Elizabeth Hand - 12 Monkeys

He was naked. Shocked, he ran a hand across his chest, brought it to his face smeared with mud and what felt like a bit of wet tissue. When he spread his fingers he saw trapped between them the limp remnant of another finger. A tiny shaft of bone protruded from it, like a tooth.

“Arrête!”

Cole turned, frantically trying to fling the bit of savaged bone from his hand.

“Qui-est—?”

A man in a dun-colored uniform stood in front of him, shouting. Cole stared at him open-mouthed: the archaic cut of his clothes, the filthy puttees wound around his legs. The rifle he clutched menacingly was topped with a foot-long bayonet.

“Where’s your mask? And your clothes — and your weapon , you idiot!” the man shouted at him in French.

Cole backed away from him, teeth chattering. “What? What? ”

“Out of the way!” the man continued.

Cole fell back into a half-crouch as several men pushed past him, carrying a stretcher piled with stones. Torn and bloody canvas hung from it in long strands. It wasn’t until the stench of burnt flesh filled his nostrils that Cole realized the bloodstained canvas was actually the remains of a man’s arms, the misshapen stones the crushed pulp of his skull and shattered chest.

“Oh, my God—”

“Captain!” the man shouted in French. Cole doubled over as the bayonet jabbed him in the ribs. “A Kraut! We got a Kraut!”

“I don’t understand!” Cole gasped, clutching his stomach. “Where am I? Who—”

“How’d you get here, soldier?” a voice spoke in German. Another man stepped through the mud, bespectacled and smaller than the first, wearing what was undoubtedly an officer’s uniform. “What’s your rank? Where are your clothes?”

Cole shook his head. “I — I don’t understand.”

“German! Speak German! What are you doing here?”

Cole began to shake uncontrollably. His vision blurred, the background clatter of gunfire and unintelligible voices droned into a single sound, a high-pitched whining that might have been a siren or Cole’s own voice. He felt giddy and nauseated, but he no longer cared; he had gone beyond fear or bewilderment or torture to some other place. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing. The sergeant jabbed him again, but it didn’t hurt — how could it hurt? The edges of his consciousness were pulling away from his mind like burning paper; in a few moments there would be nothing left but a vacant-eyed man. In a trench or a cell, strapped to a gurney or stumbling through an airport lobby — how could it matter? Even that shrill whine was dying away, but Cole felt only a dull relief. He would have smiled, but even that was too much of an effort; it would only be another instant and he would be gone, gone—

“I gotta find ‘em! I gotta find ‘em! Please, you gotta help me!”

The voice was like a shard of glass tearing through his fugue state.

“Please!”

English, but accented English — accented American English. The sergeant jabbed him again and this time Cole flinched, blinking as he suddenly focused on another stretcher being borne past him.

“Please, you gotta listen, I got to—”

On the stretcher the other man thrashed. Blood covered his face and arms and chest, dripped in a thin line from the corners of the canvas to the wet ground. In his blackened face his eyes rolled wildly. Staring at him Cole felt a horror more intense than any that had come before.

“Jose!” he screamed. It was the boy from the cell next to his. “ Jose!”

The boy turned. “Cole!” His face contorted in anguish. “Oh God, Cole, where are we?”

His hand reached feebly for Cole’s. Before Cole could grasp it, a man darted between them. There was a flash of light, the stale scent of saltpeter as the photographer crouched in the trench, his unwieldy camera focused on Jose.

“No—” Cole cried brokenly. Without pausing, the photographer clutched his camera to his chest and scurried on. Shots rang out; Cole gasped, grabbed for his left leg and fell.

Gritting his teeth he tried to push himself back up, grimacing at the pain. A whistling overhead ended in a thump that sent more dirt raining into the trench. There were muffled shouts, commands he could not understand. Down the sides of the trench coiled thick yellow smoke. A poisonous stench filled Cole’s nostrils and he coughed, covering his mouth and looking around frantically. The trench grew thick with soldiers in gas masks, like ants in a disturbed nest. Coughing, Cole knelt on his good leg and covered his streaming eyes as he searched for some way out. His gaze fell on a jackknifed form beside him: the captain, his chest split as neatly as a capon’s. From his face dangled a gas mask. With a cry Cole propelled himself forward, fingers snatching for the mask, but before he could grab it another explosion ripped through the trench. The last thing Cole saw was his own face, reflected in the captain’s shattered glasses.

On a chill evening in late autumn, a few brown leaves still clung to the oak trees outside Breitrose Hall. Squirrels worried at a clutch of acorns, and in the velvety sky overhead an owl flew, crying mournfully. Tacked to the building’s gothic façade were flyers advertising a local band, index cards bearing urgent pleas from students for rides home for the Thanksgiving holiday, an out-of-date listing of campus movies. A handful of students crossed lazily in front of the steps, pausing beneath a streetlight to read the newest placard there:

Across the top of the placard a taped, handwritten banner read:

Madness and Apocalyptic Visions

Inside, the lecture hall was nearly full. A woman’s voice echoed hollowly through the cavernous space, punctuated every now and then by coughing, the rustle of papers. Across a giant screen in the front of the room loomed the projected image of a man’s face, crudely but effectively drawn in the bold strokes of a medieval woodcut. His eyes were huge and mad, his mouth agape as though in mortal agony.

“‘And one of the four beasts gave unto the seven angels seven golden vials full of the wrath of God, who liveth forever and ever’.”

The woman speaking at the podium lifted her head. Tall and fine-boned, her dark hair swept into a neat chignon, she was the epitome of academic elegance, striking yet restrained: large-framed tortoise-shell glasses, chic black suit that didn’t show too much leg, only a faint hint of color in her porcelain skin. Her voice matched her, refined but powerful. She paused, giving her audience a moment to savor her words, then went on.

“Revelations. In the twelfth century, according to the accounts of local officials at that time, this man—”

Her pointer indicated the raving madman on the screen.

“—appeared suddenly in the village of Wylye near Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, in April of 1162. Using unfamiliar words and speaking in a strange accent, the man made dire prognostications about a pestilence which he predicted would wipe out humanity in approximately eight hundred years.”

The slide changed to one showing the ruins of Stonehenge, bathed in moonlight that gave them a troubling glow. More rustlings from the audience, this time punctuated with a few impatient huffs.