CthuluWasRight
Fresh Meat for the SV Grinder
- Location
- Canada
A part of me remembers the time before the war. The sky is always deep blue, Papa laughing, Mama smiling. The house is clean, the streets of Evergem fair and bright. The sun shines. Back then, we would see the zoological exhibits in Ghent, when there was time, and watch the animales fabriqué grow in their glass pens as the dompteurs worked to bring them to the heights of life they were engineered to provide. We had one ourselves, a gently modified gelding who we used to move the wagon to and from the home. Our bees weren't modified, but it was only a matter of time according to Papa. We made honey, sold wax, and took care of the land. Sometimes I would help, going from farm to farm for a few days as our walking hives did their work. Sometimes I would just pick flowers.
Then the war came. It was a great and terrible thing, Papa putting on his uniform with finality, taking up arms. I thought it grand, until the Germans came. Our horse was drafted, the house burned, and our beehives smashed as the men laughed and drank wine in the smoking ruins of my home. I was lucky, that we managed to flee: not all my friends were so lucky. The stories are not worth repeating, their like could be found anywhere. A girl of fourteen need not recall such things, else it damage her constitution more than two years on the border of starvation. My mother and I were homeless, trying to eak by on charity. Often, it failed. I never asked her what she needed to do to keep scraps of bread and leather-like meat on the table, she never asked what I needed to do to protect our culvert-bound squat in our hands.
Even when the Germans left, Papa never came home. We assumed he died, either on the lightning-fences or dead of some horrific, mechanical fate on the front lines. Were he alive, he would return. It was a year before we stopped hoping. When we returned to the farm, nothing was left except scorched, barren patches of soil; heaps of fly ash and oil stains everywhere.
Things changed for the better when I was seventeen; for that was when the dompteur I was seeing offered a chance for me to meet the animals. The beasts descending from the Great Cats enjoyed my presence, much to my surprise, and in the end I found myself recruited by a man in a bowler hat and walrus-like moustache. Soon, I found myself a dompteuruse myself, and it wasn't long before I had put my name down in blood with the men in the bowlers. Jeanne du Lys, it read, would agree to serve the Company for eight years, to be paid in good coin, and to be in total possession and control of such fabricated creatures as needed to perform her assigned tasks.
Woe to me, though, for not putting any restrictions in further. The Great Cats, those jaguars so fine, were destined for the second war that had found itself opening up under our feet. The French had, in their postwar damage analysis, had delineated areas of importance; those worst off were designated 'les zones rouge'; the red zones. The damages were not merely limited to deceased war machines of Clanker origin, however; but also to the pestiferous English biological devices. The Red Arrowroot, or what the Austrians called kudzu from their world-striding Emperor, was what initially gave the areas the name- and from it bred an ecosystem to grant ghosts of life to every beast released or let loose in battle. French Hell-hounds and war boar, English flechette bats and devil weasels, even our own proud Lions Exemplar and Tunnel Voles; all lived there and multiplied.
My role, being female, was not to attempt to contain the ecological disaster at the heart. No, I was part of Les chaussures de rats; in other words, rat-catchers. I did not consider it prestigious, nor dangerous.
Five of my years in, I know better now. Of my class of twenty, four of us are still in service, twelve are medically retired, two are dead, and two are missing and presumed to join those fine fellows in Heaven above; should God still grant us entry into such a place for what we have done. If he chose to deny us, I would not assign blame, for the Devil is an old friend for my actions. He had walked with me extensively these last four years in Ypres, and I knew his tricks well. The Germans had fought hard, here. Old weapons were easy to hand, and frequently found and traded like cigarettes; so too were their explosive payloads both fireable and past discharged. The British had done their work as well, leaving dozens of strips of air-dropped Red Arrowroot around to pollute the land. Les zones rouge, indeed.
