Barkers

By: Stephen Couch

If you examine their eyes closely enough when they get The Look, you can tell that something within them -- some vital component of their mind or possibly even soul -- has broken permanently. The Look is about the only thing we haven't discovered how to repair out here. When they get it, it's best just to move on to the next patient and leave them to their fate.

The latest boy got The Look as soon as he'd seen what we'd done to his arms. He didn't scream, like many did; he simply whimpered like a dog, a series of flawless, globular tears flowing down his sooty cheeks. My assistants hauled him from the table and took him outside to be shot. They would remove the weapons we'd grafted to the stumps of his wrists so we could reuse them on the next unfortunate.

I had been a combat medic for three years at the beginning of 1917, and I understood trauma. I fully grasped combat shock, panic, terror, and all the myriad ways the human mind had of avoiding reality. But I didn't think I'd ever understand The Look. We'd taken these destroyed men, these half-men, and repaired them, improved them with mechanisms and devices meant to increase their soldiering efficiency, and they chose to go mad rather than to fight on. We were helping them here, not harming them.

It's not as though we were monsters.

#

We went on a harvesting run today, as Cavanaugh thought he'd come up with a way to use the entire bodies of the dead, not just pieces of them for grafting purposes. The main unit of soldiers was moving towards Passendale, leaving us to our work.

Harvesting was the easiest part of our day-to-day activities. Morgan remarked it was not unlike picking tomatoes from a vine. Since we'd repaired him, he'd had a tendency to make macabre quips like that with increasing frequency. I often thought I could catch a glimpse of The Look in his eyes, but it was never there when I faced him head-on.

Morgan, like a few others, had chosen to remain with the Field Ambulance, assisting us in any way he could. He was our man of choice when doing harvests, as the filtering machine we'd implanted in him exempted him from the effects of chlorine and the phosgenes. Even now I could hear the device chugging away inside of him as we trudged through the mud towards the next set of barbed wire.

"Still moving," Morgan said, as we got closer. I had to take his word for it; my goggles were streaked with grime. The haze of recent killing in the air didn't help matters, either. But as we reached the body strung from the barbs, I could see it was so: the soldier still twitched and shook, suspended from the snarls of wire.

Morgan and I removed the body without damaging it further, carrying it a short distance to where the stretcher-bearers waited. I stripped off the soldier's jacket, rolled him over, and saw the bullet hole close to his backbone. A prod to the arm provoked a twitch, while a poke to the legs did nothing.

Paralyzed, then. I wondered about breaking down the artificial legs I had constructed, rebuilding them around the existing legs of this fellow and connecting them to the spinal column through a less invasive procedure than normal. Something to think about when we got back to the main tent.

For now, though, we had more troops to attempt to save. In the distance, I could see Cavanaugh driving the body cart, with corpses stacked like cordwood within it. Morgan had vanished back into the fog. I splashed fresh water on the gauze strapped to my mouth and pressed forward. There was a solid mile of land to cover before nightfall, and the more bodies we could recover, living or dead, the better it would be for all concerned.

#

At day's end, it wasn't a bad harvest. One hundred dead, fifteen wounded. Where the surgery itself was concerned, we were less successful, as only two didn't develop The Look. Of those two, though, one was my brave paralyzed lad, who was looking forward to walking with his new built-on mechanical legs as soon as their interface grew fully into his back.

In even better news, Field Marshal Haig himself had sent word requesting the presence of some of our best successes on the front lines. Morgan wished to remain behind to further his assistance of our medical efforts, but that still left a dozen enhanced soldiers to fight the good fight as the troops pushed on towards Passendale.

I bid 'my' men farewell at an informal get-together that evening. While they were friendly to anyone who approached their little klatch, they made no effort to mingle amongst the other soldiers present. I toasted them with a small measure of whiskey one of the bearers had scrounged up. Normally, liquor was too valuable to be used as anything other than an antiseptic out in the field, but it was a most special occasion.

"There are those who believe that Europe can be felled with a bullet, with a bomb, with a cloud of gas," I said to the men. "These people feel that the human spirit has no place in their new world, and that all that is required to triumph is inflexible force.

"These people are wrong."

The murmuring of the throng pieced itself into a cheer.

"The human spirit has every place in the new world, and our brave men, our men of the new world, shall demonstrate it at Passendale very soon!" Soldiers moved in, pounding their augmented fellows on the back, yelling and shouting with delight.

