The Men of War

by Damon Alan

  “What’s the fun in that?”

  The door to the Führer’s office opened and Himmler, the devil himself, stepped out into the hallway. “Herr von Krosigk will see you both now.”

  Ernst stood and turned toward the door, realizing these might well be his last moments alive. That sensation had happened so often in the last months that it no longer really made him feel anything other than a sense that things might finally be over. “Come,” he indicated to Elianna with a gesture toward the now open door.

  The guards stepped out of reach; Ernst noticed the trigger fingers resting on the triggers of the MP40s the men carried. More than a hundred rounds ready to riddle him and Elianna with holes should the need arise.

  “Let me talk at first if you would,” Ernst said. “Once we’re past protocol the conversation will open up and you can say your piece.”

  “Very well,” Elianna agreed.

  They walked past a reception room and into a room decorated with dark woods. Herr von Krosigk sat behind a large desk. Four more guards stood at attention in the corners behind him to the left and right. Himmler walked to a leather couch and sat down next to a woman Ernst didn’t recognize. She smiled warmly at Himmler, Ernst, and Elianna, then seemed to brighten up even more when she noticed Elianna’s frame and ears. She was so bold to even subconsciously, probably, touch her own ears to feel the comparison.

  Ernst snapped to attention in front of the Führer’s desk and saluted, waiting to be acknowledged.

  “While he’s standing like a toy soldier, I’ll introduce myself,” Elianna said.

  Ernst closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. Did she not listen to anything anyone recommended?

  “I’m Elianna, consort of Hagirr, Master of Jangik and Aerth,” she continued. “You must be the Führer fellow I’ve heard so much about.”

  Von Krosigk, looking stunned for a moment, rose from his chair. His mouth hung open and he stared at Elianna, completely ignoring Ernst.

  Then he started laughing.

  “You are marvelous!” he exclaimed. “You are clearly not human, and,” he turned to Himmler, “Heinrich, if I had not seen it with my own eyes, I’d have thought you a man of exaggeration.”

  “You find me to be a spectacle?” Elianna asked, her tone one that Ernst didn’t like at all.

  Should he say something?

  “Drop your arm, Director, I’m certain you have given the appropriate honors by now,” the woman on the couch said.

  What the hell. Ernst dropped his arm.

  Herr von Krosigk came around the desk and approached Elianna, who seemed undeterred by the massive man. “So, you are… what did you say, Heinrich, an elf?”

  “I am,” Elianna said. “A Desert Elf from the Endless Wastes. A place unlike your verdant and green country.”

  “Well spoken!” von Krosigk said as if he was listening to a chimpanzee speak. He reached out to touch her skin, the area he reached for erupted into tiny waves of flame. The Führer drew back from the heat.

  “I can also do magic,” Elianna said almost seductively. “Something you can’t do, can you…”

  The guards shifted their weapons upward at the first sign of fire, but Himmler waved them down. Von Krosigk looked around, for the first time uncertain as to what he had on his hands.

  “You, my precious dear, should call me Lutz,” he informed her, his head tilted to see Himmler and Elianna.

  “Come sit down, Director,” the woman on the couch said. “You’re in the way of the show.”

  Ernst, knowing that he’d lost control, sighed. He walked toward the couch where the woman patted a spot next to her.

  “Madam,” he said. “You seem to have me at a disadvantage…”

  “Ehrengard Freiin von Plettenberg, or von Krosigk if you will,” she said, extending her hand.

  The Führer’s wife. Fantastic.

  “The honor is mine, Madam von Krosigk,” Ernst said as he kissed her hand then sat beside her.

  In the interim the Führer and Elianna continued their peculiar exchange. He seemed to think her a curiosity he could poke and prod, when in fact she was a nightmare, a powerful magician that could summon creatures, burn with fire, or simply rip the soul from one’s body.

  Ernst was letting his Führer play with something far worse than fire.

  “I should like to see you nude,” von Krosigk said to the sorceress. “Are you like a woman?”

