AEGIS Tales 2, page 2
part #8 of Airship Daedalus Series
I hefted the stock once again, squeezing the trigger. There was a muffled shot and a spray of blood at point-blank range, and the corpse opened again. The blade retreated as the empty clip was ejected from the bottom of the rifle. It had been enough force to shatter the bones holding onto the bayonet. I quickly pressed another clip into the rifle and slapped the bolt forward, sprinting up the rise to rejoin my unit.
If the Germans knew the war was lost, they sure were acting otherwise. The village of Ripont was wrapped in a swath of what appeared to be mustard gas, like a sickly yellow fog bank creeping across the town square. But there was an additional layer of ghostly white mist just under the yellow, that would occasionally poke through as it undulated beneath. The town looked mostly deserted, except for the German troops occupying every second story with a window into the courtyard. This was going to be a bloodbath, one way or another.
Shaw patted my shoulder again as I approached. “There’s our goddamn hero!”
A Chauchat crew arrived and set up at an angle to the first row of houses, opening fire in a straight line across the windows. Any dwellings that still had glass windows didn’t after the machine gun tore through. The German rear guard now consisted of a few random infantry left in place as snipers, but the majority of them were put down in the first few salvos from our machine gun. But then the Chauchat locked up with a fatal jam—as they were famous for—and Captain Shaw waved us in. “Let’s go, boys!”
Taking up position around the first corner of the farmhouse, I sent some covering fire into the second story of the bakery across the cobbled street as my fellow soldiers moved into the square. I counted down the ammo: Three, two, one. Each time I slid the bolt back, releasing the spent shell and racking a new round into place. One by one, enemy soldiers dropped where they stood or fell from the shattered window sills above. I moved from doorway to doorway, snapping off shots as they presented themselves. Three, two, one. Each time I chambered a third round, the empty clip ejected below and clattered to the stone street. Despite the knee-deep layer of toxic mist swirling around us, we were picking off the Jerries like low-hanging fruit. We had them on the run. Taking the town wasn’t going to be a problem.
I reached into ammo bag and grabbed another clip, pushing it through the open slide as other men continued to fire around me. Despite the conditions, I felt absolutely safe, protected. Then I caught a split-second flash of light from an upper window across the square, and my head snapped back with the force of a bullet glancing off the left eyepiece of my gas mask. The hoods didn’t have great visibility to begin with, but now there was a lateral crack across the lower third of the left lens, cutting my field of vision in half and making accuracy next to impossible. Turning back toward the shooter, angry and still in shock, I felt two sharp bursts of pain in my right side and shoulder. The rifle fell from my numb hands, clattering beneath the sea of chemical gas. I staggered back against the flower shop doorway, reaching toward the wounds out of instinct. Another shot rang out, and I felt my throat open at the collarbone.
“Jesus,” I mumbled in bewilderment as I sank to my knees in the town square.
Another burst of pain from my left thigh, and a fourth in my abdomen, and darkness began to creep in around my cracked vision.
I fell forward onto my face, knocking the entire left lens free. My eyes seared, flushing wet, and I began to choke as I felt my lungs begin to burn.
Can’t breathe.
And I died.
✽✽✽
My eyes fluttered open as I felt myself being supported aloft, gazing down over a stark scene. Two men wearing Rattlers uniforms gripped the handles of a stretched between them, carrying a soldier’s body upon it. I couldn’t make out the man in front, but the soldier holding up the back of the stretcher looked like Private Davies, a soft-spoken nineteen-year-old kid from Hell’s Kitchen. We’d gone through Basic together. I tried to call out for him, but no sound came out, despite my exhaustive effort. Like a balloon tethered to the stretcher, I was tugged along with the two soldiers and their cargo, this dead Rattler in his tattered uniform, past the field hospital and toward a wagon stacked with corpses. I could only imagine the destination of the wagon.
As they approached the cart, setting the stretcher down ever so gently, a terrible truth washed over me—ice-cold like a Coney Island wave in the Spring. At that moment, I recognized the corpse on the stretcher.
