Warning: This chapter contains violent and possibly disturbing imagery.
The Age of Marvels:
Chapter Thirty Four
Captain America
and the
Invaders
Part Thirty Four
During the darkest days of World War II, America stood united against the threat of the Nazi Germany war machine. Our Greatest Generation sacrificed everything in order to stem the forces of oppression from overrunning our very planet, led under the fearless banner of the greatest hero of our time, Captain America. Inspired by his courageous example, and with the aid of his misfit band of Invaders, Captain America led the forces of freedom to victory, changing his world forever.
New Jersey
The home of Mr. Barnes
Colonel Fury leaned back in the couch, deep in thought, "It's hard to believe in this day and age that T'Chaka ever had to put up with intolerance like that. Now you'd be court marshaled for that kind of behavior."
"Well, it was a very different time back then," Mr. Barnes conceded, nursing his cup of coffee. "But things haven't changed as much as you might think. I hear about that kind of bigotry all the time on the news when it comes to equal rights for homosexuals, women, and other ethnic minorities. How are they being treated any different than the African American soldiers of the second World War?"
"Touche," Fury responded with a smile. "But believe me, we're working on that. When it comes to acceptance and tolerance of others, real change always takes time, but we'll get there."
Their conversation was interrupted by an impassioned bellow from the second floor, "Matthew Alexander Barnes, you get out of bed THIS INSTANT! You only have twenty minutes to get ready for school, young man, and if I have to come in there and drag you out of bed by your feet than so help me..."
"Is that your grandkid?" Fury asked, not able to hide a smile at the antics from upstairs.
"Matt's a pistol," the old man chuckled. "He's always drivin' his poor mom up the wall in the morning before school. He knows just how far he can push her before he gets into trouble."
"Ahh, where was I?" Barnes asked, suddenly realizing that they had wandered off topic. "Oh yes, but T'Chaka wasn't the only one who had to face challenges while we were separated. During a mission with his squad, Logan found himself drawn into a nightmare the likes of which no one should ever have to endure..."
September, 1944
From the Journal of Private Griggs
Don't know if anyone will ever read this, but when you've got a story to tell like mine, it doesn't much matter, does it? I ain't never been too much for reading and writing, but sometimes you just got to get it out, you know? Besides, when you're marching through endless forests and scrambling for cover under German fire, sometimes its hard to think about life after the war, and if I don't make it...well...let's just say I'll feel better knowing that someone out there knows what happened here.
Back home in Gadsdon Alabama, I was Tim Griggs, Benny Griggs' boy, but out here in the rain and the chill and the smoke, I'm just plain old Griggs. I'm just a name people shout, a body with a gun. Out here on the front lines all the names and faces blur together and we all become just one more means to an end. It all becomes about the objective, and everything else fades away. That's the way it has to be. It's the only way to keep yourself sane out here, when every moment could be your last the only way to keep going is to distance yourself from everyone around you. That is...until your pal right next to you gets blown away in an instant, a painful reminder that we're all too human, and everything that we were could be lost forever as your body crumples to the ground without anything inside and your whole life gets reduced to just another statistic. After something like that, it becomes all too easy to blend into the uniform and leave the rest of you behind in Alabama...and that's how I became Griggs...just Griggs.
Of course, all that changed when our new commanding officer showed up. I think it's safe to say that nobody had seen anyone like Commander Ronin before. As soon as he introduced himself, the whole company started whispering and staring. We'd all heard the rumors that the replacement CO was one of the legendary Invaders, the heroes of Normandy, but seeing one of them in the flesh was something else.
None of us knew what to make of the strange little man. I'll give him this, he was one hairy, tough looking, son of a gun. Sure he was shorter than almost anyone in the squad, and had a wild haircut that would have given my poor mamma a conniption, but you could tell just by meeting the man that he had seen his fair share of the war. Don't take this the wrong way or nothing, because I don't swing that way, but he had some of the biggest damn muscles I've ever seen! I mean, if the man survived D-Day with just that funny little sword he carries around, then he's got my respect and that's no lie.
But that ain't the half of what made Ronin such an odd egg, if you catch my drift. He claimed he was Canadian, but he sure didn't talk or dress like any Canadian trooper I've ever crossed. He had a weird way of speech that I ain't never heard before, like he picked up a foreign dialect from somewhere, like a cold you just can't shake. And more than that, even if nothing else tipped you off, you still couldn't miss that crazy uniform of his.
It was like something straight out of one of them history books you read at the schoolhouse. He would just walk around, proud as could be, in some kind of blue and yellow samurai's robes. Now don't that just beat all? And even more strange, he even went into battle with the darn thing on!
You'd think that something like that would drag the little man down, but you'd be wrong. After seeing Ronin in action, you'd understand why he didn't even need a gun to fight. That samurai was a soldier like I'd never seen before...a real warrior type, you know? He would charge into a firefight, brave and bold as he could be, sword drawn and a-hollerin' enough to beat the band, and in a flash he'd be on the enemy, and then a few seconds later, after the screaming was done, there he'd be, covered in blood and gasping for breath, with half the Nazi force dead at his feet.
Yup, Ronin was a real life saver. At first I wondered how he never got hit, taking down as many Germans as he did during every battle, but then one day I saw it. He had just ambushed a small squad of the enemy from behind, and I saw with my own eyes how they pegged him in the chest a couple times. At first I panicked, I mean, if our CO got taken out, our unit would fall apart without a leader and we'd be sitting ducks, but the samurai just kept on going! He didn't even bat an eye as chunks of flesh got blown off him, he just kept swinging that sword of his, mowing down the enemy, growling and carrying on like some kind of wild beast as his blood spurted across the battlefield.
