“Sarge, we can’t wait any longer. Jesus, look at what they’re doing, for Christ sake!” Martin shouted from beside him. “Come on,” he called and charged out of the coppice, followed by ten other men, the movements fuelled by rage, their actions clumsy. Their minds shunted over into the passenger seat for their joy ride into death.
“No!” Graham called after them – but his words were cut off by gunfire, and not from the group of men. Their attention was still held by the two women, but from a new group, hidden by the trees to their far left.
Martin was the first to fall, his head exploding in a red mist; quite possibly the same mist that had descended over him a few moments earlier. The rest of the group fell after a scattered burst of panic fire tore through them. The first shot was more luck than a specifically aimed headshot.
Graham had seen them, something, a glint of light which he was sure came from either a pair of binoculars or the sight of a rifle, but he hadn’t seen it in time to stop Martin from doing exactly what he himself had wanted to do.
“Two o clock. Unknown number of targets. Watch the trees and open fire as soon as they emerge!” Graham shouted over the rattling sound of his own gunfire directed towards the tank. The German soldiers threw the women to the floor behind the tanks in what looked at first glance like a strange act of protection.
The Nazis (for there was no other option that that) jumped inside the British tank which they had somehow acquired, no doubt at the same time they picked up their uniforms, Graham reasoned. They heard German voices barking orders on all sides of them, and when the tank’s engine roared into life the group’s resolve was broken.
The battle intensified and when the turret of the giant tank turned in their direction Graham didn’t need to give any orders. The group turned and fled. They moved along the trees rather than deeper into them. No sooner had the last man broken into a run than a booming shot rang out, shaking the ground like an earthquake. The splintering sound of trees being felled shook their bones. Tendrils of smoke overtook them like a mist rolling across the English moors, only the snarling hound was not the Baskerville ghost but the machine gun fire of German troops.
By the time they stopped moving to regroup, the hidden German soldiers had emerged, another tank, this one a Panzer with approximately ten men walking beside it, all in German uniform.
Graham couldn’t help but offer the world a wry smile.
“Waas’up, Sarge?” Matthew Paterson asked, his voice barely a whisper, his body crouched low to the ground behind a small bushel which had at one time been a wild blackberry plant.
“Just thinking about how fucked we seem to be,” Graham whispered in return. Their situation was indeed grave and at that point in time he saw no options open to them other than to make a stand.
The ensuing battle was inevitable. The German troops joined together and spread out, leaving the tanks guarded but not occupied. Graham knew that once the skirmish began the tanks would be useless, as not even the Germans would use them in such close proximity to their own troops.
Matthew, Henry Balfont, and Jimmy Stevens, the radio operator, were the first to fall, followed soon after by a number of German soldiers. The cover offered by the trees, although sparse, was enough to give Graham and his men a degree of shelter. They moved fast but with caution towards the edge of the copse, moving away from the church. Graham was relieved when no more German troops arrived. The numbers had not been in their favor when it began, and with nine of his initial twenty men dead and one other with a nasty wound in his shoulder, things hadn’t gotten any better.
“Listen, we need a plan. If we run now they’ll mow us down; if we stick in the trees they’ll unleash the big dogs on us.” Graham gestured towards the tanks. The Germans were less than a hundred meters away, remaining outside the line of trees.
Graham crouched down to his haunches and fired a burst towards the moving stumps that were legs attached to hidden German bodies. None of his shots killed but several of the group fell, their screams breaking the eerie silence that had fallen. Graham sprang from the trees, his rifle ready, and unleashed another volley, partnered by Harold McCarb, the oldest man in their group at twenty-five – yet he still had yet to be promoted to a higher rank despite his near perfect service record. He and Graham had both enlisted together before the war even started, unlike the majority of the others.
