The Bloody Red Baron: Anno Dracula 1918 Page 31
'Is he really up there?'
Winthrop had imagined Dracula would radiate an aura of evil and despair which would be unmistakable.
'Intelligence confirms the Graf von Dracula is aboard the Attila,' said Mr Croft. 'Your moment has come.'
The grey man had addressed himself to Captain Allard.
'Shouldn't we be strafing ground troops?' Algy suggested. 'Our lads must be taking a terrible pasting.'
Croft looked death at the young airman. 'Nothing matters but the Attila.'
Winthrop had the sense Allard was, for once, uncertain. In the end, he would obey orders.
If Dracula was up there, so was Baron von Richthofen. Every nerve in Winthrop's body thrilled. This must be what it was like to be a vampire. His blood sang, calling for victory. Tonight, he was sure, it would end one way or another.
The pilots clustered around Jiggs, handing over letters and keepsakes. Winthrop had nothing more to give. He hadn't told Catriona he was still alive. By tomorrow's dawn he might not have to. In the end, this was kinder.
The first Camels were aloft, circling the field, waiting for the formation to come together.
Equipment was piled on to trucks. There was not an idle man in Maranique. By the time this flight was through, the airfield might be in enemy hands. If there was fuel left, the squadron were to fall back to Amiens. There would be no fuel left. Condor Squadron would fight until it could fight no more.
He hauled himself into his machine, settling comfortably at the stick.
'Contact,' he shouted.
Jiggs spun the prop. The Camel moved forwards smoothly and into the air. The sun was down, but the land was burning.
Kate squirelled along, following Penderel's men. More reinforcements were on her tail. She knew her way, following the clattering troops as they rushed to the front. The trenches were partially covered, turning into tunnels. Candle-stubs stuck in tin dishes gave points of light.
She used the shovel as a scythe, getting things out of her way. She was stripped down to the animal, acting on instinct. No purpose but to be in the thick of it.
Popping out of a tunnel into the main trench, she found herself facing a fifteen-foot wall of collapsing sandbags. Men held ladders against them, but their upper reaches snapped.
A terrible grinding assaulted her ears. The treads of a tank churned at the top of the wall, shredding sandbags. The motorised juggernaut was jammed in mud and wire. Soldiers fired upwards at the plate-iron shell of the tank. Bullets spanged off metal, leaving dents. The tank lurched forward a yard, great flat nose protruding over the trench, shadow cast down on the squirming men below.
Fumes leaked from inside the thing. Kate coughed, fearing gas. Gun turrets in the war-beast's side swivelled. She threw herself down into the liquid depths of the trench. A shell shot across the gap and burst against the mouth of the tunnel. Someone had drawn a bead on her former position.
The fire-flash lit the tank, showing every bolt on its side. It was a castle, with arrow slits and battlements. Shrapnel and fire spattered around. Men were pierced and fell, writhing bloodily.
Kate wanted to kill.
The tank's centre of gravity eased over the lip of the trench. The nose swung downwards, threatening to crush the men who crawled in the bed. The treads snagged on the rear wall and ground on, getting a purchase, pulling the machine level. It could roll over the trench as if it were a crack in the road. Men fired at the iron underbelly as it passed.
Kate bent low, like a frog, and leaped upwards, extending clawed hands, pushing against the ground with all her vampire strength. She shot level with the tank and grasped at the steadily moving tread. The grinding wheels caught a fold of her coat and pulled her into the side of the beast. She would be turned to paste as if thrown into the workings of a flour mill, but her broken body would stop this thing. A war cry began in her lungs and emerged as a death scream.
Poe had intended to present his manuscript to Theo this evening, but events had overtaken them. It started when the Attila detached itself from the castle, the signal for the offensive to begin. All along the lines, tanks trundled out of concealed positions, and men fixed bayonets to go over the top. The might of the Central Powers thrust forwards, trampling over the Entente. This would be victory.
On the tower, they watched fliers prepare to join the battle they could hear all around and see in the middle distance. It was still an awesome sight, the transformation of the fliers, but it had become almost familiar.