Now I didn't get a real good look at him that time, but before long he was acting good as new and the squad moved on like nothing had happened. And I wasn't the only one who knew something was up. Stories began circulating all throughout the unit that something was screwy with the commander. We all had heard the stories of the Invaders, we all thought we knew what they were capable of, but we were wrong. I don't know what kept this guy going no matter what hit him, but it was downright spooky. Spooky as hell.
But that slowly changed as the days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to months. Our unit's job was to follow the bomber raids as they flew deeper and deeper into German territory. The B-17's would hit a target, usually a Nazi military base or outpost, and then we would follow and mop things up once the enemy had been weakened. We all thought it would be a cushy job, but when they assigned Ronin as our CO we should have guessed otherwise. We were dead wrong.
It didn't take a genius to catch onto our brilliant military strategy, effective as it might be. And say what you will about them Nazis, but they ain't stupid. The deeper we penetrated into their territory, the more the Germans began developing strategies to save their soldiers from the bombing raids. Underground bunkers and other such protective measures became more and more common as we advanced, and while sometimes the enemy would just up and surrender at the mere sight of us, we encountered others that had barely been scratched by the bombers, and still others who were organized enough to set traps and ambushes for any unfortunate Allied units who happened to stumble across the pile of rubble they'd once called home.
Those were dark days all right, but at least we had Ronin by our side. I don't know what would have happened to us if he hadn't been around to save our butts. Strange and eccentric as he was, our soft spoken and reserved CO could hoof it from one side of the battlefield to the other and save a dozen men by slicing the Germans to ribbons in the blink of an eye.
What's more, it was next to impossible to surprise the man. I swear sometimes it was almost like he could smell danger. We'd be marching through the woods, or a town, or hell, just down the road, and he'd halt the entire company and just stand there almost like he was sniffing the air, or listening to something that the rest of us couldn't hear, before issuing new orders and dashing away to scout out what was ahead. And the craziest thing of all was that he was always right! Sure enough, as soon as we got to know Ronin a little better all the rumors and fear were forgotten. He might dress a little funny, but he cared about each and every one of his soldiers, knew us all by name, and by gum, before we knew it he'd become one of us. As far as any of us was cocnerned, he was our hero.
Unfortunately, his sterling reputation was permanently shattered for me one day when we were on a scouting mission through a small occupied village that had just been bombed, and I saw the masterless Ronin for what he really was.
It was safe to say that the village had seen better days. The bombers had really done a number on this one, like the rest of the war had when the German front lines had retreated through the area, no doubt pillaging every scrap of food and supplies that they could get their hands on during the process. After all, survival of the fittest was what those Nazi bastards were all about. If those peasants weren't strong enough to protect their own belongings, they didn't deserve to have them in the first place. Just makes you wonder, now that the Nazis are losing the war, how they like the taste of their own philosophic medicine when the boot's on the other goose stepping foot.
Anyway, the whole place was a wreck, but it looked safe enough for us. I mean, what kraut in his right mind would try to ambush us in a bombed out pile of rubble like this sorry town? On the other hand, we weren't born yesterday, and it was always better to be safe than sorry, so that's what we did, we played it safe.
The village was small, but it was fairly spread out, so Ronin did what any good CO would have done, and ordered the majority of the company to back off while the squads that specialized in scouting went in to secure the area. Naturally, that meant it was time to put my neck on the line and do my job. I only felt that unique brand of fear that bubbles up and twists your stomach into a knot for a moment before I reflexively swallowed it back down again. Fear like that you gotta show who's boss lickety split before it gets a hold on you, because once it really sets its roots in, the only way you're going home is in a body bag. I've seen it happen to plenty of good soldiers, and even though I knew all too well what little control I had out there on the battlefield, I could at least make sure that I didn't go out like that, like a coward.
I was ready for our basic maneuver, divide into small groups and quietly and quickly sweep the area, until I got thrown for a loop by the Commander's calm voice, "Private Griggs, you're with me."
Yeahbuhwhuh?" was almost what I said as I suddenly found myself giving the samurai my full attention.
The other men only threw us furtive glances as they quickly scurried away towards the town. They were beginning to sense that something wasn't right here, and they wanted no part of it. It wasn't that they were afraid of Ronin, because by that point he had become quite popular among us soldiers, it had more to do with the fact that our commander usually did his scouting alone, and they figured that if something was so dangerous that it required someone like him to have back up, then it might as well be old Griggs in the line of fire rather than their own skins.
But despite all the thoughts and questions rolling around in that brain of mine, I found the words that came out of my mouth were the same as always, "Yes sir, right away sir," I replied, throwing a salute despite myself.
If only I had known what I was getting myself into.
Most of the village was located in what remained of a small clearing which had been eked out of the body of the forest long ago, and it was that area which most of the scouting parties were going. Unfortunately, Ronin and I were heading in a different direction, which was all the more reason to be nervous, I reasoned, while I clutched my gun with my fingers so firmly that my bones started to ache.
When you're out in the thick of things and facing down enemy fire so loud and heavy that you're convinced that even if you do manage to survive, you'd still have a lifetime of therapy to pay for, the only things in the whole world you have to depend on is the guy to your right, the guy to your left, and the gun in your hand. And since the guys to your right and left tend to die on you without warning, usually the gun seems the most dependable option. Your gun is your life, and as I trotted away at the heels of the calm and collected samurai, who's features betrayed an intense degree of concentration that I'd never seen before as we made our way through the trees, I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach at the depressing thought of how truly interconnected my life and my gun had become.