Checking my Winchester, I frowned slightly. The city council had an accident occur recently; restoration to the city's sewers had accidentally breached an older Undersoldaten complex by setting off unexploded ordinance in the course of work. The tenacity of a Bosniak mechanique or some other hell-bound minority of that seething pot of greed could not be overestimated, so creatures had been designed to root them out. These English war-beasts tended to be the smaller, vermin-based type with barely limited reproductive capacity; thus it was rightly feared that they would infest the town. Therefore, the area needed to be taken to hand.
In my first year, it would have been three chaussures for this task, with four more escorts besides. We would scour the nest, with thermite for their food supplies and pheromones for to disrupt their trails, killing everything we found. In my second, it would have been two chaussures and one porter, using gasoline to disrupt and burn out the nest.
Now, it was just me, and my cats: Sander and Caspar. The two guardsmen who escorted me to the mouth of the hole saluted, and one of them held out a rucksack.
"Here." he said, trying to smile and failing. I could sense his nerves, but that was natural. Anyone would be nervous here. "We scrounged you up some grenades from the arsenal. Two thermites, three lemons, and six stahlgranates. Be careful with those, though: they're mint of fourteen."
I nodded deeply, taking the bag before smiling a little. "Thanks."
"We're not going to come in after you," the other guard warned. "But if you're not back in six hours, we'll have to leave. If you can, come and check in before then, and we'll make sure to send another shift."
"I'll do my best, but if this really is an Undersoldaten complex, there's no guarantee I'll be up soon." I warned, before pulling out my bayonet and locking it to the shotgun definitively. Saluting, I watched them return the gesture. Then I was off.
The one good thing about Undersoldaten, as far as I was concerned, was that they knew their mines. Every two meters like clockwork was a shoring, and bundles of cables ran along the top left corner, still wrapped in insulation. Flicking on my electric torch, I stopped, before putting my signal whistle in my teeth.
'Tweet tweet tweet' I blew, but in reality I meant 'Stop'.
The insulation was unchewed. Any vermin-derivative warbeast had teeth that would grow at near a millimeter per day, and as such they were constantly, constantly gnawing on anything and everything in range. Lost telegraph wires had been one of the most common issues the English had faced in the trenches, as once the anti-chew pheromones wore off, they would be soon severed by their own creatures.
'Tweet tweeeeet, tweet.'; 'Follow, on guard.'
Something was controlling the vermin population down here. Warbeasts would eat warbeasts, and it was all too likely a Hell-hound or whatnot had survived down here. I had lost Balthazar to a surprise War Boar two years ago on what should have been a ratting mission like this; Melchoir had barely lasted out my first before being retired for torn tendons when a Dire Weasel had maimed him.
Knowing now there was a predator afoot, I clipped my torch to my helmet, and brought the Winchester up into my shoulder. I had to keep moving, and try to find the nest. With the radium paint of my gunsights glowing under the tunnel-night, I continued poking. Whatever this place had been, it had been important. Barren sub-chambers littered the area, and in a few places I could even see filament bulbs lying around. There was rat-sign, and a little weasel as well, but that was less important than what I found a half hour in.
On the wall in China pencil was a series of symbols. I could see a crescent moon, stars, arrows, and a clip of bullets. None of it was standard, but reaching into my pocket, I let my gun slide down a little. With my own grease marker, on the opposite wall I left a standard message: J3A 2c rat/mink jaune. My name and class number, my quarry, and the risk level. In a rare moment of levity, I took the time to add a detail; a little stick figure with cat ears and a rucksack. An avatar to show who I was, to the other occupants of this warren.
I was pulled up from my moment of levity by Caspar growling, hackles raised. Grease marker forgotten, my gun was up and a shell in the chamber as fast as I could manage.
"Arretz! Halt! Ophâlde! Stoppen!" I yelled, praying it wasn't a person. Trench madness was a mythical disease, and I would not be facing one of those monsters perpetually near death that had come forth from the trenches in Verdun. There had been rumors about that, and when Marceau never returned, we believed.
