By the Blood of Heroes (34 page)
RICHTHOFEN’S QUARTERS
R
ichthofen managed to make it back to his office before the rage that had been building since leaving the crash site got the better of him. The next ten, maybe even fifteen minutes vanished as he lost himself in his fury, only coming back to himself when someone began pounding urgently on his office door.
He shook his head, clearing the red mist from his vision, and found that he was standing amid the wreckage of his office with the half-eaten corpse of a sentry in one hand. He turned in a slow circle, taking it all in.
His bookshelves had been pulled from the walls, the volumes they had contained now shredded and strewn about the floor. The chess set had been ground underfoot. The top of his desk had even been smashed in half.
Not one of his calmer rages.
Richthofen tossed the corpse aside and kicked his way through the wreckage and over to the door. He paused a moment to wipe some of the blood and uneaten tissue off his face with the back of his hand and then opened the door.
The messenger who stood on the other side managed to hand him the telegram before losing control of his nerve and falling to his knees, pleading for his life.
Ignoring him, Richthofen shut the door and read the hastily jotted message. It informed him that one of their troop transport trains was acting erratically, bypassing scheduled stops and ignoring attempts to flag it down.
He stalked back across the room to where a map of the region still hung on the wall and traced the route of the train forward from its last known position all the way to the end of the line, marking its path with the blood that stained his finger.
The route ended at Nogent, a small town very close to the front.
The missing fugitives were on that train!
He hunted through the mess he’d made until he found the phone and put in a call to his headquarters at Jasta 11, one of the few locations that were currently set up to use the new communication device.
When Adler answered the phone, Richthofen said, “There is a train currently running on track 89, bound for the front. I want it stopped.”
“Of course, Herr Richthofen. I will have the conductor contacted and . . .”
Richthofen cut him off. “The train is no longer under our control and may, in fact, be in the hands of the enemy. I want that train stopped, intact if possible, but do what you have to do to keep it from reaching the front lines. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Herr Richthofen!”
“Good. I am returning to base and will join you in your efforts from the air as soon as I am able.”
Richthofen left the phone hanging as he rushed out of the office, headed for the airfield and the aircraft waiting there.
ABOARD THE TRAIN
H
ow are we doing, Professor?” Burke asked as they labored to climb up another hill.
Graves shrugged. “As good as can be expected, I’d think. We’d move a bit faster if we could get rid of some of these extra cars though.”
Burke wanted to hit himself for not thinking of that sooner. The train consisted of about a dozen cars, if you counted the locomotive and the tender car. By jettisoning the majority of them, they could save on fuel consumption while at the same time reducing the danger of derailment. The machine-gun emplacements were on cars three and eight, so he figured he would keep the first three and get rid of the rest.
He listened carefully as Graves told him how to release the clamp that held the cars together and then headed aft to do the job.
“Need help?” Compton asked.
“Nah, I should be all right. I want you and Williams to come with me and check out the machine-gun emplacement atop car number three, though, in case we need it.”
“Right.”
The three of them moved aft. The cars were connected by a small wooden platform at either end with about two feet of space between them, which granted the engineers access to the coupler arms. Burke could see the thick pin that held the couplers together, which blocked the switch from being set to the release position accidentally. To release the coupler between cars three and four, he would have to climb down between the cars, balance on the couplers, and pull the pin with the help of an engineer’s wrench before he could throw the switch. For now though, he just jumped lightly across the gap between the cars and hauled down on the handle that opened the door to the next.
Behind him, Compton and Williams followed suit.
About half the passenger seats in the third car had been torn out to make room for the machine-gun crew. A ladder had been welded into place in the center of the railcar, giving access to a small platform that hung down from the hole that had been cut in the ceiling. Above the platform on a swivel mounted to the top of the train was a Hotchkiss machine gun. To operate it the gunner stood on the platform with his head and shoulders outside the top of the train so that he could swivel the gun into whatever position was necessary to fire on the target.
Burke left his subordinates to check out the condition of the machine gun and continued aft, intent on uncoupling the cars. When he arrived at the junction of cars three and four, however, he happened to glance inside and discovered that he was looking at a private kitchen/dining car all rolled into one. The men hadn’t had a decent meal in a while, so dumping the dining car before they had a chance to raid it for anything edible just didn’t seem right. Having come to that conclusion, Burke decided to check out the other cars, just in case there was something usable there as well.
