The Bloody Red Baron

Part Two: No Man's Land Chapter 20

Foreign Field
The stick was torn from his hands. Wind blast dashed his whole body. He realised the entire front of the RE8 had been wrenched off, ripped aside. His life was probably saved for a few seconds. The stove-hot engine was no longer three feet in front of his lap. Jolted out of its cowling, the contraption would have shot into the cockpit like a big bullet, punching through his soft body.
Winthrop was pushed back into his seat by the force of the crash, then thrown forward into dark. Hard ground thumped him in the chest and face. He reflexively grabbed earth as if it were eiderdown.
His ears were still assaulted by the roar of the air and the grinding of the RE8 coming apart all around him. Something heavy fell on his back, forcing him further into the dirt.
The goggles prevented his eyes from being mashed into his head but his mask was ribboned. Dirt went up his nose and into his mouth. A sharp spar worked its way through his Sidcot into his side. Every part of him hurt, as if he had been beaten about the belly, kidneys and groin. Death was a single breath, a heartbeat, away.
Cat, he thought. Sorry for the silly letter ...
He lifted his face from the ground, coughing and shaking loose matter from his mouth and nose. He breathed again. And again. His heart still beat. Maybe he would not die? Or maybe he was already dead?
This was something like the plain of hell he had imagined as a child, listening to the Reverend Mr Kaye, Catriona's father. There were distant screams and pillars of fire, and a deep darkness.
He shrugged violently, dislodging the broken wing-frame that had fallen on his back. His Sidcot tore as he extracted the spear-like end of a snapped strut.
On his knees, he froze, feeling only pain. His teeth rattled and were thickly smeared with blood and filth. He coughed and spat. His stomach rolled and emptied through his mouth. Being sick at least cleared his throat. He had no way of knowing which bones were broken and which just hurt. It might have been easier to determine which bones were unbroken.
A burst of intense light flared nearby, searing his eyes. Flame seemed to brush his face and dissipate in an instant. The engine had blown up but there wasn't enough fuel left to make a proper fire. Dribbles of flame spread along a dark shape revealed as the nose of the good old bloody old Harry Tate. The machine had died but somehow cherished his life to the last, bringing him alive to the ground.
He should get away from the wreck before there was another explosion, but he couldn't move. He knelt, but it was as if his legs were anchored in the ground. His hammering heart slowed. Fumbling at his sooty face, he dislodged the remains of his goggles. It was as if the clouds parted. Moonlight flooded, spreading sickly. He pulled off his helmet and balaclava and wiped his face with the woolly rag.
No Man's Land was a mad landscape. Before the war, Winthrop had toured this country. It had been pleasantly wooded. Now there were no trees. The earth was pitted and cratered and denuded of all but the scrubbiest plant-life. Rolls of barbed wire were savagely strewn. The RE8 had gathered trails of the rusty stuff and dragged it, scratching deep ruts.
Mud-coloured corpses were beaten into the ground. A few feet away, a fanged skull in a pickelhaube lay on its side. It must have been there since the first push. The Boche didn't wear helmets like that any more. Winthrop tried not to make out disembodied limbs, tattered scraps of uniform, exposed bones. These former fields, fought over for four years, were seeded with millions of dead.
He checked his arms and legs and, though he found bruises and pain, thought his major bones intact. A bullet had creased his bootsole, burrowing like a worm. His sock was stiff with blood but the shot had done no more than tear his skin.
Standing, his right knee jolted pain. His Sidcot was torn and the pyjama trousers underneath were shredded, though his breeches were merely mashed into his leg. His footing wavered, as if on land after a month at sea. In the air, he had got used to the nothing under his feet. His balance was off but he struggled to recover it. His head swam and he blinked, yawning to open up his aching ears. He fought to regain his relationship with the solid ground, with gravity.
A star-shell burst overhead. The brightness hurt his eyes. White trails showered like jellyfish tendrils. Such infernal devices were to light targets for night-snipers. With what seemed agonising slowness, he crouched against the broken side of the RE8, shadow wrapping around him. His ears still roared, so he could not be sure no one was shooting. The star-burst trails fizzled to the ground and he was still alive.