My luck held out, as a starving war ferret jumped out of the shadows and straight into a load of buckshot. Ramming the slide back, I made sure my finger was off the trigger as I brought the gun back into battery and sent the next shot down the tunnel. A scream came forth, and I responded by casually pulling out a homemade firebomb and ramming it in at bayonet point. Ripping back the friction-primer fuze, a hissing, shit-reak ball of flame lit in the ferret-tunnel. Flechette bat guano had a horrific smell, and I quickly made to wipe off my bayonet before reloading the two spent shells. The townsfolk had been right to fear this breech.
Back in the day, I would have stopped to ascertain the sexes of the dead ferrets, but now I knew better. Once you were in le zone rouge, never stop moving. Once you were in danger, never stop shooting. Once you had killed, burn the bodies. Ironic, that we had to learn that trick from the Austrians: if the ecosystem wasn't systematically denied biomass, the damaged portions would regrow in short order. Red arrowroot led to bastion bee colonies, bastion bee colonies lead to stockmice, and from there did every other warbeast feed.
No matter, now. Pushing onwards, I found more of the unique trailsign, and this time I bore it no mind. Twice more I passed it's ilk, before I found something more morbid- a wolf-skull marked on the wall, with a bar sinister of brown cutting through the marking. Scratching it with my finger, I sniffed carefully. Blood, old and dry. The markers had killed something? Presumably a dog. Sander hissed slightly on the sight, before leaping off into a side passage, yowling before the sounds of a fight broke out. Running after him, I saw the jaguar turn the corner into a side room, before a fight broke out. Coming in, I could see him mauling an injured bitch, tired from birthing. It was but the work of a moment to flick my safety on, and as the two wrestled I worked a practiced stab in, ripping her guts out.
It took little time for Caspar to join in, ripping the bitch's throat out. Checking my cats over for injury, I smiled faintly. Nothing a little whiskey and soap back at home wouldn't fix.
"Tweet, tweettweet tweeeet."; "Hunt together"
My cats flew off, looking for the pups. Checking my torch again, I blinked. Someone had barricaded off a place where an ancillary tunnel joined this room. Knocking some of the rickety planking away with my gun's stock, I found myself in an old basement. It had been used as a shelter, and as my feet found a clean floor, not in the long-forgotten shellings. Moving quickly, I slipped a smoked lens over my torch, and spat on the floor: the jaguars could follow me from that. Pulling out a small twist of tobacco, I started chewing it carefully to start building up a supply of spit. Between my scent and the tobacco, it would be nigh-impossible for the cats to lose me.
I had to go deeper. The old basement shelter was connected by an expanded drain to an old storm sewer, which in turn led to another basement shelter that dipped into a French bunker. Two turns and a glare at an arroweed-encrusted support beam, and I was into a Canadian bit of trenchery, which I could tell from the frequent use of shitty chickenwire mesh to keep the mud walls from closing in. God preserve the Canadians; for being stuck dealing with the worst of the French and the British and judging by how the beams sat this tunnel was proof they could not look over themselves!
It was a few minutes later that Caspar came to me, and meowed softly. A few paw-signals later, and I determined he wanted me to follow, so I did. Backtracking through the Entente tunnels and a dip near a still-active sewer line (which I made a mental note to mention), we found Sanders next to a dead hell-hound. It had been killed recently, but more notable was the missing fur and meat. It had been butchered, and quite competently at that. Both backstraps had been taken off, and the plates and shanks had been cut free as well. I prayed no human would eat it, since as a rule warbeasts were poisonous from the chemical ingestion as part of their diet, but it was not fatal. Merely deliberating, and for the younger generations, liable to stunt growth. I could attest to the later, sadly. All the gegenkruz shots in the world couldn't bring me up in stature, and I was forever cursed with stomping on feet to get my way in lines.
Caspar whined, and I continued following him. As we went, the basements got newer, the tunnels continued being German, and eventually I heard a voice in the distance. A human voice.
"Hello?" I called out. Sander, the little traitor, gave a happy meow back, and I heard a bolt cock closed.
