by Don Wilcox
“Stories! Granddaddy McCorkle! Have I got a story for you! Have I? Wait a minute.”
The window was rattling again, and this time there was no thunder to account for it. My mysterious companion went over and opened it from the top. He picked up the tray that contained the rare steak, and held it out into the darkness.
A huge yellow talon reached down and took it away.
CHAPTER II
The Mysterious Sun
We were chasing Rommel back across Africa when it began (said Toby McCorkle, apparently anxious to take my mind off the strange thing I had just seen—and as he proceeded with his story I almost forgot, for a time, that some weird taloned creature was up there on the roof waiting for him.)
We had reached a village near Mizda. You’ll see it on the map, and you’ll probably think it’s pretty close to the Mediterranean coast. It isn’t. It’s so far inland that any time you get a whiff of sea breeze you’re smelling a mirage. Which is just about nothing.
A lot of blasted tanks and artillery pieces cluttered up the village, a sort of junk man’s paradise. And there were plenty of prisoners running around trying to find some officer to attach themselves to so they could get counted in for a square meal. Mostly Italians, but a sprinkling of Germans.
Well, here was this big crusty German professor and his gun, and thereby hangs the tale. That’s where I got lifted out of the war so quick I didn’t know what happened.
(I interrupted my narrator. Did he mean an honorable discharge? . . . “Accidental discharge,” McCorkle replied, and continued with his monologue.)
We found this big gun and the big crusty German between a couple of rock heaps that had been buildings. The German was working away, apparently lost to the world. He was clearing a space around the base of the gun, heaving broken bricks and stones right and left. We figured right away that he was crazy, working that way in the heat.
His clothes were good quality white linen, getting more soiled every minute, and he had three fountain pens in his coat pocket. Yes, he was wearing a coat and a hat, also tortoise shell spectacles on his nose, with amber sun lenses attached. Prisoners tramped by within his hearing and he didn’t even turn to look. Seven or eight of us who were detailed to gather up some of the strays stopped and watched him.
When he saw us standing there a shudder of surprise caught him, but he went right on tossing rocks. By now he had cleaned off a thirty-foot square behind the base of his gun. The ground was hard packed; it had been a street before our shells upset the fruit baskets; now it was a smooth white earth floor, and the sight of it pleased him.
“He’s crazy as a Texas bedbug,” said Lieutenant Wells. “What does he think he’s doing?”
“They shoulda kept him in Berlin,” I said. “I hear they need extra street cleaners.”
One of our men yelled at him. “What you got there, cheese-puss? A rocket gun?”
The professor began to mumble to himself, not bothering to answer us. So we started shouting at him, making sport. Where’d he get that glorified beer barrel? What was he aiming at, Bengasi or Cairo? Wasn’t he afraid of a traffic jam in that Holland tunnel? Why didn’t he stick his head in and forget to pull it out.
“Cut it!” Lieutenant Wells snapped. “I want to catch what he’s saying.” Lieutenant Gene Wells was an officer we’d all learned to respect in the course of our past half year of stringing along with the British Eighth. He was young, but hard as steel, and quick with his imagination. We fell silent; we watched and listened.
The German jumped around this way and that, like a dude heavyweight doing his shadow-boxing in Sunday clothes. He twisted a lever here, he twirled a crank there, and the gun— if gun it was—swung upward for what might have been an aim at a cloud of smoke over a burning hargm or something on the north horizon. Or maybe he was getting set for that swarm of flies above a nearby fruit market.
I bent down and tried to get a squint through the gun’s barrel, the big end of which was lowered in our direction. Some of the men edged around for a front view, but Lieutenant Wells called them back.
“Look out, you rubes. He says the damned thing’s going off. I think he’s loco, but we’ll run him in with the prisoners to play safe.”
Personally, I had a hankering to see this circus act to the finish. This thing I’ve called a gun looked like the cannon that shoots the man into the net twice daily at Fairyland Park, admission twenty-five cents. It glistened like chromium, innocent of all camouflage, and it responded to the professor’s crank action like a big beautiful toy.
