CHAPTER FOUR
The squad marched for a day and a night without rest. They talked from time to time, and the brothers even attempted a few games here and there, but the mood was permanently grim, and as yet, their Captain wasn’t offering any clue as to where they were heading or why. Snow came and went, and the men’s hunger grew rapidly, their critical thirst only exacerbating their exhausted state. Dirty snow shoved into their mouths quenched their needs, it was barely enough to keep them on their feet, but it was their best and only option at this time - they couldn’t keep going like this for long. So, as the second day was nearing its end, the squad were more than grateful to discover what they were just lucky enough to happen upon.
Charlie was the first to see it, instantly dropping to the ground and ordering his men to do the same. They grouped together and peered down the rise they found themselves upon, and into a great and vast valley below. They had finally reached the coast. The water was calm and beautiful, as the fading sun glistened off its lapping waves. Just before the shore sat an undersized village, in a derelict state, apparently uninhabited. Buildings stood with roofs missing, walls were half destroyed, allowing insight into the abodes within, and windows smashed, broken, glass scattered across the streets. A single German tank - a Tiger 1, to be more precise - sat wrecked, slightly askew in the centre of the village square, with three abandoned trucks parked next to it, whilst out on a shoddy looking jetty poked the tail end of a half sunken boat. In fact, all that remained complete was an old church, standing tall and rather sinister within the confines of the village.
There were, however, a few rather more unusual things about the settlement. The most striking was the colouring. A beautiful red littered the area, flourishing and scattering along the ground throughout and around the village. Charlie snatched the binoculars from around Specks’ neck, half strangling the poor fellow. He studied the peculiarity fast.
‘Poppies,’ he said, rather perplexed.
He was absolutely right. Throughout the snow and dirt and debris, a host of red poppies were pushing their way through the snow, tinting the entire locale with a hint of pretty. But amongst the beauty, things far more sinister dwelt. On a free standing wall, at the very front of the village, a large amount of tally marks, painted in what appeared to be red paint were prominent - and there were a lot of them. As the oddity caught Charlie’s eye, he felt a shiver run down his spine, as he contemplated its meaning. But there was one other thing that worried them all.
Near the back of the small town, close to the coast edge, stood an incredibly tall water tower. In no way did it fit in with the rest of the village’s rural design. Charlie surveyed the scene with quiet inspection. The construction looked brand new, glimmering a bleached white light from the evening sun bouncing off of it. The construction was simple enough, but beautifully crafted. An incredibly thick pipe ran from the ground directly beneath the tower, all the way to the centre of the tank above, with what appeared to be pumps actively working either side. Yet what was most concerning were the tower’s legs. There were six of them in total - large, hefty girders of metal, keeping the immense device stable, each with a multitude of much smaller pipes running down the length of them. And connected to the bottom of all but two of the legs, encased in large metal units, were the Manipulated Men. They stood erect, unmoving, with their heads, arms and legs strapped at their sides. Charlie lowered the binoculars and breathed a long sigh of strain.
‘There are four more of those… things, down there,’ he said, handing the binoculars to Billy, strangulating Specks even more so. He took them and looked for himself.
‘Oh. Brilliant,’ he remarked. ‘That’s just brilliant. Do you know what that is?’
‘No. What is it?’ asked Doodle, innocently.
‘That’s just bloody brilliant!’ Billy snapped.
‘What do you say, Cap? Go down there, take ‘em out?’ suggested Yankee. He had raised his sniper and was scoping the village for himself. Immediately he eyed up the tower and the Manipulated Men. ‘Those things look like they’re sleeping. Could be the opportune time.’
‘There’s four of them and only four and a half of us.’ All eyes rested on Specks, who was still struggling with the binoculars wrapped around his neck. ‘I don’t know about you, but in our current condition, that doesn’t seem like a fair fight right now.’
‘Based on the sheer intensity and jeopardy Billy faced with his encounter,’ harped up Specks, ‘multiplied with our own current physical state… odds of a successful attack are highly against us.’
‘Well, maybe if you hadn’t marched us half way across the Goddamned country, in the middle of the Goddamned winter, without food or drink or stopping…’
‘We wait,’ ordered Charlie, cutting off Yankee mid-sentence.
The two men glared at each other, both stubborn as mules, neither willing to back down, whilst Billy and Doodle watched on quietly.
