There were mountainous, snow-capped piles of rubble everywhere, and deep puddles where impact craters had become filled with dust and ash and melted snow to leave a claggy, paste-like mud which coated everything. He looked down at his shoes and the bottom of his trousers with real disappointment. He would never normally have allowed himself to be seen out in public in such a bedraggled state.
It was while Mercel was staring at his shoes that he realised the area was splattered with blood and body parts. The remains of people mixed freely with the remains of the buildings they’d previously inhabited, and it was a gruesome sight which caused his stomach to flip. He’d not eaten this morning (not as much as a normal morning, anyway), and it took all the self-control he could muster not to vomit and further ruin his already grubby shoes. But when he caught sight of a hand and part of a forearm, flesh clearly having been chewed and bones snapped just above the wrist, his limited self-control was lost. Mercel emptied the contents of his stomach onto the pavement with a semi-solid splatter, the noise and taste of which did little more than make him heave again. He’d never had the strongest of constitutions, and Mother had always been there to hold the bowl whenever he’d been ill. The fear and isolation caused him to wail for help like a little girl.
In the otherwise all-consuming silence of this dead part of this dead town, his noise travelled a surprising distance. Far enough to be heard by those few people still sheltering in the ruins, and by many things.
A scream was a scream, thought Wilkins. Though he’d have rather heard friendly voices and local accents, right now any noise (as long as it wasn’t German) was better than no noise at all. He left the cover of the trees and ruined buildings and broke into a gentle jog along the road into Bastogne.
Wilkins sensed he wasn’t alone.
He’d seen more and more of them the closer he’d got to town, and here there were hundreds. Driven, faceless, emotionless creatures. Dead soldiers and dead civilians, all fighting for a horrific new army, all as keen as he was to find the lone survivor who’d cried out in fear or pain or both.
Lieutenant Parker watched the pitiful man through his binoculars from up high. He lowered the glasses. ‘Damn fool’s gonna get us all killed at this rate.’
‘So whadda we do?’ Kenny Gunderson asked. ‘Take him out?’
‘That ain’t exactly playing by the rules, Gunderson, much as it would please me greatly at the present time.’
‘So just leave him to it?’
‘Ain’t you got a single bone of compassion left in your body?’
‘Not today, Lieutenant.’
‘Look,’ Parker said, his interest piqued. ‘He’s already calling them to him. See how they’re drifting? They’re moving like a herd of cattle.’
Lieutenant Parker was right. They could all see it. The Belgian’s noise was attracting the attention of a huge number of the cadavers still gathered in the square outside. It was like a chain reaction rippling through the masses. Heads were turning on the outer fringes of the huge pack, and those closest to his location were moving away to investigate. ‘We’re gonna have to go down and get him,’ he announced.
‘I’ll go,’ Lieutenant Coley volunteered.
‘Appreciate that, but I’d like you up here keeping tabs on your German friend, make sure he don’t get up to nothing he shouldn’t.’
‘I’ll go, sir,’ Escobedo said, knife ready.
‘That’s what I like about you, Escobedo. Volunteering before I can volunteer you.’
‘Yeah, well I fancied a walk.’
‘You too, Johnson.’
‘I figured as much,’ Johnson said, less enthusiastic.
‘I’ll provide the downstairs cover, Gunderson’ll keep you both safe from up here.’
‘Damn right,’ Gunderson said, readying his rifle. ‘More than happy to do my part and get rid of a few more of them.’
‘Just the dead ones and any stray Nazis, Gunderson,’ Lieutenant Parker warned.
Henri Mercel was aware of them closing in from all directions. Everywhere he looked he saw them, and there was no question that they had seen him. Trudging and trampling. Moving with lethargy but no lack of intent. Desperate, he crawled under the wreck of an upturned Panzer. Its gun turret had wedged in the mud, leaving just enough space for him to hide and remain out of the reach of grabbing hands. And he knew what damage those grabbing hands could do too. Whenever he closed his eyes to try and block out the immediate horror of his surroundings, all he could see was that poor priest who’d helped him being brutally eviscerated.
The crowd seemed to be thinning out the longer he was out of sight. Had he confused them by disappearing, or had they found another poor soul to hound instead? One of the dead things lost its footing and hit the ground next to him with a nauseating thud, like meat on a butcher’s slab. Mercel caught his breath when he recognised the monster.
‘Monsieur Lefebvre?’
He immediately cursed his own stupidity in speaking out, but he’d been taken completely by surprise when he’d recognised one of his neighbours. An ex-resident of Bastogne, Monsieur Lefebvre had, until a few days ago, been a quiet and inoffensive boulanger whose shop had been a little way down the street from his own. Monsieur Lefebvre’s transformation was remarkable and terrifying. Now he was base and degraded, just like all the rest of them. Blood-soaked and blood-thirsty. The old man dragged himself closer on his belly through the snow, and Mercel saw that his right leg was mangled, broken bones jutting through rips in the flesh. It turned his stomach (again). He screwed his eyes shut, then opened them when he felt Monsieur Lefebvre’s cold hands on his feet. He kicked out at the elderly boulanger and, quite by chance, cracked him across the jaw. Another bunny-kick broke the old man’s nose. Three more in quick succession and Monsieur Lefebvre was no more. Unfortunately for Mercel, unsighted as he was beneath the Panzer, he hadn’t bargained on the effect his uncharacteristic show of resistance would have on the rest of the undead nearby. Almost as one they turned and converged on the wrecked tank, and as the forest of feet and legs grew ever closer, Mercel curled up into a ball again and tried to pretend that none of this was happening.
Escobedo climbed over the wall and landed in the slushy snow on the edge of the town square. Johnson followed close behind. ‘What the hell’s that no good idiot doing?’ he whispered, watching Mercel squabbling with the undead.
‘Heads down, fellas,’ Lieutenant Parker hissed from over on the other side of the wall, and he ripped the pin and threw a pineapple grenade as far as he could across the square.
A couple of seconds of silence, then the blast. Body parts were hurled in all directions, and the noise echoed off what was left of the town’s walls.
Almost as one, the dead forgot about the cowardly Belgian hiding under the tank and surged towards the blast zone. ‘Are those things as stupid as they seem?’ Johnson asked.
‘Yep, pretty much,’ Escobedo said. ‘Don’t matter how dumb they look though, they know how to fight and they know how to bite.’
Parker appeared over the wall again, looking like one of those Mr Chad cartoons the Brits were so fond of (wot no action?). ‘The hell are you two waiting for? GO!’
Escobedo led the charge. With most of the creatures heading away, it was comparatively easy to get around them. Johnson took out a couple of stragglers with a knife to the nape of the neck (a tip he’d picked up by chance that had unquestionably helped him stay alive). Escobedo followed suit, and the two of them were at the Panzer wreck in no time and with relative ease.