“He says to get back, it’s going off,” someone yelled.
Four or five English soldiers had joined us by now, and Lieutenant Wells called to one of them.
“Take a look at this, you artillery men. What do you see?”
“A bally humbug,” one of them said. “Nothing but a harmless fabrication—to impress the natives, no doubt.”
At an order from the lieutenant, four men closed in on the German professor and prodded him with bayonets to make his feet go in the right direction.
He went, but with the most bombastic of protests. His mad guttural squawks caused us to stare after him. He swung his arms, pointing back at the gun, vociferating like a volley of ack-ack.
“What the hell’s he raving about?” one of the bayonet men asked.
“He says he’s a civilian engaged in a peaceful scientific experiment,” said Lieutenant Wells. “Let him tell it to the colonel.”
One of the four who were leading him away must have known enough German to scramble the professor’s explosive warnings. The interpretation was shouted back to us:
“Did you hear that? He says that damned gun jumps sideways when it goes off. So don’t get in front of it—or somethin’.”
Seven or eight of us were standing directly back of the blinkety-blank humbug. It went off—not frontwards, not sidewise, but backward!
It gave one mighty puff. If you can imagine the exhaust pipe of my old coal-burning Willys-Knight magnified a hundred times, that was it.
The puff looked like red steam. It felt like fire. And, believe me, friend, it got us, just like that!
CHAPTER III
Land of Beauty—and Death
If you ever happened to be standing over a volcano when the lid blew off you can imagine my feelings when this gun went poof. Though I’ve never tried the volcano myself, I assume there would be an instant’s sensation of heat, then you’re gone. That’s how it was.
And that was my exit from the war. I presume the whole group of us have been listed as missing in action.
So what happened to me? Something no man in the world could ever guess. Something that has still got me guessing, and I’ll be an Irish uncle to anyone who can help me figure it out.
First there was that long period of awful blackness, like when you’re down with the measles and a high fever in a dark room and you think you’ll never live to see daylight.
I was undoubtedly unconscious for a long time. Sometimes I thought I could hear someone calling, “Hey, McCorkle—hey, Pudding-Puss!” Then I’d go off into a dream in which I’d talk with Private Hammerstein—Maxie for short—because he’s the one who always called me Pudding Puss.
Then I’d seem to hear Lieutenant Wells shouting, “Where’s Private McCorkle? Has anyone seen Private McCorkle?” But these dreams couldn’t make sense, because everything was so black and I just couldn’t wake up.
The heat was terrific, during all this dark torture, and sometimes I thought sand was blowing over me, and I was dying of thirst.
But finally it rained, and my parched lips tasted the sweetest drink of water in all my life. It rained torrents, and along with the beat of raindrops I heard a terrific fluttering of wings, like a thousand condors flying past me. My eyes opened.
I beheld what I thought must be the strangest landscape in all Africa. Great Granddaddy McCorkle! Where was I?
I was in the middle of a thick clump of bushes on the side of a ste
ep, cone-shaped little mountain peak. Night’s darkness was trying to make way for daylight, but the rain came down in heavy gray curtains. I started to climb out of the bushes, but I was as weak as a sick kitten. I dropped back and tried to make myself comfortable.
Through the brush I could see these big feathered creatures swooping down past me—Zwish . . . Zwish . . . Zwish . . . Birds? I supposed so, although it wasn’t light enough to see them plainly. Or angels? I confess I wondered. But how could such a reckless one as Toby McCorkle expect to see angels?
The landscape was an artist’s dream—a wide floor of land broken here and there by these conical little mountain peaks as fanciful as cathedral spires. As the rain clouds began to fall away these geological specimens took on a host of colors—purples, blues, greens, deep reds. No painted desert on earth could match this.
