By the Blood of Heroes (7 page)

A glance at the shambler’s body showed his knife still stuck deep in the creature’s eye socket. He hobbled over, pulled out the knife, and wiped the blade off on the shambler’s uniform, and then returned it to his boot.

The convoy had been moving in the same direction he had, southeast, and so he decided to leave the road behind and strike out cross-country in a more easterly direction. He’d still be headed toward the front; he’d just have to angle southward once he drew closer.

Satisfied with his decision, he was about to head out when he felt a hand clamp tightly about his ankle. Glancing down, he found to his horror that the shambler had returned to life, the removal of the knife having restored whatever unholy force it was that animated the creature!

Before he could figure out what to do, he was yanked off his feet to fall directly onto his injured leg.

Freeman howled in agony, the pain sweeping over him like the tide and nearly rendering him unconscious. That surely would have been the end of him, for it would have given the newly reanimated shambler all the time it needed to finish him off.

Right now it seemed to be having trouble getting its lower limbs to work, but that didn’t stop it from trying to find an unprotected piece of Freeman’s flesh to feast on. It reached out and began pulling itself up his body, hand over hand, its teeth clacking together like some kind of deranged castanet, its one good eye rolling around in the socket as if no longer under control.

The shambler’s spastic movements jostled Freeman’s injured leg and sent waves of pain crashing through his system, forcing him to fight to stay conscious as he flailed at the creature, pushing against it with both hands in an attempt to get it off him.

It clung tightly despite his every effort to dislodge it. Its face was even with his stomach, and he suddenly had a horrible vision of it rooting around in his guts, its teeth sawing through his intestines as it burrowed deeper . . .

Better do something, Jack, before it’s too late!

With his head spinning, Freeman did the one thing he’d been trying to avoid since first laying eyes on the hideous creature.

He drew his pistol, shoved it against the rotting flesh of the shambler’s forehead, and pulled the trigger. Blood, brains, and bone splashed across his face as the shambler’s skull exploded beneath the force of the bullet.

Heaving the now unmoving body off him for the second time that day, Freeman dragged himself several feet away and sat with his pistol aimed at the corpse, afraid that it might still find some way of coming after him despite all the damage.

That was how the German soldiers who had been summoned back by his gunshot found him some time later. So unnerved was he by the shambler’s ability to continue fighting long after it should have stopped, he didn’t even look away from the corpse as the soldiers snatched his gun out of his hands and dragged him to his feet.

Chapter Eight

THE LABORATORY

B
urke had been awake for over an hour by the time Sergeant Moore showed up to escort him to his appointment with Professor Graves. Burke probably could have gone on his own, as it wasn’t that far, but since he was still under the doctors’ care they wouldn’t let him out of the facility without an escort.

So with Charlie there to steady him if the distance proved too much for his recovering body to handle, Burke headed off down the hall and out into the early morning. He could smell the corpse fires the minute he stepped outside; they had been burning overtime to deal with the aftermath of the latest attack. The air had a greasy, sooty feel to it, and the taste of ash clogged the back of his throat.

Another beautiful day in the war effort,
Burke thought sourly.

It was only a few minutes’ walk from the entrance of the hospital to the bunker complex that Professor Graves had commandeered for use as his laboratory. The complex had started life as a deep dugout that served as protection for artillery and mortar attacks, and over the last several months had been expanded into a literal warren of passageways and rough-hewn chambers in which to test Graves’s various projects. Burke had never been beyond the main chamber; he had no desire to venture into the dark depths of that underground kingdom. Dealing with the professor himself was creepy enough sometimes; he didn’t want to see what peculiarities the man had generated down there in the dark.

Apparently, the same held true for Charlie. As the two men approached the entrance to the “facility,” sandwiched as it was between piles of sandbags, the sergeant slowed, then said, “You all right from here?”

Burke cast a glance in his direction. “Aren’t you going in with me?”

“Not a chance.”

“Coward.”

Charlie laughed. “I like to think of it as the better part of valor. I’ll be waiting right here for you when you come out,” he said, settling back against a pile of sandbags and reaching for his cigarettes.

“Thanks a lot.”

“Anytime, Captain, anytime.”