He made his way through the dining car, out onto the platform, and then stepped over the gap to the opposite platform and the door leading into car five. He pulled down on the handle and slid the door open.
A shambler stood on the other side, so close it must have been pressed right up against the door. Behind it, a horde of others filled the car, packed in so tightly that they had no room to move. At the sound of the door’s opening they all turned and looked in Burke’s direction.
“Oh, shit.”
Burke went for his .45.
The lead shambler went for Burke.
It fell upon him, slamming him backward, its weight carrying them both off the platform as the door slid shut. They fell down into the space between the railroad cars, the .45 spinning out of Burke’s hand and disappearing.
Burke let out a sharp yelp of pain as they landed hard on the coupler arms, the shambler atop him struggling to get close enough to take a bite out of his flesh while he worked to keep it from doing so. The wind whipped past, buffeting them on their precarious perch.
With his right arm between them like a brace, holding the shambler back, Burke began to beat at the shambler with his left. The heavy, mechanical arm smashed repeatedly into the creature’s face and head with savage force, causing blood and flesh to fly. At the same time, Burke wrapped his legs around the coupler arm and squeezed them tight, not wanting the momentum of his own movements to accidentally knock him free of the train. He prayed there wasn’t anything sticking up from the tracks ahead of them that might snag his foot and tear him free, then promptly forgot about the danger as he focused all his attention on the problem in front of him.
As expected, the shambler made no effort to avoid his blows, and it was starting to develop a considerable dent in the side of its head, but Burke was worried he wouldn’t finish it off before the rest of the shamblers managed to get that door open. Now that they’d seen how it was done, it might not hold them as long as it had the first time. He needed to solve this and solve it fast.
As he levered another devastating blow to the shambler’s face, it occurred to him that while he might have lost his .45, he was still carrying a firearm. The Colt Firestarter Graves had given him to test was still in its holster on the left side of his belt.
Without giving himself time to think about all the things that might go wrong with an untried weapon, Burke used his mechanical arm to push the shambler back a bit and snatched the gun out of its holster with the other, shoving the barrel against the creature’s chest and pulling the trigger.
The shot tore right through the shambler, blowing a fist-sized chunk of flesh and bone out of its back before it embedded itself into the door behind them with a solid
thunk
.
Burke barely noticed, for he was too busy staring at the shambler. The enzyme that coated the round went to work on the creature’s flesh, sending scorching trails of liquid lightning burning through its veins like fire following a trail of gasoline until open flames belched forth from the shambler’s eyes, ears, and mouth. Burke jerked his metal hand up over his face to protect himself against the sudden eruption of fire, managing to keep himself from being scorched to a crisp and coming away with only a few patches of singed flesh, and then shoved the still-burning corpse to one side where it was swept away.
As the other shamblers lurched toward him, Burke opened up with the Firestarter again, causing those closest to him to erupt in blazing funeral pyres as flames tore them apart from the inside out. The sight of the walking dead dying so easily from just a single shot practically had him shouting with glee. When he’d cleared those closest to the door, he scrambled to his feet and climbed up onto the platform between the cars, knocking the burning creatures over the side with a quick thrust of his mechanical arm.
A glance through the still open door showed more of them moving forward, those behind pushing against the backs of those in front as they clambered over one another in their desire to reach him. Burke had no intention of giving them the chance.
He fired on the closest shambler, hitting it right in the face and sending the shot into the creature behind it as well. He then made use of the resulting confusion inside to leap for the door, intent on sealing the creatures back up again.
Except the door wouldn’t move.
A hunk of burning shambler flesh was wedged in the track, jamming it open and preventing Burke from getting the door closed. As he struggled with it, the shamblers inside the car managed to get around their blazing comrades, lurching forward, almost within reach . . .
The rifle fire that sounded over his shoulder was uncomfortably close, but it did the job. The shamblers were knocked back into the crowd behind them, giving Burke the moment he needed to kick the unidentifiable piece of flesh out of the way and haul the door shut just as the shamblers inside reached the opening. Without hesitation, Burke used his mechanical hand to bend the handle until it broke off in place, sealing the door shut.
He turned to find Jones standing on the opposite platform, his Enfield in hand and a relieved grin on his face.
“Guess we should have searched the train, huh?”
