Neo-Odyssey

Chapter Seven

When Taylor awoke, they awoke to pain beyond anything they'd ever experienced before. Every small writhe, every breath in and out, every subtle gasp and shrieking scream made them that much more acquainted with true agony. They couldn't move, they could barely see, what they tasted was copper, what they smelt was blood, and what they felt was simple sheer suffering.

They screamed for a straight minute.

"It's okay, don't worry, you're being helped," said a strong sounding, stern figure, looming over Taylor dispassionately. "Here, have this," he continued, popping something in Taylor's mouth and forcing it down their throat. In an instant Taylor felt the pain grow lesser.

"Good to know the painkillers were as strong as promised. How do you feel?"

It took a few minutes for Taylor to respond, as they gritted their teeth and felt the crashing tides of suffering ebb and weaken. It was still bad, horrifically so, but nothing Taylor hadn't felt before. Conceptually speaking, at least.

"Thanks," they finally croaked out.

The figure looming above took a deep, relieved breath at that.

"Don't thank me. I didn't make the stuff."

"What is it, anyways? I don't know of any painkillers strong enough to deal with broken bones that could also be taken on board a plane?"

"Oh? It's something Florence whipped up." He explained, pulling out and showing off a little vial full of amber liquid. "It's made from the juiced eyes of the snake that did this to you. We've been testing it on some of the other injured. It has some incredible anesthetic properties, although, it isn't without its drawbacks."

"Have you taken any?"

He shook his head.

"Not directly, no. I think. I'm not too sure to be honest... Anyways... You'll be feeling weak, too weak to move all that much, not that that should be an issue for you in the condition you're in...."

As he kept talking, Taylor felt their focus grow keener and keener, analyzing their face in ever greater detail. The way he spoke, the way he moved, it seemed eerily familiar to Taylor.

"Have we met before?"

He seemed to almost freeze up at that querry.

"In a manner of speaking. I helped save you last night."

"Oh, is that right?" Taylor thought about it. His voice... yes... Taylor did feel like they'd heard it somewhere. Now that their eyes had a closer look....

Pain returned, an unbidden flash of searing torment in Taylor's mind, sending pangs of shivering suffering shooting through every last nerve cell the injured medical student had. They saw something, brilliant, blinding, staring back at them. If only for a moment.

"Easy. Try not to get worked up. Your pain is numbed, but your injuries still haven't been directly treated. There's no telling how much damage you could do to yourself if you aren't careful."

"I'm fine Collin, no need to worry."

He paused...

"...I... don't recall giving you my name..." he said, narrowing his gaze. "Are you a fan?"

"A fan?"

Taylor didn't know what he was talking about, a fact that must have been clearly shown on their face, because Collin didn't push the issue further.

"Never-mind. One more question to add to the pile, nothing more. Now then, do you feel like you need anything? More blankets? Pillows? Food?"

"I... no... no, I'm fine." Taylor said, their nerves feeling stone cold under their skin, barely any sensation passing through them. "What about you? What is it that you need?"

Collin locked eyes for Taylor for a moment, before backing away.

"You seem like a smart kid. I'm sure you can figure that out on your own. Anyways, if you need help, just give us a shout, and somebody will be with you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting I need to attend." He finished, walking out and away from the makeshift medical wing of the plane for parts as of yet unknown to Taylor.

"That one has weary eyes," a familiar voice said, "I wouldn't bother him too much. He's got some chip on his shoulder I'd bet, and none of us have any right to bother him about it unbidden."

Taylor turned as best as they could to the source of genial wisdom, finding themselves face to face once more with Sir William Redmond.

"Must be awfully irksome, a student of medicine unable to heal one's own wounds. A physician unable to heal thyself."

Taylor cringed at that.

"I wouldn't be so sure."

"Oh, is that right?" Sir Redmond inquired in a faux authoritative manner, before erupting into gentlemanly laughter. "Pay no heed to me, young one, just having a spot of fun I suppose. In the trenches, me and my mates would make sport of all manner of buggery to keep spirits high, never thought I'd ever catch myself doing it again.

Taylor shrugged it off.

"Fair enough."

"Aye, fair enough! God Almighty, what are the odds? Not even a month left to my name, and I find myself in a scene I thought I'd never witness in my old age. It's like I'm right back to recouping in a makeshift medical wing, deep in the German Hinterland."

Taylor could see it on his face, nostalgia thicker than the blood that stained his clothes. Of times more perilous and horrific than they could imagine, and yet, more important than any other time in his life.

