Tigers on the Western Front (Royal Zombie Corps Book 2)

by Harald,C. M.

  'The war takes all types Sergeant.' Marsh replied.

  'So what do you know about our Tigers?' Wells asked their old drill instructor.

  'Boots aren't shiny enough.' Simpson complained, scuffing the sole of his boot across Marsh's admittedly dull boots.

  Although they had been at Étaples for a week, Simpson still insisted on parading them every morning. He had set himself the mission of meeting his high standards of appearance. This was on the grounds that the troops passing through the depot needed to see that soldiers who had seen action could still set a good example. Simpson even insisted on a small amount of daily drill, something wholly approved of by the long term Canaries, the NCOs based at the camp to drill and mould the troops passing through the depot. Lieutenant Scott had let Simpson get on with it, knowing that it was best to keep the detachment busy so they did not get up to trouble in their idle time. Besides, if Simpson got his way on this issue, it was one less thing Scott would have to listen to the Staff Sergeant complaining about.

  The troops were dismissed from parade and joined Wells, who had excused himself from the drill to forage. He had managed to liberate some chocolate from the supplies department in exchange for some battlefield mementos. Not that the mementos were actually from the battlefields, but then supply staff would be unable to tell. Simpson had conveniently gone to file some paperwork, so there was no need to worry about sharing with him or the atmosphere created when he was present.

  'How many more days will it take here?' Simmonds asked, bored with the return to the routine of Étaples.

  'Couple more days to get through the rest of the camp.' Marsh said, 'There were some new arrivals last night and we'll need to check them.'

  'Then what?' Davies asked.

  'We move on to the next bloody camp is what.' Simmonds moaned.

  'At least we'll be away from this dump. The other depots have got to be better.' Davies said, 'You don't hear about mutinies in them.' He referred back to the incident in the summer with the ANZAC troops, further souring the relationship between the Canaries who trained the troops that passed through the camp, and the troops themselves.

  'But we've not found anyone yet. Surely we should have found someone who has some sort of control over the Tigers?' Davies was dispirited by their lack of success.

  'That means this 'ere Marsh is an endangered species then.' Wells quipped, 'One of a kind.'

  'Don't let Simpson hear you say that. He'll shout "Hallelujah, there's only one Marsh in this here spit and polish army."' Morgan chuckled.

  'Seriously, if I'm the only one who can handle the Tigers, we'll never get to turn them into a useful weapon. It's all very well having a few of them running around the battlefield, but we need hundreds, if not more.' Marsh said.

  'But how do you control them?' Simmonds said around a mouthful of chocolate, a question they had asked before.

  'Absolutely no bloody idea.' Marsh replied again.

  'And how did the foreign ones in the village understand you was talking English?' Morgan asked.

  'Same way we understand you Welshman. We don't.' Simmonds teased, earning a punch from Morgan.

  'I don't really know how it work in that shell-hole.' Marsh explained before going into more detail than he had previously shared with his friends, 'I don't need to see them, the experiments Colonel Hudson conducted showed that. I don't think they need to hear me, and it does not matter which language they used to speak, they still understand me. The Colonel said it may be some kind of spiritualism or subliminal consciousness. He kept talking about this bloke called William James and the idea of spirituality. Also he thinks it may be connected with Hinduism. The word he kept using was telepathy.'

  'If Hindus are involved, there's some Indian soldiers here. We might want to try them?' Matthews suggested.

  'You know that only some Indians are Hindu don't you?' Wells had been sitting quietly, listening as the matter of religion came up, 'Maybe there's something to the idea of it being in the mind as well. I was there when those Tigers set about you in the village, likewise when you stopped Gibson from eating me in shell-hole. They just stopped on your command. It was so quick it didn't seem like they'd heard something. It was like they didn't think about it. Perhaps you fired your thoughts straight into their minds?'

  'Hudson tried to get me to just use my mind to control the Tigers back at the camp, but I just couldn't seem to get them to do what I wanted. It almost seemed like they knew I was talking to them, but they couldn't quite hear what I said.'

  'Perhaps you need some practice then?' Wells said, 'We've got a Tiger here. You should spend some time trying to just sent it thoughts?'

  'Would be better use of my time than spending it polishing my boots.' Marsh said.

  'Aye, and you could tell it to attack Simpson and do us all a favour.' Morgan suggested.

  'Pass me more chocolate.' Simmonds asked, before unwrapping the bar that was handed to him.

  'Simpson doesn't like the Tigers.' Wells explained, 'When Scott told him about them he nearly went apoplectic. He nearly accused Scott of lying about such an unnatural beast. He even suggested that the Tigers were not really a fair weapon, at least until Scott pointed out things like poison gas and machine guns. In fact Marsh, it's possible that he dislikes them more than he dislikes you.'

  Simpson had been less than impressed when Scott had briefed him on the details of the operations of the 1st Experimental Battalion. The new arrival had not at first believed that there was such a thing as the Tigers, at least until he had been introduced to one. Then Simpson had been shocked at how Marsh, a completely useless soldier by his standards, had such control over the creature. Scott had gone on to explain how their encounters with the creatures had shown not only Marsh's unique skill, but also that the Tigers had great potential as a weapon.