‘Yes, sir,’ Yankee answered, through clenched teeth. He returned to his scope and moved his focus throughout the rest of the village, finally resting on a wagon that had lost one of its wheels, and was mashed up against a rather distressed wall. Its previous hold, a wealth of apples, now lay scattered all around it. ‘Hey, hey. I spy me a broken wagon of apples. I need to get me some eats.’
‘I said we wait,’ ordered Charlie for the last time, ending the awkward conversation once and for all.
And so they waited, and it wasn’t too long before their opportunity arose. It was abrupt, with the sudden sound of chains and cogs clunking away, waking the squad from their mistaken slumber and immediately seizing their attention. From their vantage point they observed the unfolding of events. With an excruciating sound, the Manipulated Men were released from their harnesses, as the restraints holding them snapped open. In perfect synchronisation they took a big step forward, right away stopping and standing motionless. From such a distance it was hard to make out the specifics of what exactly was going on, but the four designs were making a high-pitched whirring sound between them, that was carrying along the air. The noise ceased, and straight away the four Manipulated Men turned, and began to walk off in their robotic fashion, a plodding march, each heading in a different direction, quickly leaving the parameters of the village.
No sooner had the Manipulated Men left the area, than a handful of people appeared, out of the blue, scurrying from one of the derelict buildings. Charlie and the squad watched in surprise, a little taken aback by their unexpected emergence. There couldn’t have been more than half a dozen of them down there - mostly women, but with one man and a small child in tow. Their clothes were in tatters and their faces dirty with black. They headed straight for the apple cart and began crawling around the floor, filling their faces with the rotting fruits. Even from this distance, it was obvious how hungry they were.
But just then one of the Manipulated Men reappeared, marching round from behind a large building. The group of scavengers instantaneously froze, looking at the thing with fearful eyes as it towered over them. For a brief moment it did nothing, but then it raised its fist, and revealed a wealth of those same syringes filled with that same blue liquid. The women raised their hands in surrender, instructing the child to do the same, whilst the man did little more than cower behind them all, shielding himself with their bodies. But the Manipulated Man showed no sign of remorse or even thought as it fired a single syringe into each and every one of the scavengers. A syringe straight in their chests put the women and child down without difficulty. The man tried to run, but his effort was futile, and within moments a final syringe landed in the square of his back and put him down. All were dead, motionless on the floor. The Manipulated Man turned 180 degrees on the spot and began its march once again, leaving the village for good this time. Charlie followed its path through binoculars, watching it stride off into the snowy terrain, leaving in its wake great massive footprints, until finally it disappeared over a hill and was gone.
The Captain swiftly
turned his attention back to the village and watched in even more surprise as this time a profusion of people begin to fill the village. Out of every house, every doorway, every hiding place one could imagine, people emerged in bunches. A few men were scattered here and there in the growing crowd that gradually began to fill the village square, but the majority were women and children.
‘Friendly’s?’ asked Billy.
‘Perhaps,’ replied Charlie, scrutinizing the scene very carefully through the binoculars.
‘We’ve gotta get our butts down there before those dead ones come back and start eating the live ones,’ said Yankee, jumping to his feet and swinging his sniper rifle round his back. ‘And some of those little punks have already got their mitts on my apples!’ But Doodle grabbed him by the scruff of his uniform, delaying him just enough to see the look on Charlie’s face. He stopped himself and stood to attention, though there was a swagger about it. ‘Unless you’ve got a problem with that, sir?’ His voice boasted brawn, but hinted at poorly disguised sarcasm.
Charlie took a moment, considering the village and considering his men. After a fair length of time, he made the order:
‘Keep your weapons lowered, but to hand.’
He led the way down the hill, and as they approached the village a small boy, dirty as mud, clocked eyes on them all, immediately pointing in their direction and yelling something in German at the top of his high-pitched voice. The crowd were quick to look, both curious and dubious of the appearance of strangers. The squad slowed their pace, but continued their march.
‘Ladies, trust me on this one. You do not want to go anywhere near those dead bodies,’ said Yankee, who was desperate to break into a sprint and save the day.