"Who's there!" a voice yelled, before repeating itself in German and English.
"The owner of the cat!" I yelled back. "Can I come in?"
There was a muttering, and the kid seemed to make up his mind. "Yeah, the cat's friendly. Hands where we can see 'em!"
Slinging the shotgun on my back, I came out carefully, tilting my torch at the floor. By a flickering lamp, a child- near twelve or thirteen, if my guess was right- sat, a cut-down rifle in his lap and a wicked trench nail at his hip. Whistling when he saw me, he jumped up, slinging his own gun behind him.
"A real person! Wow!"
I tried not to smile, but it was hard. "No, just a chasseur. Do you know where my other cat is?"
"Ah… Sander? He's back in the clubhouse, c'mon!"
Following the lad, I took the time to dismount my bayonet, and smiled as he moved forwards, laughing quietly. "Aya! Elmo, we have a visitor! Make tea, she looks like she needs it!"
"A visitor, eh?" another voice called, distorted in the tunnels. We were back in German territory, now, and soon enough there was a lamp by the door of an old command bunker, still in immaculate shape. Inside were several bunk beds piled high with mattress pads that only smelled of regular mold, an open air vent, and a thin fire. Next to it were a pair of girls, one with a war ferret draped around her neck like a scarf and the other in a dirty machinist's smock. A boy was tending the fire, tapping in thin sticks of old shoring-wood and dried brambles as a brass pot with a flared base bubbled. As I walked in, I noticed a notch, before I blanched. That had been a shell casing, once. The child on guard followed me in, and shortly two more children came in, genders undeterminable under sweat and dirt. Wiping themselves off on a painfully cleaned towel, they both proffered cracked tin mugs, and wordlessly I accepted one as the lot of us gathered in a circle.
"What brings you down here, then?" one of the children- a male, from the voice- said as he put another stick in the fire and started serving the drink. Thick and red-black, he served us all equally, before dropping a homemade cake of concentrate in and pouring in a canteen of water.
"There was a breech in the sewers." I said, shrugging. By my feet, Caspar stretched out, unperturbed by the other warbeast in the room since it had a handler. Trust in humans was the first thing every warbeast learned, followed by trust in that humans could control a pack of different animals.
"That breech? Opened last week?" one of the girls asked carefully.
"Yes." I replied, sipping the tea. It was cloying and bitter, and as I swallowed my stomach heaved mutinously. Setting the cup aside, I tried to hide the pain, but Caspar picked up on it and I barely made it outside the door to the hut before I started heaving.
"What the fuck?" I asked, gasping. Taking a moment with my own canteen to rinse my mouth out, I found the mechanic girl coming over to pull me up around her shoulder.
"Elmo forgot that some people can't take the tea as strong as we can." she apologized, parking me in front of the fire again. "Sorry. I'm Aleta, and that's my sister Marit."
"Jeanne." I replied, pulling out one of my canteens and nursing it. Once I had a little water back in my stomach, I slung off my thin work-sack, and dug through for a tin of sardines and a package of field crackers. Opening the tin, eighteen eyes swiveled towards me, and I sighed. Of course I would need to share my meagre rations, never mind that it was their brew that made me deposit breakfast on their doorstep!
Sighing, I just pulled out another two tins, and got to work dividing. One cracker and one fish for each of the children, two fishes for each of my jaguar-beasts, and two leftover crackers for the war-ferret on Marit's neck. Rituals of food abated, I stared at the fire-tender, Elmo. His Mauser at his side was still in excellent shape even though it was cut down to the barrel band. Still, he'd done a good job recapping it in old brass, and a heavily hooded front sight decorated it proudly.
Leaning forward into my crossed legs, I sighed, patting the ground. As Caspar left his head on my right leg, Sandar took the left before belching a faint mustard cloud.
"You know what happened to connect this to the sewers." I said carefully.
Elmo looked pained, taking a sip of his tea. "Yes."
