Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation (23 page)

The man’s nose seemed to crush into his face, tearing skin and spurting blood. The body – most certainly the man had to be dead already with his whole face imploded into a mess like that – actually remained on its feet for a moment. The smashed, bloody crevice where the face should have been stared accusingly at Johan.

Then the dead body’s knees buckled and it fell back, the head hitting the ground with a squishy, hollow thud.

A woman screamed, and Johan couldn’t tell if it was the woman he’d struck with his gun standing right next to him or another from the crowd that had gathered around the scene.

He could not look away to find out, even as the pitch of it seemed to rise to an inhuman level and go on without end. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from that dark shapeless mess at the center of the dead Jew’s head, a swirl of black and red and white chips of bone.

The man’s lower jaw was still intact, making the wound a grotesque parody of a bloody
gaping maw. It opened
to let out a scream that no longer sounded like a woman, nor anything else Johan had ever heard.

Johan closed his eyes and pointed his pistol straight in the air. “Shut up!” he screamed as he squeezed off two shots.

Then everything was silent but the slight howl of the wind. He looked around at the sad, wide eyes of the crowd around him, stopping on the woman with the split lip.

She stared at him with her eyes narrowed. She hadn’t bothered to wipe at the blood streaming down her chin, and it dripped onto her shirt, spreading like a crimson Rorschach test on its white fabric. She hadn’t been the screamer, Johan was sure of that. Her will was too strong. She’d never give him the satisfaction of a scream like that.

He looked into her eyes. “Tell the old shit,” he spat at her, “that more die until he

comes back.”
Johan turned his back to the woman and walked away. He headed back to tell Dietrich and Aldous that things were going to get difficult if the old man didn’t come back, and probably even worse when he finally did.

~*~

The jacket was burning quickly. Johan was scared to let it burn away before putting more fuel on the fire. He needed just a bit more time. Something would come to him. Something always did. His best work was done under pressure, and this was more pressure than the bottom of the sea.

He unbuttoned his shirt and took it off, dropping it in a loose crumple on the fire. Now he sat in just a white, cotton undershirt, and even with the fire the cold caressed his back, drawing sharp fingers down his spine.

It bought him at least another minute or two. That would be enough. He just needed to think.

~*~

The next day Johan made sure that Dietrich and Aldous came with him into the village, and that they stayed close and watched each other.

The snow fell in quick squalls, intense for an hour or so, followed by periods of flurries or even clear skies, in a cycle that had persisted since early the night before.

The snow was thick in the air as they reached the village center, a white swirling that obscured the destruction of war. The little village square almost looked normal again, almost whole, until the rubble from a blasted building or the charred remains of a tree became visible through a clear patch.

As the three soldiers made their way to the center of the square, Johan noted the rough, snow blurred shapes of people at the square’s perimeter, moving on the threshold between rubble and storm, watching them.

“
Where is the old man?” Johan screamed. He felt his words ripped from his mouth and dragged away by the wind, lost to all but his own ears.

Johan headed for a cluster of people, fleetingly visible through gusts of snowy wind. By the time he reached the edge of the square, the people, if they had ever really been there were gone, snuck away while hidden by the storm.

Then the wind seemed to ease. The blinding density of the snow in the air lessened. Within moments, the snow had calmed to a drifting flurry.

Johan repeated, “Where is the old man?” He held his rifle, careful that it was always pointed vaguely at some part of the crowd around them. He checked to see that Dietrich and Aldous were doing the same.

No answer came from the people. Although the intensity of the wind and snow had lessened, there was still a thick ceiling of smoky grey clouds that kept the day dark and gave the crowd adequate shadows in which to hide and watch.

Aldous leaned back and whispered to Johan, “They’re acting strong. I don’t like this, Johan. They’re up to something.”

“
When we kill the rabbi, they’ll be easy to control again,” Johan said.

Dietrich grunted, but whether in affirmation or disagreement, the other two could not tell.

Johan took a few steps forward, separating himself from the other two. He lifted his rifle to his shoulder, squinted his left eye and looked through his right. He locked his line of sight down the gun barrel and onto an old woman wrapped and bundled against the cold.

Johan squeezed off a shot and the old woman dropped, the layers of clothing hiding all but the crimson stain as it spread outward from her chest.

Johan heard a hushed gasp, but couldn’t tell if it had been the people or the snowy wind around him.

“
Tell me where the old man is hiding or I’ll kill a child next!” Johan announced.

Aldous gulped loud enough that Johan could hear him over the wind filling the space between them.

“
Fine! Another will die,” Johan yelled after a moment of icy silence.

“
Wait!”

It was a faint yell, either far away or caught and muffled by the wind.

Johan scanned the crowd, searching for the source of the plea, waiting for someone to say something more or step forward.
Then he saw movement, a small shape hunched a bit and moving incredibly slowly as it approached, blanketed by the shadow of a half demolished building. It seemed, when seen through the snow and shadow, as if the shape was followed always by a gust of wind, snow-filled and at its back. Following as loyally as a well-trained dog while the bent old shape shuffled forward.

“
Is that you, old man?” Johan asked with a smile and a musicality that implied it had better be.

The old man stepped out from the shadow, the obscured light of the mid winter sun revealing a face so pale it looked dead. It was the rabbi, but his skin looked bloodless, white with blue and lavender hues showing in places. Moisture had frozen in his long grey beard, coating it with frost.