“Walter, John, we’ll divert their attention. You guys need to get to those tanks,” Graham instructed the two men he knew could operate a tank. They sped off at once without even daring to question his order. The skirmish wasn’t a long one; Graham took a flesh wound to the right thigh from one of the tank guards – who he had rightly guessed didn’t dare even consider firing the big guns into their own men. He remained on his feet long enough to fire one round. The man’s face disappeared in a cloud of red, and he fell backwards onto the Panzer and everything fell still. The only sound that remained had been groaning of the injured Germans, their bodies broken and bleeding, their guns fallen out of reach.
Slowly, the scene around Graham began to dilute, the same way a photograph reduces in clarity over the years. The color was the first thing to fade. Then the lines and boundaries of everything began to blur. Colors ran and collided with each other. The tanks half sank into the ground, their motors still grumbling. Graham looked to his left, but Harold was gone. He had been replaced by a faceless, flesh colored orb; the eyes, nose, mouth, everything had been erased. The dawning realization that it had all been a dream came when Graham tried to move. He was still sitting, lost between worlds. His wrists were bound, his legs also. His army uniform was gone, replaced instead by a strange and rather uncomfortable suit, the top button fastened in a choking fashion.
“You remember, I see. Well, that makes my job somewhat easier,” a voice said.
Graham felt a surge of emotion rush through him, and he fought hard to keep control of himself, tensing his jaw until it hurt.
“How could I forget? But it was a war. I killed. I shot first and cursed when I missed, but I accepted what happened over there,” Graham said defiantly. The room was cold and his breath clouded before his face with every word he said.
“Really? You can tell yourself that, you can even tell me that, but we both know that this is where you finally broke. Doesn’t it still haunt you, the look on those women’s faces?” Was there pleasure in the voice?
“Fuck you. I still remember them; how could I forget? I remember every man who served and died by my side, so I guess you’re out of luck.” Graham tried to sound strong, but even he could hear his voice start to waver, just a little. As Graham’s eyes adjusted he found he could make out more and more of his cell. The walls were lined with wood. There was nothing but earth on the other side; he could smell it, rich and peaty. Before long Graham could see from one corner to the other, yet try as he liked, he could not find the owner of the voice.
“I believe you, I really do. That’s why our time together it about something else entirely,” the voice whispered in Graham’s ear.
“Oh, then please enlighten me, set me on the right path so that we can get this over and done with,” Graham responded, not with fire and guile but anger. An instinctive reaction brought on through having to relive memories that now they had been replayed and brought to the surface again didn’t seem to matter.
“First, answer me this: why did you leave them?” the voice asked. It came from behind him now. Graham turned his head. He saw someone, two people in fact. Shadows in the corner, but just as Graham thought he could see his tormentor both figures disappeared, leaving him with a different scene to contend with. He saw the old church; the brick and stone walls had crumbled away, the small spire fallen through the roof and stood but a few feet proud of the walls that had supported it for so many years. Graham recognized it without a moment’s hesitation.
Then all of a sudden they stood before him. Stared at him, their heads tilted to the right. They studied him. Their faces blank, ex
pressionless. Their grey, sagging flesh was covered in open wounds which even after so many years still wept. Fleas and ticks sprung joyously from one body to another. They opened their mouths, yet speech was impossible for the women as they had no tongues. They had long since rotted away or been eaten by some hungry scavenger. As a replacement, each mouth contained a thick white maggot, their bodies swelled so large and obese after having gorged on the rotting treasure trove they had discovered that they now barely fit inside the respective mouths that they called home.
“Johanna, Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry.” The words were empty. They were words he had spoken a hundred times over the years but never had he wished them so earnestly.
The corpse muttered at him, angry mumbled sounds. Yet her eyes said volumes. They stared blindly at Graham but he understood well enough that it wasn’t anger, but warning; a plea for him to once again turn around and just keep walking.
“Answer my question, peon. Why did you leave them? You never gave a second thought to that family,” the voice said through the women. Their mouths opened and closed in no particular synchronicity with the words, like fish. “You just packed up your things and left, eager to get back to the comfort of your platoon and spread the word of your heroics.” The last word was spat, as if it left a foul taste in the back of the mouth.
“They were dead. It’s not as though burying them wouldn’t have helped. We needed to get back and advise those that needed to know what had happened,” Graham lied. He stuttered as he spoke. He always was a bad liar.
