Guts and Glory

                              

                                                                Guts and Glory                                                                                                                    
                                   
      John Chadwick pushed back his chair, stood up and stepped back  from his computer desk as he turned his tired eyes to the window and outward at the rising sun as it peeked its morning rays through the pines on a hilltop a few hundred yards from his house.  He had been up all night at his computer. He yawned and stretched.
   
    “What a night,  I have had it. Time for me to hit the sack.”
   
      He reached for the standby button on his keyboard and knocked over an empty Pepsi can, it rolled off the desk and clattered onto the hardwood floor of his bedroom. A platoon of empty Budweiser cans  stood on the desk near  his computer monitor and the ashtray, which was full of Marlboro butts, and the cans; a group of dead soldiers that still served as testimony of a long night of computer gaming and beer drinking.
      He turned and walked toward the hall entrance for a final bathroom stop before going to bed. 
A sharp  knock on the front door echoed in the living room and reverberated throughout his small house.
John was slightly startled.  He stopped in the hall.
    “Who the hell can that be?” He mumbled scratching a stubbled chin. He squinted at his watch pulling the sleeve of his flannel bath robe back far enough to expose it.
    “Hmm, I gotta pee,  lettem knock.”
More loud rapping came from the front door:
    “Hallo! Hallo anybody home?” 
    “Oh what the…?”  John grumbled.
Knock knock knock.
    “Is anybody home?”
    “Yea yea yea, what do you want?” John scowled walking through the living room toward the door; his bathroom break now irritatingly postponed.
Knock knock.
    “Hallo!”
      John pulled  open the shade of the door and peeked out the window. Who could be coming to his house at this time of the morning on a Sunday and bugging him like this?
He squinted and blinked through the glass, trying to focus on the face that belonged to the dark silhouette.
      It was an old man. A timid looking, frail skinny little old man.
His thick gray hair and pale-pasty wrinkled skin surrounding his sharp blue eyes was in vivid contrast to the  black suit he was wearing.
    “ I vus vundering if you could help me, sir.”  He said nearly pressing his nose to the glass.
    “What’s wrong?” John asked hesitating at the man’s obvious German accent.
    “Vell, I uh, my uh, car is up the road about two kilometers and uh, I’m afraid it is  broken down. I vus hoping maybe you could let me use your telephone.” The man pleaded.
      He had pushed his hands into the pockets of his black pants as he tried to shrug-off the cold, his boney shoulders  protruding through the black material of his coat. An awkward silence fell upon them as John regarded the sight of this figure standing on his front porch. The morning sun was radiating from behind the man and it made his facial features appear dark shadowed and chiseled.
      John craned his neck to get a view out into the snow covered yard as if to see if anyone was with the old man. The old man appeared to be alone. After a long moment, John came to a skeptical decision; It’s just some old gray haired  wrinkled up codger that needs a little help, John was nearly a  certifiable codger himself, at least that’s the way he felt about it. Perhaps being forty nine years old, and  living alone doesn’t quite qualify one to be at codger-level, but John had shut out the world in the last few  years after the divorce and the kids were now off to college and he had fallen into a semi-depressed  state.         
    He had done nothing much anymore beside work forty hours during the week at the post office  and play games on his personal computer while he was at home, particularly a World War Two fighter simulation game that he had grown so fond of and had developed such a strong addiction to that he would spend an un-healthy amount of his personal free time doing nothing but taking part in numerous fighter plane scenarios  as a simulated World War Two fighter pilot. 
    However,  he could still sort-of relate to the old guy at least on the level of starting to feel the pain of old-age creeping up on him, and besides ,the guy did need help, and John found the man’s German accent intriguing.

    “Well,  okay.  I guess that’ll be alright.”

    John reached for the locking mechanism and released  the bolt, then, being  in mid-yawn, turned the door knob and as the door  squeaked wide open a blast of cold air swept into the room and it was at that moment that John had noticed  that there were no foot prints left in the snow behind the old man but, it was a thought too late as  the little thin old man stepped into the house and closed the door behind him.