"Was it on purpose?" I pressed gently, watching the other children frown. "Or was it an accident?"
"This is Thijs' story, but he's not here." Elmo said carefully, "so it falls to me to tell it. Simon was also there, but-"
"-I can't remember a lick of it." the watch-stander said, shrugging. "Rung my bell, and when I came up I had my gas mask on and was passed out in one of the English rabbit holes. I'm lucky the rats didn't get me, but they know better than to lick anything that smells like pineapple and pepper."
"You know how many unexploded shells there are in these tunnels." Elmo said quietly, taking a deep pull of his tea and refilling it, the liquid having an eerie air of blood in the cavern. "We don't fuck with them normally, but crossed shells leak."
I nodded, shivering. The Kreuz was the German symbol for a gas weapon, color denoting payload. "And these are your tunnels, now."
"We don't have many other places to go. The orphanages are full; always have been. If something happens to our folks, it's the poorhouse for us. There's food in here, old war supplies and secret passages to places where eyes are slack."
"That still doesn't explain why you were fucking with an unexploded shell." I said, flat.
It was Thijs who spoke next, glancing at me. "That wall that gave in was what separated our tunnel to an old pump station. We could get clean water from the Ipeelee, and filter it there to bring back pure. Another wall had caved- I remember that much- into an old wurm-trail, and pulled down a mess of grunkreuz shells."
I held up a hand, putting my head in my hands. "And you decided, you brave, foolish boys, to build a small charcoal fire on top of a leaking canister while wearing your masks to neutralize the chlorine."
The silence was deafening. I didn't need to ask what happened next; the answer was obvious. A regular mortar bomb or mine or what have you was mixed in there, the heat from the fire set it off as it cooked the dirt and the gas shell. The dirt ate the shrapnel, but one blast set off a bursting charge, another shell, something; and the walls of the sewer maintenance tunnel had not been so thick when I went through.
At the end of it all were two injured boys scrambling for a home that didn't exist. "What happened to Thijs?" I asked quietly, knowing the answer would be bad.
"He maimed his leg and hand." Elmo said softly. "I don't think he's going to keep his eye, either. He was Karl's brother; but now the two are off to make their way in the orphanage."
"We gave them all the tea and hides we could." Marit said softly, reaching over to hold his hand. "It'll be a lean month for us, but we can make do."
"There's less valuable creatures here every week." Elmos sighed. "We can't stay here forever."
My heart bled, and I sipped my water to hide the pain. If I was not on the job, if I was not in the tunnels, if I had any hope of seeing the sun again without every breath of my wits about, there was a flask of cognac in my bag. Not much was left from when Giles had given it to me in Liege, but I'd made every drop count. This would be worth the nip, to dull the sawing edge on me.
"I'm here to make sure the ferrets don't infest the city." I said quietly. "I should be going home soon. If I can- if I can, then I'll talk and see if we have any more places for apprentices, or dompteurs or handlers, or anything."
"Are you sure you'll be back?" Aleta asked.
"As sure as the sun."
-/-/-/-/
When I finally reached the surface again, a telegram was waiting at my apartment. My team of chaussures were to be moved to a teaching position in the school at Arras in two weeks, and I was to halt any operations to prepare for the move. If I went down into the tunnels again, it would be viewed as contract violation, and I would be penalized accordingly.
Sitting down on the floor, rain pouring down my face as thunder crackled outside, Sandar tried to curl into my side as Caspar licked my hair. It didn't help. The last of a dead man's cognac couldn't numb the pain. As the flask fell from my hands and I gripped at the hidebound lifelines that were all I had left, I wished the world was kind, and fair weather would grace the worlds.
Only the generation of mud heard my prayers.
Wow! I just... Wow. This is the sort of work you always hope to see when you start writing a quest in a setting as evocative as this one. It perfectly complements the world and provides a lot of interesting tidbits which I think fit very well into the existing stuff I have prepared. The characters and plot are also excellent.
Great work, man. Have a well-deserved threadmark.