“That does make a convenient excuse for you, I am sure, but utterly irrelevant. You see, they were alive; they were healthy, in fact. In spite of their exterior ailments, their bodies were strong. But thanks to you their family was taken from them, their patriarch, their hunter-gatherer, and their future, the small child. Their bodies were left to rot inside that church, riddled with holes; they drowned in a sea of their own blood. Alone. The women didn’t dare go back inside, not even to say goodbye,” the voice snarled.
“You turned and walked away from us. The fight was over and you turned heels and took your men away from danger.” The two women continued to convey the words of the mysterious narrator whose face he dared not show. Their bodies were thin and haggard, their arms and legs so tiny it looked as though they would break if they had to so much as hold each other’s hands. Their hair was matted and filled with leaves and twigs.
“I thought you were dead,” Graham said, his voice beginning to crumble. “With all the gunfire we just thought you were dead.” He could feel the warm, salty tears stinging his eyes. Graham tried as hard as he could not to let them fall. It was unavoidable. Not because he was angry or because what he saw upset him, but because he was lying. He hadn’t thought that they were dead, not back then, not at the moment. Truth be told he had simply forgotten them, he had been happy to survive and wanted to get himself and his men (although if you asked him at the time, he would have said that they too were expendable) away from the encounter and back to the rest of the unit. There was comfort in numbers. It wasn’t until much later, as they sat around a makeshift table playing cards for cigarettes, that the family came back into his head. It was then, at that point and no sooner, that Graham convinced himself that they had died. They had been dead as soon as they had been pulled from the church, the rest was just a faded memory; selective, they called it. It helped him sleep a little that night, and over the years it simply became truth.
“No, no, we were alive, and scared. We were alone, our shelter and food taken from us. We were forced to stand there through the cold nights, the wet days.” The words were accusatory, barbed and meant to hurt. Then it went silent. Their voices muted, and then his voice returned.
“It was starvation and dehydration that took them. It ravaged their bodies and melted their minds long before their hearts stopped. They died cold, alone, and still believing that you would come back for them.” The words cut Graham like a hot knife. He tried to tell himself that they were dead, nothing could bring them back anymore. It was too late: the damage had been done in Graham’s mind. The floodgates opened and try as he might, Graham could do nothing to stop it.
“I’m sorry. I never stopped thinking about you, both of you. It was because of you, Johanna, that I became a teacher. I taught children your age. I wanted to help them understand life, not just in terms of schooling but in the broader terms of reality. I helped prepare them for everything life would throw at them, not just the standardized do not copy your neighbor’s answer kind of problems but real issues. You saved my life. I got out of the military as soon as the war was over and I never looked back. You stayed in my dreams until the end and I mean that.” Graham felt his emotion building but his words were cut off. His windpipe closed as if someone had shoved a cork down his gullet. His lungs began to burn and although he was dead Graham felt his heart begin to race. His face grew dark, his limbs heavy; his thumbs and fingers became useless, fat sausages that dangled from his arms in bunches like fruits on a tree.
“I know what you did; I see everything. Don’t you get it? I didn’t create these images; I just found them in your mind and pressed play. It’s my job to ensure that you see everything in the stark, unrepentant light of day. I am merely the tour guide, here to keep you on track and, well... maybe have a bit of fun with you on the way.” The pressure around Graham’s throat abated and as he gasped for air with burning gulps, his captor continued to talk.
“I don’t care about them and neither should you. They died, you lived, and that’s all that matters in your petty human world. Believe me, down here, it’s remarkably similar. I would cast my own brother into the pit of Assisi if it would help me advance another level down. Your real problem is what happened to you because of that day,” the voice said, but no longer boomed or demanded. To Graham it sounded like the narrator of a game show.
“I don’t understand. I let those innocent people die; I did desert them. I deserve to be here… more than I realized.” Graham felt his resolve crumble faster than the walls of the church that had been the tomb of a father, his only son, and youngest daughter back in 1944.