But as the squad closed in, they could see the villagers were already taking care of things. Three rather gaunt looking ladies ushered the squad back, and although their language was foreign, their body language was universal - back off. So the squad stopped and watched. A second group took the bodies, awkwardly dragging them across the street and behind a nearby building, followed by a third assembly who were all carrying large sharply pointed sticks. Even from this distance the noise was easy to make out, the squelching sound causing Specks to gag, and leaving very little to the imagination. As the women re-emerged from behind the building, their clothes were splattered in blood, and one walked directly over to the free standing wall and added six new marks with her blood-covered hand.
The squad stood in the centre square, surrounded by onlookers who were now giving them their full attention. Eyes clocked on to Billy and his arm, and swiftly whispers turned into frantic hollers, escalating around the crowd. The squad shifted uncomfortably as the circle became more and more agitated. Charlie took a bold step forward.
‘Who’s in charge here?’ he requested, in his most bellowing of voices.
There was a considerable amount of fuss, mutters and hand gestures were thrown about, until finally the crowd parted and an Old Woman, who was relying heavily on a scruffy and aged walking stick, gradually came forward. She approached them in her own good time, with unwanted assistance from a few of the more fretful women, whom she repeatedly shook off. She began to hobble around the five soldiers, sizing all of them up one by one. She was wrapped up in bundles of torn clothing, her eyes were little more than dark squints, and her face was wrinkled and well-worn. She began muttering things to herself in German, too fast and too quiet for any of them to even take a guess at. She stood in front of Specks and pushed his glasses back up his nose for him. She whacked Billy’s arm with her cane multiple times. She completely bypassed the brothers altogether, though they were sure they heard her mumbling something about ‘bloody Americans,’ under her breath, until finally she stopped in front of Charlie and looked him up and down. She gestured to him to move in closer. He did as instructed.
‘Are you… with him?’ she whispered in a scratchy voice, with a thick German accent.
‘Miss?’ asked Charlie in reply.
‘Don’t you Miss me, soldier,’ she shouted with surprising volume, smacking Charlie with the top of her cane, causing a knee-jerk reaction from both Yankee and Doodle, who instinctively reached for their weapons. Charlie raised his hands and eased the brother’s nervousness. ‘Just answer the question, soldier.’
‘I fight for the British army. My name is Captain…’
‘That is not what I asked you,’ she interrupted him in mid-flow. She tapped Billy’s armoured arm again. ‘This. This contraption. Is it one of his? Is this made by the hands of the devil?’ She moved in close to Billy, studying every line on his face in great detail, even sniffing him - causing him to sniff himself. Quickly she snapped her gaze back to Charlie. ‘Do I have reason to tell my people to fear you? Are you working with the man responsible for this?’ She pointed her cane towards the water tower. ‘And those?’ She pointed in the general direction of the Manipulated Men. ‘Are you in alliance with the long grey man? And answer with truth. For I will see through your lies.’
The tension was thick and the situation unusual. So Charlie was very careful with his next words.
‘Miss,’ he spoke, clearing his throat and standing to his full height. ‘The… long grey man you speak of, is our primary objective. His demise is our goal. We have been on route to apprehend him for longer than I care to remember. I have lost countless men and seen untold insanities on this journey because of him. We will stop at nothing to see his reign end. And that… is the truth.’
The Old Woman looked at them for a long time. Once again she hobbled around, apparently taking into account the facts. She turned her back on the squad for a moment, uttering a few broken sentences here and there in German to her people. As she spoke the squad could see the villager’s eyes widen and their heads shake, as they muttered between themselves. Until at long last the villagers seemed to calm down a little. The Old Woman hobbled back and rested on her cane for a moment, catching her breath and taking her time. Behind her the children of the village had pushed their way through the crowd, and all their curious eyes were staring at Billy’s unusual arm. They moved ever closer still, until they were all hiding just behind the safety of the Old Woman.
‘Go on. Go ahead. It’s safe,’ she whispered to the children.
With grins on their faces they rushed forward. A few grabbed at Yankee and Doodle’s helmets, who were more than happy to let them play with them. A small group had surrounded Specks and were already trying on his glasses and rummaging through his notebook. But the biggest crowd had circled Billy. They were going wild about his arm, tapping on it, lifting it up and down, and much to his noticeable annoyance, even dangling off of it.
‘Forgive them, please. They have gone without toys for a very long time,’ said the Old Woman to Charlie, as they both watched the ordeal. ‘Now, follow me. You’re just in time for dinner.’