  “And I should not like to see you naked,” she replied. “What is wrong with you?”

  Considering the Führer’s manners, that seemed like a perfectly valid question. But Ernst knew what would come with an unsatisfactory answer.

  “Herr von Krosigk, if I may…” Ernst said louder than he should.

  The Führer turned to face him, giving him a moment of attention.

  “If you will, sir, I’ve seen Elianna in action. She’s not a circus act to be prodded. She’s the most dangerous creature I’ve ever had the displeasure to meet.”

  “As I told you,” Himmler added. “She is dangerous, and you, my Führer, are poking a dangerous bomb.”

  Ernst looked at Himmler and they shared a moment of understanding. He’d warned them not to act like this. Obviously neither von Krosigk had taken Himmler’s words very seriously.

  “This tiny creature?” von Krosigk replied. “Your claims to her power are nonsense. She is as frail as a child.”

  Elianna stepped to the side, opening a view between her and the guards. “Sagunimallutik nal Ingustik.” Streams of blackness shot from her outstretched hands, rippling across the room and plunging into the torsos of the Führer’s protectors. The guards screamed in agony and dropped to their knees. Unlike what Ernst had seen before, they still seemed alive, but whatever she was doing to them was excruciating beyond measure.

  The guards dropped their hands and looked up toward the ceiling, all apparently seeing the same apparition that left them in speechless horror.

  The four guards from outside came rushing in, but Himmler stopped them from firing on Elianna. “You will just spend your lives in wasted service,” he told them after ordering them to lower their weapons.

  Elianna released the guards from whatever torment she’d brought them. They dropped to the floor, two wept, one curled into the fetal position and scraped his face repeatedly against the carpet, the last one rose to his feet and charged through the four newcomers at the door.

  They, thankfully, let the fleeing guard go. He appeared to be deserting, but Ernst blamed him not one iota.

  “What have you done to them?” von Krosigk asked her, incredulous.

  He was too stupid to even be afraid. Ernst wanted to sigh loudly and say as much, but the want wasn’t worth dying for.

  “What I will do to you and your…” she looked at Frau von Krosigk, “wife if you ever deem yourself worthy of touching me again.”

  The Führer looked at Ernst, furious. “Did you explain to her who I am?”

  Ernst stood up and snapped to attention. “I did, Herr von Krosigk. She is not interested in such knowledge of our society.”

  “Why have you brought her here?”

  “I was ordered to do so, mein Führer!”

  “I had no idea how dangerous she is,” the Führer lamented. He looked back at Elianna. “Are you here to kill me?”

  “What?” She laughed out loud. “No. I’m here to offer my assistance to you, but I’m not sure I’m interested now…”

  “What assistance?” von Krosigk asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Elianna spat out angrily, her demeanor changing in a flash. “You have gone too far insulting me.”

  “No!” the Führer bellowed. “You came to negotiate; we will come to a consensus.”

  Ernst had to begrudgingly admit that at least von Krosigk wasn’t a coward. He’d seen the nightmare and was still willing to engage.

  “Well then,” Elianna said, looking over and smiling at Ernst. “Let’s discuss what you want and then we can discuss what
I want.”

  Ernst shook his head so subtly that probably only he noticed. Elianna had never intended to just talk. She’d planned to show von Krosigk her power all along. Because seeing is where real believing comes in.

  And now the Führer was a believer.

  Judging by the silent demeanor and look on Frau von Krosigk’s face, she too was a believer, and just as afraid as Ernst about where it was all leading.

  Chapter 5 - Sergeant Nelson

  July 14, 1940

  “Get that wire in place or we’re wasting our time here,” Sergeant Johnny Nelson yelled at his men. “You know the drill! We ain’t done by sundown, we retreat. Then we take this patch again tomorrow!”

  “We’re working as fast as we can,” Private McKinney shot back.

  “Shut up, McKinney, I ain’t in the mood. Get this done, because I’m sick of having to fall back every damned day because of lazy SOB’s like you.”

