Delvers LLC- Surviving Ludus

by Blaise Corvin (ed)

  He gave me the stink eye when he saw I had my men pulled aside at the back of the boat and that we were ignoring him, but that was as far as he would take it; he knew better than to push me.

  “Remember the plan, remember your training, God will protect us,” I said to my boys. There wasn’t much more that needed to be said. For days we had discussed every detail of our plan and our part to play in the taking of Omaha Beach.

  “Sergeant,” said one of my men, Jackson, the only black man in my squad. “Here, take this,” he said shakily as he tried to push a piece of paper at me. I assumed it was some kind of a death note for a loved one in case he was killed in the coming battle. I immediately pushed it back at him.

  “I don’t need to, you are going to live. Besides I’m going to run out in front, so don’t give it to my dumb ass. If anyone is going to eat some bullets it’s going to be me. Give it to this greasy fuck,” I said pointing at the Italian-American in my squad, Pettini. “You know how greased up these Italian motherfuckers are, he will probably outrun all of us. That shit is like lube on an engine piston. All he has to do is imagine those Germans are his mama's spaghetti and he’ll take off like a racehorse,” I said with a smile, and was rewarded with a round of laughter. Even Pettini enjoyed my crass humor and was more than immune to it by now.

  I could tell Jackson was still scared though. “Fine,” I half shouted. “Give me that fuckin note. Is the address in here?” He nodded. It was totally unprofessional, but for some reason I knew the situation demanded it. I reached out and hugged Jackson; the rest of my boys joined in on the hug, which we held for a minute. Then we fell back into our circle, this time everyone was holding each other’s shoulders.

  “I fucking love you salty sons of bitches, each and every one of you. You are the sons I never had, and I couldn’t be prouder to serve with you. Let’s give these motherfuckers hell,” I said with a dark grin that slowly spread to my men. We had been through a lot together, and they had seen me in my killing zone before; no quarter would be given to our enemies today. Another one of my boys broke off from the circle and ran to the side of the boat and threw up just over the edge. I didn’t blame him, to be honest I had felt sick as hell that day as well, but I didn’t want to show any weakness.

  That was when we crested another wave, then bottomed out hard. All of us almost lost our footing, and then the sound of horror started up, German machine gun emplacements. Tracers arced out of the distant pillboxes on the beach and dashed across the waves all around us, some flying into the allied boats ahead of us. I heard screams and knew men were dying; my blood boiled as my heart broke. The driver of our boat redlined the engine, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. The machine gun fire never stopped coming. We were near the back of the boat formation so we were saved from the worst of it, but not immune by any standard.

  A line of fire stitched across our boat out of nowhere, cutting a few men from other squads damn near in half. Their insides had burst out like God damn meatloaf that had been wrapped in too tight of a package. I had known they were already dead before the medic on the boat could rush over to them.

  I knelt over the closest one and said a prayer out loud. Those around me crossed their hands in respect, even the ones that weren’t religious, just as an easy way to honor the dead. I stood up straight with hatred in my heart, put my Thompson submachine gun to my shoulder and let out a few bursts of fire back towards the German pillboxes. I was much too far away, in a moving boat, in wet and humid conditions, and even though I think I had properly adjusted the elevation to account for trajectory decay there was no way my shots would land. It still made me feel better, even if I was just wasting ammo.

  “Stop firing, stop fucking firing!” the Platoon Sergeant at the front of the boat shouted. “We are in a God damn moving boat! Are you insane? If we hit a wave you will cut half of us down.”

  “Sorry, Sarge, and yes,” I said half-heartedly with a wink. I couldn’t help the reaction, I had no respect for this man or his incompetence. Of course, I knew this was a little hypocritical of me considering the dangerous outburst I had just had. I had no idea why that clown had chosen to ride in the same boat as me.

  The closer we got to the beach the more the machine gun fire hit us, and every time it didn’t take one of my boys I thanked God while cursing myself for being so selfish. Why did my men deserve to live while others around us died? That would be a question that would nag me for years to come, but to be human is to err, and another part of me accepted that much.