The cloth of the rabbi’s robes – different from the clothes he’d been wearing, had the appearance of ceremonial garments – were rigid and half frozen. Frost and snow clung trapped in the stiff folds, standing out against the black material. He looked frozen, as if he’d been out in the cold and storms since they’d last seen him.

Only his eyes looked warm. The brown within reddened by vessels that were engorged with blood, they sat over two bulges that were purple and swollen, as if he’d not slept the entire time he spent waiting in the deep freeze for this confrontation.

For a long moment, Johan didn’t understand. Freezing himself for three days was supposed to make them leave? How? Some sort of protest? No, it didn’t make sense. If the old Jew thought that torturing himself would somehow prove some point, he was wrong.

“
I said, wait,” the rabbi declared. His voice was still strong, as if his frozen exterior didn’t bother him in the least.

“
Waiting,” Johan said. He held his rifle in both hands. He had to kill the old man. His orders were explicit on that, but he was too curious as to what the rabbi might have to say.

“
I offered you a chance to leave,” the rabbi said. He had stopped just past the shadow’s end, and the strange impression of a frozen mass behind him remained.

“
You would rather kill innocent people than save yourselves. So be it,” the rabbi said, extending one open hand towards them, as if blessing them.

Aldous grunted as he quickly leveled his rifle, the butt pressed firmly against his shoulder.

“
You’ve let the cold get to you…” Johan started with a chuckle.

“
Yeah,” Dietrich agreed.

Then the movement from behind the rabbi came forward, the illusion of mass came into the pale daylight. It was no illusion at all.

~*~

Johan debated trying to open a bullet or two to use the gunpowder to fuel his fire. Then he decided that, not only would the gunpowder burn far too quickly to be of much benefit, he risked it exploding and burning him. He’d never get away if one of his legs was injured, or even worse, if he was blinded.

His fire was dying down and there wasn’t much left he could do about it.

~*~

The rabbi called it golem as it moved out of the shadows, revealing its large, humanoid body, the misty translucence of its form carved of ice.

Johan and his friends thought that perhaps that was the creature’s name or that of the spirit which gave it life. Though Nazi ideology was full of superstition and mythology, they knew nothing of Jewish mysticism.

“
You will not hurt my people,” the rabbi said as the icy beast moved around and past him, headed straight towards the three soldiers.

The size of the creature, taller and broader than any man could be, coupled with the way it had slowly followed the old man, gave it the impression of lumbering slowness. Instead the golem broke into a run that was altogether too fast for its form.

Johan squeezed shots from his rifle as fast as he could, as did Aldous and Dietrich, but the monster didn’t even slow. Each bullet sent chips of ice out in all directions before ricocheting off into the village square or lodging just below the frigid surface.

Johan turned to run, and his friends followed his lead.

They hadn’t made it out of the square when Aldous slipped on a slick rock and dropped face first onto the snow.

Johan and Dietrich stopped and turned, rifles raised, to see Aldous slide to an abrupt stop a snow bank.

Aldous’ blue eyes looked up at them, never back at the thing whose hard, heavy steps could be felt in his belly as the ground shook.

Dietrich lifted his rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired three times. Each shot lodged in the golem’s chest, not slowing it a bit, not gaining Aldous any time. He kept the rifle up as the golem stomped down on the back of Aldous’ calf, pulverizing the muscle and bone into the frozen dirt.

Aldous’ eyes opened wider as he screamed. The golem stomped down on the base of his spine, cutting off all feeling to his legs, crushing his pelvis.

Dietrich lowered his aim and pulled the trigger, putting a bullet in Aldous’ forehead before he could suffer anymore.

With that the creature began running again, blood now crusting on the cold surface of its misshapen right leg.

Dietrich shot it again.

Johan grabbed his shoulder. “It’s not working. Run.”

They did, and the golem stayed close behind.

~*~

The fire crackled weakly. The little warmth it gave off wouldn’t keep the golem away much longer. Johan lifted his rifle and shot it where a neck would have been on a person, then in the stomach, then in the crotch.

Johan laughed. “Too bad for you…no snowballs.” He laughed harder for a moment, then scowled and shot it where a knee should be in each leg. A shot to each shoulder and then one right where a mouth should have been.

By now the golem was covered in chips and spotted with dark splotches, bullets that had gotten lodged in its translucent body.

It felt not a single impact. It didn’t bleed and it didn’t stop, and though it was self aware enough to avoid the heat of Johan’s pathetic little fire, it didn’t really think. It only did what it was told.

Johan shot it in the chest again: dead center, bull’s-eye.

He didn’t know that the golem, hulking and frozen behemoth that it was, could have been stopped with a well-placed shot or two. On its forehead, etched carefully, invisible in all but texture, was the word, EMET, the Hebrew word for Truth. The word that, when wielded by a holy man, by one who is as much like God as an imperfect creature could hope to be, could give life to the inanimate.
It could breathe life into the dust or ice of the Earth, in an imperfect imitation of God’s divine spark to Adam’s dust.

A carefully placed shot, or perhaps a few, to chip away some of the lettering carved into the golem’s forehead, could easily, if one were a good shot, change the word from EMET to MET; from truth to dead. Every robot has an off switch, every fortress a weak point. Like Goliath, killed by a stone flung by a mere boy, the golem’s weak point was at its forehead.