The Forever Engine

by Frank Chadwick

  “Come on, Gabi, time to haul ass!” I helped her to her feet.

  “You said not to run if the others did.” Fear made her voice shake, and I could feel it tighten my own chest as well.

  “Yeah, I just didn’t count on the whole outfit going.”

  We ran. I ran to her left and a little behind her, between her and the sound of the animals. When she looked back to see if I was there, I yelled at her to run as hard as she could. I kept up with her.

  We passed someone down in the grass, trying to get up, but didn’t break stride to help. Part of me was relieved we weren’t the last stragglers anymore and grateful I wasn’t in charge, because then I’d have to stop and help. Another part of me was ashamed of those feelings, but it was a small part and not a very survival-helpful one at the moment.

  I tripped, almost fell sprawling, but kept my feet and regained my stride. From its sound and weight I knew I’d tripped on a dropped rifle, and the sudden surge of anger almost overwhelmed me. Idiot! Some jackass dropped his rifle and had almost killed me, not to mention himself and his friends when the animals caught up and he was unarmed.

  We’d overtaken at least some of the fugitives, but the sound of something coming through the grass was close now. No one was going to stop on their own, and this couldn’t end well. The ground cover was higher, thicker here. Branches and tree limbs crunched under my feet, and I saw the darker shape of a tree trunk.

  “Come on you lot!” I heard O’Mara shout close by. “Keep together.” At least someone was still thinking about their men.

  Time to make a move.

  “Marines, rally on me! O’Mara, pick a spot for a stand.”

  “Right. ’Ere’s as good a place as any to face ’em. Form up, you bastards!”

  I knew the emotions struggling in the men. Their legs wanted to keep running, but their heads wanted someone to tell them what to do. It might be too late, though. The animals, whatever they were, were close, streaking through the brush and tall grass.

  I grabbed Gabrielle by the arm to slow her, and we found a small knot of men, hard to tell how many in the darkness.

  “Form a firing line facing the animals,” I shouted, my voice hoarse. “Do it now! Close up and keep it tight.”

  And then the first one of them hit us, rocketing though the air in a leap. I only saw it for an instant, but it was the size of a wolf or bigger. It hit a Marine in the chest and bowled him over into the brush, the two of them rolling in a pinwheel of arms, legs, and feathers—big feathers.

  “FIRE!” I screamed and got a ragged volley of four or fire rounds. I added two quick rounds from the Webley, firing low and spreading the shots, although the noise and muzzle flash were more important than the potential damage.

  “Again! Keep it up.”

  I heard the bird screeching behind me, the down Marine crying out, fighting for his life. The ragged volley had wiped out whatever night vision I had. Everything was sound and smell now. Sweat and fear, crushed grass and black powder. The crack of more rifle rounds from our firing line, screeches of animals, cries of men going down under them, but not here, farther from the river toward the hills. A wet-sounding thud and the animal on the ground squawked once in pain and fell silent.

  “That’s done for him,” O’Mara said, his voice ragged. “On yer feet, Williams.”

  “Gabrielle, where are you?”

  “I am here,” she answered.

  An animal streaked past me from a different direction. Gabrielle screamed as she and the bird went down together. I jumped on top, got my left hand into the feathers on its neck, and tried to pull it off, but the son of a bitch was strong! Screeching, ripping cloth, cries of pain. I raised the pistol and cracked the bird on its back—aimed for the head, but it was moving too much. The blow didn’t make much impression through the feathers, but I got its attention. It spun and sank its teeth into my forearm, or at least the sleeve of my coat, shook its head, and I felt its strength all the way up in my shoulder.

  Its jaws, its head—too big for a bird. A bird with teeth? a remote part of my mind asked.

  I didn’t know who might be in my line of fire but had to take the chance. I pushed the Webley’s barrel against its chest and pulled the trigger. Its body muffled the sound. It jerked, let go of my arm, took a step away, and fell over with a whimper.

  “Gabi, are you okay?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I . . .”