Entrance to the bunker was gained through a cast-iron door several inches thick. It was currently propped open with a packing crate to allow some fresh air to make its way inside. Two guards stood outside it and they nodded at Burke as he passed by. Just beyond the doors was a long flight of stairs, nineteen steps in all, which led down into the complex itself. Burke took his time on the stairs, not wanting to slip and fall with only one hand to brace himself.

As far as Burke had been able to ascertain, the professor had only two interests in life: mechanical devices and shamblers. While one was certainly better than the other, as far as Burke was concerned neither of them was all that natural.

Or healthy.

Graves was one of Nikola Tesla’s prize students, so it made sense that he spent a good part of his time with his hands in the guts of a mechanical apparatus of one kind or another, be it the steam-driven lorries that they used around the base or the partially assembled automatons that the army was forever hoping might one day replace men on the battlefield. Success in the latter case would mean lessening the horrible cost of this war in terms of human lives and would have the added benefit of preventing the other side from resurrecting the Allied dead with their damned corpse gas.

Graves was obsessed with the shamblers.

It wasn’t that he was just doing his best for the war effort. It went beyond that, into what Burke suspected was downright admiration for the foul things. All you had to do was see how excited Graves got when he was able to obtain another specimen to recognize that it was more than just simple duty.

He could often be found walking the trenches after an attack, studying the carcasses where they lay and collecting specimens to take back to his laboratory for later study.

Sometimes, Burke found himself wondering what Graves would do if all the specimens he hoarded down here in the dark suddenly decided to get up again and start walking around . . .

He shook his head vigorously, banishing the thought. He didn’t need to focus on that stuff; he was here for his new hand.

The room at the bottom of the staircase was as long as it was wide, lit by several bare lightbulbs that hung down from the low ceiling above and cast shadows throughout the space.

The bitter smell of formaldehyde drifted through the air, most likely the reason for the open door above, and Burke followed it to where he saw a man’s body stretched out on a table set all by itself in the center of the room.

As he drew closer, he could see that the body was in fact the decaying remains of a shambler, and it looked like someone had been operating on it. The chest was cut open, and the sides were peeled back and now held in place by a set of brass clamps that were stained with the creature’s black blood. The rib cage had been removed and rested on one side of the table. An unintentional glimpse inside the body cavity showed that what was left of the creature’s internal organs gleamed wetly in the stark light of the overhead bulb. Even the head seemed oddly shaped to Burke, and it wasn’t until he’d walked partially around the table and gotten a good look that he realized the top of the skull had been cut off and the brain removed for God-knows-what purpose.

Burke glanced at the shambler’s face and was surprised to discover that he recognized it. It was the creature that had attacked him in the trench the day before, the one that had seemed to think for itself and that Charlie had ultimately been forced to shoot with the suitcase gun.

What was Graves doing with it?

Burke wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

The hair on the back of his neck suddenly stood up as he realized that he was no longer alone.

Burked whirled about.

A tall thin man with a hawklike face stood almost directly behind him. He was dressed in a butcher’s apron, stained black with shambler blood, and wore a pair of thick rubber gloves on his hands. In his hands was a shallow metal dish full of some gray gooey mass that looked oddly familiar to Burke, though he couldn’t place exactly what it was until he glanced back at the creature’s empty brain pan and made the necessary connection.

“Be with you in a moment, Captain,” the professor said as he stepped past the other man and set the bowl he was carrying down on the table in front of them. As Burke looked on, the professor picked up an empty jar from a stack nearby and then carefully poured the jellied mass of brain tissue from the bowl into the jar.

Burke had to look away.

When he heard Graves strip off his rubber gloves, he chanced a quick look. The table and the corpse it contained were now covered with a large black sheet. The professor untied and removed the butcher’s apron he was wearing, then wiped his hands on a rag he picked up from somewhere nearby.

Then, and only then, did he turn back to address Burke.

“What can I do for you, Captain?”

Burke held up his left arm stump and wiggled it in the professor’s direction.

“Ah, yes! Time to fit that new hand of yours. How could I have forgotten?”

I refuse to answer that,
Burke thought.

“All right, follow me, please.”

Graves stepped around the dissection table and led him across the room to where an open door awaited. Inside was a small operating theater, complete with banks of overhead lights, a rack full of surgical instruments, a good supply of bandages, and even a small sink. A reclining leather chair, like you might see in a barber’s shop or dentist’s office, sat in the middle.