"How old were you?"

He let out a warm stream of jovial laughter at Taylor's inquiry, his face obviously taken by a wave of nostalgic contentment.

"When I first enlisted, I was eighteen... on paper," he said with a sly smile. "They had quite the different attitude about people who lied about their age back then, so long as you were fit to serve. No, I was sixteen, though I actually had turned eighteen by the time I was serving in the Hinterlands."

"I suppose you peaked early?" Taylor quipped, sinking as comfortably into their makeshift bed as possible, while still keeping focused on the centennial sat across from them.

"You suppose right." He shot back with a grandfatherly smile. "It all mattered beyond description, every last thing I did. Good or evil, righteousness or corruption, what we did decided the shape of the world itself. I wish it had never happened, I wish all the friends I'd lost had lived to see today, but it had to be done. And do it we did, with a stiff upper lip and proper English gusto."

Taylor found themselves thinking then, about what it must have been like, how they would have acted had they the chance to fight.

Of course, they'd never let someone like me fight, they knew that in their heart of hearts, of course, he wasn't really supposed to fight when he started either.

"You seem deep in thought, my dear child?" Sir William Redmond said to Taylor, a bandaged up and bloodstained hand popping up from the cover of his blankets to stroke his finely groomed facial hair. "I can imagine why, of course. Please, don't spare any thought on what's dead and buried. That ship sailed long ago, you have your own fight to face, right here and right now. I'm sure you'll meet its challenge to the best of your abilities."

"You sound far more confident than you ought to be... Look at me. My bones are broken, I'm probably hemorrhaging like crazy, if it wasn't for the miracle drug that Collin poured down my throat I'd be screaming my lungs out in sheer agony. I'm as wasted as you are."

He shook his head vehemently at that.

"No, youngster. No you are not. Let me tell you something... When I was about your age, still in the Hinterlands mind you, me and my mates were requisitioned for something I probably shouldn't even be discussing with you right now, not that it'll matter in the slightest if I say so at this point. It's not like they can give the Grim Reaper an arrest warrant for my dear departed soul."

He chuckled at that till his mirth turned to painful coughs, the last of which left flecks of blood upon his blanket.

"Well, anyhow, we were sent to deal with one of the Ahnernerbe, a real lune of a Jerry. According to our intelligence, he'd literally struck gold, and our superiors were afraid he'd use those new assets to help finance the Nazi war efforts. At worst, kindle a resurgence of the menace of the Third Reich once our guard was down from kicking their evil flame into the dust. At best, our officials figured, he might use it to hire mercenaries and procure new war material to stage a recovery operation for members of the German high command whose positions were being threatened by the recent Soviet advance."

"I take it you succeeded in killing the bastard?" Taylor inquired, all too eager to hear of the grisly fates of people who'd have put them to death, had those monsters the choice and opportunity.

"Of course. Now I was just part of the offensive. A small part. Most of the exciting daring doo was done by specialists tasked with tying our rag tag force together. What I do remember was the Ahnernerbe. He'd managed to escape during the assault, wounded, and ran into the woods. I and other grunts like me were sent into those woods to chase him down and end the fiendish Fritz once and for all..."

He paused then, his jovial demeanor growing cold, disturbed. When Taylor looked at his face, they saw flashes of those harrowing events in his eyes.

"Sir Redmond?"

Tailor's words failed to reach him, the old gentleman still stuck in trancelike shellshock.

"You wouldn't believe it if I told you..." he muttered, the color draining from his face, his body shivering coldly. "Nobody did. They said we imagined it, that it was a bear, or some large wolf. That we'd mistaken it in the dark, that we were jumpy, superstitious..."

Taylor felt like they could see it. No, Taylor felt like they'd lived it.

"I don't know what it really was. I try not to think about it. I try to forget how it tore my friends to ribbons, left them as naught but red stains upon freshly fallen snow..."

He bit his lip now, blood trickling down from it. That hand which had been stroking his mustache now balled up in a deathly clenched grip. Taylor heard him panting, breathlessly, fighting for air as memories best left undisturbed assaulted him anew.

"I don't know what the Ahnernerbe really found in those unholy woods. I don't want to know. It certainly wasn't gold, no, I reckon that was just a cover. Or maybe he did have some, yet, it certainly wasn't all he had stumbled upon. When I found him, wounded by rifle fire, bleeding out on the snow, muttering madly in what ought to have been German, I gave him a taste of what he'd put me and my mates through. Not that that stopped the thing."