  I felt for her, found her, did a quick check on her face, throat, and hands, and didn’t find anything slippery with blood. She trembled uncontrollably.

  “Hold it together, sweetheart. Okay?”

  “Oui.”

  “You carry matches, for your cheroots, right? Dig some out. I need them,” I said.

  “O’Mara!” I shouted.

  “One moment, sir. Cooperson, is that you on the end? You and Williams, half left, two paces forward, and fire to the south. Space your shots. You others keep up your fire but slow and steady, in sequence right to left.”

  Then he knelt next to me.

  “Is the lady all right, sir?”

  “I think so, for now, but whatever these animals are, they’ll circle around eventually. We need a fire.”

  “What the blazes are those things, sir?”

  “Fire,” I repeated.

  “Right. A fire,” he said, and it was clear it hadn’t occurred to him. “Aye, a fire would be a fine thing, sir, and there’s wood lying about here, but it’s damp from all the rain. It will take some time to get it going.”

  “I bet we can speed things up if one of the men has a signal rocket.”

  “I’ve got one here, sir.” He slipped his pack off and set it beside me. “I’ll see to some wood.”

  I holstered the Webley and felt O’Mara’s pack with my hands. I found the signal rocket lashed to the top, got it free, and took my first close look at it, although by feel. A sheet-metal cylinder with a crimped cone at one end and a bracket for a launching stick at the other. The stick itself was tied to the rocket. I pulled out my sheath knife, cut the lashings that held the rod to the rocket, and started working at the soldered seam by the bottom.

  “Here’s some wood, and I’ll get more.” O’Mara dumped an armload of damp brush and branches beside us and hurried away.

  I had the bottom open by now and shook out some of the powder of the propelling charge into the brush.

  “Got those matches?”

  “Here,” Gabrielle answered and handed me a half-dozen and a box with a striker strip on the side. Her hand was steadier now. My own shook enough that I broke the first match, but I took two long, slow breaths to steady myself. The second match lit, and the charge powder sizzled and flared to life, igniting the brush. That got a ragged cheer from the Marines around us.

  I worked the top of the rocket tube open, shook out a handful of the powder from the bursting charge, and threw it into the fire, got a nice flash from it and a wave of heat.

  I turned to get more fuel, and right there, not more than ten feet away, I saw the eyes of a large hunting bird glowing with the reflected light of the fire behind me, disembodied and seemingly floating in the air. I pulled my Webley out, careful not to make any sudden move, took aim, and fired twice. I sensed more than saw the animal fly back from the impact.

  A Marine was down in the grass near me. I could tell at first from the direction of his voice; then I could make him out in the growing firelight. He was praying in a thick Irish brogue.

  “Hail Mary, full o’ grace, the Lard is with thee. Blessed art d’ou among wimin, and blessed is the fruit o’ thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mudder o’ Gawd, pray fer us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”

  But it wasn’t the hour of our death. Close, but no cigar.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  October 9, 1888, The Lim River valley, Serbia

  We kept the fire going, built it up, and had no more trouble from the animals.

  Others straggled in over the course of the next hour, more
than I thought would have survived. We’d been the Tail-End Charlies, so most of the animals had concentrated on us at first. When we kicked their asses, the flock, or pack, or whatever, lost a lot of its enthusiasm for the hunt. Many of our survivors had thrown away their rifles and packs. Gordon was among those who came in, but he didn’t have anything to say at first. At least he still had his pack.

  Gabrielle and I had matching bites on our left arms, and she had a slash in her left thigh. She had been wearing her long overcoat over her riding habit, so the teeth hardly broke the skin, but the long knifelike spur on the bird’s foot had sliced through her overcoat, skirt, riding breeches, and into her thigh. If not for all those layers, the wound might have killed or crippled her.

  I made her take off the coat and black jacket, rolled up the blood-stained sleeve of her blouse, cleaned the wound with rubbing alcohol, and then wrapped it with a clean linen bandage, both from her own haversack. I did the same with her thigh, first cutting away that leg of her breeches up to the hip. The slash looked deep, but it wasn’t bleeding all that badly so I just bandaged it good and tight. I pulled off my coat, and she bandaged my arm. I made sure we cleaned all the wounds thoroughly; the last thing we needed out here was an infection.