I smeared my wet face with my handkerchief and blinked my eyes and tried to catch my breath. There were such fresh, sweet smells in the air breezing around this mountain that I felt sure I had somehow fallen into a brand new world.
When the morning sun broke through, presently, I almost swooned from sheer delight. The thousands of bright tints in clouds, mountains, and desert plains were so wonderful as to make your favorite scenery artist look pretty shoddy in comparison.
To climax this gorgeous riot of color, there were those thousand or so birdlike creatures flying around in formation on wings that glistened in all of your favorite hues.
Now I’ve never been accused of being an artist or even a second cousin to one. The nearest I ever came to getting mixed up with art was when I hired out as an attendant for the Art Galleries. For three years I paced the floor of a certain northwest corner room where the walls were splashed with modernistic works that had driven two attendants insane, and they didn’t affect me in the least. The management figured that I was calloused.
Maybe so. But there was something within the soul of Toby McCorkle that felt a wild and rapturous thrill in the presence of all this sunlit splendor.
I’d better warn you right now that I’m building you up for an awful let-down. There was something pretty ugly going on right in the middle of this beautiful world. It was a few minutes before I realized it.
The thousand or so bird creatures flew low over the level floor of sand beneath my mountainside. They followed one another in a circular formation that appeared to be a quarter of a mile in diameter. Outside their winged circle were these five cathedral spires of colored rock—six, counting this one upon which I had evidently fallen—casting their jagged blue shadows over the sand.
These six mountain peaks formed a sort of hexagon around the winged creatures’ playground, and right away I guessed that some sort of ceremony was going on.
The flying circle changed to a clover-leaf. All but four or five pairs of wings kept in motion. These chosen few, who had led the procession, settled down on their feet right in the center of the cloverleaf where some dark object lay.
Gradually the shadows shifted and I saw that these four were feasting on something. It was a gruesome reminder of the way the turkey buzzards used to gather around the luckless lamb or barnyard fowl that fell by the wayside.
However, I thrust this thought aside. From what I had seen of these winged specimens they bore a certain resemblance to human beings.
You see, it was such a beautiful world that I wanted to think well of it. Moreover, I was already building high hopes that I would find some degree of civilization beyond these desert playgrounds. That I would find some travel bureau to tell me how I got here. And how I could get back. And what had happened to Lieutenant Wells and Private Hammerstein and Private Biddle and the others who had been caught by that backfiring toy gun.
An hour later the bird creatures were gone, and I descended the steep tooth of rock and walked out over the level sand. The scanty remains of the feast lay in my path. My eyes widened with horror.
I would have known Private Biddle’s khaki cap anywhere. Two burnt spots and the initials B. B. in soiled yellow thread.
Most of his clothing had been cut to shreds, and I could see the marks of sharp talons all around.
I saw all too plainly that Private Biddle’s back had been broken in two places. Under the conditions it gave me a little comfort to know that he must have died when he fell to this land—rather than having to suffer death at the talons of these monstrous winged beasts.
For all that remained of Private Biddle now was his clean white skeleton.
CHAPTER IV
Yellow Talons
Some of the bird creatures were coming back. A line of them circled like contented giant pigeons around a pinnacle against the sun. I paced rapidly across the sand, tried to force my weak legs to run. The nearest hiding place would have to do.
My khaki cap fell when I staggered up the base of the mountain. I looked back, and had an instant’s illusion of seeing myself lying beside that cap, just as Private Biddle lay beside his. I hurried on.
Apparently I was not being pursued. Most of the line of bird creatures floated away.
Soon I was back in my old hiding place—the nearest thing to home in this strange land, with the same brambles tickling my left ear and the same clump of roots punching me in the ribs. I wondered how many days I had Iain there unconscious.
Apparently I had fallen there from—well, from the mysterious nowhere that the gunshot sent me through. It seemed that I had suffered no broken bones or serious bruises, so it must have been the original shock that had laid me out.