He was me. And these two men were my burial detail.
I felt a strange recoil sensation, as if the invisible tether anchoring me above the man on the stretcher was plucked by an unseen hand. It was abrupt and filled my throat with bile. Suddenly I was pulled downward, and in an instant my lungs filled with air. I could tell I was on my back; the lumps through the canvas stretcher told me it was on the gravel road next to the field hospital. The dead man I’d seen below me was my actual body, and now I was back in it. Everything hurt like hell, and my lungs were on fire. I coughed, one of those earth-shaking coughs that you feel in your spine. Then I threw up everything I’d eaten since the previous night’s dinner, and the residue of whatever chemical weapons had seeped into my system during the battle. I could barely manage to croak the word “help” between coughing and heaving my guts onto the road. The most frightening thing was that I couldn’t see. Everything was a murky, desolate void of color.
“Holy moley!” cried Davies. “He’s alive!”
“Sweet Jesus!” shouted the other soldier, with an alarm that sounded like he’d seen a ghost at the foot of his bed. The quick footsteps of boots on gravel echoed in my ears. A sudden volley of shouted oaths and orders followed, and I felt the stretcher hoisted off the ground.
I must have passed out then, because the next thing I remembered was waking up with a splitting headache and still no vision. The place smelled of antiseptic soap and alcohol, and the troubled moans of wounded and dying men surrounded me on all sides. I knew I must be in the field hospital.
“Easy, soldier,” said a soft voice from the dark. It was warm and feminine, and carried an emotional weight I couldn’t begin to imagine. I felt a hand—presumably hers—on mine, turning my wrist to lay a cool finger across it, feeling my pulse. “You’re safe now,” she said.
I tried to make the words form in my throat, but only hoarse grunts emerged. “N-Nurse…” I sputtered.
“Don’t try to talk,” she instructed, releasing my arm and reaching up to arrange the pillow under my head. “I’m Dorothy, and you’re in my care.” She leaned over me, and I got the distinct scent of perfumed dusting powder through the sterile cleaning agents and disinfectants. I knew it was the only scent nurses were allowed to wear in the ward. “There’s a bell on the table to your right,” she said, placing my hand on the object as she described it. “If you need anything, ring it and I’ll be right there.”
I reached out instinctively, grasping her arm. With my left hand, I gestured at the bandages wrapped tightly around my eyes and skull. “Wh-What…happened?”
Expecting her to pull away at the sudden contact, I was pleasantly surprised to feel her other hand gently pat mine as I released her arm.
“You were wounded in the push through Ripont,” she explained. “Took five slugs and full exposure to a cocktail of gas weapons.”
I heard the stool creak as she stood, getting another whiff of dusting powder as she bent, checking my bandages.
“Private Desmond,” she said, an almost bewildered note to her voice, “you’re very lucky to be alive.”
“Th-Thank you,” I hissed from my throat.
She patted my arm and stood over the bed. Somehow I knew she was smiling. “Just rest,” she said wistfully. “Rest and heal.”
Though I didn’t know it at the time, the tinge of sadness in her voice was due to the knowledge that I’d never see again. At least, not how normal people see.
✽✽✽
“Let’s see how those peepers are getting on, shall we?”
The doctor’s voice was pleasant, smooth as a vintage single-malt scotch. His accent was Mid-Atlantic, the type we’d start hearing on the radio in just a few short years. He was an American colonel, I’d gathered, by the name of Starr, and he always stopped by my bedside for a quick chat while on his morning rounds. Eventually I was able to make more coherent conversation than the hissing croaks the gas had initially reduced me to, and we were able to talk about where we grew up and how surprisingly alike our families were.