Poe and Theo watched Richthofen as he changed. Upon the death of his brother, he had shown no trace of anger or passion. But his armour, opening in cracks as Poe teased out material for his book, was entire again, locking inside whatever there was of him that had been alive.
Richthofen's calm face disappeared under fur. Poe thought the flier not even aware of their presence, but, as Kurten and Haarmann stood away, he bowed to his biographer, flourishing a wing-tip as if it were a courtier's cloak. Poe wished Richthofen farewell. The Baron leaped from the tower, followed by his fellows. The fliers swarmed around the Attila.
Theo watched his comrades slip into the night, eyes shaded by the peak of his cap.
'It is almost as if our duties here were over,' he said, at last. 'After tonight, what more use will we be?'.
Ten Brincken's disciples had packed their records, preparing to withdraw. Karnstein was redeployed to the Italian front. Poe assumed the Schloss Adler was converted for use as the Graf's headquarters. As the castle became more significant militarily, its scientific purpose was wound down. Reports were written and despatched. The experiment was concluded.
'They will have won the war, Theo.'
Theo shrugged. 'That was what Dracula made them for, winning the war. But as Manfred said, there is no "after the war". They are the instruments of conquest, not rule.'
'There will always be conquests.'
'Eddy, my friend, sometimes for one with such foresight you are remarkably blind.'
Poe was shocked.
Though scientists were left behind along with ground crew, and Orlok scuttled about somewhere, the Schloss Adler seemed abandoned with the departure of JG1. The fliers could be seen converging on the Attila, tiny as flies. Poe's keen eyes distinguishing them from the morass of night.
In his last chapters, Poe had written of the Baron's reaction to the loss of his brother. It was as if both Richthofens had died, but he was cursed to walk the Earth a while.
'Poor Manfred,' Theo said, understanding Poe's mind. 'He is a loyal dog, for all else,'
'I'd give anything to be with them, Theo.'
Theo looked at him and tried to smile. 'It's too late for anyone to take any notice of what we do. There's a Junkers J1 fuelled, ready for an observation tour. Would you care to accompany me?'
'You can fly?'
'Only in an aeroplane.'
Pillars of fire rose from the battle. Poe thought of the skies over the decisive conflict.
'I've never been up in . .
'For a prophet of futurity, a sad omission.'
'Very well.'
Theo grinned, with some of his old sparkle. 'The raven has wings.'
In her last seconds, Kate would have liked to forgive everybody. But she couldn't.
Her coat tightened like a straight-jacket as more cloth pulled into the wheels of the tank-tread. She smelled heavy oil and grease as she was dragged into the killing gears. Then the engine inside the tank died and she was held, crucified against the machine's side. A mechanical failure or a chance bullet or the hand of God had saved her. Briefly.
One of her hands was free. She bunched her fingers and made a knife-point of her nails. She punched the taut sheet of her coat at the shoulder and tore. Stitching broke and she was free. She fell, but got her hand round the rim of one of the stalled wheels, gritting her teeth as her barbed nails scraped against greasy steel. Hand over hand, she climbed on top of the tank. The metal was heated, as fire had recently played across it.
There were enemies inside this moving cage. Warm or vampire, they throbbed with blood she needed to drink. A rifle barrel poked through a slit and angled round. She wheeled to stay out of range and took hold of the gun. With a wrench, she pulled the thing free - raising hochdeutsch oaths from inside - and hurled it off behind her.
Putting her face to the slit, she snarled like a beast. She smelled funk inside, heard tank-men scrabbling and panicking, trapped by the stalling of their wonderful war device. Fire would pour in and cook them.
Her face was close to a pair of boots. The only polished, ready-for-inspection boots in the whole of the armies of Europe. She looked up at the soldier who stood calmly atop the tank, uncringing as if the silver and lead bullets flying around were hailstones. He wore the uniform of the United States but this vampire was older than the country.
