By the Blood of Heroes (3 page)

When he was safely at altitude, he surveyed his chariot, finding a good number of holes in the fabric of his wings and several splinters gouged out of the leather-wrapped wood surrounding his cockpit area, but nothing that would suggest he needed to return to the airfield.

Satisfied, Freeman looked down once more. Now only one German biplane occupied the sky, and even he wouldn’t be up for long. A thick stream of black smoke was pouring out of the engine and Samuels was hanging doggedly on the Pfalz’s tail, firing as he chased it around the sky. As Freeman watched, the enemy aircraft suddenly collapsed on itself, falling away in pieces to the ground in a graceless ballet of destruction.

The flight regrouped, smiles on the faces of the younger pilots. Even the veteran, Freeman, couldn’t help but feel that this was going to be a good day. Both the balloon and the two Pfalzs had been downed in full view of the other pilots in the squadron, so there should be no quibbling with headquarters about credit for the kills. That made for an auspicious beginning.

They spent the next forty-five minutes edging their way farther into opposition territory without sign of another aircraft. The cloud cover had retreated a few thousand feet but was still pretty thick so the squadron took advantage of it, hiding their aircraft up among its lowest reaches.

It was from this lofty position that they first spotted the damaged aircraft making its unsteady way across the sky below them.

It was a lone Fokker Dr.1 triplane, painted a bright red, the black Iron Crosses easy to see. A thin stream of black smoke was pouring out of the engine and the pilot seemed to be engrossed in maintaining control of his aircraft as he fought to keep it moving along a straight path.

Freeman knew that only one man in the entire German air force flew a red Fokker triplane; it could be none other than Baron Manfred von Richthofen himself.

Flush from their earlier victories and excited at the chance to down the legendary ace, the less-experienced pilots reacted without thinking things over. As if of one mind, they banked over and swept downward at the opposition aircraft.

Freeman stared after them in shock.
What did they think they were doing?!

Holding the stick steady with his knees, he snatched up the radio mike with his left hand and cranked hard on the handle with his right, but he saw right away that it would be no use. The radios were not designed for emergency use. It took time to build up a sufficient charge and the squadron would come in contact with the enemy aircraft before he’d be able to get a message out.

He had no choice but to follow them down.

Freeman watched as the Allied aircraft closed in on the Fokker, their Vickers guns winking in the sunlight. They opened up as soon as they came within range. The opposition pilot continued to ignore them, a large mistake, and it wasn’t long before Freeman’s squadron mates blasted the plane right out of the sky.

It was at that point that the other side launched its carefully planned surprise.

From the west, out of the sunlight, came seven Albatros D.III fighters, their guns primed and firing before the others knew they were even there. Samuels was taken down in that first pass. One moment his Spad was there and the next it was not, replaced by a cloud of inky black smoke and small pieces of fluttering debris. James followed suit only moments later, though he did manage to take one of the enemy with him.

From there it became a tenacious duel in the sky, the opposition forces swarming around the two remaining Allied planes in a choreographed dance of death and destruction. Freeman and Walton managed to give a good accounting of themselves, taking three more of the enemy aircraft out of the fight in a dazzling display of marksmanship.

Freeman had just begun to think that they might survive this encounter when both of his Vickers guns jammed. One minute they were roaring steadily, the next, nothing. Suddenly furious and more than a little bit frightened, Freeman clawed at the charging handles, trying to clear the mechanisms.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Nothing.

Knowing he would be no good in the middle of a dogfight without operational guns, Freeman broke away from the fight, climbing in an attempt to find time to fix the problem.

The opposition let him go, choosing to gang up on Walton instead.

From his higher altitude Freeman watched the enemy aircraft make short work of his lone surviving subordinate.

Walton’s Spad suddenly dipped and headed for the ground in an uncontrolled spin, a clear sign that a well-placed bullet had ended the life of its pilot. Freeman could watch no more.

When he turned his gaze away from the destruction below, Freeman recoiled in surprise to find a previously unnoticed aircraft sitting directly off his right wing tip!

It was one of the new Fokker D.VIIIs, the “Flying Razor Blades” as the British pilots were wont to call them. The single-wing aircraft was the current pride of the opposition’s air corps and one of the most deadly aircraft in the skies. It could outmaneuver, outshoot, and outfly anything the Allied powers could put in the air. This aircraft was painted a bright red, like the triplane that had baited the trap, but the Iron Crosses on its wings and fuselage had been replaced with the double-headed eagle and skulls of the Richthofen family seal, the insignia looking stark and menacing against the brightly colored background. The D.VIII was so close that Freeman could see the other pilot clearly, right down to the missing flesh across the lower half of the right side of his face.

