managed to get around their blazing comrades, lurching forward, almost within reach . . .

  The rifle fire that sounded over his shoulder was uncomfortably close, but it did the job. The shamblers were knocked back into the crowd behind them, giving Burke the moment he needed to kick the unidentifiable piece of flesh out of the way and haul the door shut just as the shamblers inside reached the opening. Without hesitation, Burke used his mechanical hand to bend the handle until it broke off in place, sealing the door shut.

  He turned to find Jones standing on the opposite platform, his Enfield in hand and a relieved grin on his face.

  “Guess we should have searched the train, huh?”

  Burke didn’t bother to answer. It was a stupid oversight, one they were lucky to survive. If he’d come along a few minutes later, if the creatures had managed to get the door open, all their efforts would have been for nothing.

  It didn’t bear thinking about.

  As Jones kept watch to make sure the shamblers didn’t find a way to knock the door open with sheer numbers, Burke climbed down between the cars, making sure to keep his feet on the portion of the coupler that was attached to the dining car, and then grasped the pin in both hands. He heaved upward, expecting it to come right out.

  Nothing happened.

  The pin was stuck.

  “Damn it!” he shouted. “You motherfuckin’ stupid piece of . . .”

  The rest of his statement was drowned out by the shrieking sound of the train’s whistle as Graves tried to get his attention.

  Hold your horses, Professor . . .

  Burke raised one foot and hammered his boot against the pin, trying to free it from its seat. One kick. Two kicks. Three. Four. Five.

  The fifth time was the charm. The pin rattled in its seat, and Burke wasted no time grabbing it by its ring with his mechanical fingers, hauling it upward, disengaging the locomotive from the rest of the train and causing it to surge forward now that it was free of all the weight behind it.

  Congratulating himself on a job well done, Burke let Jones help him back up onto the platform, and the two of them rejoined the others in the locomotive. As they came through the door, Graves turned to Burke and said, “Station coming up,” pointing through the front window at the building looming ahead.

  Burke recognized the unspoken question.

  “Don’t stop,” he told him. “Don’t even slow down.”

  The professor did what he was told.

  They rolled through the station without slowing, ignoring the surprised shouts of those on the platform who’d been expecting the train to stop. They did the same thing a half hour later, when they reached the station at Saint-Mihiel.

  Word must have gotten out about the runaway train shortly after that, however, for when they began their approach to the station at Commercy they could see that the platform had been cleared, the potential passengers replaced with several riflemen and a three-man machine-gun crew. A flagman was also present, and he began waving his flags in a series of signals the minute they came into view.

  Burke had no idea what message the flagman was trying to impart to him, nor did he care. Stopping was out of the question. When it became clear that the train wasn’t going to heed their signals, another order was given and the machine gunner opened fire on the train.

  Burke instinctively ducked, as did the rest of his men, but then straightened up and laughed aloud as the armor that covered the front of the train deflected the bullets with ease. Graves pushed the throttle forward, giving them more speed, and they shot through the Commercy station unharmed.

  The element of surprise was lost now, though. Word would be going out to all the stations on the line that the train wasn’t answering commands to stop, and resistance to their movement would only get worse. Burke’s biggest fear was that the enemy would blow the tracks ahead of them, effectively ending their run for safety. That’s what he would do if he were in their position. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it if that was the option they chose.

  He could, however, prepare for other possibilities. He ordered Compton to man the machine-gun turret on the roof of the train and put Williams and Jones at the windows in the dining car just behind him. He took up a position on the platform behind the tender car, where he could see what was coming but still communicate with Jack and the professor without trouble.

  At both Saint-Dizier and Vitry-le-François, the enemy repeated what they’d done at Commercy, flooding the platform with troops who fired at them with an assortment of small arms and what few crew-operated weapons they had on hand. Compton opened fire as soon as the opportunity arose, cutting the enemy down with long bursts from the Hotchkiss on the roof above, and Burke was suddenly reminded of the corporal’s prayer from days before, his desire to kill as many of the enemy as possible. Seems someone upstairs was listening, Burke thought, and then said a prayer of his own just in case they still had the big man’s attention.