“Humans, you are so pathetic, with your crude emotions and your lack of control. You’re not in Hell; not yet, at least. You are here to be judged. I am not the executioner, but merely the messenger; a bailiff, if you will. They would have died from their malnutrition even if you had have taken them with you. I mean, come on, the lives of a couple of poor farming women is of no interest to me or anybody down here. If anything, I, personally speaking, applaud your actions that day. No, you are here because you gave up on God. You surrendered all your belief in Him, your fear of Him after that day. Your life became about helping others, but not for a cause any less selfish than trying to fill that gnawing hole left inside you where your faith had once been,” the voice lectured now, and Graham imagined him as a tweed-wearing History teacher, not unlike Robert Carmichael, the History department head back at his first ever high school teaching job. It didn’t make the situation any less daunting but it gave Graham a base from which he could conjure an image to fit the floating voice.
“God, I never forgot God or stopped believing in Him; I just decided that He’s a cocksucker and only interested in seeing people suffer. Eradicating that sadistic son of a bitch from my decision making took my life and turned it into something enjoyable. So if you ask me if I believe, then yes, of course I do. I always did. If you ask me what I would do if I got to the pearly gates, then I would love to kick my bearded creator a swift kick in the bollocks and then go find my wife,” Graham spat. Now it was his turn to feel enraged. Not because of the questioning and not as a result of the images he had seen, but simply because he had been forced to empty himself. He could feel the atmosphere working on him, ridding his body of the pent up emotion and aggression, rendering him passive, empty and tired, making him easy pickings for whatever lay ahead.
“Yes, yes, I find it all very intriguing but also so incredi
bly... boring.” The voice roared the last word. “If you do not fear God, then you cannot fear us, and if people stopped fearing us, then, well, Hell wouldn’t be as much fun, now, would it? Sure, it would still exist, and yes, business would pick up with all the holy defectors, but fear is kind of what we do down here; it is what drives us. The terror helps us survive and keeps us all functioning.”
Graham opened his mouth to speak but the voice snapped, barking at him in the snarling voice of an old man. “Be an end to it. I am bored with you now. Your ghosts are simple, your past pathetic, and I no longer have an interest in you. You will learn of your mistakes in the Chamber of Blood. Now get out of my sight.”
There was no goodbye, no cackling laughter as Graham had half expected. There was nothing but a rushing wind. Graham began to fall. His restraints had vanished, so too the chair. Graham fell into the darkness and the walls turned from black to purple, from purple to red, and finally from red to a burning blood orange. It didn’t take long before Graham hit the ground… no, not ground, but water, a sea, a vast sea (or lake) and was swallowed by it whole. Graham was effortlessly sucked deep beneath its surface.
When he broke the surface of the water, Graham struggled and flapped with his arms. They seemed to respond to his commands with the same conviction a toddler shows when listening to its parents. He sank beneath the surface again, pulled – or so it felt – by hands grasping at the newest member of their clan. Graham’s body called out in agony, his chest tightened, his vision faded, and yet his thoughts seemed to clarify. He saw the field and the church, the way it had been before they arrived. It was a beautiful sight. With that in his mind, Graham let go. He stopped his struggles and allowed himself to sink. Eager hands tightened their grip on his ankles and pulled him deeper. He opened his mouth. The taste of copper hit the back of his throat and surged down his gullet. Then suddenly he was propelled upwards, pushed by some hidden force. Graham rose fast and broke the water, coughing and spluttering, gasping for air. For a few moments he wheezed and gulped, and after a while began to regain control. Graham trod water and looked around, panicked that they would grab at him again. He saw no signs of a shoreline, but the rough undulating surface could easily have hidden land from view; Graham decided he was in an ocean, for he had never seen anything other than sea so rough and untamed. Only the water was not the crisp blue of the tropics, or even the sewage green of the seas around Europe, but red. It didn’t take long for Graham to realize the sea was blood, and he was nothing more than a clot in the system, destined to end up wherever the tide would take him.
Highway To Hell Page 15