He looked up at the skies for the bat-shapes. Would the Boche comb the wreckage for survivors? That was absurd. His survival was so unlikely and flopping down in No Man's Land so dangerous that even the Red Baron should leave him be. But he knew enough about vampires to guess the shape-shifted fliers would have their red thirst up.
He was not deaf. Besides roaring and ringing, he heard engine noise. There was definitely a machine still in the sky. One of the Snipes. He wrenched off his helmet and shook gathered sweat out of his hair.
There was gunfire. Specks of light in the air. In the direction from which the engine sound was coming.
He could see little, but imagined a fleeing Snipe, flying low, one of Richthofen's bat-staffel things on his tail.
More gunfire. Nearer. A machine passed over. He had the impression of swooping wings and wheels, a Snipe shimmering briefly in moonlight. He turned to follow the fighter's course.
A silent shadow passed, spreading a heart-deep chill. Like a bottom-dweller looking up at a manta ray, Winthrop cringed as the Boche flew over, intent on his prey. The Snipe streaked towards the British lines, wings wavering. It was gaining a lead, leaving the Boche behind. The shape-shifter rose in the sky like a hawk, pouring down fire.
Winthrop couldn't look away. Fire took the fighter in the tail. The Snipe went into a sudden spin. The fire-burst hurt his eyes before he heard the explosion.
The Boche hovered over the crash, underside reddened by firelight. A hugely distended white belly bobbed from the bat's midriff, blue and red veins swarming through the membranous canopies of the wings. He had never seen a vampire so completely shifted from human shape. Not even Isolde was so far gone. Richthofen's flying freaks had fed on Dracula's blood. He understood Mata Hari's confession. The Germans were scientifically cross-breeding to create these monsters.
The Boche rose from his kill on warm air and slipped into the dark of the sky. Slowly, with great straining flaps of his wings, the vampire circled away, returning to the German lines.
Winthrop cursed the murderer's tail. Something in him had died in the crash. Panic burned away, freeing a lizard-like cool from within his brain. This was what it was like to be reborn as a predator. His priorities changed. Immediately, it was important he survive the night and get back to the Allied lines. Beauregard must be told about JG1.
A painful step reminded him of his wounded knee. He needed a crutch. Stuck into the ground was the snapped-off blade of the Harry Tate's prop. It would do. At a pinch, it was sharp enough to pierce a vampire's heart. He wrapped his ruined helmet around the jagged end to pad it, and propped it under his arm.
The Snipe had been heading home. Now its fire was a beacon, signalling the direction he must take. He doubted the pilot would appreciate the use Winthrop was making of his flaming death but could afford no guilt.
There was no point in looking for the RE8's cameras. They must be smashed. If it came to it, Winthrop could draw pictures. Every detail was burned into his memory.
He set out, stumping towards the fire.
Alder, where he had grown up, was on the Somerset levels. In the wetlands, fields were divided by ditches rather than hedges. Outsiders often stood on the village green and assumed it a short walk across the moor to the church where Catriona's father was vicar. But if they took the 'short cut' rather than the winding lane, they would find themselves in a damp maze, forced to walk entirely around fields to find plank bridges laid over the ditches. It could take over an hour to cover the distance a crow could fly in a minute. No Man's Land by night was a similar matter of traps and blinds and dead ends.
Winthrop made his way methodically towards the Snipe's dwindling fire. After dawn he'd be a crawling target for any Boche sniper who cared to draw a bead. Actually, his baggy Sidcot was so muddy it might easily be taken for German grey and earn him a bullet from some enthusiastic but misguided Tommy.
He did not fret and swear when unbreachable tangles of wire or water-filled shell-holes barred his way. Patiently, he retraced his steps and found alternative routes.
