ON THE CUSP OF MADNESS

 

Major Richard Blaine and his Spartan 300 have just survived a meeting with a mocking all-powerful entity. 

Why did it let them pass?

ON THE CUSP OF MADNESS

“I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness.”

- Oberführer Reinhardt König

 

“Who the devil was that?” gasped Evans.

“You just answered your own question, Eric,” I managed to get out.

André stepped even farther from me. “átkozott vagy!

I nodded. “Sometimes it does feel as if I am damned.”

Rachel lightly touched my shoulder from behind.

“The angel who saved you earlier did not think so. Whether she was your Helen or someone else entirely does not matter. The angel thought you worthy of being saved.”

She squeezed my shoulder. “And so do I.”

Amos clamped a hand on my other shoulder.

“So do we all, Rick. We all look at your bandaged hands and see the flinch of pain on your face when you think we aren’t looking, and we know ….”

His voice thickened, and Theo took over for him, 

“That the worth of a man is not from what people call him but from the pain he’s willing to suffer for others.”

I cleared my throat. 

“Thank you. But we have some miles to cover before we reach Oradour-sur-Glane. And trust me, Spartans, we want to reach it long before sundown.”

The mottled undergrowth and twisted trees thinned as we marched. Unseen things crawled and scurried in the branches above us which seemed to reach down like gnarled fingers.

A clearing teased us from yards away. I didn’t know if I was glad or sad to be nearing the martyred village. It didn’t matter.

We had to cross that Rubicon and resign ourselves to survive the consequences. Destiny beckoned … along with a lot of death I was afraid … past and future.

Vincent said, “Did, ah, your Dark Passenger tell you how soon that unit of Nazi psychos will reach us, Major?”

“No, Ant. She tells me a lot of things … but not everything. But she did tell me the German High Command is not happy with Senior Colonel Dr, Oskar Dirlewanger.”

Risking a thump aside the head, Taylor asked, “Why, Major?”

“He’s a psychopath, Stew. It’s not something you can turn on and off like tap water. They ordered him and his unit to come here from Poland weeks ago ….”

“Weeks ago?” blustered Floyd. “They should have already been here.”

I nodded. 

“Yes, but the Senior Colonel is a slave to his compulsion to kill. He’s stopped from time to time to feed his addiction and those same ones of his men.”

Taylor squeaked, “So, he could be here anytime.”

“That’s about the size of it,” growled Theo, “so put the muscle to the hustle and let’s get to that damned village. Ah, pardon my French, Rac, ah, Nurse Reynolds.”

“Pardoned, sergeant,” laughed Rachel, “if you gentlemen will pick up the pace.”

“You heard the lady,” I said. “Pick up the pace.”

The land seemed to slope oddly as if our eyes were viewing it from the wrong end of a telescope. 

Worse, our feet felt all tangled up in waves of gravity like the force had become tangible in some high tide manner.

My head felt light, and my stomach felt at high tide along with the strange gravity tugging at my leaden legs.

“Watch your steps, men,” urged Theo. "You do not want to fall down in this cursed forest."

Amos muttered to me, “Is the air starting to smell … odd to you, Rick?”

“Gentlemen!” I snapped, “take your helmets from off your belts and put them on?”

“Why?” grumbled Dimitri.

Theo said harshly, “Because the Major said to do it.”

Dimitri did it, but he hated the cooped-up feeling it gave him despite the cool oxygen jets and other stimulants it breathed into his nostrils.

"Because what we are about to find in the air in that stricken village may be poisonous to breathe unfiltered."

"What of me?" asked André. "I have no helmet."

“The camera Sentient gave you will act as a filter.”

“If I die anyway?”

Cloverfield drawled, “We will always miss your sunny disposition.”

André gave the British agent a look he usually reserved for me. Cloverfield actually seemed amused.

Rachel and I kept our Spartan helmets on that only looked Greek whenever we marched.

They were futuristic as well and acted accordingly. So we simply watched the others don their futuristic helmets that looked nothing so much as fancy deep-sea gear.

We edged around the last grove of nightmarish trees and stopped dead in our tracks.

The ground no longer seemed to slope, it dipped down dramatically into what must have been a lush valley but was now covered in seared, burnt grass.

As sometimes happened with my Sentient-altered helmet, I saw a map over my right eye which indicated that this land had always been even and flat. 

I even saw an image of what this land once looked like beneath the map.

“Be very cautious, Gentlemen. Sentient has shown me this has always been flat land.”

Taylor rasped, “Wh-What changed it Major? How?”

“König. When he opened a door between realities, our dimension recoiled at the unnatural intrusion. 

Feeling raped, the very land rebelled and thrust itself away from the touch of what it felt unclean and loathsome and vile.”’

Amos forced out, “Is that what killed the Nazis and the villagers?”

I shook my head. 

“Even Sentient does not know. But when you open a door to the Great Darkness, its denizens scurry in like hungry cockroaches … or worse. And they came in ... hungry.”

I shivered, “Be on guard, friends. We are deep in enemy territory in more ways than one.”