THE TOWN THAT HATED GOD

Major Richard Blaine is leading his Spartan 300 into the cursed village of Oradour-sur-Glan.

Sentient, the alien entity who shares his consciousness, 

tells him that nothing natural lives on these smoking streets and within these seared buildings.

But something lies in wait. Their lives are the least they have to lose.

THE TOWN THAT HATED GOD

“We have come to a turning point in the road, my friends. If we turn to the light perhaps our children and our children's children will go that way.

 But if we turn to the Dark, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word.”

 – Rabbi Lt. Amos Stein

 

We stepped on the seared rubble of what was left of the cobblestones of Oradour-sur-Glan.

 Our footsteps sounded hollow and loud no matter how hard we tried to be quiet. Even Agent Cloverfield failed at silence.

For a heartbeat, I was whisked back to lethal New Orleans to that alleyway bordered by delicate iron lacework terraces.

Helen stood defiant and strong, her petite revolver held firm in her slender fingers. 

Her silken hair tickled my left ear. Helen always stood on my left, the side where my heart beat.

Loathsome creatures were following the scent of our souls. No masking them possible. 

It appeared Mr. Morton would have his final checkmate against me.

Helen smiled warmly up at me. “Death will not be so terrible with you at my side.”

The bright light that had suddenly enveloped us at that moment seemed to amazingly bathe me and my Spartans where we stood.

“Whoa!” cried Reese. “What was that?”

“The remembrance of Love past,” I managed to get out.

Taylor grunted, “That don’t make no sense.”

Rachel murmured, 

“Love doesn't need a reason, Stewart. It speaks and manifests from the irrational wisdom of the heart.”

Taylor mumbled, 

“And that don’t make any sense neither.”

Evans sneered, 

“For a guy who asks so many darn questions, you don’t seem to know what to do with the answers once you get them.”

I said into my helmet’s speakers so that all the Spartans would hear,

“Answers are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. They often don’t make sense until you get enough of them to fit together into a coherent whole or a sense of the whole picture.”

Johnny Knight whistled as we got closer to the seared and cracked buildings. 

“This town must have hated God for Him to allow this kind of madness to happen to it.”

Amos said sternly. 

“We mustn’t prejudge. The very opposite may be true: this town may have in fact loved Elohim, and for that it was punished by His Adversary.”

Cloverfield said, 

“I think it is merely side-stepping personal responsibility to blame all mankind’s atrocities on the devil.”

He laughed harshly, 

“I look back on my life, and I see my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I have outgrown. I wonder how I could ever have been some of them. 

At the time, I might have consoled myself with the lie that some of my darker acts were merely mistakes.”

Cloverfield’s voice hardened, 

“But even then, and most assuredly now, I knew that they were just plain wrong. 

No satanic whisper made me do them. I did them of my own free will. I was my own devil.”

I shrugged. “Only makes you human, James. We live. We make mistakes. We learn from them or die when we don’t.”

Porkins yelped. I turned in his direction. I was spared yelping myself by his warning.

I had seen strange sights in New Orleans, but none like the one flowing with a life of its own towards us oozing down the steps to our right … the side away from our hearts.

If Hell breathed, this eerie fog looked like it had barely escaped from its congested lungs.

My mouth dried, and every orifice in my body shrank to the size of a pepper seed.

Its color was like vaporous candy corn. But the flickering flames within it promised no treat but only the deadliest of tricks.

Somehow, it gave off the aura of ravenous hunger. As it neared us, the undulating mists sped up as if afraid we would run away.

“Don’t run. Don’t even move. Stand your ground, “I urged.

Words came out of my lips, and I knew they were not Sentient’s but Someone else’s.

“Fear not! Stand your ground. The Lord himself will fight for you. You have only to keep still and see Evil does not always win.”

Amos breathed, “The words of Moses. You are he born again.”

I shook my head. “Rabbi, I am just me.”

As if in denial of my words, Helen Mayfair’s velvet voice arose from nowhere yet from everywhere like a whisper from the Gateless Realm:

“Bind me—I still can sing—

Banish—my mandolin

Strikes true within—

 

Slay—and my Soul shall rise

Chanting to Paradise—

Still thine.”

Helen had read those words of Emily Dickinson’s to me long ago in that dark hour when all seemed lost in St. Marok’s eerie library.

Against all odds we survived that Halloween.

My spine firmed. I and my Spartan 300 would survive this day as well. 

I believed that deep down without confirmation of my eyes like I knew the sun still shone above the hurricane’s howling.

The first tendrils of that loathsome fog reached out for me, then recoiled with a hissing much like mist makes when touched with a heated fireplace poker.

With a heart-wrenching whimper, the iridescent fog bled back up the steps away from us. 

Even after it disappeared around the corner, I could still hear the moaning of the mist as if it still hurt by merely getting close to me.

Reese cleared his closing throat, “Major, before I met you, my life made sense.”

“I envy you, Trent,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because at some point, life made sense to you. It never has for me.”

Porkins grumbled, “Where are all the bodies of the dead Nazis?”

“Oh,” I smiled sadly. “They are in the courtyard yonder in the direction that mist took.”

“Why there?” asked Rachel.

“Because that courtyard is where the Nazis herded the poor villagers to be the target of Oberführer Reinhardt König’s experimentation.”

“All of the Nazi soldiers are there?” wondered Cloverfield. “It took all of them to herd weaponless villagers?”

I sighed, “There were 642 men, women, and children, James.”

“Children?” gasped Nurse Reynolds.

“Yes, Rachel. Though James, it did not take all 200 soldiers of the Panzer regiment Der Führer to herd the terrified villagers.”

I was so mad that I growled the rest of my sentence. “The majority of those bastards just wanted to watch.”

“Are any of those Nazis still alive?” hissed the usually peace-loving rabbi.

“No, Amos. König rushed through his calculations, eager to impress Hitler. He disregarded any hint his equations would not produce the effect for which he was aiming.

He cut corners and forced the equations to come out as he thought they should.”

I shook my head. 

“Sentient tells me that he should have paid attention to his calculations. His weapons and devises are more potent than he intended.”

Theo grunted harshly, 

“Let me guess? He fired on those villagers and killed, not only them, but all of his own men.”

“Yes. But the coward wasn’t among them. He was in his laboratory and fired from a distance.”

I pronounced it the British way as had Dr. Frankenstein in one of the only movies I had ever seen. No one laughed. Not even me.

The rabbi eagerly asked, “So that rat is still alive?”

“No, Amos. According to Sentient, his insides are smeared all over the walls. 

The only thing that remains of him that you can recognize are the two oak leaves on the uniform collar rank patches.”

Cloverfield nodded to the suspiciously unmarred signpost.

 “I can read German, too, Major. That sign points to König’s headquarters.”

“I want his laboratory, James. And that sign is too clean not to be a plant from my enemy.”

“Then, how are we going to find it, Major?” asked not too surprisingly by Taylor.

I held up my left bandaged hand. 

“Inside this artificial hand are devices and instrumentation from 413 years in the future. 

They have been reacting to the … let’s just say the unnatural residue from that explosion which killed König.”

Theo asked, “So, you can lead us there?”

“Yes, but it will not be pretty, and it will be dangerous.”

“We are not expecting roses, Major,” said Rachel, “only a road that will take us the fastest to an end of this nightmare.”

I remembered the words of Niccolo Machiavelli: 

“There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.”

But to avoid a small war with Rachel, I kept silent.

Was I a coward, or was I aware she had the right to her own hopes?

Every day, no matter how you fight it, you learn a little more about yourself, and all most of it does is teach you humility.