  The ramp at the front of the boat had started to lower itself into the waves and I started my squad’s chant. My closest troops behind me grabbed my shoulders, and the ones behind them grabbed their shoulders.

  “Spartans, Spartans, Spartans, Spartans,” we chanted. As soon as the ramp was fully open and the Platoon Sergeant at the front and the other squads started offloading, our chant culminated in a final shout before we also began to run.

  “SPARTANS!” The cry ripped from my throat as I pushed forward, eager to get at the enemy. We were just a bit too far out from the beach proper so when I jumped off of the ramp and into the waves my head went under the water. It was exhilarating, and then terrifying as I realized some of my men might not be as confident in the water as I was. I pushed forward a few steps until I got some higher footing and my head popped out of the salty waves.

  The German machine gun fire and its corresponding tracers were landing everywhere. We needed cover or concealment at that very second.

  “Smoke! Lay down some fuckin smoke!” I shouted. I turned around and noticed most of my men were still bobbing around in the waves trying to get stable footing. “FUCK!” A private from another squad had been next to me in the water. I noticed a smoke on his kit and yanked it off, pulled the pin, and threw it forward. The private just looked at me, stunned. “Quit staring, son, get up that fucking beach!”

  Somewhere near my feet under the waves, something tugged on one of my legs. I reached down, my head going under the water to extend my reach. I didn’t dare open my eyes in the salty brine. I grabbed the thing grabbing me and yanked upward. I pulled until a screaming private from another squad bobbed up out of the water. I held him aloft until he got his feet under him. He cleared the water from his eyes and saw my face and rank and sputtered out a thank you.

  “Thanks, Sarge, I thought I was going to die down there, I couldn’t breathe—” He would have kept blubbering but I cut him off.

  “Shut up, move, get up that fucking beach!” I yelled as I shoved him forward.

  I suddenly realized I had to piss bad, but the water around me was stained with the blood of American soldiers, making these waves a holy place in my mind. I waited until I made it onto solid land then happily pissed my pants. Then I rushed over to the nearest iron emplacement meant to keep armor off of the beach and I put my back against it, taking a headcount as my boys ran to me. As soon as they were close enough I started yelling orders.

  “We can’t stay here grouped like this, we make too convenient a target. We need sporadic cover fire as we move. Don’t blow your whole loads, but make sure to keep them honest. Don’t make it easy on them. I’ll lead. SPARTANS!”

  I spun around the anti-armor emplacement and raised my Thompson to my shoulder as I jogged, plinking at anything that even remotely looked like a German or a machine gun nest.

  “Get some more fucking smoke down!” I yelled behind me. Immediately a smoke grenade flew over me, thrown from one of my men; my boys were well trained. I jumped into a rut behind a small sand berm just short of the smoke grenade as it started sputtering out the concealment that would keep us alive. I had spun in air to land on my back and I had finally gotten my first good view of the battlefield. Well… it was more like a killing field. I didn’t realize how good my squad had been doing compared to the rest of the rank and file. Proud American soldiers were being cut apart left and right. The air was dense with smoke and it smelled richly of blood. Men were screaming everywh
ere as body parts flew into the air… It was a God damn massacre.

  I felt hot tears on my face cut through the residual moisture of the ice-cold ocean water. The rest of my boys piled into the small divot that I was in and saw what I saw.

  “We gotta fucking help them, Sarge,” Jackson shouted.

  “And we will! Throw another fucking smoke grenade, let’s pop this fucking top. Let’s kill some fucking Krauts!” I shouted with enough hot hatred in my soul to power a God damned coal engine.

  “Last smoke, Sarge,” yelled one of my men as he threw the grenade forward of our position. I got up on my haunches, switched out my half-spent magazine for a full one, and readied myself to run the second the smoke grenade had put out enough concealment. I was seeing red and ready to kill. I started the chant again, softly and angrily at first, and slowly escalating it. The men knew we would run when I was at my loudest.

