18. WHY WE FIGHT (1944)
"Ow…"
I was momentarily disoriented. I could not remember where I was or even who I was. I thought I was speaking, but I doubted the words made sense. My first awareness was of crushing, blinding pain. The most intense pain I'd ever felt.
Then memory began to return. No, not the worst pain I'd ever felt. That was the burning. I suddenly remembered the burning. Yes, that was much worse.
And Susan. That pain was worse too. Just thinking of her beautiful face, human and inhuman, was more painful than whatever my body was experiencing now. It was actually refreshing to concentrate on my current physical predicament, to embrace this crushing pain, to experience it. I once again washed away all thought, all memory. Yes, I had done this to myself for a reason. A very good reason.
I tried to move. I started with fingers and toes. Many of them were broken. I pushed one finger against another, did the same with my toes, trying to set them so that they would heal. The process was not slow, but would have gone far faster had I had greater use of my body. One bone at a time then.
First the middle finger of my right hand, unbroken, setting the index finger. Then the index setting the thumb, while the middle set the ring. The pinky was already fine. I repeated the process with my left, having to start with my ring finger. I set the bones, and waited for my body to heal, for the joints to reconnect, and copied the process with my toes. Now for my hands.
The healing was exhaustingly slow. Never had I broken this many bones, not when I'd leapt off the highest cliff face I could find, not when I'd jumped into the enormous canyon in Arizona that was now called Grand. Not even when I'd taken the artillery straight to the chest twenty something years ago. That had been extremely painful, had blown much of my body to bits and burned to boot, but not broken so many bones. More painful, but far easier to heal.
My toes were useless to heal anything else. I needed my arms. I jerked my wrists when my hands were healed, and heard a roar of pain as I reset them. My own roar. When the wrists healed, I finally had full range of motion in the hands. They needed to do the work. My fingers gripped the ground beneath me. Grass and dirt. I risked opening my eyes.
It was dark, but no hindrance to my vampire vision. I was in a forest at night. I made out the trees. I realized that I was surrounded by branches. I wondered why, and then realized I'd probably brought them with me as I'd fallen. I could not move my neck to see my body, but I thought I was face down on a forest floor.
I used my hands to drag my arms toward my face. When a hand reached my eyes, I tested, first my left, then right, flicking my fingers. So I was facing right. I let the hand crawl past me, and had the left follow suit, so that they touched above my head. Then each hand went to work setting the opposite arm, first forearm, then elbow, then shoulder. It must have been an hour just to do that. When my arms were healed, I moved my hands back to my face, and to my neck.
With a sickening crunch, I twisted. My head had turned too far right, and I jerked my head towards the ground, so that I saw nothing but dirt and grass while I waited for it to heal. The neck took longer than any of the other joint. When it was finally set, I pushed against the ground with my left arm and rolled myself over.
I could look at my body then. It was grossly deformed, my back broken in several places, every rib shattered, my legs crooked. But I had not lost anything. Just broken, but not in pieces. That was good. Best to start with the back.
I could not stop myself from my memories as I continued the painful yet tedious process, so I concentrated on the happy ones, but almost every moment was bittersweet. Susan's green eyes glinting in the sunlight. William laughing over a meager dinner. They would never be human again. Susan's naked body, glowing by the light of the fire, as I caressed her flesh. Hard to a human, and cold, yet soft and warm to my touch. I would never have that intimacy, with her or anyone else, again. Mary…I nearly smiled at that thought. Bittersweet, but not as bad as thoughts of William and Susan. No, thinking of Mary was not more painful than my injuries, despite her place in my past. Perhaps I was finally able to forgive her.
I was setting the third of four separate breaks in my back when I heard a rustling in the forest. I supposed, in my current state, I could pretend to be dead. If it was a Kraut, I could kill him without using my legs. Then I caught the familiar scent, and knew that Danny had tracked me down.
"Jaysus Garrett, what 'ave yeh done ter yerself?" He exclaimed when he finally saw me.
I muttered something, and then realized I hadn't fixed my jaw. It was broken in three places, and I moved to set it. I reset my nose as well.
"I just need another hour or so," I said, trying to keep my tone casual. "You can watch if you like."
And so Danny crouched next to me and we spoke quietly while I fixed the rest of my body, Danny helping to reset my legs while I worked on my ribs. With his help, the healing process took half of the time I'd guessed.
"Why in ther hell would yeh want ter do this?" He asked as we worked.
"'Having nothing, nothing can he lose,'" I quoted quietly, only a whisper.
"What in ther hell do that mean?" He was resetting my right knee, and I stifled a cry of anguish.
"Shakespeare, Danny, Henry the Sixth, Part III," I grunted. "And it doesn't mean anything. Don't worry about it." If Danny and I were to continue to spend time together, he would have to catch up on his reading. A man who could not discuss Shakespeare was no man at all.
We finally finished, and I hunted for my rifle and the rest of my belongings. We were lucky no one had come upon us. Once I was fully outfitted, we sniffed the air for German prey, and then went to work.
XXX
The Tiger II rolled over the crest, and I was directly beneath its weaker underbelly. No use for the rifle, so I flung it away and braced the tank above me, and began ripping through the metal between the tracks. The tank was enormous, but its weight meant little to me.