  “You got any antibiotic cream or powder in that first-aid kit?”

  “I do not know what that is,” she answered.

  “No, I was afraid of that.”

  We had two animal carcasses close by the fire, and we looked them over. They were like the biggest wild turkeys, or maybe fighting cocks, you could imagine, probably seventy or eighty pounds each, but with much thicker, more muscular legs and broader feet. They didn’t have beaks so much as long, bony snouts lined with small, sharp teeth. Their heads were too big for birds, though, and featured a flaring transverse crest across the back of their skulls which reminded me of the hood of a triceratops, but in feathers.

  Their forearms bore a pretty complete set of long feathers, but nowhere near enough for flight. The substantial and muscular forearms ended in grasping talons. Their main weapons were the long, knifelike spurs on their hind legs, the ones which almost got Gabrielle and sliced up one of the Marines badly. The giveaway, though, was the tail, long and thin and about a meter long, as long as the rest of the bird’s body.

  Neither the Brits nor the Bavarians had ever seen anything remotely like them. I had. Sarah had gone through a dinosaur phase, and that meant I’d gone through a dinosaur phase. I’d taken her to the Field Museum for the opening of a new exhibit on the late Cretaceous period a few years back. It included the first reconstructions of Velociraptor mongoliensis after the fossil finds that established it was feathered. The ones in adventure films were featherless and always larger, about man-sized, I guess for dramatic effect, which was over twice as big as the real animals. These carcasses weren’t that big, but they were bigger than the V. mongoliensis Sarah and I had seen, and the heads looked different, shorter and wider. Maybe they were a related species, like dromaeosaurus, or maybe something I’d never seen—something nobody from my time had ever seen. Who cared? They were night predators, hunted in packs, and were plenty big enough for me.

  The fire burned smoky from the damp wood, and the wind kept changing, blowing the smoke in our faces no matter where we sat. Gabrielle and I got our coats back on and sat together, shoulder to shoulder, near enough to the fire to catch its warmth but far enough the smoke wasn’t too bad. At least when the wind gusted around we had time to close our eyes and hold our breath.

  We hadn’t had a real meal since morning, and once the raptors—I couldn’t help thinking of them that way—seemed done for the night, some of the men started eating. None of us considered roasting one of the dead animals, interestingly enough.

  I took a tin of bully beef from my haversack and Gabrielle and I shared it, pulling strings of the greasy corned beef from the can with our fingers and spreading them on hardtack. It gave me an entirely new appreciation for MREs.

  Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you got till it’s gone?

  Somebody got a kettle going, and O’Mara came around with two tin cups of tea for us and knelt in the grass beside me. The tea was sweet with sugar and evaporated milk, almost overpowering the flavor of the tea itself, but it hit the spot all the same.

  “One of my lot’s still missin’,” O’Mara said. “Don’t know about the Fritzes. Don’t think their sergeant has done a count.”

  “Okay. Thanks for keeping me up to date, but you need to make a report to Captain Gordon.”

  O’Mara looked over toward Gordon, standing by himself at the edge of the light circle, and spat.

  “Corporal, things are going to get worse here. I’m betting they’re going to get lots worse. Undercutting Gordon might give you some personal satisfaction, but it won’t keep your men alive.”

  “The men’ll follow you, sir.”

  “Well, thank you for saying that, but the Bavarians won’t, and we need them. All that keeps them here are their orders to work with Gordon.”

  O’Mara thought that over, chewed on it like a piece of gristle he was reluctant to swallow, but eventually he nodded.

  “As you say, sir. You want me to talk to the Fritz sergeant?”

  “No, I will. He outranks you. He probably won’t take an ass-chewing from you all that well.”

  That got a smile from him. He rose and walked across the firelit circle to Gordon, came to attention, saluted, and gave a report I could see but not hear. I looked around the circle until I located Melzer.

