The Sharp End (The Great Undead War prequel story) Page 2

  Burke breathed a sigh of relief and then quickly followed it with another when he realized that their fear was unnecessary; the gun wasn’t even shooting in their direction.

  So what was it shooting at?

  He signaled for the others to stay put and then belly–crawled forward the last twenty feet until he lay at the edge of the wood with the farmhouse off to his right across a short stretch of open ground. More importantly, his position gave him a clear view across the long expanse of No Man’s Land that they were going to have to cross if they hoped to reach safety and as he looked in that direction it didn’t take him long to figure out what had spurred the machine gun crew into action.

  There was a wounded man down there, trying to crawl to safety.

  The gunners were firing intermittently, seemingly playing with their target as their shots came close without hitting him, kicking up rows of dirt close enough to make him flinch.

  Eventually they would get bored of their sport and finish him off. Burke hoped to turn the tables and finish them off before they had the chance.

  Burke crawled back to the others and carefully outlined what he wanted them to do. When he was finished, he sent O’Leary around the left side, Bennett around the right, and held Perkins back in reserve. Their jobs were to keep any of the machine gun crew from escaping out the side or front of the building in the event they managed to live through Burke’s attack. He waited until they were in position and then waved Charlie forward with him.

  There was twenty–foot stretch of open ground between the tree line and the door of the farmhouse. The two men raced across it, weapons out, knowing this was the moment at which they were the most vulnerable. If one of the enemy soldiers inside the building chose that moment to come out for a smoke or to take a piss, the entire assault would be blown and they’d have deal with the consequences in the space of a heartbeat.

  Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

  They reached the back door and flattened themselves on either side. All these farmhouses had been built to the same basic layout, so they knew the back door opened onto the kitchen which in turn looking out into the living room. That’s where the machine gun was situated, no doubt firing out the living room windows that looked out over no man’s land.

  The plan was simple. Sergeant Moore would kick open the back door and then get out of the way as Burke charged inside. Burke hoped the few seconds of surprise they had would be enough for him to take out the gunners before they could retaliate.

  It was risky, but they didn’t have any other options available to them. Grenades were out, for the explosion would attract attention. At least the sounds of the machine gun would cover the sounds of their own weapons.

  The two men looked at each other and waited.

  Right at that moment the machine gun opened fire again and as soon as it did Burke gave the other man a short nod.

  Sergeant Moore stepped forward and tried the knob, finding it unlocked. He opened the door and stepped softly inside, moving to the left to give Burke room to follow. The gun was right where they’d expected it to be; surrounded by its four man crew, only one of which was turning in their direction, a surprised look on his face.

  Burke raised his pistol and put a bullet into the man’s face.

  The rest of the enemy soldiers were dispatched with half–a–dozen shots between him and Moore before any of the German soldiers had a chance to bring their weapons to bear. Burke felt no remorse; this was war, after all. He only regretted not taking them out sooner as a glance through the front window showed the man the Germans had been firing on lying unmoving in the distance; one of their last volleys had apparently found its mark.

  Burke led Sergeant Moore back outside, gathered the other three to them, and set off as a group down the small hill the farmhouse rested on and into the wide expanse of no man’s land that lay between them and safety.

  It was slow going. The terrain was uneven, the result of months of constant shelling, and the earth beneath their feet was still soaked from several days worth of accumulated rain. They moved forward as briskly as they could, uncomfortably aware that the foremost German positions were only a few thousand yards behind them. A decent sniper might still reach them with a good shot, but they were hoping the distance and the rapidly falling dusk would make identification too difficult for the enemy to chance a shot. No one wanted to kill one of their own, after all.

  Sergeant Moore led the way, followed closely by Bennett. Behind them came O’Leary, Burke, and Perkins. They skirted shell craters and scattered bits of barbed wire, stepped past the bodies of friend and foe alike, knowing there was nothing they could do for them now.

  They were about half way to the abandoned trench line that Burke had decided would be their first rally point when a sound ripped through the late afternoon air and sent a dagger of ice–cold fear deep into his heart.

  The sound of a Maxim 08 heavy machine gun.

  Bullets ripped up a furrow of earth just a few feet away from him and Burke gave the only command that came to mind.

  “Run!”

  His order was unnecessary; his men were already charging forward as fast as they could go, desperate to get out from under the sights of whoever was manning the gun in the farmhouse behind them.

  Burke didn’t know if one of the gunners they’d left behind them had only been injured or if another patrol had come upon the sight of the battle and decided to dish out a little payback to the men responsible. Given the erratic nature of the gunfire he suspected the former and cursed himself for not checking the bodies of the soldiers they’d left behind. All he could do at this point was hope the gunner’s injuries were bad enough that he would be unable to get a bead on them before they reached the safety of the trench.

  It wasn’t to be.

  A sharp cry sounded behind him and he glanced back in time to see Perkins fall beneath a hail of gunfire.

  Fuck!

  Burke froze in indecision, glancing back and forth between the safety of the trench and the fallen man behind him.