  The private scowled but reached into the trailer with his gloved hands to drag out more wire. Two more men grabbed the bundle and started processing it. Once the men cut the baling wire holding the wire tightly wound, the coil of concertina wire was dragged into position.

  Nelson walked away to inspect the previous section the men had put in place. “Give me lip, you little…” he mumbled as he chewed the stub of his cigar.

  For some reason, if the soldiers sealed the area behind the wire with one continuous band of metal, the deaders no longer wanted into the area. If there was a gap, or if they didn’t clean the bones of the deaders they put down for a second death earlier that day, tomorrow it would be full of the horrors once more. Horrors that would either rip a man apart or cage him in and force him away from the safety of the American line.

  Nelson’s squad was on their fourth day of duty. Everyone had questions, and few had any answers about what was going on. As the squad sergeant he’d had a week of instruction and training, but the other squad members were expected to learn on the job.

  So far the process wasn’t working that great.

  “Why don’t we just burn all of France like we burn the areas we’re securing?” Corporal Wilcox wondered out loud.

  “They don’t make that many petrol spraying planes,” McKinney replied.

  Kid was probably right.

  Nelson hadn’t lost any of his men to the deaders yet, but his squad had one of the lowest rates of success for securing new territory, at least for this week. After a month in Brittany the US Army had less than half the region to show for it. At this rate they wouldn’t liberate France before 1952.

  Mysteriously, they hadn’t found even one French citizen, dead or alive.

  “Why doesn’t whoever is killing the living and raising the dead send one of those dragons that attacked Berlin to do us in?” Wilcox asked. “That would end our time here real quick.”

  “Because this is the Devil’s work and he ain’t none too smart,” Private Fensten said, finally giving his two cents.

  Nelson rolled his eyes. “The Devil is plenty smart. If you need to believe he isn’t smart to get your work done, you believe that for now. But Satan has a plan and he’s no fool.”

  As long as his boys worked hard and got back behind the lines before the deaders surged up once again, they could say about whatever they wanted. But if they slacked, spoke ill of Christians, back talked him or got sloppy in their work, they’d deal with him.

  “It’s always the Devil with you, Fensten,” McKinney said derisively. “If God is all powerful, then how does that Devil of yours get anything done?”

  “Quit your blasphemin’,” Nelson warned. “I ain’t havin’ it.”

  Nelson knew McKinney thought he was some sort of scientist, and maybe he thought he was an atheist, but let a deader get close enough and that would change. If there ain’t no atheists in foxholes, then there sure as Hell ain’t any around this supernatural evil either.

  Nelson carried a Bible in his second holster. On his right hip sat a Colt 1911, and on the left a travel Bible his momma gave him when he left Kentucky for Fort Dix in 1935. It had kept him sane during basic training, and it would keep him sane now. And hopefully provide some of God’s protection.

  A pair of crop dusters rattled in from the south. They’d drop latex infused gasoline to soak and burn the land to the east for tomorrow’s efforts at reclamation. The first of many, soon the sky would be glowing orange and black with smoke. Only the USA was using this tactic as far as Nelson was aware, but probably because only the USA had oil to burn. The Krauts might act up and break their truce at any time, those Nazis were none too reliable. Britain was reportedly stockpiling fuel for any such contingency, ready to fuel their tanks and planes. They didn’t trust the Germans either. So, thanks to the bountiful oilfields of Texas, Americans were the only army on the coast of France trying to make a difference.

  The dusters looped back and forth no more than a half-dozen football fields away as they soaked the area with fuel from just a few feet off the ground.

  Finally, he tore himself away to check in on his men. “Come on, boys, we ain’t getting younger. Let’s wrap this up and get back behind the lines. If this area isn’t full of new deaders for us to kill tomorrow, then we’ll move on to the next patch.”

  A biplane approached, following in the trail of the two crop dusters. A small incendiary dropped over the side of the open cockpit. A flash of white phosphorus and the entire ‘dusted’ area flashed into a raging fire. A farmhouse and a barn were soon adding to the firestorm. Trees lost their leaves then turned to ash as grassy fields burned away to nothing.