But these thoughts were cut short as Ronin suddenly stopped, holding up his hand in the unmistakable signal for silence. As I shuffled up beside him, striving with all my heart to remain so quiet that I hardly dared to breathe, I finally saw what had caught the commander's attention.
I still have no idea how the heck Ronin knew it had been out there, but the barn I made out through the trees was still about a hundred yards away. It was isolated enough from the town that it had probably been hidden from the bomber's sight by the canopy of trees above, but was still close enough that they would have definitely felt it when the village was destroyed. Luck must have been on the hairy CO's side when he decided to come out here, because I sure as heck wouldn't have wanted to recon that place without any backup. No siree.
The structure consisted of a large barn, located in front of the main house, which had become clearly dilapidated with the passage of time. Standard procedure demanded that we investigate the house first, but Ronin was headed right for that barn. Somehow he knew something was in there, and even though it made no sense to me at first, before too long I could hear it as well.
It was the sound of someone crying.
We crept up to the barn as silent as the grave, crouching just beneath the window next to the main door. I'm sure the large, low window used to have glass or shutters or something, but being located in a war zone, buildings have a habit of misplacing those kinds of unnecessary commodities. Anyway, the important thing was what I could hear going on within the barn. There were two people inside, both of them just boys, one of which was trying and failing to hold back tears, and both of them were speaking in heavily accented German.
Now if you're a civilian, I can just hear your whiny little voices, "But Griggs, if they're speaking German, how could you understand them?"
Well if you knew anything about how the Allied military works, little civilian, you'd know that most scout troops are trained to understand at least the basic lingo of the enemy. Wouldn't be much of a reconnaissance trooper if I couldn't understand a blamed thing the Nazi's said, would I? In fact, it was rumored that one of the reasons Ronin was assigned to us was that he understood German as well. So there.
"Niklas, please...you don't have to do this!" pleaded the boy who was crying.
"Just shut the hell up, Steffen," said the other one, Niklas, hatefully. "You have never been one to believe in the cause. You never even wanted to be here at all! You shame the Deutsches Jungvolk with your cowardice. And now, with your death, you will do what you never could in life, and serve the Fuhrer with your dying breath!"
The air caught in my throat with the thought of what was about to happen. How old could these kids possibly be? And what was the Deutsches Jungvolk? Then I heard it, the cocking of a gun, and I knew that something horrible was about to happen. After all the atrocity and madness I'd seen in this war, I never thought I would bear witness to a child ending another child's life. But what could I do? I had only a fraction of a second to act before that gun went off, and the weeping, pathetic child's life would be ended forever, executed like a dog alone in a dark, dingy barn, his body lying forgotten on the hay strewn floor until somebody, maybe months later, happened upon what remained of the nameless boy.
But while those thoughts, emphasized by my own sense of helplessness, flashed through my head, Ronin sprang into action. I don't know what kind of training he must have gone through before he joined the military, but that man's reflexes were like a cat. Before I even had the time to stand up he had already sprung to his feet, leaped through the window, tackled the gun toting boy, Niklas, to the ground, and was now holding him in a choke-hold, not forceful enough to harm the kid, but certainly enough to keep him immobilized.
As soon as I could I had scrambled through the window myself, as only a shocked, ill prepared soldier could, and helped the other kid, Steffen, to his feet, and gave him a cursory examination to make sure he was okay as he coughed back his desperate sobs. Both children examined us with wild, surprised eyes, their gazes lingering on Ronin (not that I blamed them), trying to decide whether or not we were threats.
"Don't worry, kid. We're Allied soldiers, we ain't gonna hurt you," I said in a reassuring tone. "Uh...do you speak any English at all?"
Steffen, wiping the tears from his grimy face, nodded, "Yes, we are all being taught the English, but only the...um...small little bit."
"Okay, that's good enough," I said, trying to flash an encouraging smile. "I'm Private Griggs and this is..."
"You may call me Logan," the Commander said, still in a quiet, calm voice. "Do not worry, you are safe now."
Logan? The CO had a first name? I was shocked. Everyone knew about Captain America, the leader of the Invaders. The story of how little scrawny Steve Rogers had been turned into a super soldier by good old American science, and through nothing but sheer willpower and determination had become the symbol of a nation was famous across the world by now. But the rest of his teammates were still something of a mystery. And who could blame them? To us, to all the American soldiers, Captain America outshone all the other Invaders. He was an inspiration to us all. But the thought of Ronin having a first name just made him seem so...human, so normal. The concept would take some getting used to.
"What happened here, kid," I asked, forcing myself back to the present.
"Thank God for you," was all Steffen could say, throwing his arms around me and hugging me as tightly as he could while his pal glared at us from a few feet away. "Thank you, thank you, for saving my life!"
Frankly, I didn't know what the heck to do. I was still having trouble wrapping my head around the situation we'd stumbled upon. I mean, having caught a good eyeful of them, these kids couldn't have been more than thirteen years old. What could have possibly driven them to that kind of behavior?
"I am sorry," Steffen apologized, getting a hold of himself and taking a step back. "I am so lucky, so lucky. It is hard."
"Take your time," Logan said, tightening his grip around Niklas who attempted fruitlessly to slip away from his grasp.
Finally Steffen looked at us earnestly, "Thank you for saving me," he said once again. "But you do not knowing where you are. This village, we are the only people still here. The Deutsches Jungvolk are all that is left, hiding here on this farm."
"What are the Deutsches Jungvolk?" Logan finally managed to ask.