  “I’ll be back,” I told Gabi.

  I walked over to him. He and a knot of his men smoked their clay pipes and cast sour, resentful looks across the fire at Gordon.

  “Can we talk?” I said as soon as I faced him.

  “Talk here,” he answered, his jaw thrust out farther than normal.

  “How many men did you lose?”

  “Too verdammt many, thanks to your officer.”

  The three other Bavarians with him nodded and murmured their agreement.

  “How many?”

  He hesitated, then looked at his companions.

  “Heinrich ging unten,” one of them said.

  “Gerhard auch,” said another.

  “Nein, ist Gerhard hier,” Melzer answered. “Wo ist Burkhardt?”

  “Corporal O’Mara has already taken roll and reported to Captain Gordon,” I said. “He is a good noncommissioned officer who remembers his duty.”

  “Duty to him?” Melzer said, gesturing across the fire to Gordon.

  “Duty to his men. Captain Gordon said to run to the trees and take cover. O’Mara did that, kept his men together, and in the trees found the brush and wood for this fire. He followed Captain Gordon’s orders and his men lived, except one who lost his head and kept running.

  “Where did you rally your men, Feldwebel? Where did you stop them from running? The Bayerisch Garde Schützen, routed by a flock of poultry!”

  The three men with Melzer shifted uncomfortably and exchanged looks, but Melzer remained motionless, his eyes avoiding mine.

  “Do your head count. Find out how many of your men are alive, how many still have their rifles, how many are injured and how severely. Make your report to Captain Gordon. Do it now.”

  I turned and walked away, but after a few steps Melzer’s hand on my arm stopped me. He nodded toward the darkness, and I followed him a couple steps so we were out of earshot of the others.

  “You speak to me this way in front of my men?” he hissed.

  “I gave you the chance to talk in private and you wouldn’t, so go fuck yourself. Next time keep your nerve, do your job, keep your men alive. Or I’ll find someone who can.”

  I rejoined Gabrielle, watched Melzer do his head count and make his report, but it wasn’t long before Gordon drifted over to us. I was tired of talking, but this was one conversation that couldn’t wait.

  We stepped away from the fire. He didn’t say anything at first. I
guess he wasn’t really sure where to start.

  “I panicked,” he finally said,

  “Yeah, no shit. Don’t do that again.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “It’s easy to say and hard to do. So what? Someone promise you ‘easy’ when you put on a uniform?”

  I leaned in close and spoke quietly to make sure no one at the fire would hear my words.

  “Get those NCOs under control and remind them who’s in charge. You’ve got to get out ahead of them mentally and stay there, tell them what to do next before they think of it.

  “You screwed up today. I dragged enough brush over your trail they’ll wait and see what you do next, but this is it, Gordon. One more screwup and you will never get them back and this expedition is down to me trying to make it through the mountains on my own.”

  “I’ve never been in the field before,” he said. “I feel . . . I can’t explain it, exactly, but—”

  “Look,” I interrupted, “back in my own time, when I was still in uniform, sometimes I’d get assigned young soldiers, first time away from home, first time they weren’t the center of attention, the center of the universe. They’d try explaining how they felt about it all, and as their squad leader I would counsel them. Know what I’d say? ‘Just do your job, kid.’

  “Maybe you had a bad childhood—overprotective mother, overbearing father, whatever. I don’t care. I don’t care about your mother or your father or how you felt when your pet frog died when you were five years old. They aren’t here. You are.

  “So just suck it up and do your job.”

  When I got back to the fire, Gabrielle was curled up and sleeping on the ground, her head cushioned on her rolled ground cover and blanket. I unrolled my own ground cover and spread it behind her, then picked her up gently in my arms and slid her onto it, laid down behind her, and spread my blanket over us. Half of the group was snoring by then, the rest looking as if they were wind-up toys running down even as I watched. Fear and exertion take it out of you, burn up every ounce of go-juice you’ve got before you even realize it, and leave you dull-witted and heavy-limbed.