I knew from experience that there would be five Krauts in side. Too many to feed on. I would simply have to kill three of them. But the officers were fun to eat.
Danny and I had once again surprised our unit when we'd rejoined them as the Allied hold on the Normandy beaches strengthened, though this time, with the way all the paratroopers had been spread behind enemy lines, our return was less of a shock. Apparently, hundreds, if not thousands, of paratroopers were still missing and unaccounted for. We even heard a story about an entire team that was tracking down a lone paratrooper deep in enemy territory. I couldn't imagine why.
Once we'd rejoined the 82nd, we got a bit of rest before our next major operation in August and September. This one, Operation Market Garden, was aimed at liberating much of the Netherlands from German forces. This had been our last major offensive, and the Allies had worked to shore up our hold before we moved further.
Unfortunately, this allowed the Germans to plan a counteroffensive, and a very effective one. Once we'd taken Antwerp, the Germans decided to move in the west, rather than suffering further losses against the unstoppable Soviets. Apparently they felt a bit more confident fighting Americans. We'd have to see about that.
They'd used the same attack plan that had utterly decimated the French four and a half years earlier, driving through the supposedly untenable Ardennes Forest, and we let ourselves fall into the same trap. Now our lines were nearly split in two between north and south, and the driving snow made air support for our men nearly impossible.
The 82nd had dropped in a week after the attack began, north of what was being called "the bulge" in our defensive line. The 101st was already there, and they'd withstood a massive siege by the Krauts at Bastogne. Every soldier was talking about McAuliffe's reply to the German request for surrender. "NUTS." Bless the man. A Captain Winters, withstanding a siege, and an officer so crazy he'd told the Germans "nuts" in reply to surrender. I loved the 82nd, but I really thought we'd picked the wrong Airborne Division.
Danny and I decided to leave the 82nd then. We didn't really care what our brothers thought of us, because being part of the unit during a standard drop did not allow us to use our vampire abilities to the fullest. We assumed they'd think us dead. We were too gung ho to be deserters.
I was inside the tank now, enjoying the German officer after breaking driver's neck, when Danny joined me from above, feeding on the gunner. He must have finished decimating the accompanying soldiers. The other Germans were scrambling away from us, looking for any way out of the Tiger. One crawled through the hole I'd made. The tank had lurched to a stop on the other side of the crest, and he had to crawl underneath it. I thought he was the radio operator.
The loader went out the top, and Danny finished with the gunner and went after him. I moved after the radio man, but the tank suddenly shook violently around me. Fire spread through the opening Danny had made at the top. I continued after the radio operator, away from the flames. I was almost upon him, out from underneath the tank, when I heard a scream that was not human.
I turned to assess the situation, forgetting my prey. An American Sherman had fired on the defenseless Tiger, not knowing that we had already taken care of it. Smoke billowed from the turret, clouding my vision. I saw the loader on the ground, his body charred and lifeless. Where the devil was Danny?
I leapt atop the tank, and saw him lying limp upon the now mangled main gun of the tank. His body, too was maimed and charred, but he was still alive. Sort of. I examined him as I moved closer. The round had not struck him directly, but a large chunk of shrapnel, still ablaze, was wedged into his stomach. Danny had never been cut before, never injured, not in his vampire life. I could not imagine how much this might shock him.
His eyes were wide with concern as I looked at his face. "Glad…I pulled…ther cord," he groaned, and tried to smile at me. I hoped that my answering smile would look genuine.
"Let's get out of the line of fire and we'll take care of that, okay?" I asked, trying to keep my voice light. I picked him up easily and carried him from the tank, across the deep packed snow, and into the woods. I moved quickly east, well past the German lines this far to the north of the battle, deep into the Ardennes.
I placed him gently against a tree, and then moved to examine the wound. It was not bad, though it still burned. Ignoring the pain I knew to be coming, I grabbed the shrapnel and pulled it quickly from his gut. I heard a sizzle when it hit the snow, and smelled the burning flesh of my hand. I ignored that too, grabbing snow and placing it on and in his wound, so that it could cool and heal. Fortunately, this soothed my own hand as well. Once the wound cooled sufficiently, I held the two sides together and waited for his flesh to fuse together.
Danny had not spoken during this process, and instead he simply watched me.
I smirked at him, trying to keep everything light. "That was nothing. You should have seen the shell I took in the Great War. Straight to the chest, not shrapnel but the full load. Though these burn a bit hotter, I must admit."
"Yeh. Weren't nothin'. I ain't feel ah thing," he replied. I knew he was lying, but he smiled, and he seemed to want me to believe him. No reason to argue.
His wound was completely gone within minutes, the only remaining signs the blood around it and the destruction of his uniform.
"Done with this war then?" I asked. I felt confident about America's chances without two insane vampires helping out.
"Yeh. Let's find us some Children o' ther Moon," he replied.
My responsive grin was completely genuine.
XXX
We traveled for three years without a trace, without encountering a single other vampire. The Allies crushed the Germans, and the Americans dropped a bomb on the Japanese. For three years we did not catch a scent.
We were in the cold plains of Poland when I caught a vampire scent. I waited for Danny, hunting on his own, to find me before I began pursuit.
He recognized the scent immediately.
"Tis Jonathan."