"No, don't tell them!" Logan's captive, Niklas, shouted out in German. "You coward! How dare you betray your own people!"
Despite his earlier fear, Steffen found it in himself to spit at the ground in front of the other boy, "Stop it, Niklas. I was never one of you. I will never be one of you, you monsters!"
After a moment he composed himself, turning back to us, "The Deutsches Jungvolk are a part of the Hitlerjugend...the Hitler Youth. We make up the younger section of the organization, the Deutsches Jungvolk, known as the German Youth."
"I have heard of this Hitler Youth," Logan replied. "It's an organization almost like a twisted mirrored version of the Boy Scouts, who's objective is to take the children of Germany and mold them into an entire generation of fanatical Nazi storm troopers. The Deutsches Jungvolk must be the indoctrination branch of the program."
"They're junior Nazis..." I said, eyes widening with realization. In boot camp they train you to be ready for anything, but there was no way I could have been ready for this. This was twisted, warped...wrong.
Steffen nodded, his expression distressed, "Yes, but it is not being my fault," he fearfully explained. "The Boy Scouts, they were outlawed and replaced by the Hitlerjugend. At first it was just being the more older boys, the ones who could work and fight. But after a time, the younger ones were encouraged to join, even the girls. Soon, every child over the age of nine was required by law to join, or we would be taken from our homes and our parents would be executed, sent to the gallows...or even the camps. No one is safe anymore."
He looked up at us with a face that was different than that of any other child I had ever seen in the States. He had lost something, something I couldn't quite define. Instead of the innocence and wonder I had seen in the eyes of so many children back home, his eyes held only sorrow, and pain, and dread. He had seen too much. He had experienced a kind of terror and hatred that had changed his life forever. Even though he couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve years old, he wasn't a kid, not anymore. The Nazis had taken that from him, and he could never get it back.
"At the beginning, the Deutsches Jungvolk were only concerned with education and physical exercise," Steffen explained in a hushed tone, his eyes losing some of their focus as his mind traveled back in time. "We were to be learning about the Fuhrer, about the glory of the Third Reich, about what it meant to belong to the superior Aryan race. We were made to pour over the Nazi doctrines again and again, memorizing every word so that it was drilled into our brains forever. This was all that mattered."
"They were brainwashed," I murmured in horrified astonishment. "Those Nazi bastards took these kids and brainwashed them so this was all they'd ever know."
Logan just stared ahead with a sad look on his face, his eyes having lost their light as if somewhere inside him he knew a little something of what this poor child had gone through.
"But things soon changed," Steffen went on, his voice rising with passion. "At first we would be made to exercise outside only a little every day, but the war, we were no longer winning it, and the homeland needed new soldiers who were better, tougher...meaner. So that is what we became."
"The Hitlerjugend, the older boys, they would come and 'supervise' us. We stopped reading the doctrines, and focused only on the training. Only the strong survive, only the strong survive," Steffen repeated, his voice cracking with emotion. "Those that did not perform well, the weak or the slow, would be punished, punished again and again, until the weakness was beaten out of them."
Steffen choked back a sob, his voice catching in his throat as he went on, "We were no longer children, we were being trained to be soldiers. The Reich needed men, and they were running out of them. The older ones, the Hitlerjugend, they were being called into action, sent to the front lines by the thousands. We were all that was left."
Now the boy slumped to his knees, holding his head in his hands and shaking slowly from side to side as images flashed through his mind faster than he could handle them, "We were being trained, trained at using the weapons. Guns, knives, explosives, anything that we could get our hands on. The Allied scum were advancing, and we were expected to hold them back no matter what, or our families would pay the price. The Third Reich must survive, even if we did not. And if we did not perform our duties as expected, if we were not strong enough, than we would be tortured, broken down, and rebuilt into something more useful to the Reich, until we were."
"I...I can't believe I'm hearing this," I couldn't help but stutter. "What kind of people could brainwash and torture their own children?"
"Quiet Griggs," Logan said softly. "Let the little one speak."
"And things then became even worse," Steffen continued, his voice a ghost of what it once was. "The front lines, they were getting too close. The village had to be evacuated...but not abandoned. The people, our families, my parents, were ordered to flee, escorted away by armed convoy, but we, the Deutsches Jungvolk...we were ordered to stay behind."
"You bastard! You coward!" Niklas shouted, bursting with rage from within Logan's iron grip. "You would rather retreat, still clinging to your whore mother's breast, than fight for your country! It is filth like you that will lose us this war, you abschaum!"
"There was no one left," Steffen continued with a broken voice. "No one left to fight for the homeland. We had to stay behind to defend the village. I had to take up arms as I watched my parents being dragged away by the soldiers. My mother, screaming and weeping as the men carried her away, knowing I would...I would never see her again..."
And with that, Steffen broke down. As he collapsed on the ground, curled in a ball and weeping into the dirt, I did all I could as I knelt beside him, placing my hand on his shoulder in a comforting gesture that was all too shallow. I knew that after all he'd lost, nothing a stranger like me could do would mean anything. But at least I was there, and that had to count for something.
"Steffen is a worm," Niklas growled from behind his scowl. "We all knew that he did not have what it took to survive in our glorious Fuhrer's world. He is too soft."
An unquenchable rage replaced Steffen's tears at the other boy's remark, "My Father is twice the man your insane Fuhrer will ever be!" he screamed with fury. "And Father says that our people, any people, can never be truly strong as long as they blindly follow the words of a power mad tyrant! He says that a truly great people must have the courage to think for themselves, and that can never happen when we live in a society where it is against the law to ask questions! He says that a government should exist for the people, that the people should not exist for the government, and that until we accept responsibility for our own actions, and stop trying to build our nation only by oppressing others, we will never be strong, only ignorant and hateful."