Graves stepped over to the sink and scrubbed the shambler blood off his hands. “Climb up in the chair, Captain,” he said, as he dried them on a towel, “while I retrieve your new prosthesis from storage.”

Burke slid into the chair and settled back, letting his neck and head relax against the cushion. There was a quiet whirring sound followed by a rustle of movement, and something cinched itself around his stomach.

Burke looked down and found a thick leather strap with a metal buckle had just fastened itself around his midsection.

“Hey!” he said, surprised, and was answered when four more straps emerged from the sides of the chair and fastened themselves around his thighs and ankles respectively.

This time Burke was much more emphatic in his response.

“Professor Graves!” he shouted. “Professor!”

Footsteps sounded and Graves emerged from around the corner carrying a long and narrow wooden crate.

“Yes, yes, what is it, Captain?”

“These straps . . .”

Graves chuckled. “I’m sorry, I forgot to warn you about those. The arm we’re giving you this time around is a considerable improvement over the earlier model,” he said, as he unfolded a side table the same height as the chair and rested Burke’s arm on it so that the stump extended off one end. Taking a couple of thin leather straps out of his pocket, Graves secured what remained of Blake’s arm to the table.

“In order for it to work at the level for which we designed it for you, we’re going to have to implant a kind of platform at the end of your arm in order to power and maintain the prosthesis long term.”

Burke only caught one word, really.

“Implant?” he asked.

“Yes, yes. No worries, Captain, I’ve done this procedure hundreds of times now.”

Something about the way he said it made Burke pause. He hesitated and then asked, “How many of those were on a living person?”

Graves laughed but didn’t answer.

Burke began to have second thoughts.

“Maybe we should wait until Doctor Tesla returns . . . ?”

“Nonsense! You don’t want to go two months without a hand, do you?”

Two months?

Finally satisfied with the arrangements, Graves opened up the box that he’d carried in with him. Inside, on a bed of satin, was Burke’s new hand.

It came in two pieces; a small baselike attachment that would be attached to his stump and the fully articulated wrist/hand piece that fitted into it. Both pieces had been fashioned out of highly polished wood, brass, and steel. The fingers had three knuckles and only bent in one direction, just like real ones did, and judging by the cables and clockwork components running throughout, it certainly looked much stronger than his previous model had been.

Satisfied that Burke had seen enough, Graves put down the box and removed the base mount. “The first step is to mount this device onto your arm where it can intersect with the existing musculature.

“When the rest of the hand is slotted into place,” he continued, picking up the hand and doing just that by pushing one into the other until Burke heard a sharp click, “the electrical impulses produced by your muscle will activate the miniature clockwork gears inside each finger, telling them what to do.”

Graves smiled. “Nothing to it, really.”

Before Burke could say anything more, Graves picked up a bottle of ether, poured some on a cloth, and held the cloth tightly over Burke’s nose and mouth.

For a second his eyes grew wide as he saw Graves looming over him, and then he was out like a light.

A
s Burke stumbled into wakefulness two hours later, he instinctively felt for his hand and encountered the smooth, metal surface of the new implant. It was heavier than he was used to, but he knew he’d adapt to that soon enough. Right now he just wanted to be sure it worked.

He held it up in front of him and then tried to bend his fingers. To his amazement, all five of them slowly bent inward toward his palm and then opened back up again when he tried to move them the other way. He could feel the muscles in his upper forearm moving as they powered the motion of his mechanical fingers, and he knew he was going to have to do some work in the days ahead to build up some strength in that area.

“How are you doing, Captain?”

Burke jerked in surprise, which caused his hand to snap shut with an audible click, and it was only then that he realized how much power he could generate with his new prosthesis.
Who knew? One day he might even need all that strength.

Graves waited patiently for Burke to get his hand to unclench and then began to unstrap him from the chair. “Any dizziness? Nausea? Pain in the extremity?”

There wasn’t. Nor were there any lingering effects from the ether. Graves gave him a quick check and then suggested he head back to his hospital room for some more rest, a suggestion Burke was more than happy to take him up on. He was anxious to show Charlie his new hand.