I’d spent two weeks in this hospital, literally in the dark, as the dulcet-toned Colonel Starr tended to his patients. Most of us were either French, or Americans under French command, like the Rattlers—who were now becoming better-known by their German nickname: The Harlem Hellfighters. By now, I’d mapped out the entire ward, including the hallways, the WC, and the garden outside the former church that had been converted for its current medical purpose. I’d also formed an impression of every patient, doctor, nurse and orderly in the place, especially nurse Dorothy Brown. Now it was time for the doctor to trim away the bandages from around my eyes and see what was what.
The pressure at my temples, what had been an endless, dull ache, was relieved as the colonel cut away the rolls of gauze around my head and eyes. I could feel layers come away, and yet saw no intrusion of sunlight. Everything was still as dark as it had been for the past two weeks. Finally, I felt the last of the gauze fall away, and the colonel’s fingers pry the twin cotton pads from my orbital sockets. I blinked once, twice—nothing but darkness. My thoughts returned to Sunday school, and I remembered a passage from Genesis: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
“What do you see, Private Desmond?” Colonel Starr inquired, his hands gently changing the position of my head as he observed the extent of my damage.
“Nothing,” I replied, husky and heavy from deep in my chest. “Not a damn thing.”
“Not surprising, really. The damage to the corneas and the optic nerves was extensive.”
Something halted in his breath. I could tell he wasn’t satisfied. Neither was I, of course. The fact that I wouldn’t be the only blind veteran of this war was cold comfort.
Colonel Starr cleared his throat. “There’s a specialist in Paris,” he began. “I think we’ll try to get you in there—”
And at precisely that moment, the lights came on. All of them, all at once. It was as if the noonday sun had dropped right into the ward, white-hot and blinding. Except I was already blind, and this light was searing away the darkness. Every nerve ending in my skull screamed in agony, and I threw my arms across my eyes to stop the pain, stop the light seeping through, to no avail. The pitiful cries of a wounded soldier surrounded my bed, and I realized they were coming from my own throat. I felt hands on my shoulders, both the colonel’s and Nurse Brown’s. They gently tried to steady me as I rocked back and forth in my bed, unable to escape the light. Let there be light, indeed.
After what seemed like an eternity, but was likely not more than several seconds, the pain receded, and my arms dropped away from my face. My eyes fluttered open, and the light retreated to a normal level in flashes, like shells bursting in a night barrage across No Man’s Land. I could see shapes now; shadows and highlights and nuance. It was all a blurry landscape, but there was depth and form. My ravaged eyes welled with tears, and I blinked, washing them with my natural saline. It stung like nettles, or getting lemon juice in a cut. But I let it sting, breathing deeply with damaged lungs as those hands held me.
“How we doing, Desmond?” the colonel asked. “You want something for the pain?”
My head shook no without my conscious input. Apparently I needed clarity for what was to come. “No,” I explained. “I’m okay.”
The doctor gave some instructions to Nurse Brown, who took a seat beside my bed and continued to monitor my condition. Colonel Starr then disappeared on his regular rounds, promising to return later in the afternoon. I sat up in bed, blinking those lemon juice tears, washing my eyes in stinging agony. After a good twenty minutes, the pain dulled and my vision became clearer and deeper. Shapes, both near and far, were clearly defined. What’s more, every shape seemed to radiate with a sort of prism of light. I’d learn later that “halo effects” are common among victims of optical injuries. I’d also come to understand that what I was seeing wasn’t a simple halo effect. I glanced to my right, looking into the face of Nurse Dorothy Brown, one of several kind and compassionate medics who had cared for me these past two weeks, but by far my favorite of the bunch. Her face was not more than three feet from mine, and yet gazing at her felt like looking at an unfinished portrait. As much as I’d discovered basic depth and detail in my surroundings, finer features were still a jigsaw puzzle. However, those prismatic rays of light emanated more brightly from her than from the other inanimate objects I’d focused on.
As I glanced around the ward, I noticed every bed had a soldier in it, and every soldier radiated a bright aura of light—like the corona of an eclipse, flickering and flaring in a brilliant dance. Then something in the hallway caught my attention. A soldier seemed to be walking across the hall, but there was no form to his body. The light aura still radiated, but it flared around the outside as if from an invisible silhouette. There was no solid substance to him. Thinking it just another manifestation of my injury, I initially paid it no heed.