His new-mended watch was broken again, stopped at quarter to nine. Possibly, it was not yet ten o'clock. Dog-fights rarely lasted more than a few minutes, though survivors often swore they had fought for upwards of an hour. There were hours before tomorrow's dawn.
Ground crunched and gave under his boots. He was walking on a horse that had been flattened like rolled-out dough. Birds had picked out the eye-sockets. The dead animal was alive with scavenging vermin. Squeaking rats writhed under their horsehide carpet and escaped in all directions. He didn't waste any effort on killing or hating rats. They were no worse than the human feeders-on-the-dead infesting this country.
His knee hurt more. The rest of his pains lessened, if only by comparison. The top of his jury-rigged crutch tore his armpit. His toes were numbed and he hoped the chill would set in around his knee soon.
Shells fell, but not too close. It was Allied policy to pour fire on No Man's Land by night, to discourage German excursions. As things stood, Winthrop considered the logic of the stratagem dubious, though he supposed it a mercy that he was unlikely to run into a lost scout out here in the mud. Even the most impoverished Boche would be equipped with a rifle and a bayonet and all he had to meet aggression was his trusty prop. This was such an impromptu jaunt he'd not even thought to bring a revolver.
The Snipe was directly ahead, its fabric completely burned away. Red-hot metal parts glowed in the last of the fire. It was impossible to tell which of Cundall's Condors this had been.
The daredevil Courtney was dead. Plucked and sucked by the Bloody Red Baron. Almost certainly, Cundall himself had gone west. Not to mention all the Bs: Ball, Bigglesworth, Brown. And, for alphabetical variety, Bill Williamson. Condor Squadron would be crippled.
A shell whistled and burst within a hundred yards. A scattering of dirt pelted his face. It was horribly possible an artilleryman was sighting on the Snipe's blaze, just to have a bright target in the dark.
When he returned, Winthrop would have suggestions to make which would, he felt, greatly improve the conduct of the war. After this picnic, he was entitled to bend Sir Douglas Haig's ear. He'd look up the journalist Kate Reed. As a matter of fact, he'd have looked her up anyway. An idea was forming, and Kate Reed was its budding heart.
With her red hair and sharp tongue, Kate was the vampire Catriona might become. Dainty little fangs in an appealing overbite. Behind her specs, she was smart and resilient. She was the nearest thing to a vampire elder in his circle of acquaintance. He would need an elder. There was no doubt of that. A newborn would not do. The strength was in the bloodline. The Red Baron and his murderous crew were proof of that.
A trap closed on his ankle, barbs sinking into his boot. He wheeled around, lifting his propeller-crutch. He aimed to strike at the thing which held him.
In the dark, there was a human croak. Winthrop saw large eyes in a black, charred face. And shining white teeth, extended vampire incisors exposed by the burning away of the lips.
It would be a mercy to stab with the prop.
The teeth parted with a hiss of breath. Another grip came, at his knee. The creature tried to climb up his leg, to haul itself upright.
It was the pilot. Winthrop couldn't tell which face this had been. The hiss died and the pilot let go of his leg, with an almost apologetic patting motion. The tatterdemalion stood, crookedly. From his twisted shape, he realised the vampire was Albert Ball. The pilot had survived another brush with Richthofen's Flying Freak Show, if barely. His Sidcot was fused with flesh, moulded black over his living bones.
'Good Lord,' Winthrop said.
The ruined leather of Ball's face made a smile. The pilot extended a contorted claw. Winthrop took the fragile hand and shook it, afraid fingers would snap off. He was grateful for the gauntlet that prevented him from touching the crackling greasiness of Ball's skin, but felt the cooked-through warmth of the pilot's grip.
'We'll have to get you home,' he said.
Ball nodded his bald skull. His flying helmet was burned on to him. Cloud drifted across the moon. The darkness deepened.
By himself, the chances had been slim enough. Now, Winthrop would have to get to the lines with the sorely wounded Ball.
These things were sent to try him.
'Come on, old son,' he said to Ball. 'It's this way, I believe.'
They walked towards the sound of the British guns.