  Ahead of him he saw Sergeant Moore skid to a halt, no doubt mentally going through the same calculation that Burke was and that was enough to break the lieutenant’s reluctance.

  “Go!” he shouted to the others, waving them on, and then turned back for his fallen comrade.

  Bullets whipped and whistled past him as the gunner saw that he had another target. Burke did his best to ignore the hail of hot lead that filled the air as he charged back to where Perkins lay and threw himself into the mud beside him.

  One glance was all Burke needed to know that it was all but hopeless; there was a hole the size of his fist in the younger man’s abdomen. Perkins’ uniform was turning black with the blood that poured out of the wound as he thrashed about in agony. It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened; the bullet had entered through the man’s back, probably hit a rib and started tumbling, tearing a bigger hole in his gut on its way out. Perkins was already dead; he just didn’t know it yet. If the wound didn’t kill him, the infection he was certain to get as a result of the battlefield conditions most definitely would.

  But Burke had never left a man behind, no matter how badly injured, and he had no intention of starting now. Ignoring the bullets smacking into the mud all around him, Burke got to one knee, hefted Perkins over his shoulder, and then surged to his feet, charging forward toward the trench in the distance as fast as his legs could carry him. Perkins screamed once as Burke got underway but then mercifully went limp, no doubt unconscious from the pain. Burke was glad; it was hard enough carrying the wounded man without him thrashing about in agony.

  The mud sucked at his feet, pulling at him, trying to drag him down like it was a living thing intent on keeping him from escaping. But Burke fought on, determined to see his charge to safety. Bullets whipped around him with the drone of angry insects.

  The trench was thirty yards away.

  Twenty.

  The machine gun fire behind him sudde
nly stopped.

  Reloading, Burke thought.

  His foot caught on something and he stumbled. For a moment he thought both he and his charge were going to end up face first in the dirt, but then he caught himself and staggered on.

  Fifteen yards.

  The trench line was close now, just another few minutes…

  “Incoming!”

  Burke heard Moore’s warning cry coming up from the trench right about the same time the shrieking whistle of a descending round reached his ears. He could tell from the tone that it was a big one, probably a 17cm, or maybe even a 25er. Getting caught in the open when one of those bastards went off was tantamount to suicide. There wouldn’t be enough left of him to bury if the shell landed close by.

  Burke frantically glanced about, looking for cover, but the ground had been so thoroughly devastated by repeat artillery engagements over the last few weeks that even the tree stumps had been pulverized into matchstick–sized splinters. The trench ahead of him where the others had gone to ground was too far away; he’d never make it in time.

  The whistle of the incoming shells was getting louder and Burke knew he had mere seconds to find cover or he was going to become a permanent part of this landscape. He spotted a shallow blast crater a few yards away and altered his course to head directly for it. It wasn’t much, a piece of scooped out ground where a howitzer shell had landed during some previous bombardment, but at least it provided some cover, limited though it might be.

  He was only steps away from the edge of the shell crater when a shell impacted somewhere behind him, the shock wave knocking him to the ground and sending Perkins tumbling away from him. He must have banged his head in the process, for he spent a confused moment trying to figure out where he was and what he was doing before his senses returned to him and he realized he was still in terrible danger. With the realization came a burning pain from his left leg. A glance showed him the gash where a piece of shrapnel had caught him across the thigh. It wasn’t bad enough to keep him from moving, however. As more shells began to impact the area around him, Burke scrambled forward, grabbed Perkins by the straps of his haversack, and dragged them both into protection of the shell crater, limited as it was. He covered the other man’s body with his own and prayed they’d both live through the next few minutes.

  The ground continued to shake and roll for a few moments before the enemy gunners found their range and the artillery barrage, never intended for the middle of No Man’s Land, found its proper target a thousand yards farther south in the midst of the Allied line.

  When the crash and boom of the artillery came to an end several minutes later, Burke cautiously raised his head.

  He could see the rest of his men, including Sergeant Moore, doing the same in the trench in front of him.

  Burke was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the sergeant suddenly began shouting something and frantically pointing back toward the German lines.

  Burke looked behind him.

  Grey–green tendrils of gas were creeping across the ground toward him, like questing fingers of some malevolent creature intent on strangling the life from him.

  Shit! Shit! Shit!

  All thoughts of dealing with the wound in his leg were forgotten at the sight of the gas. He’d never seen gas of this particular color before, but he had no doubt it was as deadly as any of the other kinds of chemical weapons he’d encountered so far and he needed to protect himself immediately. He grabbed the mask of his respirator from where it was clipped to the front strap of his haversack and pulled it over his head. He took the rubber mouthpiece that was attached to the chest box containing the neutralizing chemicals between his teeth and bit down hard to be certain of the seal and then made sure that the nose clips holding his nostrils shut were seated properly as well. If any contaminated air made it through the fabric or under the edge of the mask itself, the clips would keep him from breathing it in so it was worth the discomfort. Burke had seen too many men asphyxiating inside their masks not to wear the clips.