  Tomorrow the fire would be out and there would be a new square of gray earth, filled with the dead who surged west toward the Americans every night. The soldiers would fire their weapons from the safety of the ground taken yesterday until none of the dead moved, then the cleanup would begin. Dozers from the combat engineers pushed the dead into rapidly dug pits where they were burned, and their ashes buried once more.

  Hopefully to stay this time, because a few times Nelson noticed the pits from the night before turned into churned up earth as the dead escaped to roam again.

  He shuddered. They might retake France from the horror that held it now, but what would it be worth? Paris was reportedly filled with the deaders according to aerial recon. Would the military burn the entire city? Where had the Parisians gone? Scuttlebutt was there weren’t enough deaders to account for all the people.

  A noise from behind the lines caught his attention. He looked at his watch. The truck to pick them up was approaching. The men were as done as they were going to get. “Get ready for the truck, boys. It’s time to run away again and hope the line holds.”

  They’d survived another day. “Hopefully they’ll have a good mess tonight,” Fensten said. “The ashes of the dead don’t taste the best.”

  “They taste like grit and despair,” Nelson replied. He’d gotten used to it already, but he’d been here longer. Every day he and his team breathed in the remains of WWI soldiers, the ashes of French civilians, the burned land, and the remains of farm animals destroyed by the dead. They were still trying to ignore the taste and smell, but it got to them. Every day they hoped for a good meal when they got back behind the wall that crossed the peninsula, one that would finally get rid of that taste. At least overnight.

  So far the chow had been adequate. It wasn’t that hard to get hot meals and smokes to the battalion, since they weren’t moving at any speed that would stretch a supply line and the German U-boats weren’t sinking any ships, at least not for the moment. There were reports of some ships not making it, but that had to be the nonsense soldiers said to convince themselves that others have it worse than they do.

  He looked around at his squad. Wilcox was technically his second in command, but the kid was twenty years old. And about as mature as an eighth grader. Nelson, with a cigar in his mouth, a flask of whiskey in his pocket, and two days of facial hair was the old man in the unit.

  At
twenty-four.

  “When we get back behind the wall, you all need to check the boards at the command tent and see if you have guard duty,” Nelson told the boys. “If you do, you’re first in line for food then grab a nap.”

  “You ever get guard duty, Sarge?”

  “Every day I watch you guys like your momma,” Nelson answered. “We’re not going to lose anyone to stupid if I can help it. I need to be awake for that.”

  “It’s not that dangerous,” McKinney replied. “The dead are… well, dead again by the time we come out in the truck, and they don’t return that day for some reason.”

  “You’ve seen the ones in the trees, no more than a mile away?” Wilcox asked.

  “Yeah. They just stay there.”

  “They’re just lulling you into a comfort,” Wilcox told McKinney. “You let your guard down, and they will be on you. They can move fast.”

  “If you say so,” the private replied. “I just haven’t seen it.”

  Wilcox started to respond, but Nelson stopped him.

  “The second day I was here one got through the fence right after we moved it east,” Nelson said. “They’re fast alright. Killed three men before the guards could put it down.”

  The kid looked like he didn’t know how to respond.

  “I never lie,” Nelson said. “I don’t break the commandments. Carelessness out here will get you killed,” Nelson added. “And that ain’t happening on my watch. I see you messing around, and you’ll have guard duty every night. If you ain’t paying attention anyway, it might as well be ‘cause you’re tired.”

  Eyes around the truck widened a bit. Guard duty didn’t get a man out of working the next day to clear the land. It just got him exhaustion. A week of it would wear even a young man down.

  The rest of the ride was quiet. The boys were nearer to figuring out what sort of sergeant he was. The kind that didn’t take to a private doing a thing that wasn’t in the soldier’s manual.

  Nelson crossed his arms and chewed his cigar. He was finally satisfied that this group was smart enough to work with.