"The steel and technology of the new has combined with the human body of the old, and the result is the group of selfless volunteers you see before you. They shall go forth in the morning as the battle is joined, and they shall demonstrate to our enemies that the human spirit has survived, it has adapted, and it will always be triumphant!"

Oh, how they celebrated then. More whiskey materialized, songs were sung, and the men, new and old, made merry as only soldiers can. The evening stretched on, guttering into collective snoring and mumbled reminiscence. The next dawn, our brave, enhanced men set out with a formal salute, off to glory.

Four days later, the dead and dying began pouring in from Passendale by the thousands.

#

After the first few days, all I could see was red. Even in the walking slumber I found myself in, the insides of my eyelids were red, not black. I would nod off during surgery, awakening to find I had operated on ten or more patients during my fugue. That the majority of those patients died surprised me not in the least.

Word was trickling back from the Third Ypres, whether by official means or by the whispers of the dying. Something had gone horribly wrong at the first assault on Passendale, and the right wing of the main force had failed in its objective. The casualties were still coming in as a result of that failure.

When I was awake, I couldn't remain so, and when I tried to sleep, my eyes flew open. I was more of a corpse than the bodies being piled five-deep outside the tents. We were planning to incinerate those piles if ever the dead would stop arriving and accumulating.

One of the other doctors ordered me to bed after I had passed out face-first into one of my patients. I lay on my cot, hearing the screams, the unending, unvarying screams that had been our constant accompaniment over the last few days. The flap to the tent was shut, and I felt as though I was floating through that darkness, entering a world where neither nighttime nor daylight existed.

And as I drifted, I came to find Morgan sitting beside my bed, staring at me without expression.

"They're all dying, sir," he whispered.

"The men...?"

"No one else has your expertise, sir. No one else can augment the men as they come in. Mister Cavanaugh, he has some ideas, but he just can't do it. We need you out there, sir."

It seemed as though I fell asleep for some time, but when my eyes fluttered open again, Morgan remained in his seat, unmoving. He leaned in close, and I could smell the carbon powder on his breath. I could hear his filtration unit chugging away, almost obscuring his light voice. "We didn't go to the trouble of supplying you with all this raw material to see it become food for the vultures, sir. Please, get back to the tent as soon as you can."

Darkness claimed me, and Morgan was gone when I once again returned.

#

No one told me how long I'd been away when I returned to surgery. Things hadn't slowed down in my absence, however. The stench was so unbearable everyone was wearing moistened gauze masks as though a gas attack was immanent. Cavanaugh greeted me with a salute and a grim smile. I returned the gesture and dived right in.

My first patient had the misfortune to seek cover in a foxhole where mustard gas had settled. He was still alive, and functional, so I arranged for his skin to be replaced with a light, flexible metal compound of my creation.

Next, a young man whose hand had been destroyed by a backfiring sidearm. There was enough bone and connective tissue left behind to attach to a new gun, so I prescribed exactly that.

And on and on and on. I had been foolish, caught up in the horror of that first wave of wounded from Ypres, and had lost my professional detachment. But now, in the clear light, I could see how many incoming patients could be saved, improved, and sent back in numbers greater than before.

Throughout it all, Morgan would drift in and out from doing odd jobs across Field Ambulance. He would meet my gaze and nod sagely.

With approval, I would say.

#

There was another disastrous attack on Passendale, and more bodies than ever to repair. I was in a state I'd never experienced before -- absolute clarity of reason and purpose. Every living solider who came in was reparable and easily augmented, and our turnaround on the creation of new men improved with each passing day. Fresh groups of them were sent back to the Front regularly.

Yet the casualties continued to mount. The enhanced forces were being sent to the front lines in greater and greater numbers, but the amount of British wounded didn't seem to be abating.

It was mid-August then, and our good work continued apace. I was examining a fellow named Parsons, who had lost an arm through unknown circumstances. In my off hours, I had sketched out rough plans for an arm constructed of mechanically manipulated, prehensile barbed wire. It would be devastating in close combat.

I was detailing the installation procedures for this appliance to Cavanaugh when Parsons lashed out, grabbing my shirt and pulling me down to his face.

"What are you doing to me?" he hissed.

I waved Cavanaugh away and used my calmest, most doctoral voice. "It'll be all right, son. We're going to fix you, make you even better."

His eyes widened. "You're making me into one of those things? Those mechanical men?"

