Each corpse told a story that I could follow easily enough. They were behind the tanks, that much was obvious. The first few bodies I found had cut throats or broken necks. It wasn't hard for me to imagine Jonathan Crowley moving behind them in the snow and killing them one by one.
The snow still fell, you see. Despite a night of sleep and a half-day wasted in an effort to move south, the snow still fell from a dark, leaden sky and didn’t seem at all concerned with the deaths of a few Germans, but it made wonderful cover.
I counted ten bodies killed in quiet. I don’t know how many died before I found the trail. I wasn't about to go back and count. All I know is that ten men died before anyone sounded an alarm. It was easy to understand. The snow was too heavy for anyone to notice much of anything. These days, they have all sorts of ways to track people without seeing them, but in the Second World War, you mostly used your eyes. Bodies fell and it wasn't long before the snow tried to hide them. By the time I passed the seventh body I reckon the first was already out of sight.
The tanks were moving and they were noisy, but they were barely silhouettes. I finally managed to reach the one at the end of the trail and Crowley was there.
The man was walking just behind the tank, letting the snow hit the monstrous thing and take the brunt of the force. He saw me and nodded.
He didn’t seem at all surprised to see me, which was kind of a strange thing, as I hadn’t expected to be there.
We couldn’t risk being heard over the tanks. It wasn't likely, but sounds can carry in the damnedest ways. So we slowed a bit and walked on, following the thunder down the road.
“I was beginning to think you’d tried for the Allied side of France.” His face was deadpan, but his eyes looked at me hard and I felt a blush coming on as I looked down at my feet.
“I thought about it.”
“Get lost?”
“Something like that.”
“I tried asking a few of the krauts what they were doing. They didn’t know. The only one who has any idea is in the second tank. A captain named Rotenfeld. He’s the one that committed the sacrifices.”
I remembered the bodies. Every time I closed my eyes I remembered them. Rotenfeld had cost me a lot of sleep.
“What are we gonna do?”
“I have to get to that third tank in the line. It’s slow going.”
“So how can I help?”
Crowley smiled. “Make noise.”
He handed me a pouch that was deceptively heavy. Inside it I found several grenades. They were German made.
The good news about grenades is they all work about the same way. It didn’t take long to figure it out.”
“Which tank?”
“Start with this one.’ He pointed to the one closest.
Here’s the thing, you put down a grenade, you need to run. They make a very big explosion for their size. I always kind of chuckled when I saw someone throw a grenade in a movie, because right up until the nineties or so, it seemed to me they didn’t really get it. A puff of smoke wasn't all that happened. A body didn’t flip through the air and land in one piece all that often and even if it did, it landed broken in the worst ways possible.
So I ran hard to place the grenade. I pulled the pin and tossed the damn thing in front of the tank, and then I rabbited back to the trail and dove for cover.
I got lucky on the first one. I blew the left tread off the damned thing. Tank with one tread is about as worthless a vehicle as you have ever seen.
Before they could even climb out the see what the damage was, I was throwing another grenade and thanking God Almighty for my pitching arm.
The second tank in line rocked back a bit when the grenade went off. It didn’t seem to do much permanent damage, but I can bet safely the ears of those inside were hurting them at the very least.
I threw a third grenade that did even more damage to the tank closest me. But after that I had to run again.
The German soldiers were coming back to the end of the caravan and they were in a killing mood.
Here’s the problem. The soldiers that came back my way weren’t human.
I don’t know just what they were, but they were covered in fur and half ran, half loped on all fours, and their uniforms were torn because they just plain couldn’t hold all of what those poor bastards had become. They snuffled and growled and kicked at the tank a bit, and then they came for me.
There was no sign of Crowley. I’d done what he wanted and he’d moved on, looking for his chance to break into the third tank.
That just left me, and the pack of nightmares heading my way.
They came hard and they came fast. I guess you could say I got sort of lucky again, because whatever had happened to them left them not giving a damn about their rifles.
The first one I shot went down hard, a spray of blood flying from the back of that misshapen head.
The rest of them came at me in a fury and dove into the snow, heading in my direction. The waist deep snow, where I couldn’t see them worth a damn.
The day was overcast, and that helped a little, but there was still a sun up there and the light from it made the snow glare up something fierce.
I could have tried hiding in the snow, but the way those things moved, I figured they were probably going by scent.
That meant I wasn’t going to be able to hide very well.
I saw something moving a goodly ways off, and I didn’t think, I just threw. The grenade landed on target, and a moment later I saw snow rising in an wave and at the center of that wave was blood and broken bone, and what looked like a German outfit.
I was still trying to figure out where the next one might be when it came out of the snow and hammered me to the ground. It let out a sound like a chimpanzee maybe, or one of those screaming monkeys. And while I was trying not to piss myself a second time those massive arms came down and smashed me flat.
I’d have lost that fight right away if not for the snow. The fool thing dropped me hard and fast and the snow was loose enough that I fell back and the snow collapsed on me.
No time for guns and too close for grenades. I pulled my bayonet knife. Those hands came for me again and grabbed my shoulders. The fingers were hot despite the cold, and the nails were thickened to the point where they cut my jacket sleeves.
My knife cut too. I thrust it straight in between those arms and was rewarded with a different kind of scream. The blade slipped into something solid and then skimmed along a hard surface and the thing jumped back, roaring, blood flowing freely from where I’d opened it’s face, peeling back half the flattened nose and slicing a gash from the lower lip all the way down to the collarbone.
God, how it screamed. Even as it came for me again. I had only one move, really. It never let go of my jacket even when it backed away. All it did was haul me forward and so I stabbed again and again, and I think I was doing a fair bit of screaming myself until I realized it was down and I was standing over it, my arm warm from the blood of the damned thing that was bleeding out in front of my eyes.
You ever try to pull up a rifle while you’re holding a knife? I don’t know how I managed it to this day. Somehow the knife went back into the sheath and the rifle was lifted on its sling and I fired into the snow wherever I saw movement.
I couldn’t give you details if I had to. I just know I burned through my remaining bullets, firing at anything that looked like it might consider moving in my direction. When I was done with that it was back to throwing grenades until I was out of them. I nailed that first tank another time and something inside it finally had the decency to explode in return. The shockwave knocked me on my ass again, but when I stood, there weren’t any things coming for me.
The German at my feet looked human again, just dead as could be. Whatever had changed it must have left the body when he died. He was a kid, same as me and I’d ruined his face with my blade. Enemy or no, his family never did a thing to me, and I’d taken him away and mutilated him besides.