    “So, it is you. You are zee one.”
    “What are you talking about ?”
    “Is it you who is using ziss… com-pyooter device as you call it?”
      “Computer? What about it?”
    “It is ziss compyooter, yours specifically ,as to zee reason of my presence here, in your house, it is not my automobile broken.”
    “Now look old man, I don’t know what kind of a freeking nut case you are but, you better get your butt  out of here right now!”
    “Oh no, I vill not need to do zat, I cannot leave. Not now zat I have arrived and have entered your house.”
    “What are you talking about?”

    John reached for the oldman’s arm with the intention of providing a swift and forceful escort out the door and into the snow, possibly face down. His hand passed through the old mans arm as if it were a transparent hologram.

    “What the…”

    John backed away from the little gray- haired man. He quickly stepped to the window and looked again in horror, reconfirming a realization. The snow-covered  walkway leading up to the house was smooth and undisturbed, there were no foot prints and no visual evidence indicating the presence of a person coming onto the porch. His eyes found the old man again, his pupils widened and he stepped back toward the hallway leading to the bedroom.

    “Who are you?”

    The old German stood sullen near the door as John backed away toward the hall.
    “Perhaps you have heard of a town called Luckenwalde, Mr. Chadwick.”
    “Luckenwalde?  Yes, I think I may have. I believe that’s a town in Germany. ”
    “Yes, It is a small town south- vest of Berlin.”
    “Yea, so?”
    “Vell, Mr. Chadwick, it vus near zis town zat I vatched in horror as zee flaming vreckage of a large aircraft came down from zee sky and destroyed my house, my home. My daughter and my two grand daughters vere in zat house Mr. Chadwick.”
   
    “So what does that have to do with me?”

      “Oh I believe it has a great deal to do viss you Mr. Chadwick, a great deal indeed.”
    “Well, why damn it, why?”
    “If you remember zee Berlin map on your compyooter game you vill see ziss town Mr. Chadwick. You vill then see and you vill remember vut happened und ven, und you vill know.”
    “Still, what does it have to do with….”
    “Mr. Chadwick, let me ask you a question: Did you not fly viss zee Luftwaffe last night?
    “Yes I did. In a  Godblasted video game!.”
    “Did you not fly in defense of zee Berlin area? Against zee Army Air Forces of zee United States und it’s allies?”
    “Yes, I did”
    “Vut did happen last night Mr. Chadwick?”

    John thought of calling the police.
   
    “No no Mr. Chadwick, zee phones vill not verk. I assure you.
    “How did you know I was gonna…?”
    “I know a great deal, now vy don’t you just tell me vut  happened last night.”
    “Oh  this is just crazy. Get out of my house!”

    John approached the oldman and he slowly pushed his right index finger  into the man’s chest and watched as it disappeared into the black fabric of his coat; he quickly withdrew his finger and snapped back.
    “Nope,  this is not happening, I must be dreaming or something.”  John stood shaking his head in doubt of what was taking place as old-gray- hair  stood and silently smiled.

    “It IS happening Mr. Chadwick.”

      John stepped back  slowly and sighed heavily, strolled to the other side of the room and eyed the old man suspiciously. He threw a glance back out the window with the frown of all frowns. Hands pushed into the pockets of his bathrobe:
   
      “ Okay,…. okay …I’ll go along with this little joke, for now:

      In the game; the mission took place in March 1945 and I belonged to the Jagdgeschwader 52 as a  Messershmidt 109 fighter pilot and I was dispatched to stop American bombers of the Eighth U.S. Army Air force as they were  attacking the homeland every day from bases across the English Channel.
I was following orders.
      My orders were to seek out and destroy any  allied aircraft but specifically the B-17 Bombers, we called them Boeings, the Yanks were using them mostly at the time. My flight of  eight Me 109s took off at 0900 hours from Gatow, I was number four and as we climbed to altitude our number three plane spotted the contrails approaching from the west; it was the bombers. 
      As we approached to setup our attack my flight was broken up and scattered by a group of Mustangs that  had come down to meet us. My wingman was killed and I managed to get one of the Mustangs to leave a trail of black  smoke but, he disappeared far below in the clouds and I never saw him again and the next thing I knew I was all alone and I could not see any other aircraft accept for the bombers on their way to the east.
      I gave chase and after what seemed an eternity  I was able to overtake the bombers and it seemed that I went undetected because I tried to stay lower than the bombers and below the horizon so my dark colored fighter could blend in with the terrain below. As I increased my lead of the formation I climbed into the sun and when I thought my altitude was above that of the bombers behind me I turned to the west and  flew directly toward them.
      I attacked with the sun to my back, flying head-on with the number one bomber in the formation, closing in fast I fired my cannon at the nose of the B-17 and I rolled over missing the belly of the big bomber by only a few meters.  I dove away to avoid the browning machinegun fire and building up speed I got out of range as fast as possible.  Once I felt safely out of range I started a slow gentle climbing curve to get set up for my next attack. I didn’t know what had happened to the lead bomber that I had fired at until I was closing in; this time I was planning a side deflection shot.
    It was then that I saw him. It was spiraling down slowly in a tired looking almost  flat-spin but as it tried to float and get lift  it would roll over again inverted and dive down in a terminal spin toward the Earth.  Although I was aiming for the pilots windshield I must have managed to hit the number three engine because flames were poring out of it as it left a corkscrew trail of black smoke as it when down. I didn’t smile, I just watched as it spiraled down.  At that time I noticed my fuel level was dangerously low; I must have taken a hit and was leaking fuel so I returned to base. That was the last mission I flew for that night.”

    “Following orders, ha!  Indeed Mr. Chadwick. Indeed.  I‘m not  very impressed viss your valorous service to the Luftwaffe, please spare me anymore of your var stories.”
    “Hey  you ..spooky little creep, you weird old  son of a.. , it’s just a game, a computer simulation. It’s all just a virtual world that doesn’t really exist, sort of like you I guess.  Besides,  you asked me what happened didn’t you?”
   
    “Really, I don’t exist? If I don’t exist zen viss whom are you speaking right now?  If I didn’t exist zen you vould be fast asleep in your nice varm bed now vouldn’t you? You vould not be talking to me right now.”
    “ I uh…”
    “The fact is Mr. Chadwick is zat I DO exist. An event does not take place viss persons or places or objects zat do not exist. Therefore, all  of zee simulated so-called virtual sprawling melees you leave behind vile using your compyooter simulation actually DO exist, und nobody can deny it. They exist in your mind und in zee electrons of zee machine, so, in zat sense zey are present und zey are very much alive und real in zee same manner as I am here right now.”
    “Well, I uh never really thought about…”
    “Vell you had better start zinking about it, because you are about to learn zat virtual reality can very quickly turn to actual reality in zee blink of an eye.
Let me show you something right now, Mr. Chadwick.” 
     
    The little old grey haired man’s face grew twisted and evil,  bright blue eyes unblinking deep in their dark sockets.  He commanded in a loud and boisterous voice. He called to the front door:

    “You can all come in now!  Come in, come in gentlemen, all of you come in.!”

    John stood in the hall and he looked on in horror as the front door once again slowly squeaked open letting another blast of cold air into the house.  Then they came in.

    The first  was dressed in a  dark blue flight suit and  a leather jacket with a sheep skin collar and black leather boots. He was an aviator but the problem was that his head appeared to be melted and there were open boney areas  where the burned skin had peeled away from his face. His skull was exposed and his fingers protruded from the ends of the jacket sleeves as corpse like digits that curled and uncurled as if the man was in pain, or very angry.
    What was able to form a facial expression  did so with a skeletal grin, bloodshot eyes darted side to side in their charred skinless sockets in small jittery movements. He attempted to speak but, the purplish tongue had no lips with which to form  words so he could only manage a low-gravely  moaning gargle however, it  was still very easily understandable to John.
   
      “You did thith to me….” 
   
    “Meet zee captain of zat B-17 Mr. Chadwick.”    Old gray hair said  motioning to the aviator.
      “Captain Moore, ziss is John Chadwick, zee pilot of zee Messerschmitt that hit your plane last night.”
    “Oh my God.”  John said.
    “Hellllo,  mista  thadwick.  “
    “Oh my God, this can’t be happening.”

  Captain Moore extended his boney hand.

    “Oh my God this cant be happening! This isn’t happening!”
  Gray hair called out for the rest of them:
    “Come in! all zee rest of you come in!”