  The mask restricted his vision to just what he could see through the round glass lenses of the eyepieces. It also filled his ears with the panicked sound of his own breathing, but Burke didn’t pay attention to either one; he just wanted to keep that gas away from his throat and lungs.

  The gas was almost upon him when he turned to Perkins, intending to pull the other man’s mask on for him, only to be met by the younger man’s unseeing stare.

  Perkins was dead.

  Burke spit out a curse around the mouthpiece of his gas mask and pushed the body away from him, scrambling up the forward edge of the crater as best as his injured leg allowed. The gas was very thick, restricting vision down to just a few feet, and Burke knew that this was his best chance of escaping. Gas attacks were almost always followed up by a wave of men on foot, but Burke knew they would wait for the gas to dissipate a little before marching into enemy territory. If he could use the cover that the gas provided, he might be able to rejoin his comrades and make the safety of the Allied lines before the Germans caught up to them.

  Burke left the crater behind and hobbled forward as best he could, heading for where he had last seen the others.

  A light breeze was blowing in his general direction of travel and it wasn’t long before the full extent of the gas attack was upon them. Clouds of gas would envelop Burke for several minutes and then he’d step free of the vapor for a moment, just long enough to get a look around and re–adjust his trajectory before being swallowed up again.

  The thick material of the mask filled his ears with the sound of his own panicked breathing, but he barely noticed, his mind lost on another thought.

  Something to do with the color of the gas…

  His foot caught on something and he went down, hitting the ground hard enough to knock the mouthpiece of his gas mask free from his lips.

  He rolled over and sat up, his hands coming up to fix the mouthpiece as he looked to see what he’d tripped over.

  A hand jutted out of the earth, the fingers locked around his ankle.

  Even as he watched in horror the grip on his leg tightened as the arm shook back and forth, freeing more of its length.

  He could see the hand clearly, could see the rotting flesh peeling back from the bones, could see the black lines of what had once been human veins pushing out against the decaying flesh as it reacted to the gas seeping down into the earth.

  A gas the Germans called T–leiche.

  Corpse gas.

  Fuck!

  The realization that the rumors were true brought a wave of terror so strong it threatened to drown him in its grip. Burke fought it off even as he began kicking savagely at the hand with his other foot.

  Once.

  Twice.

  On the third blow, several of the fingers holding his ankle broke into pieces, allowing him to wrench his foot free. He scrambled backward just as the corpse attached to the mutilated hand forced itself up from the mud in which it lay and turned its rotting face to snarl at him in hunger. Burke knew he would never forgot the sight of the gaping hole in the side of its head even as he brought his foot back one more time and sent it slamming into the creature’s decaying face.

  The force of the blow snapped the bones of its neck and tore its head right off its body, sending it bouncing away from him into the mist.

  The suddenly inanimate corpse crashed back down at his feet.

  Burke scrambled away from it, hearing a high keening noise in his ears and only realizing after several seconds that he was the one making the sound.

  He climbed to his feet as the ground around him began to shift and stir, the bodies of other dead soldiers reacting to the gas and pushing up against the weight of the earth that held them in its grip.

  Run! his mind shrieked at him and Burke obeyed, lurching forward as fast as his injured leg would carry him.

  The gas was everywhere now, making it nearly impossible to see. Burke stumbled forward, hoping like hell that he w
as going in the right direction. He hadn’t taken more than ten steps when he spotted something moving through the mist off to his left. Whatever it was must have spotted him as well, for it veered in his direction. He caught the flash of a drab–colored uniform before it was swallowed up again by the gas.

  Could it be one of his men? Burke wondered. Did they leave the safety of the trench only to become disoriented by the gas?

  He continued moving forward, doing his best to move quickly while trying to watch his step and be careful of his injured leg all at the same time. He’d gone another couple of yards before he began to feel that tingling sensation one gets when being watched.

  Burke glanced behind him, didn’t see anything, and continued forward.

  A heartbeat passed.

  Two.

  And then Burke swung back around, his sixth sense telling him there was something there after all. He paused, waiting for the gas to clear, and as it did so he found himself staring in horror at the thing lurching awkwardly along in his wake, its arms held out hungrily toward him.

  It was Perkins.

  For a second Burke thought perhaps he’d been mistaken, that Perkins hadn’t actually been dead but merely unconscious, that he’d left a wounded comrade behind in his haste to save his own skin. But then his gaze fell upon the savage wound in the man’s chest and travelled up to that pale, waxy face where an unholy fire burned in the creature’s eyes and he knew he hadn’t been wrong.

  Perkins had been dead.

  And now he was…not dead.

  How Burke kept himself from screaming in terror, he didn’t know; perhaps he’d already passed that point given what he’d dealt with so far. What he did know was that he couldn’t let that thing get any closer. He drew his Browning M1911, pointed it at his former comrade, and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet struck the Perkins–thing right in the center of the chest. Perkins slowed for a second, more a result of the kinetic force of the impact than anything else, and then continued forward.