"Your father is a fool," Niklas simply replied, glaring across the barn at the other boy.
"I did not want to join the ranks of the Deutsches Jungvolk," Steffen explained, his anger burnt out as he looked at us with an pleading eyes. "Everyone my age was forced to, and now...I will never see my family again. Please don't hurt me. I am so, so sorry!"
In an effort to keep the kid from bursting into tears all over again, I said the only thing I knew to say, "Don't worry, kid. You're with us now. We're not gonna hurt you. Just you wait, we'll find yer mom and dad again before you know it."
"You...you really think they're alive?" Steffen asked, a note of hope in his voice that I had not heard before.
"You bet!" I said, giving him a big, encouraging thumbs up and ruffling his hair. "They ain't soldiers like the guys we fight, and we aren't real big on killing civilians. Don't worry, they'll be fine."
"That is what you think, American swine!" Niklas raged, his eyes wide with mad passion as he wrenched himself away from Logan's unprepared grip in one fluid motion. "The Third Reich will march over the bodies of the unworthy, be they cowardly traitors or weak foreign chattel!"
Before Logan or I could do anything, the crazed Niklas had ripped his shirt off, revealing a thin jacket underneath with a device on it that I didn't recognize. Good thing that Logan did though, because if it wasn't for him both me and the boy would have died that day.
"It's a bomb!" the Commander shouted, immediately moving in our direction. "The boy has strapped himself with a bomb!"
I was rooted to the spot, paralyzed with fear. I could see Niklas reaching for his detonator as if in slow motion, a maddened, wicked grin spreading from ear to ear. Acting on reflex, I pushed Steffen to the ground and curled my body around the boy in a desperate bid to save him from the blast. I may not survive what was coming, I thought, but at least he might. As the moments slipped away and the world slowed around me, images of my family and the life I'd left behind flashed through my mind...until something else caught my attention.
Suddenly Niklas had been shoved aside, a curse escaping his lips as Logan sprang into view. I could see him scream at me to get down, but it was as if I couldn't hear his voice in my panicked state of mind. Before I knew it, Logan had crouched in front of me, protecting both me and the boy using his body as a shield, as we all closed our eyes in preparation for what was coming.
My world was blown apart in the blast that instantly claimed the life of the insane German boy Niklas. I saw Logan howl in pain as the explosion knocked him clear off his feet and across the room. I felt the wave of force rip me away from my CO, sending me spiraling across the floor as I lost my grip on Steffen and cried out in agony. Everything became fire and smoke as I rolled to a stop, colliding painfully with something hard and solid that knocked me completely unconscious.
Mercifully, I got the sense that I had been only out for a few seconds, but when I next opened my eyes my vision was blurry and my ears were still ringing. The smoke was beginning to clear as I gazed around the room, barely aware of anything but the pain accompanied with each breath and the waves of nausea which persistently plagued me.
Nothing remained of poor Niklas except a sickening crimson splatter on the floor where he had stood and the charred black powder of the explosives to mark what would have to pass for his grave. I saw Steffen behind me, groaning and holding his head as he managed to stumble to his feet. I guess the Commander and I had done our jobs right if the boy could get back up so soon after such a blast, but where the heck was Logan?
"Let me help you up," Steffen offered, stumbling over to me and lending what assistance he could as I slowly staggered into a standing position. "We must get out of here. The others will have heard the explosion."
"Others?" I asked, my still ringing brain struggling to comprehend the boy's words. "What others?"
Steffen was losing patience as he led me slowly through the barn, "The other Deutsches Jungvolk. They will not be long now. Hurry!"
I shook my head stubbornly, "No, we can't leave without Commander Logan. Where is he?"
"I am...cough...over here," came a raspy voice from the far corner of the barn.
What Steffen and I saw when we turned to face the Commander was an sight I had never imagined before. Logan lay sprawled out on the floor, facing the ceiling, his robes hanging from him in blood soaked tatters, his body literally blown to pieces. I felt my lunch catch in my throat as I saw that the left side of his torso, from his shoulder all the way to his thigh, was hanging from the rest of him, some of his parts connected only by the thinnest string of flesh or sinew, leaving his innards exposed to the acrid air and splayed out on the floor.
I could hear Steffen as he began retching behind me, my mind racing as I tried to think of any possible way to save my CO. I'll confess, at that point I didn't know what the heck to do. The only thing I could think as shock began to set in was that Logan was a dead man. I had seen men succumb to only a fraction of the damage that Logan had just taken. There was no way he would survive.
And then I saw the most miraculous, and disgusting, thing of my entire life.
Logan tried to force a smile upon his scarred and bleeding face, "Don't worry, Griggs. I'll be fine," he said, using his trembling arm to scoop what remained of his stomach back into his body.
I first noticed it when staring at his face, wondering how he could smile in such a desperate situation. The large scar that had been ripped across his features...could it slowly be getting smaller? I blinked in disbelief, wondering if it was the shock setting in, but yes, it was definitely shrinking! And it wasn't just his face, all over Logan's shattered frame, his body seemed to be slowly regenerating itself, almost as if it was stitching its own flesh back together, inch my inch.