  They rolled through a long stretch of open country without encountering any resistance, and Burke found himself staring out the window, wondering how Charlie was doing. He hoped like hell that the big sergeant had managed to lose his pursuers and slip away into the woods.
If he could evade pursuit long enough to rendezvous with the freedom fighters outside of Reims, he’d have a chance of making it back to the other side of the lines.

  His thoughts turned from his friend to his brother. The sheer bedlam of their escape from Verdun hadn’t left Burke with any time to think, never mind sort through the conflicting feelings he had about the mission in general. He’d been surprised by the concern he’d felt when Jack had turned up missing back at Stalag 113 and even more surprised when the sight of him had failed to stir the old anger that he’d kept carefully banked and burning for so many years in his heart. Before today he would have scoffed at anyone who’d dared tell him that time heals all wounds, but perhaps he’d finally begun to see the truth of that statement.

  Then again, maybe he was just tired.

  He had just decided to return to the engine car and check up on the professor when a speck of motion out on the horizon caught his eye. He leaned farther out the door, staring at it, trying to make out just what it was.

  The object grew larger as it came closer, but still he couldn’t tell just what it was.

  Something about it troubled him.

  Something about the size.

  Or the color . . .

  “Sonofabitch!”

  Burke hauled the door open to the car behind him and shouted, “Stay sharp, Compton! Aircraft at 10:00!”

  “I’m on him, Captain!”

  Burke returned to his previous position on the platform between the cars and watched as the speck on the horizon resolved itself into a Fokker triplane painted a brilliant red.

  Richthofen!

  The German ace came in with guns blazing, which were answered a moment later by the stutter of the Hotchkiss as Compton returned fire. As the Fokker swept overhead, Burke joined the fray, unloading what was left in the Firestarter’s cylinder at the aircraft as well, hoping for a lucky shot that might send the undead bastard at the controls up in a blazing pyre of artificial fire.

  The Fokker swept past, unharmed, and banked around, preparing for another pass.

  That’s when Jack began screaming for him from the front of the train.

  “Mike! You better get up here, Mike!”

  Burke abandoned his position and made his way between the two cars to the engine, where he found Graves bent over the controls and Jack standing in front of one of the forward viewing ports, an expression of real fear on his face.

  “What now?”

  “You better take a look for yourself,” Jack said, stepping aside as Burke pressed his face to the viewing slit.

  Squatting on the tracks ahead of them was a massive armored contraption the size of a small house. It rested on two large treads, each one nearly as tall as the troops standing next to it, and sprouted no less than six major armaments—a 57 mm cannon and five machine guns—all of them currently pointing in their direction.

  Burke recognized the contraption as an A7V, the largest tank built to date and one the Allies were having trouble dealing with on the battlefield. If the damned things hadn’t been so prone to mechanical issues, they might have pushed the Allies all the way back to Paris. Its appearance here meant that the Germans had finally decided stopping the train was more important than stopping it intact.

  Things were about to get ugly.

  Burke had previous experience with the A7V, having faced down a trio of the massive vehicles during the fourth Battle of Ypres several months before. He knew that it required a crew of twenty to operate it at full capacity, but trained crewmen were in high demand, and odds were this one didn’t have the manpower needed to run it 100 percent effectively.

  That might not help them much, though, because this one was parked with its treads straddling the train tracks, and even from this distance they could see a spotter standing up in the hatch, a small scope in one hand.

  “I think he’s going to . . .”

  That was as far as Burke got.

  The forward-facing 57 mm cannon hurled a shell in their direction.

  It wasn’t a difficult shot, as the train was headed right for the tank and all the gunner had to do was point the barrel of the cannon in the right direction.

  “Everybody hold on!” Burke shouted behind him and then locked his mechanical hand around the nearest support, bracing himself for what was to come.

  The shell screamed toward them, crossing the distance in mere seconds and impacting right against the sloping piece of armor that covered the front of the locomotive. Most of the explosion was forced aside thanks to the armor, but enough got through to really shake them up. Both Jack and Graves were thrown to the floor, though neither of them was hurt in the process.

  “More speed!” Burke shouted. “We need more speed!”

  Graves shook his head. “I can’t! That’s all she’s got!”

  Burke didn’t think it was enough.

