Flash Fiction: Die but Do

Hello! Now that October is here, it is time for some fun, spooky flash fiction tales. If you are new to the blog, refer to the last post (https://www.chavirajranecdotes.com/post/flash-fiction-spooky-and-fun-tales-for-october). Throughout this month, I will put out a flash fiction story every week centered around monsters and ghouls we think about when we think of All Hallows' Eve. I wanted to write about the undead, but had no idea what route I wanted to take. Instead, I stepped away from fantasy and decided to create a work of historical fiction set during WWI, where the dead fought back against the advancing Germans on the Eastern Front. I took a lot of creative liberty, of course, but if you want to read more about this battle, you can Google 'Attack of the Dead Men.'

I hope you enjoy!

Image from Google Gemini

The physician says I don’t have extreme shellshock because I don’t have tremors, and my faculties are still intact. True that I have always been a resilient man more than most, but just because my nightmares are different, that does not mean they are drivel. They are still nightmares, not of screams or explosions or fellow compatriots dead, but the dead rising itself. But what do they care that I avoid sleep? Why would anyone care? No one wants me for work; we got the worst punishment for losing the war. The Kaiser is no more, our unstable republic is a joke, our economy keeps tanking, and my own father thinks I’m daft and hysterical. I avoid funerals and graveyards because I can not get the images out of my head. It was recommended to me to write things down, but for what? To relive the terror? In all my years, I would hear stories of creatures and folk tales that lurk in the dark, but the horrors of war made all of that lose its charm. Now the absolute dread is the terror of the dead. 

02/04/1915:

During our push in the Eastern Theatre, the regiment XIII Royal Württemberg was sent to join the 11th and 76th Landwehr Divisions, which were stationed in East Prussia, right on the border of the Congress of Poland, which at that time was under Russian imperialist control. The objective was simple: take the fortress that served as a bottleneck strategic hold into Russia and push the damn Ivans all the way to Minsk. The division had been stationed there since September of 1914, and the Ivans had put up strong defences. They repelled heavy artillery and infantry attacks. My first day there, the constant attack of the siege mortars and machine gun fire made it difficult to scope out no-mans-land. The terrain was marshy, boggy, and very muddy. It was difficult to get heavy artillery moved without it getting stuck in the mud. Taking the fortress was the only way to maneuver through these swampy lands. 

27/05/1915:

That night, our captain ordered us to place more barbed wire about 50 meters from the first trench and hurry back. I recall how bright the stars were. I was afraid; my eyes saw them so bright as if to give our position away. I knew the Russians had men at the ready in the machine gun nests, so we quickly unspooled the wire and rushed back to safety. 

05/06/1915:

Mortars couldn’t let me sleep, but I remember being happy that our socks were drying quickly. The summer sun was helping us control our trench foot. 

16/06/1915:

Regiments were sent to break through the defences of the villages of Belogrondy and Sosnya. If successful, this would give us an advantage to use the control of the villages to cut off reinforcements from the Rudsky bridge and place riflemen along the Zarechny fort. It would make it easier to flank their trench zones 1-4 and be able to flank the Osowiec fortress with little resistance.

20/06/1915:

Strong defences from the Russians; Belogrondy was heavily guarded. Militia men flanking at Sosnya forced our troops to retreat into the swampy marshes. Lost good men that day, God rest your souls, Stefan, Albrecht, and Hans.

03/07/1915:

Our new field marshal, Paul von Hindenburg, had been tasked to take over the theatre of operations. His crushing victory over the Ivans in Tannenberg made us feel hopeful for a new strategy in taking over the fortress soon. Thirty more large siege guns were brought along with three battalions of specialist sapper infantry troops, and thirty batteries of gas artillery.

17/07/1915:

No surrender from the Russians. The fortress had almost been reduced to rubble. We couldn’t successfully hit their well-guarded machine gun nests. The Russians had pushed more militia men to the front trenches. 

24/07/1915:

In the morning, we were tasked to place the gas cylinders on top of the first trench in different instalments. It was 6-7 batteries per installment; the gas cylinders were a mixture of chlorine and bromine gas. The ambient conditions were not good that day. Siege mortars continued on both sides, returning fire. 

30/07/1915:

Waiting, nothing but waiting, just ready to hear from high command on our next move. Also nervous about the possibility of the Russians going on the offensive. The conditions were still not right for a gas attack that day. Siege mortars continued to rain down on the fortress. We got more barbed wire placed in different zones. Dried biscuits dipped in tea satisfied the hunger that day.

02/08/1915:

Lieutenant Anders placed our squad on the far edge of the left flank to monitor the railway. I couldn’t see anything; all day waiting to see movement from the Russians, but there was nothing, nobody moved. The drum of the siege mortars had drowned my senses. 

06/08/1915:

What I remember of that morning of the 6th of August is how brisk it was. It must have been 13°C; the wind was on our backs. It was blowing just right, and we were quickly ordered to fall in rank. It must have been around 0400; dawn was upon us, and the dark, misshapen silhouette of the fortress loomed just beyond the horizon as I took a final deep breath of fresh air before fastening my gas mask.