For another week, I kept absorbing my surroundings, my vision becoming clearer and more detailed. Colonel Starr’s opinion was that everything I was “seeing” was an optical illusion caused by my injured optic nerves sending ghost images to my brain. He couldn’t explain how I was able to navigate the ward, the hospital and the grounds, as if I could see perfectly. One theory was that I’d spent enough time effectively “blind” that I’d formed a sort of three-dimensional map of my environment based on my heightened hearing and smell. But when we left the hospital to see his specialist in Paris, and I was still in command of my surroundings, he was officially out of ideas.
It was Friday, the 1st of November. I recall the day was brisk and clear following a week of rain. News was the Central Powers were beaten. The Jerries were on the run, and an armistice was close at hand. A large influx of wounded soldiers had come through the hospital in recent weeks, testament to the final push along the Western Front. French grenadiers, American marines, and even some British Gurkha shock troops from Nepal. Even as I got better discerning faces and details, I never lost the sensation of the “ghost halos”. At all hours of the day or night, they’d wander the hallways among the wards. Often, when a soldier died in his bed, I could watch as a “ghost halo” stood from the bed in which the soldier lay, wandering away into the hall or out into the garden. I didn’t speak of it to Colonel Starr. When Dorothy came to get me ready for transport, I was already dressed.
“I see someone’s excited to get to Paris,” she smiled, brilliant shards of light dancing across her head and shoulders.
“Can’t wait to see it,” I joked.
When we exited the hospital, I found the colonel had requisitioned a staff car for the trip, instead of an ambulance. Nurse Brown and I sat in the backseat, while a young British corporal drove. As we passed along gravel roads, muddy country lanes and hedgerows, we passed columns of the refugees and dispossessed: those made homeless from the ravages of Total War. They were often in the company of Allied soldiers, marching hundreds of German and Austrian prisoners to camps southwest of the Hindenburg Line. I saw the same sparkles of light emanate from every living person, and hundreds more of the phantom halos in their midst.
Paris was alive with high spirits and the same auras of light, and so many phantoms I could not hazard an accurate number. Soldiers home from the front hobbled around on crutches, taxis honked and rattled through the streets, and Parisian ladies laden with parcels wore bright smiles with their Fall fashions.
The visit to the specialist went much as I expected. Read these letters, look into this light, follow my finger. The elderly French ophthalmologist with a well-trimmed beard and crisp, white smock could not determine why I was clearly able to see when all external conditions would indicate I should not. Much to my surprise, Nurse Brown didn’t leave it at that. The German gas weapons had affected me—altered me somehow—giving me not only normal sight, but sight beyond. A second sight, she said. Instinct told me she was right.
We stayed the night in Paris, and after that, I knew I would not be going home to New York.
I awoke at 0200 to the sight of two phantom auras in my hotel room. No discernible features, only the absence thereof, radiating a red-tinted halo from a blank outline. Whatever these things were, I knew in my gut they weren’t human, and they meant me harm. Without thinking, I leaped from the bed, and found myself hurtling toward the intruders. Whereas most people must obey the laws of physics and land when they jump, I did not fall—I rocketed forward fists balled into hammers of rage and sheer willpower. Each fist penetrated a silhouette, hands icy on contact. A static discharge as my energy channeled through each of my hands, a brief shriek of agony from either side, and it was over.
I opened my eyes, facing the inside of my hotel room door. Glancing down, I noticed my feet hovered about ten inches off the floor. My hands glowed white and purple, crackling with shards of pure light. Turning to look over my shoulder, I saw my sleeping form still tucked cozily in bed, breathing steadily. I watched the rhythmic inhalation and exhalation for a minute, satisfied that my body would be safe for the time being. Then, turning back to the door, I willed myself forward, and sailed through it.