I was completely dumbstruck, just standing there and watching, fighting back the waves of overwhelming nausea at the sight that met my uncomprehending eyes. Logan grunted and growled, clearly dealing with crippling levels of agony, while his body seemed to regrow and replace the organs and flesh that had been torn away. Muscles slowly intertwined themselves around his bones and skin seemed to sprout from the surface of those muscles, almost like mold, before my very eyes. It was the most morbid, grotesque spectacle I could ever imagine, a nightmarish visage that I still fear I may never be able to put behind me. Yet in only a matter of minutes, Logan had miraculously recovered enough that he was capable of sitting up and flashing a tentative grin as his flesh began gradually encircling the gaping hole in his chest.
I tried to say something, anything, to my CO, but all I managed was to stutter, "That was...that was..."
"That, Private Griggs, is the reason why I am an Invader," Logan said in as soothing a voice as he could muster, while he stretched his neck from side to side and snapped his bones back into place. "Before you ask, no, I am not immortal, nor am I any kind of demon or monster. Instead, my body is possessed of an inexplicable healing factor which allows me to quickly recover from almost any injury."
My response was an eloquently expressed, "Uuhhhhhhh..."
Logan ignored me, instead grabbing my hand and with a deep and painful grunt, he pulled himself to his feet, "You did not think that I earned my place on the Invaders with only the aid of my good looks, did you?"
The blank stare I gave in response clearly did not impress my Commander.
"I knew I should have left the jokes to James," Logan muttered under his breath. "I must have lost my sense of humor back in Canada."
Now that Logan's body had almost completely healed, (only several moderately large, nasty scars were left to show that he had been caught in the explosion at all) he suddenly turned back to business, "Snap out of it, Griggs, Uncle Sam doesn't pay you to stand around gawking all day. We have work to do," he ordered, shoving me back to reality.
"Yes sir," I responded automatically; there would be time to process what I had just witnessed when the mission was done.
"It's too late!" Steffen exclaimed, looking out the window to the other end of the barn. "They're here!"
As quickly as we could while nursing our wounds, Logan and I joined the boy where he stood at the other end of the barn. Peeking outside we saw a large crowd of children, all Steffen's age or even younger, pouring out from the adjacent farm house. My heart sank in my rattled chest as I noticed each one was wearing the same uniform that Niklas had worn, and still worse, they were all carrying military grade weapons. Even more impressive, they were advancing towards us in coordinated, organized ranks. These weren't just any ordinary kids, they were the Hitler Youth, and they were coming for us.
"Holy shit!" I exclaimed in a strained whisper, ducking back below the window and clutching my rifle in my blood soaked and trembling hands.
There had to have been almost two dozen of those little brainwashed brats, all armed to the teeth, and if Niklas had been any indication, they weren't to be taken lightly. We were going to die, I just knew it. There were only three of us after all, a boy, a frightened and injured soldier, and an equally wounded freak of nature. We would be no match for them, and there was no way we could hold them at bay long enough for reinforcements to arrive and save us. This was the end of the line.
"Calm yourself, Griggs," Logan instructed harshly. "Steffen, are these the other members of the Deutsches Jungvolk you warned us about?"
Steffen nodded, nervous sweat pouring from his brow, "Yes sir, under the command of Sergent Lukas Bader. They will not stop until they have killed us all!"
"Do not worry," Logan said, smiling as he put a reassuring hand on the boy's shoulder. "I promise we'll make it out of this."
Then turning to me as I crouched shivering on the floor, he muttered softly, "Griggs, cover me. I'm going out there and I need you to watch my back."
I tentatively turned around and poked my head over the windowsill. I could see the boys slowly and cautiously advancing across the spacious yard towards the barn, marching smartly in their uniforms, firearms held in their tiny hands, their incredibly young faces eerily devoid of any emotion. Then I glanced over at Steffen, who was just as terrified as I was, his blood and tear streaked face constantly moving from me, to Logan, and then outside to the boys who had slowly been transformed from his friends into stormtroopers, and something snapped inside of me.
Somewhere within Steffen I could clearly see the little redheaded boy who used to sit beside me during church every Sunday morning. When I looked at the brainwashed German kids outside, it was like I could almost recognize my own nieces and nephews. In their faces I could picture the kids who used to play down at the schoolhouse every afternoon as I walked home from work. Something in them dredged up memories of myself and my little sister chasing each other around the woods for hours during those long summer months of my youth.
These weren't soldiers, these were just kids. No matter what they were dressed like or what was going on in their heads, they were still only children. Could they really be held responsible for what they were doing? How could we murder children in cold blood? It just wasn't right.
"I...I can't," I said with a quavering voice. "I can't fire on these kids, Commander. It's murder...it's wrong..."
"You listen to me, Griggs," Logan snarled with sudden ferocity. "There's only one way out of here, and it's through the front door, and if we don't work together, we're not going to make it! Do you hear me?"
I don't know if it was the shock, or just the horror of the situation and everything we'd just been through, but even though my ears were hearing Logan's words, my brain just wasn't processing them, "I can't...I can't murder kids..." was all I could murmer as I willed my hands to pick up my gun in self-defense, but my body simply wouldn't listen to me.
Logan cursed as he looked back out the window, realizing at that point that I was a lost cause. The Deutsches Jungvolk were alarmingly close by now, and were starting to separate into two squads in order to completely surround the only way in or out of the barn, the better to pick us off one by one. I could see their commander behind them, a large, portly, cruel looking man with an elaborate mustache, carrying a pistol and a stern expression on his face. I knew that if something wasn't done immediately, we would be past the point of no return and none of us would be leaving that barn alive. But despite what my brain kept telling me, I still could not bring myself to fire on those kids.