    The navigator calmly stepped in; his right arm was severed at the mid-point of the bicep. The jagged bone was sticking out as the shredded muscle flopped around it and the right side of his skull was  missing down to the ear exposing the dark red and gray matter of which seemed to be trying to fall out. His facial muscles were still intact. 
He said:
    “Hey mister, you really got us with that thirty- millimeter. Good shot, he he.”

    In shuffled another aviator:

    “Hi, how ya doin? I’m the uh,, or I was the co-pilot.  I’m Lieutenant Crawford, glad to meet ya”
Crawford had a hole in his face where his left eye once- was.

    Then in came the right -side waist gunner; he lurched slowly and awkwardly through the door and into the living room dragging his left leg; the left foot pointing directly backward, looked around the room for a long silent moment, his shifting gaze came to rest on John as he leaned against the wall in the hallway reaching a state of hysteria.

      He motioned for Franky the tail gunner.
   
    “Franky, get in here, we found the sombitch.”

    Franky walked in.  A young man in his early twenties, in his blue flight suit and leather Jacket.  There was no sign of any injury what-so-ever on Franky.
Waist gunner waved a  charred boney skinless  arm toward Franky and pointed while holding his gaze at John:
    “This is Franky the tail gunner, he’s the only one who went without a scratch, a dang-blasted  miracle, he got out through the tail gunner hatch before the plane exploded and broke in half.
He’s gonna help us with you.”
   
    “This can’t be…!”  John turned and ran. His old leather slippers swished on the hardwood floor when he came to  a skidding stop at the end of the hall. He turned around and looked back. His eyes widened before he entered the bedroom slamming the door behind him.

    The living-dead aviators listened  as the ‘click click’ of the bedroom door’s locking mechanism echoed down the hall.  Those who had lips smiled mischievously, and the ones who didn’t seemed to only widen a toothy lipless grin as the thrill of the chase had now begun; however short a chase it may have been. 
The B-17 radio operator entered from the front porch to join his comrades in the living room dragging his legless upper torso over the  dark hardwood floor leaving a slug-track of coagulating blood. He made his way to an end-table next to the sofa and fumbled with the clock-radio. After some gargly  profanities he finally managed to turn-on the clock radio, it then produced the music of Benny Goodman, sending the sound  all through the house.
    “ Hgk hgk hgk he ha ha.”
The radio operator cackled his satisfaction, all the hair follicles on his head were burned away, but he still managed  a smile.


 
      In John’s bedroom:

    “Pull yourself together man, pull yourself together.”

    The room was rich and afforded a dark solid look of mahogany with a bed frame and nightstand.
Soft white light washed in from the window as John now realized that the electricity in the house was cut off. He pushed a hand under the mattress reaching fumbling and cussing under his breath, then he shifted his frantic search to the nightstand, his hands shaking badly. He knocked over the lamp and it crashed to the floor sending small shards of broken glass over the hard wood.
    “That’s it, that’s it,  ha ha.”
    He found his Smith & Wesson .38 revolver under some old credit card statements  and a Flight Journal magazine in the back of the drawer. He flipped open the cylinder to check the rounds; it was loaded.  With a flick of his wrist he snapped it back closed , quickly shot a sweaty nervous glance at the door and went to the corner were his computer desk was. The fact that he could hear Benny Goodman playing from the living room did not phase him one single bit.  It was an understandable  addition to things happening in his house on  this morning, the music even seemed to make sense to him. “ Ha ha, wow. Benny Goodman, that’s perfect, just perfect.”
    Sweat dripped from his brow as he crouched and waited in a defensive position  behind his computer desk in the corner. “Defensive position.” He thought, whispering hoarsely to himself.
    ”In defense of what?” 
    He thought of going out the window. He could very easily do that, just go out the window and run away. Run to the car, the snow covered car. He peeked out the window and got an angle good enough to see his Jeep Wagoneer sitting in the driveway with half a foot of snow covering it. He thought of doing that, doing just- that. Go out the window, run across the fifty or so feet of front yard and  jump into the Jeep and hall-butt out of here and away from this madness.
    “Where are my keys?”  He muttered to himself.  “ Damn, they are in the kitchen drawer near the stove. Son of a bitch!”
    He crouched in the corner behind the desk, nervously analyzing his possible courses of action.
    “ I’m going for it anyway, I have to get out of here. It’s time to go out the window.”
      He stood up, slid the pistol into his pocket  and slippered around the computer desk and to the window when an eye-less human face pressed against the glass from the outside. The aviator’s nose was pressed flat against the pane and the tongue and lips were trailing saliva in a circular motion on the cold glass. Time moved slowly as John stumbled  backward and fell, his rear-end planting heavily into the soft comfortable chair at his computer desk. The chair accepted the weight and broke his fall very efficiently as it rolled back on it’s wheels gently stopping when he reached the back wall near the corner.