  He sent Jack to fetch Williams and turned his attention to the furnace, feverishly shoveling wood into the feeder, hoping to raise the temperature of the fire and thereby produce a greater head of steam. When the others returned, they added their efforts to his, stuffing the hopper almost to overflowing.

  He could hear the staccato shout of the Hotchkiss and the answering roar of the Spandau machine guns on Richthofen’s aircraft as it swept by on another pass, but there was nothing he could do to help Compton now. If they didn’t deal with the tank, it was all over anyway.

  Another round screamed toward them, missing by inches and going past the train on the left side, so close that Burke imagined he could have reached out and touched it.

  A glance at the gauge told him they were creeping up over sixty miles per hour now, which was faster than Burke had ever gone before.

  “Five hundred yards,” Graves called out, and Burke rushed over for a quick look, his mind racing, trying to come up with a plan but knowing that their only hope was to ram the tank and pray for the best.

  His gaze fell on the stretch of land behind the tank, and he was surprised to see the rolls of concertina wire and abandoned trenches that marked the edge of no-man’s-land, that boundary between the opposing armies that shifted back and forth as ground was lost, gained, and lost again.

  If they could get past the tank and into no-man’s-land . . .

  “More fuel!” Burke ordered. He reached past Graves and pushed the throttle all the way forward, trying to squeeze another few miles per hour out of the engine.

  The tank fired again, scoring another hit on their front end, and this time it tore away the armor, exposing the bare bones of the locomotive underneath.

  One more shot and it was going to be all over . . .

  The distance between the two vehicles seemed to close in a heartbeat, and Burke was suddenly screaming for everyone to brace themselves as the front of the tank loomed in their windshield.

  There was a tremendous crash, and Burke felt himself flying through the air only to slam into something less yielding than he was.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  NO-MAN’S-LAND

  The whistle of a mortar attack brought Burke awake with a start. The sound of the shells screaming through the air was one that any trench soldier learned to listen for, and hearing it now sent his heart hammering in his chest and his head swiveling from side to side, searching for a place to hunker down and wait out the attack.

  That’s when he realized he wasn’t in a trench at all, but in some kind of metal bunker . . .

  . . . the train!

  It all came back to him in a rush. Freeman’s rescue. Charlie’s sacrifice. The seizure of the train and the long ride across occupied France to the front at Nogent. The battle with the tank and the collision that had ended it.

  He pushed himself to his feet and shuffled his way over to the nearest window. Looking out, he could see the cratered earth and lines of barbed wire that were indicative of no-man’s-land.

  And there, a few hundred yards beyond that, the first of the trenches that marked the Allied lines.

  T
hey were so close!

  The sound of the mortars came again, the shrill screaming whistle of a shell moving at subsonic speed. He found himself ducking down as multiple shells slammed into the ground and exploded less than a dozen yards away from the train.

  Something about their placement bothered him, but he was still pretty fuzzy from the crash.

  He tried to puzzle it out.

  Something about where the shells were landing . . .

  Shit! We have to get out of here!

  He glanced around the dim interior and saw the rest of the team lying in the wreckage. Worried that they had only moments available to them, Burke rushed over to the nearest man, who turned out to be Graves, and shook him awake.

  “The Germans are firing on the train,” he said as soon as Graves could focus. “We need to move!”

  The professor was still groggy, but he was able to function enough to drag himself over to Jones and begin to revive him while Burke moved to his brother’s side. Jack was just starting to come to when Burke knelt down beside him and saw blood on his brother’s shirt.

  “How badly are you hurt?” Burke asked.

  Freeman put a hand to the back of his head and when he took it away there was fresh blood on it. Still, he only grimaced slightly when he said, “Must have banged my head. It’s a bleeder, but I don’t think it’s too bad.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, on your feet then!” Burke helped him up, then slid an arm under his own and helped lead him out of the train car behind Graves and Jones. They took shelter in a large shell hole about ten feet from the wreck as Burke went back for the others.

  The whistling came again, and Burke flattened himself on the ground just as the mortar rounds slammed into the earth nearby. The earth shook savagely, but the explosives did little more than throw a lot of dirt into the air. The shells were starting to zero in.