In any war you have to do things to survive that disgust and horrify you. Things that you never thought you could ever do, things that eat away at your soul and change you from the man you were, into the man you're going to have to spend the rest of your life learning to live with. Over time, you gradually begin to accept deeper and deeper levels of depravity, explaining them away as necessary for your own survival, knowing somewhere inside that piece by piece, you are losing more of yourself to the war every day.
However, every soldier has a point where they're no longer willing to accept the sacrifices necessary for survival. Deep inside, every soldier has a line that no matter what, their soul is not willing to cross. I've seen a lot of good men reach that point...and most of them don't survive the experience. The lucky ones get shipped home, wounded or worse, their spirit all used up and then discarded like an old carton of cigarettes, no longer useful to the military at all. A shell of the person they once were.
Maybe I had reached that point myself. Maybe I had given all that I could give, made every sacrifice I could make to the ravenous hunger of the war, and now I had nothing left. Maybe I was just too scared, at the end of the day a coward just like everyone else. Maybe I could no longer cope with the horrors and revelations and miracles that I'd seen that day. I don't know. But I do know this. What happened next saved my life, and forever warped my faith in humanity. I don't know what the heck Logan was, or what part of himself perished inside him that day, but whatever it was, it sure wasn't human.
At that point Logan was completely ignoring me, but he turned to the boy and forcefully looked him straight in his eyes, "Listen to me Steffen, I want you to take your hands and cover your ears, okay? Close your eyes tight and no matter what you do, never never open them, alright? I'm coming back for you, I promise. But in the meantime, no matter what, don't open your eyes. Can you do that for me?"
Steffen gulped fearfully and nodded his head, "Yes sir," he said, trying to summon some last shred of bravery from within.
"That's a good boy," Logan smiled, ruffling his hair. "Just repeat over and over, Logan's coming back for me, Logan's coming back for me, with your eyes shut and your hands over your ears, and it'll be over before you know it."
As Steffen dutifully carried out his orders, Logan turned to me and growled, "So help me Griggs, you had better protect that boy with your life, got it? Or I swear this will be your last day on Earth."
My hands were so sweaty that I could barely manage to hold onto my rifle, but I somehow stuttered out a meek, apologetic, "Yes sir."
With a final nod to us and a deep breath, Logan crouched down low, drew his sword with his still scabbed over and crimson stained hand, and leaped out the window with a savage, animalistic roar that chilled me to the bone. What followed was a bloody massacre that will haunt my nightmares until the day I die.
Logan charged straight towards the ranks of the Deutsches Jungvolk, but they were ready for him. With a silent, efficient composure that chilled me to the bone, the kids fired upon their adversary with deadly accuracy. I saw whole sections of Logan's chest and torso explode, chunks of meat and bone flying through the air as he bellowed with fury and pain. I could plainly see the agony, barely checked by the blind rage that suppressed it, upon his face, but despite the extensive damage his body was suffering, he continued charging straight at the enemy.
My eyes widened with unimaginable horror as Logan's arm flashed to the right, his sword slicing through the air so fast that my eyes couldn't keep up...and the head of his first victim flew lazily through the air, the child's eyes now forever frozen with a look of eternal surprise.
"Logan's coming back for me...Logan's coming back for me," mumbled Steffen, rocking back and forth with his head buried between his knees.
An instant later, Logan's sword dashed to the left, and a spurt of blood arced through the sky as another child was nearly sliced in half. I began to feel vomit well up inside me as I realized that Logan's reflexes were so swift that the poor kid hadn't even realized he was in striking range until he was already dead.
But the Youth were finally beginning to realize the danger they were in, and on the verge of panic, they began to spread out, trying in vain to mow down the samurai warrior who was already in their midst. So skilled was Logan's advance, that he never once offered the Germans a shot without putting one of their own in the line of fire, and before long he had made it all the way to the back of the group, where their commander was standing, rooted to the spot with terror.
"Shoot it, shoot it damn you!" shrieked the officer, screaming at the top of his lungs as he finally began scrambling away from his tormentor...but it was already far too late for that.
Logan had clearly picked the commanding officer as his first objective, a smart decision that would throw the rest of the unit into chaos, and implied that somewhere in there he still had some vestige of humanity left. But what remained of the man that had been Commander Logan was quickly swept away as he cried out in savage rage and leaped upon the German officer as he turned to run, knocking him to the ground with Logan crouching on his back, sword raised threateningly while he glared and snarled at the other kids in the unit, as if daring them to interfere.
By now the officer was scratching and tearing at the ground in a panic, grasping with a mad fervor for anything that might help him escape his assailant, but it was no use. As the helpless officer, who had become so terrified that he was now openly weeping pitifully, begged the bestial, mutilated monster atop him for mercy, Logan quickly raised his sword and plunged it through the Nazi's heart, the officer's final breath dying in his throat and fading away with a nauseating gurgling sound as the light vanished from his eyes forever.
"Logan's coming back for me...Logan's coming back for me," Steffen continued chanting, his shaking voice rising in volume.
I watched as Logan slowly rose, extracting his bloody sword from the chest of his victim, and turned to face the remaining children, who stood transfixed with horror, staring upon the scene before them. As Logan advanced towards them, slowly, deliberately, step by step, one of the kids in the back could no longer take the suspense, and in a shout of pure terror, fired upon the nightmare. With a flick of his wrist, Logan somehow deflected the bullet using only his blade, and with one final roar of fury, leaped upon the nearest children and rained blow after blow upon them as spurts of blood splattered high into the sky.
I don't know why I never looked away during that massacre. I don't know what kept my eyes glued to the horror that was unfolding before me. Vomit had risen into my mouth and my uncomprehending mind could barely keep up with what was going on, but I couldn't look away. I had to see. I had to know. Someone had to be able to be able to tell the story of the terrible fate of those kids.