After what I had seen of Private Biddle I hardly dared wonder what had happened to the rest of the group that had got caught. It was up to me to look out for myself, and so—
Oh-oh! One of those pesky bird creatures must have seen me. He and seven others had alighted out there in the middle of the feasting ground. Now he started, with a flutter and a few hops, in my general direction.
He turned to the others and motioned them to follow, and called something to them in a voice that sounded very human. I say he, for his face appeared to be somewhat whiskered, and he lacked the long flowing hair that had identified the females of the feasting ceremony.
Two others followed him for a few hesitant hops, and kept looking my way, though I doubt if they could see me.
The bold one took to his wings and came on as fast and straight as a baseball. He had spotted my thicket with deadly accuracy.
From somewhere back of me I heard a clatter of loose rocks, and I figured some more of them must be closing in from the rear.
But I didn’t dare turn. This big fellow was swooping right down at me. For the first time I saw what huge, dangerous yellow talons he carried. And what a perfect human face—with what an inhuman look!
Bejabers, I was in no physical condition for a fight. I had no weapons and I had no strength. But my name is McCorkle, and my granddaddy’s name was McCorkle. I jumped up out of the thicket with my fists swinging.
Again I heard that rustle of rocks back of me. But it didn’t have the ominous sound of these wings right over my head. The big human bird fluttered his massive gray wings, hovered right above me. His deadly talons lowered—two feet beyond my fists—one foot.
I can see him yet, glaring down at me. Wild but fearless black eyes, a murderous taunt on his gory lips, a fringe of heavy brown whiskers over his leathery cheeks and throat, and muscular arms that clawed at the air—not with hands but with scaled yellow talons. What a sinister, weirdly shaped creature he was, as brown and naked as a panther.
If he had had legs—even short ones like mine—I would have seized his ankles and taken my chances on dragging him down. He had no ankles, luckily for me. His human body terminated at the hips.
But there was a fan of tail feathers. I snatched at them and—missed! Then he dipped down and swung a talon at me. Just one yellow flash, fast like a tracer bullet. I ducked. I double ducked—down, right, left—but I knew he had me, and I knew he meant to clean my bones.
I fell to my kn
ees. I grabbed a bit of shrub, and, praise be to St. Patrick, it came up by the roots. I flung the thing at his face, and trusted to luck that the spray of dirt and mud wouldn’t agree with his eyes.
“Yeou-eeek!” he yelled. “Yeou-eeek!”
He flapped his wings, took a swift circle around me, and called down to his group of friends on the feasting ground.
“Yeou-eeek!” It wasn’t a cry of pain, as I had at first thought, but the cry of a winged killer, boasting to his friends that he was now ready to claim his victim.
They heard that boast, and took to their wings. They were coming over to see me get the works—I knew it as sure as I knew my grandfather’s name was—here it came—that yellow talon—
But it didn’t hit. That rustle of stones a few yards up the mountain brought forth a sharp crack!
I heard the bullet whiz past. I saw feathers fly from my assailant’s left wing tip—just pfft—and they fluttered down, zigzag, into the bushes.
The owner of the clipped wing gave an angry choking sound. “A-a-awk!” He flapped past me so quick he knocked me off balance. I whirled as I fell, and caught sight of Lieutenant Wells, pistol in hand, crouched in the rocks fifteen yards away.
“Saint Patrick, be good!” I mumbled. “Don’t let the next one miss!”
I was sure that insignificant wing clip had done no damage. But I was wrong. With another, “A-a-awk!” the violent bird creature turned and flew off!
I didn’t understand. What on earth happened to his fighting spirit? He didn’t even look to see who shot him. He just turned and went. He headed right around the mountainside as hard as he could go, as if he’d been insulted.
“You practically missed him,” I hollered to Lieutenant Wells.
“Amazing results for a miss,” Wells said, coming over to me. “What do you suppose—Look!”
My recent attacker plunged down into a thicket and started running with his wings folded, trying to keep out of sight of the other bird creatures. But they flew over and searched him out—and then you should have heard the weird shouting.