SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

“Well, eventually we made it to the château. It must have been a beauty in its heyday, but there really wasn’t much worth looking at anymore. The Germans had already been through the place and taken anything worth having. What they left behind was a lot of broken furniture and lots of bare stone walls. They’d been very thorough in their search of the place. I wish I knew what they’d been after. I suspect that they found it.

“Crowley led the way again. There was something about him that made you not want to argue about who was in charge. And something that inspired confidence, though I can’t for the life of me say exactly why. Maybe it was because he never seemed scared of anything. He seemed more like he was waiting to hear the punch line to a joke, or maybe waiting to tell it.

“Whatever else I can say about the man, good or bad, he knew how to move without making a sound. I felt like an elephant waltzing through tin cans in comparison. But I guess I was quiet enough walking through those dark halls. We never ran across a guard or even a mouse. I kept waiting for them around the next corner, and Crowley just kept leading me through the maze of rooms and corridors like there was nothing to worry about.”

My grandfather looked at me for a moment. His eyes glittered in the faint light of his cigarette. Almost against my will, I looked away and went inside for another beer. I brought out a full six pack, and then I stole another of his cigarettes. When he started talking again, his voice was subdued and sounded… weaker than I’d ever heard it sound before. “That should maybe have been my first hint, in hindsight. I’d heard Crowley whistle in the middle of artillery fire, like there wasn’t the least little thing to worry about. And here he was, just gliding along and leading me into a darkened building. I wouldn’t have been too surprised if he’d started singing.

“Well, sir. We finally got where we were going. We found where the Nazis were, and we saw what they were doing. But I have to be honest; to this day I don’t really understand it all.

“There was this huge chamber down in the lower levels of the château, and I figure the Krauts must have torn down all the walls they could without actually making the foundation give away, just so they could set up everything they needed.

“There were all sorts of machines lining the walls of the room we found them in. Machines like I’d never seen before and don’t want to ever see again. They made noises like you’d expect from a power plant, that deep hum that rattles your teeth and sets your hair standing on end. I hadn’t even heard it until we were almost in the room, because the walls down there were solid stone. They had a sort of operating station in the center of the place, with seven separate tables. Each of these had a man on it, or what had once been a man, at any rate.

“Not one of them much looked human anymore. They looked like nightmares. Their skin was pale and bloodless, their faces drawn and withered, like those pictures you see of mummies, but with a little moisture left to them. Each and every one of them was strapped to the table while men worked on their bodies with scalpels and other tools, the sort you don’t really expect to see used on a person. There were places where the ones they’d been working on the longest were covered in metal, like armor almost, but actually bolted into their skin. I could see the way the metal cut into their soft flesh and could see the blood that welled around the rivets they’d used to drive the metal in. I could almost imagine the pain they must have been feeling, as surely as I can imagine the Nazis used the bones of their victims as anchors for those steel plates. Just like the studs in a wall, Eddie, they’d drive those bolts into skin and muscle and then down into the bone. Worst of all, there wasn’t one of those poor bastards that weren’t awake and screaming.”

My grandfather looked at me again; his eyes seeming to wander in my general direction, unfocused until he settled on me. I have seldom seen a man look so haunted, and that was unsettling for me, especially after looking in the mirror for the last two weeks. He reached over and popped a beer, drinking half of it down before he continued.

“Every last one of them was awake, and in all my years I have never heard screams like those before, or since. They weren’t the screams of the dying, or even the seriously wounded. They were the screams of men having their souls ripped out. I don’t know just why or how the machinery managed to do such a thing, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.