Instantly, Freeman recognized the true nature of the trap to which his squadron had just fallen victim. The triplane his fellow pilots had exuberantly chased had been a decoy, designed to pull the younger pilots into the fray just as it had so brilliantly done. The flight of Albatroses that had dropped out of the clouds to the rear of the Allied planes had been there to whittle down the Allied fliers, leaving Freeman isolated and alone.

Ripe for picking by the commander of the enemy flight.

Freeman did not wait around to see how the trap turned out. He stood his aircraft on its beam and whipped around in a turn that came close to pulling the wings off.

Too good a pilot to be taken in so easily, the other chased Freeman into the tight turn so that the two aircraft were spinning around each other in a vertical helix. Looking directly “up” from his cockpit, Freeman could see straight into the former German’s cockpit, where the other man was looking “down” at him in return. They flew that way for several moments, getting closer to the ground with each revolution as they arced around each other in opposite directions, Freeman sitting hunched against the chill wind while Richthofen ignored both the cold and the centrifugal forces created by their movement.

A sudden change in the sound of his engine let Freeman know he suddenly had a bigger problem than the presence of the opposition’s most deadly ace. It was barely discernible at first, just the slightest change in tone and pitch, but he was too experienced a flier to not know that it represented a major problem. His eyes swept over the gauges where he immediately noted the change in fuel pressure. One of the attacks by the Albatroses must have damaged his fuel line, something he hadn’t noticed before now. He was about to pay the price for his negligence.

There was no way he could continue this ballet of motion in an aircraft with jammed guns and a faltering engine and he knew it. He waited another moment, watching, until his opponent looked away for a split second to check on his own aircraft’s controls, then broke out of the spin, headed east in a straight line, praying that the German pilot would take the bait.

Like a cat with a mouse, the enemy pilot had been waiting for just such a move, and he pounced just as Freeman had hoped he would. As the enemy’s Spandau machine guns began hammering Freeman’s aircraft to pieces, the American launched his own surprise.

With a sudden turn, Freeman arced his Spad over into what first appeared to be an Immelman turn. As the other pilot altered course to intercept his arc, Freeman abruptly turned, steering directly into the German’s path.

The enemy reacted quickly, shoving his stick over in an attempt to get out of the way, but his reflexes were not quick enough. The edge of the Spad’s upper wing struck the Fokker’s solitary one. Cloth, leather, and wood flew in all directions as the two aircraft collided and then tumbled away from each other.

Freeman fought the stick as it jumped in his hands, trying to get his aircraft under control, but with most of the Spad’s upper wing now shredded, his options were limited. He managed to get the plane into a flat spin, using the entirety of the aircraft’s surface in an attempt to slow his plunging descent, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the crash altogether.

He could see a dark space off to his left and he did what he could to angle the aircraft in that direction, hauling on the stick and hoping that the shadow was a farmer’s pond or a copse of trees, or hell, even a wide hedgerow, anything that might give him a bit of a cushion.

As the ground rose up to greet him, he prayed the resulting fire would be hot enough to prevent him from rising again.

There was a thunderous crash, a moment of agony, and then nothing.

Chapter Three

TRENCH 479

A
s the wave of shamblers poured out of the strange machine in front of him, Burke calmly drew his pistol and began to fire into their ranks. His first shot struck the closest shambler in the face, knocking it backward into the one directly behind it, sending them both to the ground. He’d hoped it might slow the others down, even if only for a moment, but the rest of the horde didn’t even notice as they pushed forward, trampling their comrades into the mud beneath their bare feet as their chilling cries of hunger split the morning air.

Charlie’s rifle sounded from close by and the two veterans had time to get off several more shots, sending half a dozen of the enemy to the ground, at least temporarily, before the shamblers were too tangled up with their own troops for them to continue.

At that point there was little choice but to wade into the melee. They had to hold the line; if the shamblers managed to get past his unit and into the rest of the trench complex, there was no telling the damage they might do.

With his pistol in his right hand and his trench knife in the metal fingers of his left, Burke charged forward. He’d been here before, too many times to count, and his body knew what to do without conscious thought. Shamblers were not only slow, but they also fought without any sense of self-preservation, their only thought the food they saw in front of them. As long as you weren’t overwhelmed, a well-armed man could hold his own against several of the creatures at once.

He scythed about him with his trench knife, aiming for an unprotected neck or maybe the soft spot behind a knee, the well-sharpened blade cutting through the creature’s rotting flesh with ease. Once he had one of them down, he’d thrust his pistol out and put a bullet through its skull, ensuring that it didn’t get back up again. Within moments he was covered with blood, gore, and the stench of rotting flesh.