  'That fits. He's not asked to see our pet yet and always keeps clear when we do the experiments to find other handlers.' Davies said around a piece of chocolate he had just stuffed into his mouth.

  'He'll have to get used to having them around. If this idea takes off we'll be the unit responsible for it.' Marsh explained.

  'Left turn!' shouted the young recruit. He was fresh from England, only having completed his training within the last few weeks. Unsure what his future held, he could end up in almost any non-specialist unit having been sent to the infantry depot.

  'No.' Said Marsh who was looking through the slit into the animal cage. Davies who was in the entrance to the tent gave a subtle shake of his head to Wells outside.

  'Sorry lad,' Wells said, 'You aren't ready yet.' He turned to the next one in line, 'Next.'

  As planned, they were using one corner of the parade ground. The cover was that they were looking for men with an exceptional command voice for accelerated promotion and training. The open secret was that it involved animals. The animal crate containing the Tiger was kept in a canvas tent, supervised by Marsh. The soldiers were paraded in front of the tent, their backs to the tent, with Wells putting them through their paces before asking each to demonstrate his command voice. In their experiments in Belgium, it had been established that Marsh could command the Tigers from this distance, and in these conditions.

  'About. Turn!' The next soldier shouted. A moment later another shake of the head came from Davies with Wells moving on to the next rank. They had already screened thousands of soldiers this way, further reinforcing their belief that Marsh was unique.

  'Next!' Wells shouted.

  'Right. Turn!' The next soldier barked. Davies did not shake his head.

  'Carry on private.' Wells said, in the absence of any response from the tent.

  'About, face!' This time Davies nodded.

  'What is your name private?" Wells asked.

  'Bill, I mean William Rose, Sergeant.' The private replied, surprised at the unexpected interest that had been shown in him as opposed to his peers.

  'Fall out and wait by the tent behind you. We will talk shortly.' Rose fell out,
his face somewhere between fear and excitement as he made his way to stand by the tent. He knew this sergeant was looking for command potential, and had been so fussy, so was very surprised to have been selected.

  The remainder of the afternoon saw the discovery of one other person with the ability to influence the Tiger. The successful discovery of the two other potential handlers was the cause of significant celebration. After several days searching with no success, two people had been discovered who had the ability to control the Tigers. Morgan was particularly pleased as the second person had been from among a group of Indian soldiers who were awaiting redeployment following their recovery from minor injuries.

  'I told you to look at the Indian's didn't I.' Morgan smiled.

  'Yes, and I told you they aren't all Hindu as well. The man we picked out was a follower of Muhammad.' Wells replied with a bigger grin.

  'Marsh, are you going to train these new handlers?' Morgan asked.

  'I wouldn't know where to begin. I barely understand it myself. Colonel Hudson has some theories, so he'll get started on them before we return.' Marsh replied, 'We've got to find more.'

  'So they'll not be staying with us then?' Morgan looked disappointed as he was enjoying the chance to brag about his successful suggestion to check with the Indian troops.

  'They go back to our camp, Scott has signed off on the travel warrants. So they'll be off tomorrow,' Wells explained, 'while we carry on around the depots.'

  First Combat

  Our men were terrified. I debriefed a number of them gaining their trust through the usual methods of good care and shared acquaintances. One junior officer used the word 'Valkyries' to describe this new British weapon. This was in spite of the male gender of the assailants. His description fit exactly with the phenomenon that the French have been calling 'zombies'.

  The effectiveness of this new weapon is the way in which it strikes fear into the hearts of the defender. Witnessing their peers being torn asunder completely undermines the morale of the defender. It is vital that we deploy defensive measures at the earliest opportunity to dispel the spreading of mythic stories about the powers of these so-called 'Valkyries' or 'zombies'.

  Fragment from report on the first British deployment of Tigers on the Western Front. Colonel Nicolai, German Military Intelligence. Undated, but believed to be late 1916. Found among fire damaged German archives, 1963.

  It was the end of 1916 by the time the squad returned to the battalion camp in Belgium. By this time they had travelled around nine British infantry depots. During this time they had recruited a total of thirty-two handlers from the tens of thousands of soldiers they had encountered. The handlers took all forms, not just Indians, but ANZACs, men from all over the British Isles, Canadians and even a single Belgian who had used his dual nationality to join the British army rather than their tiny Belgium counterpart. All were enlisted men. The recruiting squad had not been allowed to recruit from the officer pool. It seemed that the Royal Flying Corps had priority among the officer corps.

  The war had progressed little during this time, no end in sight, deadlock reigning across the battlefields. Exhausted, the armies disengaged. The men questioned how much longer the conflict would last. The Battle of the Somme had ground to a bloody halt at some point in November. Few sustained advances had been made and the sheer number of casualties was an open secret. The stalled offensive, along with a growing realisation that the Royal Navy had also been unable to break the Germans at Jutland in May, did not bode well for the future. Even the slaughter at Verdun was reaching an indecisive end, with the French and Germans equally worn by nearly a year of fighting, the French having recovered much of the territory the Germans had taken at the start of the campaign.