His boots grew insubstantial, whitening into a mist. She'd heard of the trick but never seen it done. The vampire gathered himself into a wraith-shape, glowing faintly. His clothes and kit dissolved with his body, as much a part of him as his hair. A bullet struck nearby, clanging against the tank. She cringed, but was mesmerised by the elder. A man-shaped cloud floated over the slit. It elongated and funnelled down, like a puff of smoke suddenly inhaled by a smoker.
Screams cut through layers of iron and steel, shaking her to the teeth. A pistol was discharged, shot rebounding in the confined space. A red cloud burst from the firing slit, spattering her face with warm blood. She licked her face, impassioned by the blood, swallowing the terror that came with it.
Not waiting for the elder to emerge from the tank, she vaulted off the machine's back and felt earth under her. Looking back, No Man's Land was No Man's no more. Strung-out lines of grey uniforms advanced through the night in implacable ranks, stepping over their fallen, walking on in a human tide towards the Allied trenches.
A machine-gun, maybe thirty yards away, started up, and a fan of the advancing troops were scythed down. More men filled the gap. The gun ranged again, cutting more down. Then the gun was overwhelmed and silenced. The gunners were torn apart by the undead soldiers, blood splashing all around. The Germans' mouths were red.
The elder floated above the tank, reconstituting himself pretty face reddened with fresh blood.
Someone shot Kate but only with a lead bullet. It slipped through her calf. The hole healed over immediately. She heard the shot long after the stab of pain passed.
Another tank spat a line of burning petrol towards the Allies, spreading fire on the ground. All about her, men retreated, falling back or just falling.
The elder drifted towards the second tank. He must be ancient to have such control of his form. Older than Dracula or Genevieve. Pre-mediaeval. Perhaps pre-Christian. An awesome thing to have hidden among mankind for so long.
He'd have numberless names.
The flame-thrower hitched upwards and belched another burst, catching the elder full in the chest. He burned like a butterfly. Centuries of unchronicled life were extinguished in an uncaring instant, blasted to sparking shreds by brute modernity.
Someone took her arm and saved her tiny life, pulling her backwards, along with the mass of men fleeing the front lines.
'Retreat, man,' someone told her.
42
Night of the Generals
At HQ in Amiens, everyone was shouting at once. A double . dozen telephone lines were manned, staff officers hopping to pass on grave news from points along the front. Lieutenants with brooms shifted markers on a map table the size of a tennis court. Bombardment shook solid walls. There were fires in the town. Shells were falling just short of the outskirts. Fall-back positions on the roads were being hurriedly manned. This was the big push everyone had expected.
Bone-tired after another stormy Channel crossing and dispirited in the aftermath of My croft's funeral, Beauregard was shunted into a corner by panicking strategists. It was coincidence he was so close to events. He was ordered to report to HQ to hand over to Mr Caleb Croft a list of the Diogenes Club's operatives behind enemy lines. It would be almost his last duty in the war. After that, he was free to go home to Cheyne Walk and think about writing his memoirs.
Croft was expected directly from Maranique. Condor Squadron were in the skies, represented on the table by a wooden arrowhead painted red. A broom pushed the arrowhead towards the black oval that was the Attila. The blocks representing Allied troops were mixed up, probably reflecting their actual dispositions. The Central Powers had thrown so many men into the onslaught that HQ had run out of the black blocks that symbolised them. To make up the shortage, a subaltern tore strips of paper and rubbed Maltese crosses on them with bootblack.
Beauregard rubbed his tired eyes. Battle smoke from a hundred cigarettes swirled over the map. The air in the command room tasted foul.
Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig was on the telephone to Lord Ruthven, holding the receiver to his chest while he relayed orders to messengers, who passed them on to telephonists, who delivered them to officers in the field, who presumably told their men what to do. There was some sort of a plan. Haig was not at all discouraged by the attack. His red eyes glowed like electric lights. The pin-sharp points of his jagged teeth shredded his lower lip, spotting his chin with his own blood. As he commanded, he almost foamed.
Winston Churchill, despatched from London to be in on the bloodshed, was in the thick of the excitement in his shirt-sleeves, collar undone, silk hat on the back of his head. He shouted facts and figures around his burning cigar-stub. He must have fed within the hour, for he was blown up like a red balloon, fingers like red sausages, veins throbbing in his temples.