Our mortars began firing to overwhelm the Russians while we turned the knobs of the gas cylinders. Ferocious clouds of yellowish green came forth from the pipes like hellhounds let loose. The wind carried the dense gas toward the enemy; every battery of gas was unloaded. Before me lay what seemed like a sickly tiger stretching well over three kilometers long and seven meters tall, ambling toward the fortress. The height of the tiger quickly dissipated as the compound was so dense that it lingered on the ground, prowling, suffocating everything in its wake.

It was not long before I heard the screams of the Russians and militia men in the first trench zones. I stood there watching the needles of the gauges on the cylinders move, focusing in hopes that my ears would ignore the pleas for help. Within minutes, the screams were no more, machine gun fire from the Russians started spraying our direction, but that too soon slowly stopped. The chlorine and bromine quickly oxidized the metals of their guns, rendering them useless. Soon there was no more machine gun fire, the screams faded away from the further lines, the hiss of the cylinders decrescendoed, emptying all of the gas.

All I could hear was my heavy breathing within my mask; the sun was rising, making the pale green cloud more visible as it danced around ground level, encasing the Osowiec fortress. About 15 minutes passed before Captain Bayerlein shot his flare gun, and the mortars stopped firing. He blew his whistle, and my compatriots and I left our trench. We marched side by side, maneuvering around the barbed wire through the thick yellow-green cloud. I could see about 10 meters ahead of me, the dense cloud was like fog covering majority of the sunlight. The dead black grass crunched underneath my boots, dead birds and squirrels lay dead with blood coagulating from their nostrils in the wet marsh. The trees we passed became wilted with dead, black, and yellow leaves. 

As we approached the first Russian trench, we saw nothing but bloodied bodies. I had my rifle ready for anyone who might have survived, but all the corpses lay still. I think I saw a piece of lung tissue, but I pushed mud over it with my boot so that I wouldn’t think much about it. Then the second trench, then the third…nothing but corpses. The majority of them didn’t have gas masks; some of them had rags across their faces. Those who did carry masks looked like they hadn't had enough time to react and put them on. I remember letting out a sigh of relief because it was a lot of dead bodies. I personally didn’t think we would be able to take the fortress, but now there was no resistance.

We marched a few more meters when suddenly, on top of a small mud hill, before the fortress zone, there stood a man. The pale green fog covered any features to point out who it could be or what rank this person was. Its rigid and hunched position made me think that this poor soldier was still suffering the effects of the gas. Captain Bayerlein fired at the soldier, but the man did not react. The bullet hit him right in the chest, but this man still stood. The captain fired again, but the body did not fall. What happened instead was that the man raised a stiff arm in the air, holding a sword. Through the moving green fog, I then lay eyes on the decomposing features of blood running down the eye sockets, nostrils, and mouth, the pale yellow flesh looked burned and decaying, sinking into the cheekbones.

I gasped at the horrid sight before me. The corpse was alive?! The sound it made as it growled and gurgled, spewing organ tissue on its uniform, then from behind it and before it, as if rising from the ground came a hundred lurching corpses. I couldn’t believe my eyes; they were wearing soldier attire, carrying bayonets. They were dead but were not; how could that be? Their postures and demonic screams made me freeze while seeing the horde. Others around me opened fire, but none of the dead fell; they continued advancing toward us with blood flowing from every pore of their body. They spewed out dark tissue like one spews out bile; they moved with wide, unflowing stances, taking bullets but would not fall.

I screamed, I ran, and many others did too. I tripped over a few men as I tried to get away from the undead. Some got caught in barbed wire, while others fell to the rusted bayonets of the corpses. Bullet after bullet, nothing stopped them. I had the urge to rip my gas mask off as it became chaotic and hot inside. I continued running when I tripped over one of the corpses we had passed from the trench zones. I screamed, thinking it had grabbed my ankle. Through the green fog, more soldiers ran. I raised my arm, cowering in fear of being trampled, but once the soldiers of the same uniform passed, quickly the dead followed. The stumbling, hunched,  lurching fiends got closer and closer. Their eyes were dark crimson, their skin bubbled and fell off, terrible sounds came from their mouths like a legion of demons deep within, and their stiff arms made their yellow, decaying hands look like claws grasped around rusted rifles. I fired one shot because I did not know what else to do, and that didn’t do anything to the undead. I panted and slipped while pushing myself off from the muddy, wet ground. These ghouls, who had lain for God knows how long in the bogs, were wanting to bring us down with them. I managed to pick myself up and continued running, not looking back, gasping till I saw the German lines.

We retreated and pulled back from our position. I did not sleep for many nights after that. My regiment got moved to a different division. I heard that a few weeks later, the fortress was taken, but there was no one there, no evidence of the dead ambling aimlessly around the premises. Many soldiers who were not there didn’t believe me, and even today, my father thinks I’m making things up, excuses for not being warrior enough to take a simple fortress. I don’t care if people believe it or not, but I know what I saw that day, the undead following their orders till the end.