  “Spartans… Spartans… Spartans… SPARTANS!” I bolted out of our divot and ripped off a line of fire from my Thompson at the nearest pillbox, barely aiming because I was running so hard. Then some kind of explosion went off at my feet and I was airborne. At the time I had no idea if it had been a landmine or German mortar fire. When I was in the air my only prayer had been that none of my men had been hit by whatever had gotten me.

  I landed hard and all of the air was knocked out of me. My eyes reflexively squeezed shut as I tried to pump air into my lungs. Pain radiated out from my back. Then the sudden realization hit me that I was still moving, rolling to be exact. My sorry ass was rolling down a hill, which I thought was strange as hell because I hadn’t been anywhere near a hill on that beach. I grasped wildly around me trying to stop my momentum but my hands couldn’t find any kind of purchase, just loose detritus of some kind.

  Through all of the pain of surviving the strange explosion and my downhill jaunt I was still seeing red, still in my killing zone. I couldn’t wait to get my feet back under me and open a c-ration full of kick-ass onto those German fucks. The second I stopped rolling I came up snarling and whipped my Tommy Gun into position, fighting through the random pain in my body to stay focused. It was still smoky as hell and I had just enough wherewithal to realize I was standing on leaves and it was way too dark. Maybe there was more cloud cover now?

  Then a German in full Wehrmacht uniform carrying a long gun stumbled through the smoke in front of me and fell on his face, accidentally pinning his rifle under him, just in time to look up at the barrel of my Thompson. I smiled grimly, glad to know I would be the last thing he would ever see. But then in perfect English he shouted, “Behind you!” I didn’t care what he had been saying; I had been ready to end him and I meant to follow through.

  Before I could pull the trigger on his stupid German head, strong hands grabbed me and ripped me backwards as someone else kicked me in the back of the knees. I went down like a sack of potatoes and reflexively fired up into the faces of my attackers. Blood sprayed into my face as I ripped a short burst into each of the people who had taken me down. I forced my eyes to stay open as blood ran into them and more silhouettes ran out of the smoke straight at me. One had a bronze sword held above his head primed for a killing blow. I blew both of his knees out from my prone position with three-round bursts and then just kept firing as attackers kept coming.

  Some part in the back of my brain was screaming that everything was very wrong. It was suddenly night somehow, the smoke around me was way too thick and swirled strangely, and my attackers had fangs. I couldn’t help but think of them as the vampires I had seen in comic books and Penny Dreadfuls growing up.

  At some point I managed to crawl to my knees and ran out of ammo. I dropped my mag to insert a new one. The German I had been primed to shoot suddenly yelled, “COVERING!” This gave me enough time to finish my reload and stand up unmolested as he fired his bolt-action long rifle at our attackers. I had almost forgotten about him since he was so low a priority to my shell-shocked brain compared to the black-eyed, tiny-pupiled, strange-haired, fanged horrors that were trying to attack me with tooth, sword, and club alike.

  I couldn’t believe it, but this German was a turncoat and he was helping me fend the creatures off. What kind of Nazi science experiment of Hell had I fallen into? We went back to back and kept fighting. I covered him as he reloaded and he covered me but we were quickly running out of ammo. I didn’t understand the German’s kit at the time, but if it was like mine it then it wasn’t meant for sustained battles like this without resupply.

  The probing attacks stopped but I could barely see twenty feet out into the smoke. No, it wasn’t smoke, it was mist. The mists swirled around us in unnatural ways and I heard footsteps out there, footsteps moving much too fast. I thought I saw a flash of someone running inhumanely fast and I took a couple potshots at it.

  “What are you shooting at?” the German yelled.

  “I don’t know. There is something out there. I think it’s testing us.”

  The German took my cue and fired at everything moving in the mists. I had a bad feeling that if whatever it was got anywhere near us that we would be done. Then it came, in a zigzag pattern, heading right for us.

