HELL OF OUR OWN MAKING

 

Major Richard Blaine leads his Spartan 300 to a cursed French village 310 miles away from any other Allied troops. 

If anything goes wrong, they are on their own. Can anyone say "Custer's Last Stand?"

HELL OF OUR OWN MAKING

“The human soul is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.”

– Helen Mayfair

 

“I didn’t sign up for this,” groaned Jace Mercer as he rearranged his pack for the thousandth time.

Johnny Knight, who had marched beside him all through Sicily, grunted, “You didn’t sign up period. You was drafted.”

“As you repeatedly reminded us all through boot camp,” snorted Eric Evans.

“Well, blazing summer sun and long, dusty roads sure wasn’t what the enlistment posters promised,” insisted Mercer.

“Kit” Carson snapped, “You were drafted!”

Cpl. Wilson shook his head,

“And these woods have started to feel more like October than summer ever since we rounded that bend back there.”

Dee Stevens shifted the weight of his own pack and looked to his friend,

“I just hope that when we reach that spooky village of the Major’s, it doesn’t turn into Halloween.”

I called back to Dee,

“It’s not mine. It’s not anyone’s. Not since Oberführer Reinhardt König played fast and loose with the Natural Order with his experiments.”

“Then, why are we going there?” muttered Taylor.

Since Evans hadn’t slugged him, he wanted to know, too. Merde, all of the Spartans probably did.

I listened a moment to the disturbing things Sentient told me. 

I groaned inside. 

How was I going to phrase that to men whose world had always made sense before they met me?

Simple. Start with survival, then, move on from there.

As furtive wild things rustled in the mottled undergrowth, I said,

“There are … weapons there that we can use against the Nazi’s heading our way.”

“How do they even know about us, Major?” yelped Taylor, who promptly got slugged by Evans.

“They don’t. They were sent by the German High Command to chastise König for disobeying direct orders. As odd as it may seem, there were some things too foul for even the SS.”

“How many does your Dark Passenger say?” asked Cloverfield.

“She didn’t give me an exact number. Just the name of the unit: SS Sonderkommando Dirlewanger.”

“Oh, bloody hell! Stones and Blood! Not them!”

“They’re that bad?” gulped Taylor.

Cloverfield grunted,

“Bad doesn’t cover it, mate. Led by Senior Colonel Dr. Oskar Dirlewanger, a violent alcoholic psychopath and murderer. Many of the men in his brigade were common criminals and sadists with prior convictions for rape, murder, and even worse crimes.”

Cpl. Wilson whistled, “Worse than rape and murder?”

Cloverfield nodded, 

 ”Having sex with the dead and forcing the relatives to watch qualifies in my book, mate. The brigade became so notorious for their atrocities in Poland and Byelorussia that even other senior SS officers complained to Himmler.”

Amos, his face stone, husked, “And they’re headed here?”

Cloverfield turned to me. “You sure there are weapons in that damned village we can use against them.”

“Yes.”

Theo stepped out of the ranks and roared at the men, 

“You heard the Major and Cloverfield! Put some muscle to the hustle. March like your lives depended on it ‘cause it sounds like it does!”

They marched.

The fear of the men made our surroundings blur in their minds obviously for the Spartans paid them no mind.

I, however, did pay them mind.

So, did André. 

He pulled back from beside me as if I were as diseased as the densely fungus-covered trees we passed.

 He husked out one word as he glared at me.

“Megszállott!”

“Yes, I am possessed … just not in the way you think. Why do you hate me … and don’t bring up your lost love. I have one, too.”

He took his time answering.

It was morning when we started out, but shadows lurked thick here. I had an uneasy feeling they were always here no matter the time of day.

The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too thin and twisted for any healthy French woodland.

There was too much silence in the dim paths between them. Strange, deep-set tracks of cloven hooves dotted them. 

I had no desire to see where they led. My dark fears were too sure of their destination.

 The floor beneath my boots was soft with the dank moss and mattings of seemingly infinite years of decay.

Finally, André started to speak low, putting a cigarette in the corner of his lips.

I snatched it out of his mouth and threw it into the woods. “Let’s not advertise our presence to any unseen ….”

I stopped when a mottled, tiny hand shot out from the undergrowth and snatched up the unlit cigarette.

“Nicotine is a nasty habit,” I managed to get out.

He paled and rasped, “Átkozott vagy!”

“I do feel accursed. But that is not why you hate me. Spill it.”

His dark spaniel eyes glittered with anger.

“I! I get to choose if … if! … I place myself in danger. No one else. I get to choose to be hero, to be coward! No one else! But, no! You pluck me from the deck of that ship where I was safe.”

“You promised Life Magazine you would go on Omaha Beach to photograph ….”

“Yes! I promised! Not you! Not you! Now, those eleven photographs I gave my word to give them are not there.”

He pounded the camera hanging from his neck and froze, suddenly realizing it was not his old camera.

“Yes, Sentient kept your word for you ….’’

He tapped my forehead roughly with his right fingertips.

“Cseszd meg! There is no Sentient. Only this … this diseased brain of yours.”

I shrugged. “No matter. Those eleven negatives are already on your editor’s desk.”

“I did not take them! They will not have my style, my vision.”

“Your paycheck will still be all yours.”

“I will not have earned it!”

“How delightful,” mocked a voice I had never wanted to hear again. “Cain and Abel arguing. I so missed it.”

Mr. Morton, hidden in the shadows to my right, chuckled, “What took you so long? I was getting bored.”

His voice became hollow as if spoken from a cavernous crypt. “And you know how dangerous I become when bored.”

I turned.

An opening slowly formed in the very shadows, blood oozing along its edges … as if he had torn a hole in reality itself … which was not beyond the entity I called Mr. Morton.

André husked, ”Nem, nem, solia!”

Mr. Morton laughed as if dry ice had been given voice and turned to me.

“Never say never. Isn’t that the inane rallying cry you have given the French Resistance?”

He continued to laugh in his immaculate, elegant SS uniform.

The portal abruptly closed.

Mr. Morton was gone. 

The steaming blood from reality’s wound, however, remained bubbling on the forest floor.

The shivers stayed, too.