General Jack 'Blackjack' Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, was eager to get into the game. He stood at one end of the map with clumps of American troop blocks in each fist, an eager gambler newly arrived at the table with chips to squander. By his side was 'Monk' Mayfair, a carnivorous apeman who might have been one of Moreau's surplus patients got up in a general's uniform and a cowboy hat.
The impression Beauregard got was that vampires like Haig, Churchill and Pershing welcomed this end to the boredom of entrenched squatting and bomb-ducking. They were fairly squiffy from the excitement of it all. According to reports, the lines were breached in a dozen places. German cavalry units were galloping into the fray in the wake of the tanks.
A grey presence made itself known. Croft surveyed the map with a thin, smug smile. At the relay of another report, the Condor Squadron arrowhead was shoved against the Attila oval.
Croft ignored Beauregard. Since his advancement, the Diogenes Club had ceased to exist for him. Beauregard felt the list of names heavy in his inside jacket pocket. He could not help but feel that the agents he and Smith-Cumming had so carefully placed and nurtured would be literally wasted by a more ruthless spymaster.
Haig held the Prime Minister at bay and shouted Tell the bloody fool to retreat' into another telephone.
'This is absurd,' the Field Marshal announced to the room and Lord Ruthven. 'Damned Frog won't fall back. Mireau is shovelling his men under tank-treads when we've perfectly sound rear positions prepared. Le retreat n'est ce pas francais. No wonder his men want him impaled.'
A blue block representing Mireau's French divisions was taken off the map and thrown away. A black block advanced over them.
'The Mireau problem seems solved, Prime Minister. C'est la guerre.'
Beauregard was chilled. From this room, it was too easy to believe the war a matter of maps and toys and blocks and brooms. Discarded blocks littered the floor, getting under officers' boots. Each meant a hundred or more casualties.
Enemy strategy was a three-pronged push, with Paris as the objective. With tanks and aerial assault and long-range bombardments, Dracula's forces were trying stop the Allies falling back to prepared positions, spreading enough panic in the ranks to turn strategic retreat into a rout.
'It's a question of numbers,' said Haig. 'The enemy can't have enough troops to waste.'
Once the Allies had fallen back, unbelievable death would rain down upon the advancing Germans. On unfamiliar territory, after four years hiding in tunnels, they would be liable to be cut down by mortar, bomb, machine-gun, mine, flame-thrower and heavy gun. Both sides were abjuring subtlety to go at each other with sledgehammers, pounding directly at the most obvious spots.
'They may have a million men,' Churchill advised Haig. 'An iron steamroller ploughing across Europe.'
'We've more than a million,' the Field Marshal declared. 'We can pour in the Americans.'
Pershing bared fangs and whooped, 'The Yanks are coming.'
Mayfair capered off to take a telephone in one gloved foot and grunt orders to the American positions. Pershing, caught up in the moment, tossed American blocks on to the map, a desperate gambler trying to spend his way out of a losing streak by upping the stakes with each spin of the wheel. Mayfair kept up the stream of deployment orders.
The building shook from nearby shell-bursts. Dust sieved down from the ceiling on to the table. Beauregard brushed his shoulders. Winthrop must be with Condor Squadron, in the thick of it.
'We're digging in and fighting back,' Haig announced. 'We'll see some of those blasted black blocks off the map in no time.'
43
Attila Falling
The observation port spread out the landscape like an embroidered quilt. There were no clear lines any more, just waves of ants and flame. It seemed the offensive was a complete success. Wireless messages came in from all along the front. Enemy defences were overwhelmed, targets taken, fortifications breached. The armies of the Vaterland rolled on.
'We shall be in Paris by tomorrow's sunset,' Strasser opined to his commander-in-chief.
Dracula said nothing.
The Attila descended gently. As enemy gun positions were taken or destroyed, it became safer for the aerial warship to approach the ground. With each confirmation, Strasser authorised a downward shift. The view through the port enlarged, showing more detail. The crawling ants became men, identifiable as things that fought and suffered and died.