  The encampment of the 1st Experimental Battalion had moved further behind the lines and grown considerably. The first thing that struck Marsh as he returned to the new base, was the degree of security. There were three fences around the encampment, patrolled by Military Police, with a great deal of signage warning potential intruders of the risk they would encounter dangerous animals. Colonel Hudson had spun out the cover of experimental animal combat uses and later Marsh heard a wolf howling. Upon investigation he found that there were actual zoo animals at the camp, carefully sited by the edges for any potential spies or aerial spotters to draw the conclusions Hudson wanted them to reach. Temporary barracks and administration buildings sat on the edge of an enclosed inner area of the camp. It was in this secured inner area that the true work was done on the Tigers, where they were kept and research was conducted. This was all safely away from the non-handlers, and even the rest of the unit, who knew little other than the myths that were fed to them by the men who had been present when the first Tigers had been captured.

  A further thing that struck Marsh was the small number of soldiers actually present. Very few soldiers were visible within the encampment, with the most visual being the Military Police. However, actual soldiers within the Battalion were rare. When he later spoke to Colonel Hudson, he found that the unit had not been brought up to normal infantry battalion strength. It had been kept in a weak state with the intention of those few soldiers present, providing battlefield security for the handlers. A full strength battalion was simply not needed.

  The last weeks of 1916 were spent on working up tactics and sharing the skills that the different handlers had developed. There were very few Tigers to go around. In addition to the two that Marsh had captured in the village, a small number had been captured, and delivered, from the front-line. Colonel Hudson was still having trouble establishing the mode of transmission to the initial patients. It was clear that if you died as a result of being bitten you had the chance of turning into a zombie. The Colonel had provisionally estimated that someone in these circumstances had a 75% chance of reanimation. Hudson's research had lead him to suspect that those who came from the front line were initially infected with the bacteria close to, or at, the moment of death. It was suspected that this bacteria may not have even been delivered by the zombies, but simply been present on a surface on in a liquid. Geographically, cases were very limited. In the British sectors, this amounted to a ten mile stretch of the line, although the French had grudgingly confirmed some cases in parts of the line under their control. Unfortunately, some of the cases from the front were caused by secondary infections, people who had been killed by the initial cases. Clearly there was a threat to the front line soldier from these untamed creatures. There were even rumours, ones which the Colonel would not confirm, of deliberately caused cases, whereby the Colonel had administered the bacteria to terminally ill casualties. There was even a joke, circulating the barracks, that the army would replace the firing squad with an eternal conscription into the unit.

  All in all, there were few Tigers to hand. Minus those that had been expended due to experimentation, there were exactly fifty Tigers. Spread across the thirty-two handlers recruited, thirty-three when Marsh was counted, there was a great deal of slack in the system.

  Looking after the zombies had proved to be the subject of trial and error. The original zombies had shown little evidence of degradation, with minimal rotting noted. They were routinely fed animals, but it was unclear by what process they extracted energy from the flesh, as it seemed to pass through their digestive system in an unprocessed form. For all intents and purposes, the Tigers were dead. There were none of the functions that would be found in a living human. They did not breath, they did not digest, their hair and nails did not grow. They possessed neither the majority of urges, nor emotions, of a human being. There was just one over-riding drive, to consume the living. There was nothing alive about them, except in one sense. On the bacterial level there was a limited amount of life. Namely the very bacteria that animated them and colonies of the naturally corruptive bacteria found in human bodies. The corruptive bacteria seemed to make little progress against the reanimating strain.

  Once the first handlers began to arrive, true experimentation wi
th control could be developed. These first handlers had arrived shortly after they had been recruited in the camps, long before Marsh returned from his mission. Some handlers were more effective than others, with distance of command being a key factor. Some handlers could only control with direct line-of-sight, while a very small number could control merely with a thought. With practice, most handlers were able to improve their abilities and with extra Tigers being made available for training, it was found that some handlers could control large numbers of zombies as long as the instructions were kept basic. In an extremely small number of cases, a few handlers could control larger numbers of Tigers with a significant degree of precision.

  Then, of course, there were accidents. The accident that everyone guarded against was exposure to an attack by a Tiger, either deliberate or accidental. Unfortunately, some troops became complacent around the passive zombies and let their guard down. This had only happened once, but the ranks of the Tigers were swollen by a further five animated corpses as a result. Other men had been more fortunate, with people being victims of bites and scratches, but not significantly injured. Even when under command, the Tigers would snap and scratch at nearby humans, especially ones with no handling skills. There had also been casualties among some of the Tigers, mainly when the humans around them became scared or on the occasions when a handler lost control. Once a handler had slipped and banged their head on a large stone. Upon losing consciousness, the two Tigers they had been controlling became full independent and charged the unconscious handler. That handler had not survived the attack, but had the good fortune of not reanimating. However, the two Tigers had not survived the attentions of the terrified security squad that had accompanied the handler. Thus the thirty-two handlers had become thirty-one. Yet even with diminishing numbers, Colonel Hudson did not authorise a further recruitment drive as he wanted to work on tactics.