    “ How ya doing there fighter jock?”  Queried the navigator. ( He had been the first to make it down the hall. )

    John turned to find the bedroom door wide -open and the threshold filled with the faces hands and grotesque disfigurements of the bomber crew as they crowded  into the bedroom. Franky, the tail gunner, shoved his way around and through them as he stepped into the room.
   
    “He asked you a question mister."

    John could not answer, he could only sit. It was only after a very long moment of terrified silence that he  remembered;  there was a  gun in his pocket.
   
“Wow, that guy looks like he’s bout to crap on  himself.” The copilot commented.

  Franky nodded in agreement.

    A gunshot cracked through the  small bedroom as a bullet produced a small hole in Franky’s forehead, then another shot put a hole in the wall next to the door, and then another.
    Franky lunged at the computer desk grasping the keyboard with both hands and pulling hard he ripped it away and flung it to the floor. An opened bag of skittles was swept off the desk and the little hard candies bounced and rolled across the room and around the bomber crew's feet crowding in the door way. He then grabbed the cord of the computer’s mouse and after ripping it free he stepped behind John’s chair bringing it around Johns neck. He wrapped it twice and tied the ends off  around the seat-back. John let the gun drop to the floor and clawed at the cord around his neck. 

“Ha ha ha ha ha.”  It was a group- laugh coming from the doorway.

    Franky found more electrical wiring behind the computer and he ripped it free. He continued lashing John to his chair very snuggly with the power cord and then the cord from his flight-simulator joystick. John was soon tied up very securely with his arms to the armrests and his legs bound together at the ankles.
  “How’s that mister fighter-ace?  Do you feel securely strapped in?”
    Franky cinched the cords tightly.
“Good thob Franky, very good thob. Can we get a golf-clap thentlemen? Leth’ all give Franky a little applauth huh?” (The Captain requested from the crowd.)
    “Bravo, bravo.”

    The group of living-dead aviators produced a collective gentle clap with murmurs of appreciation.
It did sound like a golf clap.
   
    Franky stood over John with his hands on his hips and said:

“Well, I guess it’s time to rock, fighter-jock.”
   
  “ Let’s bring in Martins, he hasn’t seen Martins yet, lets bring him in here.” Franky commanded.
  “Here you go Fwanky.“  Captain Moore took the head of Martins as they passed it forward and he handed it to Franky.  He took it with both hands and approached John.
   
“This is  Martins, he was our ball-turret gunner.”

    Franky plopped the expressionless head onto John’s lap, then an arm was passed forward, then another, and then a leg with the black leather boot still laced-up.

Franky said impatiently to John:

“Here, have these.’”
   
      John  responded by vomiting as the parts were placed on his lap.

    “You wanted some realism, how’s this hotshot?  Good enough for you?"

Bring up the rest of him!”  Franky called out.
   
“The rest of him?”  John thought.

“Eew. I aint never gotten used to this part yet. Here ya go hotshot; this is a special high-resolution gift from all of us.”    Franky said.

      After the crew had passed it from hand to hand and finally up to Franky, he  held it briefly in front of John’s face and then released it with a heavy plop.  It was the upper torso of Martins the ball-turret machine-gunner of whom John had not had the pleasure of meeting until this moment. Some of the exposed entrails slid out and snaked away over Johns urine-soaked thighs and crotch, and some rolled  away onto the floor and over his comfortable leather slippers.

   
      All ten of the dead bomber crew were now in John’s room. Also joining-in were a young woman and two little girls and they were painfully reanimated corpses.

    They were around him. Teers tracked down his cheeks. The odor filled his nostrils as he sat tied into his favorite chair.
   
“It’s only a video game, only a game… only a game.”
   
    The sound of John’s voice became muffled as they pulled him apart and into thier world.

         



                                                                      The End