My brain tried to tell me that it was a kill or be killed situation. Those brainwashed children would have taken our lives without a second thought. But something about this spectacle, something about the way Logan hunted those children like they were his prey, about the way he almost seemed to relish the gruesome scene that only he could create, let me know deep in my heart that what was happening was an abomination, and that God could never forgive me for sitting by and allowing it.
"Logan's coming back for me...Logan's coming back for me," Steffen was now wailing, fresh tears soaking his clothing as his face contorted into a grotesque mask of horror and sorrow.
I will never forget what I saw that day. I saw children get ripped apart before my very eyes, by a man who I had once looked up to and admired. I saw limbs snap like they were twigs. I saw organs and flesh and blood ripped from a child's body and discarded like trash. I heard the kind of hellish, tortured screams that a human being can only make when utter, senseless terror has consumed them, the kind that leaves nothing behind after death but the lingering, ghostly imprint of their own damnation. I saw a part of myself die along with those children, brutally savaged by the same man who was trying to save my life.
When the last terrified plea for mercy had been brutally cut short, when the last body had hit the ground with a lifeless thud, I saw Logan, his eyes devoid of any intelligence or compassion, descend upon the body of the last child he had slain, a primal, almost lupine howl of victory echoing from within his gnashing maw as he stabbed the corpse again and again with his blade. Each time the sword pierced the soft flesh another sickening squelch was heard as drops of the victim's blood flew skyward, mixing with Logan's own grievous wounds. Again and again he stabbed with his blade, and I knew that Logan was possessed of a kind of mindless savagery that he had been forced to draw upon in order to survive, but though he had first used it as a tool, he was now a slave to those same passions. For once unleashed, they demand a toll that would consume one's very soul.
I had already seen it a few times on the battlefield, when a soldier becomes so consumed with rage that they lose all rationality and completely give into their bloodlust...but never to this extent. There was nothing left of the man Logan had once been now. He had succumbed to something basic, monstrous, and primal that lurked within us all. Something that most of us don't even know we have. Something long buried beneath the thin veil of humanity that we all carry within. Logan had unleashed something that dated back to before the first man had crafted his first tool, to before we had claimed mastery over the wheel and the flame. Something dark, something tragic and evil and monstrous and bestial that stalked hidden in the darkness of pre-history and had been all but forgotten during our long, painful, clawing ascent of evolution. That something had been necessary for our species to survive those silent, shadowy, forgotten and mysterious days, but now that Logan had been forced to rely on it for our sakes, it would not relinquish his mind so easily. That force, that monstrous spiritual energy, held his heart in its claws now, and it would never again release his soul from its razor, predatory grip.
Logan had shed all pretense of humanity as he continued savaging the body of that poor boy. He was only an animal now, a monstrous amalgam of man and beast, a hideous, wounded, writhing man thing that was too horrified at itself to live, but was too tenacious and burning with fire to die.
Steffen was no longer repeating the phrase Logan had taught him, and had been reduced to a pitiful, sniffling, wailing puddle of a boy on the cold barn floor, his clothes clinging to him damply from his own blood and tears.
At that moment I pitied Logan almost as much as I reviled him. What he had done was disgusting and evil and unforgivable, but he had become that...thing...in order to save us. Regardless, I knew in my heart that what I saw was no longer human. I still don't know what Logan is, man, monster, devil, or some terrible nameless thing in between...but it certainly wasn't a man, and I would never think of him that way again. He was something lower, something dirty and tainted, something from a nightmare that walked around in human clothing. He was wrong.
And at that moment I could no longer stand to see him that way any longer, "Commander, sir, it's over...it's over," I called out from the safety of the window across the corpse littered field.
I immediately realized my mistake when Logan's head snapped up, glaring and snarling like the mindless beast he had become, his eyes bloodshot with rage, as his hand darted upwards and he threw his katana at me with incredible precision. I didn't even have time to gasp as the blade sliced through the air and buried itself into the wooden window frame only inches from my head.
I screeched in terror and collapsed backward, nearly falling upon the weeping boy beneath me in my fear. I couldn't believe Logan had done that! Somehow, after everything I'd seen him do, it never occurred to me that he would turn on his own men. Knowing the danger we were in, I quickly scrambled to my feet, grabbing Steffen in my arms, intent on making an all-or-nothing break for the door when I heard a soft, broken voice from outside the barn.
"It's...it's okay, Private Griggs," I head Logan say, his tone exhausted and ragged but otherwise recognizable. "I'm okay now. It's me. It's me."
Slowly, cautiously, I swung open the entrance, its creaky hinges whining loudly as Logan was revealed standing in the doorway, leaning heavily against the frame and panting like a wounded dog. He was hunched over, bleeding from at least a dozen deep wounds. All manner of filth and innards had been splayed against the rags of his once beautiful robes as he stood there, haggard and utterly spent. He no longer even dared to attempt a smile, as he knew we had both seen him for what he really was, a twisted, perverted imitation of a man. He was broken, and exhausted, and there was no longer anything inside him to keep him going, but somehow he had saved all our lives, this shambling hairy beast. But as long as I live I will never be able to bring myself to thank him for it.
A cold hatred burned in my heart as I faced this monstrosity, trying with all my might to maintain the last shred of my composure as I asked the only question that mattered, "What...what are you?"
"I wish I knew," the thing that had been Logan replied as I noticed silent tears flowing from his clenched eyes to mix with the blood caked upon his face. "God help me, I wish I knew."