After what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes, there was a lull in the fighting directly in front of him and he had a moment to survey the scene. The world seemed to shift, everything slowing down, letting him get a good look at the action going on around him, as if he’d suddenly stepped out of time and was looking back in, the details popping out with stark clarity . . . one of his men, openmouthed, screaming his fury as he bashed in a shambler’s skull with the broken shaft of his Enfield rifle; another standing, firing his pistol at the shambler that was latched onto his leg, gray teeth tearing meat from his calf; a hysterical young man cradling the body of another in his arms while blood streamed down his own face as the enemy closed in.

The arena was pure, unadulterated chaos, the stuff of battle, and to his secret shame Burke felt his heart cheer at the sight of it all.

This was what he had been born for; this was what made him come alive, what had kept him at the front even after losing his hand in the midst of a battle very much like this one.

Motion near the strange burrowing machine caught his eye. As he watched, a hatch opened down low in front between the treads and a gray-faced shambler peered out. It was the creature’s very caution that drew Burke’s attention; it should have been charging out into the melee like someone had just rung the dinner bell, not checking to be sure the coast was clear.

Burke dealt with the shambler directly in front of him by jabbing his knife into its eye socket and twisting sharply, then turned his full attention on the newcomer. He was in the perfect position to watch as it apparently made up its mind and burst out of the hatch at a run. It dogged friend and foe alike as it headed for the opening of the communications trench in a lumbering gait.

Shamblers can’t run,
Burke thought to himself.

Shamblers CAN’T run.

But this one could. It was doing a damned good job of it, too, like a tight end who’d just caught the football and was giving it everything he had to get into the end zone ahead of the other team.

The end zone in this case was the communications trench that ran perpendicular to the one in which Burke and everyone else now stood.

One of only two such trenches that led into the unprotected area behind the lines.

That’s when Burke noticed the belt of potato masher grenades the shambler wore around its waist. Wires ran from one device to the next and, seeing them, Burke had little doubt that setting one of them off would detonate all the rest. In the close quarters of a communications shack or a command bunker, the explosion would cause one helluva lot of damage.

Urgency spurred him forward.

“The block!” he shouted at the men manning the communications trench, trying to be heard above the din. “Release the trench block!”

Every trench at the front had one, a wood or an iron frame that was covered with barbed wire and ready to be wedged across the path of the trench to keep it from being overrun if the enemy broke through. At least one man was supposed to be near it at all times, prepared to cut the rope and allow it to fall into place if circumstances required it.

Except that no one seemed to be paying attention.

Burke’s cry went unheeded.

The men in the communications trench were no doubt hunkered down, waiting for their comrades to either defeat the horde in front of them or fall back to the next position behind. This would ensure that a fresh force was ready to take the fight to the enemy if they managed to break through the lines. No one was watching for a runaway shambler and, even if they were, the thing’s speed and dexterity would make them think it was one of the living, rather than one of the undead.

“Block the trench!” Burke screamed again as he raced after the creature in front of him.

There was no way he was going to catch it. The blasted thing ran like hell itself was snapping at its heels. Burke skidded to a stop, raised his pistol, and fired off three quick shots. The first two missed, but the third struck the shambler in the back, knocking it forward off its feet.

Burke lined up his next shot with the back of the creature’s skull, took a breath to steady himself, and pulled the trigger.

Click.

The hammer fell on an empty chamber.

The rotting thing in front of him climbed to its feet, snarling.

“Damn you!” Burke yelled. “Seal the trench!”

The shambler was almost to the entrance, was less than twenty feet away in fact, when someone finally heard him. There was a loud grinding sound and then a massive iron plate covered with a roll of barbed wire dropped in front of the entrance to the trench, blocking the way forward.

Burke wanted to scream and dance and shout for joy.

Until, that is, the shambler slowed down and came to a stop. It paused there for a moment, staring at the trench block, then turned to face Burke, clearly making a decision to try this another way.

They’re not supposed to do that, either!

Burke transferred the gun to his left hand while he dug in the pocket of his coat with his right, fingers fumbling for the extra cartridges he kept there.

The creature angled its head one way and then the other, like a dog might when considering something it hadn’t encountered before.

Burke knocked the breech of the pistol open and began shoving cartridges into the chamber, never taking his gaze off the thing in front of him.

He’d only managed to get three of them in place when the shambler’s head lifted and it looked directly at him.

A kind of crafty intelligence glinted in its eyes.

“Fuck me,” Burke said softly.

The shambler sprang forward, pushing off with its hind leg like a sprinter and tearing down the length of the trench toward him.

