Peter Idone - Red Vengeance

The Hanomag veered to the right and braked to a stop. Armed with a panzerfaust each, Angst and Braun exited the vehicle and separated to provide cover and focused on the distance for any threat that might loom toward them. They waded through slaughter and destruction, beyond belief or imagination, that mired the road. Braun, every fiber of his being quaking with revulsion, began to heave bile. He sank to his knees, exhausted from the wrenching effort as the green oily substance erupted from out of his mouth. Angst tried not to look directly at the horror in the road, but no matter where he cast his gaze, some ghastly detail would violate his sight. Leg. Hand. Torso. The shapeless mass that had once been the Sturmbannfuehrer’s staff car still burned. Corpses lay on the ground, burnt clothing fused to seared flesh. Amid this blackened, smoking wreckage was the Sturmbannfuehrer, his face still brightly jaundiced despite being partially charred, his lipless mouth forever open in a helpless, silent scream. Voss, having witnessed his share of maiming and death, turned ashen. There was neither incident nor memory to compare with what he now confronted. This was annihilation taken to the extreme—willful, almost ritualized mutilation of men and machines by machine. A thick, pulpy jam of meat and bone lay in a smear across the muddy road amid twisted, shredded mechanical parts. The impression of tank tracks were evident all around, formed in crisscross and circular patterns. A slurry of mud, gasoline, and blood flowed into the river and discolored the water with a red oil-slicked plume. It was difficult to distinguish where the mud began and the blood ended, so thoroughly mixed had the two substances become. Reinhardt was numbed by the sight; to preserve his sanity, he blanked out the image. He cowered behind the shield of the bow machine gun, sweeping an arc, right to left, on the coaxial mount. He seemed to struggle for breath as he felt whatever was true, meaningful, and real slowly die within him. From the scout car turret, Falkenstein studied the details and attempted to play out the course of events in his mind. The staff car was the very epicenter, the bull’s-eye as it were, of the destruction. Trucks, motorcycles, and bodies radiated outward in a compact diameter; some had even ended up in the river. Separate vehicles had been targeted and destroyed in different positions in relation to the core of wreckage and then rammed or pushed closer. Those that had survived the initial volleys of high-explosive shells were raked by steady bursts of machine gun–fire. Afterward, the tank did some quail shooting, using cannon, to judge by the dismembered casualties who tried to run away from the opening onslaught. Others had been chased down individually and crushed. The tank had then returned to the center of the initial ambush and systematically rolled over the bodies and vehicles. The ground had been deeply churned and furrowed as the tank traversed from side to side on its tracks, grinding up and flattening its victims. Falkenstein made an attempt at some analysis as he viewed the scene with the coolness of a police inspector at a particularly ugly homicide. The hideous nature of the spectacle was remarkable. Red Vengeance wallowed in mutilation. The slaughter it left behind was not haphazard but willful. The tank seemed to dare the observer, the witness, to try and recreate the method of its depravity. Voss had stepped out of the Hanomag and approached the scout car. The captain still brooded from the height of the turret. No one, Voss believed, could survive such a rampage without his mind becoming unhinged. He did not want to linger any longer than was necessary. The residue of evil that hovered over the scene was palpable. “What are your orders, sir?” Falkenstein did not respond; he was so transfixed by what lay in the road that his subordinate’s presence had yet to register. “Captain! What do you intend to do now?” Voss asked again, but it was the sound of Khan’s distinct voice that broke the spell. Upon their arrival, Khan had left the scout car and ran some distance along the riverbank, carting along the weighty antitank rifle. He now stood some two hundred meters away, at the water’s edge, waving his arms and shouting. The captain muttered a few words into the microphone, and the scout car circled about the wreckage and drove off to where the shaman stood. Voss had Braun and Angst get back to the vehicle and, upon boarding himself, issued the order to follow the command vehicle. Although the retching had subsided, all the color had drained from Braun’s face. He looked terrible. “I can’t take any more of this.”

The lieutenant snapped. “And do you think I can? Well, Braun? I asked you a question!”

Submissive, Braun said nothing. Reinhardt took hold of the lieutenant’s arm, as it seemed he was about to strike the grenadier. Voss shook off the sergeant’s grip, then looked straight ahead and pointed to the ground alongside the wet riverbank. “See, the track imprints continue.”

Khan had followed the tracks as well, and when the Hanomag came to a stop behind the scout car, the shaman had removed his boots and waded into the river. The ribbed, waffled set of tank track imprints continued straight to the water’s edge and then ended. There were no other tracks either along the bank or down the road; no sign that Red Vengeance had changed direction to the north or east over open ground. Khan followed the track marks along the silt bed under the water, using his bare feet to guide his direction. He almost disappeared below the surface before paddling back. The gray water rippled with alarm. In his heavily accented Russian, he called out, “The beast hides in the river. Deep!”

Falkenstein nodded, as though the shaman’s absurd discovery made perfect sense. After he wrung the water from the hem of his tunic, Khan sat down and pulled on his boots. “We go back to Veranovka. Bad place here, Captain.”

“It knows I am here, Khan?”

“It comes for you, but not here. Not good time. Kill Red Vengeance at Veranovka. Much better.”

Falkenstein could not simply turn around, not after so many months of frustration and wasted opportunities, and certainly not after having to witness the aftermath of this slaughter and the memory of his own tragedy. Red Vengeance was too close not to attempt a kill. “Let’s see if I can’t raise the miserable, cowardly beast to the surface!” He swung the turret around, sighted the 20 mm cannon beyond the point in the water where the shaman had originally swam, and fired, one armored piercing round after the next, traversing the turret slowly from three o’clock to nine o’clock and back again. Reinhardt succumbed to the strain and squeezed the trigger of the MG42. A mad ballet danced upon the waters’ surface. Next, it became Braun’s turn to get sucked into the hysteria, and he fired the panzerfaust. The extreme arc of the trajectory sent the hollow charged projectile high into the air, and when it plopped down, a geyser of water and white smoke frothed. Counterblast gases filled the crew compartment. Braun flung the spent firing tube into the river. The captain continued to fire, despite Khan’s protests. “No, Captain! Nothing will raise it up! Please, Captain, we must go.”

Sickened by the ill logic manifesting all around him, Voss pushed Reinhardt away from the machine gun as he went to reload with another belt of ammunition. “Come to your senses! There is nothing hiding in that river.”

“Is all this madness then, Lieutenant? Did that really happen back there? Because if it is real, then we have been cast into a hell deeper than anything we’ve ever known over these past years.”

The shooting ceased. Khan had evidently brought Falkenstein under control, either that or, having used up a twenty-round magazine, he wasn’t inclined to invest any more ammunition on the submerged target. Wrung out, adrift, Voss felt as though the events to come would simply carry him along, and no influence or will of his own could he summon to alter the outcome. Not even Falkenstein could claim to be in control. Some other unnatural power navigated the course of their destruction, which now seemed inevitable.