Burke didn’t bother to answer. It was a stupid oversight, one they were lucky to survive. If he’d come along a few minutes later, if the creatures had managed to get the door open, all their efforts would have been for nothing.
It didn’t bear thinking about.
As Jones kept watch to make sure the shamblers didn’t find a way to knock the door open with sheer numbers, Burke climbed down between the cars, making sure to keep his feet on the portion of the coupler that was attached to the dining car, and then grasped the pin in both hands. He heaved upward, expecting it to come right out.
Nothing happened.
The pin was stuck.
“Damn it!” he shouted. “You motherfuckin’ stupid piece of . . .”
The rest of his statement was drowned out by the shrieking sound of the train’s whistle as Graves tried to get his attention.
Hold your horses, Professor . . .
Burke raised one foot and hammered his boot against the pin, trying to free it from its seat. One kick. Two kicks. Three. Four. Five.
The fifth time was the charm. The pin rattled in its seat, and Burke wasted no time grabbing it by its ring with his mechanical fingers, hauling it upward, disengaging the locomotive from the rest of the train and causing it to surge forward now that it was free of all the weight behind it.
Congratulating himself on a job well done, Burke let Jones help him back up onto the platform, and the two of them rejoined the others in the locomotive. As they came through the door, Graves turned to Burke and said, “Station coming up,” pointing through the front window at the building looming ahead.
Burke recognized the unspoken question.
“Don’t stop,” he told him. “Don’t even slow down.”
The professor did what he was told.
They rolled through the station without slowing, ignoring the surprised shouts of those on the platform who’d been expecting the train to stop. They did the same thing a half hour later, when they reached the station at Saint-Mihiel.
Word must have gotten out about the runaway train shortly after that, however, for when they began their approach to the station at Commercy they could see that the platform had been cleared, the potential passengers replaced with several riflemen and a three-man machine-gun crew. A flagman was also present, and he began waving his flags in a series of signals the minute they came into view.
Burke had no idea what message the flagman was trying to impart to him, nor did he care. Stopping was out of the question. When it became clear that the train wasn’t going to heed their signals, another order was given and the machine gunner opened fire on the train.
Burke instinctively ducked, as did the rest of his men, but then straightened up and laughed aloud as the armor that covered the front of the train deflected the bullets with ease. Graves pushed the throttle forward, giving them more speed, and they shot through the Commercy station unharmed.
The element of surprise was lost now, though. Word would be going out to all the stations on the line that the train wasn’t answering commands to stop, and resistance to their movement would only get worse. Burke’s biggest fear was that the enemy would blow the tracks ahead of them, effectively ending their run for safety. That’s what he would do if he were in their position. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it if that was the option they chose.
He could, however, prepare for other possibilities. He ordered Compton to man the machine-gun turret on the roof of the train and put Williams and Jones at the windows in the dining car just behind him. He took up a position on the platform behind the tender car, where he could see what was coming but still communicate with Jack and the professor without trouble.
At both Saint-Dizier and Vitry-le-François, the enemy repeated what they’d done at Commercy, flooding the platform with troops who fired at them with an assortment of small arms and what few crew-operated weapons they had on hand. Compton opened fire as soon as the opportunity arose, cutting the enemy down with long bursts from the Hotchkiss on the roof above, and Burke was suddenly reminded of the corporal’s prayer from days before, his desire to kill as many of the enemy as possible.
Seems someone upstairs was listening,
Burke thought, and then said a prayer of his own just in case they still had the big man’s attention.
They rolled through a long stretch of open country without encountering any resistance, and Burke found himself staring out the window, wondering how Charlie was doing. He hoped like hell that the big sergeant had managed to lose his pursuers and slip away into the woods. If he could evade pursuit long enough to rendezvous with the freedom fighters outside of Reims, he’d have a chance of making it back to the other side of the lines.
His thoughts turned from his friend to his brother. The sheer bedlam of their escape from Verdun hadn’t left Burke with any time to think, never mind sort through the conflicting feelings he had about the mission in general. He’d been surprised by the concern he’d felt when Jack had turned up missing back at Stalag 113 and even more surprised when the sight of him had failed to stir the old anger that he’d kept carefully banked and burning for so many years in his heart. Before today he would have scoffed at anyone who’d dared tell him that time heals all wounds, but perhaps he’d finally begun to see the truth of that statement.