Burke managed to get off one shot, then a second, both of which struck the shambler in the fleshy part of its chest, but neither did anything to slow it down. He was trying to line up the third and final shot with the creature’s skull when it barreled into him like a runaway freight train.

He hit the ground hard, the full weight of the thing atop his chest, and the back of his head struck something unyielding behind it, momentarily stunning him.

He shook his head to clear it, opening his eyes to find a shambler staring down at him with undisguised hunger. Once upon a time it had been a blond-haired, big-boned German lad who had stood a few inches taller than six feet and weighed more than 250 pounds. Now its skin was gray and laced with black veins that stood out against the slowly decaying flesh, its eyes a filmy white rimmed with yellow pus.

Burke didn’t hesitate; he swung the pistol around and pointed it up into the creature’s face.

Only to have it knocked out of his grasp by a backhanded blow.

Trapped as he was beneath the shambler without a weapon to use in his defense, Burke could only watch in horror as the thing’s mouth opened wide, revealing broken teeth that dripped thick, greenish-gray mucus. A shambler’s bite was poisonous, and rescuers had to act fast to save a man if he was unlucky enough to get bitten. The toxins contained in a shambler’s bite spread through the body at an incredible rate, causing a raging infection, crippling pain, and ultimately, death. The really unlucky would turn into shamblers themselves, rising a few hours later once the transformation was complete, though this didn’t happen very often, thank God.

The creature reared up, drawing its head back like a snake preparing to strike, and then thrust its face downward toward Burke’s unprotected neck.

Focused entirely on keeping those slavering jaws away from his unprotected flesh, Burke did the only thing he could think of at the time.

He shoved the prosthesis on his left arm into the creature’s mouth, jamming it between its jaws.

Burke knew from prior experience just how strong a shambler’s bite could be; his lower left arm and hand had been crushed by one three years before, ultimately requiring his forearm and hand to be amputated. But losing a hand was better than losing his life. This time the creature’s jaws slammed shut on the metal skin of his forearm with a sharp clank, crushing it like a tin can.

The once-human creature yanked its head to the side, expecting to pull itself away from the offending limb and try again to reach the soft tissue at the base of Burke’s throat, only to discover, to its increasing frustration and Burke’s growing horror, that its teeth had become trapped in the twisted metal of Burke’s mechanical arm.

For a moment, the two of them froze, staring at each other, and then the shambler went berserk, slashing at Burke’s face with overgrown nails and digging at him with its feet, as it fought to free itself from its precarious position.

The shambler’s thrashing only served to jam its teeth farther into the tangled mess that had once been Burke’s forearm.

Meanwhile Burke beat at it with his free hand, driving blow after blow into its hideous face, but it was like swatting an elephant with a blade of grass; shamblers didn’t feel pain.

Unable to free itself by twisting from side to side, the shambler changed tactics. It beat its fists against the other side of Burke’s arm in furious rhythm, its animal intelligence able to identify the threat but not able to puzzle out a means of release. Each blow further dented Burke’s already damaged prosthesis. If the shambler kept it up for much longer, he knew he’d have nothing left but a piece of flattened steel for an arm and no hand at all. Panic bloomed. Desperate, Burke abandoned his attempts to hit the thing and began looking around for some help.

Where the hell was everybody else?

As if in answer to his summons, he suddenly spotted Sergeant Moore rushing in his general direction, a thick black case the size of a sea chest held in his arms like a load of firewood. The case’s weight was evident by the way the sergeant staggered to a stop and dumped the thing on the ground with a resounding thud.

It had only been delivered to them the week before, and they hadn’t yet used it in action. When he’d first seen it, Burke had laughed aloud.
What the hell were they going to do with something like that in the midst of a battle?
he’d wanted to know.

Looked like he was about to get his chance.

The shambler wasn’t sitting still for it all, however. Unable to free itself from Burke’s prosthesis, the creature apparently decided it was going to gnaw all the way through the mechanical apparatus instead. It was working its jaw in every direction it could while shoving its face forward, its teeth grinding against the inner workings. Oil suddenly spurted free in a long wet arc, splashing across Burke’s face. Half a second later he lost the use of his fingers.

Another glance in Charlie’s direction showed that he now had the case open and was in the process of setting up the device inside it. What had started out life as a Vickers machine gun had undergone substantial modifications in Tesla’s laboratory. Belts and glass tubing ran over the barrel and stock like creepers in the Deep South, and a big ball of glass sat where the sights should have been. A short-legged tripod supported the front of the barrel and allowed the “gunner” to point it in the right direction. Perhaps most incongruous of all was the hand crank that stuck out the side of the contraption, reminding Burke of the mechanism used to start the Model T Ford he’d owned before the war.