  “This side!” I shouted as I fired, but the creature always seemed to know exactly where to move to dodge my bullets. It moved beyond fast, it was…supernaturally fast. My weapon ran dry and the creature smiled, now only having to contend with the German’s slow bolt-action. I knew I was a dead man. It blurred into motion once more and I lost sight of it.

  Suddenly, a glowing spearhead was inches in front of my face, stopping the creature’s fist that I hadn’t even seen coming. I felt heat coming off of the spear, a lot of fucking heat.

  I traced the spearhead back to the spear wielder, a short and stout blonde woman with enchanting eyes and pointed ears. In that moment I finally got to get a good look at the creature attacking me as well. It had pale skin, parts of its exposed flesh were covered in bits of rock that resembled armor, and it had dark-black hair with a long white streak running through it. Its pupils were tiny and pitch black, and it had razor-sharp canines that it was snarling into my face with, and now by proxy into the face of the short woman defending me. I was sure that the attack she’d blocked would have been lethal.

  The creature, some sort of man, barked out something in a language I didn’t understand and the small woman laughed and said something back to him that I also didn’t understand before she ripped her spear back and attacked in one fluid motion. I fell backward to get clear of the raging battle that may as well have been two gods fighting for how much of a defense I could put up. I grabbed one of my remaining mags, the half-full one from the beach that I had switched out. I would have to make the rounds count. I slapped the magazine home into the receiver and tried to take aim at the creature since the strange woman was obviously an ally.

  They were both a blur, with the male being faster, but the woman was no slouch. I couldn’t get a clean shot, at least not without risking friendly fire on the strange exotic woman. I also noticed that the creature was getting some seriously powerful hits in on her, but his rock-encrusted fist was stopping an inch out from her body, hitting some kind of invisible barrier that flared into color for a split second during every impact. Lastly, I noticed her shield or barrier was growing grayer, weaker, every time it took damage. She was running out of time; I had to do something.

  Before I had a chance to formulate a plan, bronze-colored nets started falling from the trees above, each one almost landing on the creature. He was always just a little too fast to be caught, but that was all the distraction I needed to get some safe shots off at him. I started firing every time he dodged a net. The combination of dodging the nets, my fire, and the powerful spear-wielding woman’s jabs was too much for him. Then the German soldier jumped out of the mists and landed on the fucker’s back, pinning his arms to his side.

  The creature reared his elbow back and grew a spike of rock on it simultaneously. He slammed the small rock spike into the
German’s stomach at the same time that a bronze net landed on both of them. The spear-wielding woman lunged forward, stabbing the creature in the shoulder. I ran over and put my Thompson in his face.

  “Dodge this,” I said and pulled the trigger, making sure not to shoot the German. The creature’s head exploded as my rounds penetrated his skull.

  “Get this cunt off of me,” said the gore-covered German from underneath the creature’s corpse.

  All around us, women who looked similar to the spear wielder jumped from the trees and landed lithely around us. They helped me get the net and the creature off of the German. Once the creature was off of him I visually assessed the wound in the German’s stomach, and knew he was a goner for sure. I had seen so many injuries, I’d developed a sort of sixth sense for when someone was going to die.

  “How does it look?” asked the German.

  “Looks like you’ll be dead soon, but you did good for a turncoat kraut,” I replied. Surprisingly the exotic-looking woman slapped me across the face with no warning. “What the hell, lady?” I barked. The other women around me leveled spears in my direction.

  “That man possibly just saved all of our lives. Have some respect,” she barked back at me.

  “So what? He’s a German,” I said matter-of-factly.

  “Do you think I care about your petty Terran conflicts? Have some respect, I won’t warn you again.”

  Another woman ran up with an olive drab U.S. Army laundry bag. “Captain,” the new woman said, “I found this where their footprints started.”

  I didn’t recognize the bag. Well I recognized what it was, I had seen thousands like it, but it wasn’t mine. The exotic woman who I now knew held the rank of Captain dumped the bag out and two wooden boxes fell out. One had an American flag painted on the top of it, and the other a German flag painted on it in the same style. The woman opened the German-marked box first and a strange-looking metallic orb was inside.