"Of course. You won't be able to continue fighting unless we augment you, Parsons."

"No! Those things -- God Almighty, don't you know? Don't you know? I saw them. The ones in my unit, they led us into an ambush. They let us get slaughtered and slipped away. They did it!"

I pulled back as best I could, and looked into his terrified eyes. It was as though he had The Look without any procedures having been performed on him.

Still, what he had said...I thought the improved soldiers would turn the tide in the War, yet there seemed to be more death than ever.

And then I thought of my dreamlike visit from Morgan, and what he'd said about 'raw material'.

I barreled out of the surgical tent, heedless to Cavanaugh's shouts.

#

I found Morgan standing outside a tent, studying one of the more putrescent corpse mounds.

"Hello, sir," he said, before even turning to face me. He straightened and pivoted. "Bird told me you were on your way."

Bird? Bird? We had done work on a fellow named Bird today. How did he know Morgan? Even better, how did he get word to him while he was still recuperating on the other side of the Ambulance?

"Someone finally got to you, didn't they, sir?" He was pleasant, conversational even. "Told you terrible things about my kind."

"Your...kind?"

"Well, your kind, to be honest, sir. You created us, after all. Made us what we are today."

"Morgan," I said, my mind whirling, "Is it true? Is what that young man told me true?"

"Oh yes," said Morgan. "Absolutely."

My knees gave out, and I slumped to the ground. Morgan stepped up beside me, crouching down to meet me. "Why?" I said. "Morgan. God, why? Why betray your own men?"

He chuckled. "I'm not betraying 'my men' at all, sir. If anything, I'm acting -- all of us are acting -- in our best interests. It makes sense, you must admit. The more humans who are wounded, the more new men that can be created from their remains." He stood, stretched, gazing at the moon as he continued speaking. "Did you know, sir, that you've been working on German soldiers as well as British ones? And they, once released, have rejoined their own armies, to cause further damage to their men. And so forth. We expect to have representatives in every major world military force by winter's end."

I screamed then, scuttling backwards like a crab. I backed into another stinking mound of bodies. Morgan, in no hurry, strolled to where I cowered. He wore a peaceful smile. "We've studied you long enough to figure out how to perform augmentations ourselves, sir. But still, we'd like to keep you around, for sentimental reasons if nothing else."

He leaned in very close and I got the first good, hard look into his eyes I'd ever had. I realized the truth then: The Look was the normal, human response to the work I'd been doing...the permanent crippling of the soul upon having one's body utterly violated.

When a soldier didn't get The Look, it meant he no longer had a soul to be crippled.

"Come on, sir, up with you," Morgan said, his voice kind. He hoisted me to my feet and pointed me towards the surgical tent. "Lots of work to do."

I started walking towards the tent, obeying Morgan, but stopped. This couldn't be. Would I not fight? Would I not battle to stop this abomination I'd unleashed upon the world?

I turned back towards him, a furious protest on my lips. Then I saw them, and my heart froze. New men in the dozens stepping from the shadows, falling into a semicircle with Morgan at the apex. They looked at me with such peace in their eyes, such certainty in their smiles.

They looked at me as though I was God.

"Go on, then, sir," said Morgan. "Keep up the good work." He gestured at his brethren. "We're all counting on you...father."

In the distance, I could still hear the screams as the bodies were being brought in. So much to do, so many to attend to, and nothing I'd ever done had helped to save as many soldiers' lives as...

...as the augmentations had.

I closed my eyes, turned away from my creations, and walked back to surgery. I had an artificial arm to install on Mister Parsons, and who knew how many procedures to perform after that. Operation after operation, from now until the new men, in their burgeoning numbers, ended the War by default.

I could feel the expression forming on my face as I entered the tent: The Look, branded onto my features for all time.

#

The Third Ypres continued for months, and the deaths rose to the hundreds of thousands. Many times I would hear a soldier, one of our proud British boys, murmuring in native German in his delirium. I didn't think about who might have dressed him in his enemy's uniform and sent him our way. I merely diagnosed what was wrong with him, arranged for his transformation, and moved on to the next stretcher.

There are those who believe that the human spirit has every place in the new world, and that all that is required to triumph is for that spirit to adapt and survive.

Those people are wrong. I know, because I used to be one of them. And those who continue to believe such things find their numbers decreasing every day, replaced by shining steel.

Shining steel flecked with blood, reverberating with the screams of the old world as it is eaten alive.

Copyright 2003.