He looked so exhausted now, like his life itself was running cold in his veins, ebbing away with each new word uttered.

And yet, Taylor couldn't speak a word to dissuade him from further disturbing himself.

I need to know. No, it's that I can't stop listening now. I know how this ends, I know how it began, I need to know how things got from A to C.

"When I was done acquainting him with my combat knife, I took everything of value from his body, then pulled an old trick my Sergeant had taught me. Rigged his corpse with grenades, for all the good that would do, then hanged him up by the trees in plain view. While my few remaining friends and I were running away like bats out of Hell, we heard it, an explosion carried by the wind, and a grisly howl right out of one of Mr. Lovecraft's magazine tales."

He looked like he was about to cry then.

"Are you done?" Taylor asked, growing ever-more concerned for the nice old man.

"My dear child, it never is." He replied, voice quivering, body shaking uncontrollably. "I turned back to look, and it looked right at me, eyes glowing red, flying across the snow at speeds no living thing should be able to make haste at. I don't know how I survived. I shouldn't have survived. Everything from then on was a blur. Its never been clear, everything, like fog in my mind. Like the faces of long past acquaintances, the details are never there, yet, the outline remains, the shape of it all...."

Sir Redmond stopped talking.

"It's okay, I-"

"No!" he yelled, all eyes in the medical section turned to him.

"...No, you need to understand, you need to know, that as bad as things might get, there is always the hope of escaping the present horror to see a joyous next day."

He cleared his throat, and resumed.

"I remember the taste of blood, no, not remember, it's still there..." his eyes grew wet, his brow weary. "My friends, my own, even that of the creature. No doubt from its wounds. It doesn't really matter, hurt as it was, some hellish vitae still surged within it. It tore the rest of my friends apart, one by one, till the bravest of us all decided to pull a Hail Mary. He yelled for us to get back..."

Sir Redmond grimly chuckled at that.

"Us. Ha, as if there was anyone else left to hear him... still... I heard. I saw. He set off a satchel charge that had gone unused during our storming of the Nazi facility, then tackled the evil monster. Brave Yorick, poor Yorick, he saved my life that day, at the cost of his own. I don't know if it was the creature or the explosion, but something flung me some ways away, after hence I crashed into a tree, thereafter drifting into unconsciousness. I awoke a day later in the company of another bloody, battered squad. They wouldn't talk about the circumstances they'd found me in, they claimed they couldn't even remember. They just dropped me off at the nearest medical terminal, and forgot about it all."

His story finished, he was silent, reflective, tears now welling down his face despite his best efforts.

"And what about you? Do you wish you could forget?"

Without hesitation, he nodded.

"Of everything I had seen in that gruesome conflict, nothing has ever surpassed that twilight hour of damnation I stumbled my way out of. So, yes. I dearly wish I could have forgotten."

He raised his other arm from out beneath the covers then, staring forlornly at a curious ring upon his index finger.

"They never got back to me you know. I suppose it had to do with a logistics flummox, they likely couldn't find my position, the medical facility was some many miles away from that primeval forest. Besides that, I'd signed up under a false identity, which I subsequently dropped thereafter, and claimed from then on that I was a fresh recruit whom had gotten mixed up in a sticky situation. Once that was said and done, they had no way to find me."

He started stroking the ring, the metal seemingly glistening under his touch.

"When my service was done, I blamed my lack of recruitment papers on just that, a logistics flummox, which was tacitly accepted. Of course, everyone who knew better understood that I simply didn't want to admit that my service had begun under a false identity at an improper age. Once that bother was sorted I sold everything I'd looted from the Ahnernerbe facility during the initial raid, a small fortune of smallish artifacts, and used it to start up an importation business back home. My business grew and propagated over the decades, branching out into other related ventures, till I made a true fortune. I found a wife, had children, and they in turn had kids of their own."

He looked away at the ring, his eyes locking their gaze with Taylor's.

"Believe me when I say, what you have just suffered, it can be overcome. I'm sure you have a future waiting for you, more rich and beneficent than you can imagine now, under your present duress. Courage, kindle it in your heart, and before you know it you'll be back home."

Taylor understood him. Understood what he was saying. His point was well made, powerfully conveyed, yet one loose end stuck with the young injured soul.

"And how about that ring? Where does it fit into all of this?"

Sir Redmond broke eye contact, glancing down at it.

"I kept one trinket, so I'd never forget." He rubbed it over anew with his fingers, finding some relief in that small act. "Of all the nonsense he had on his person, this seemed by far the finest. I couldn't tell you why. Just... just a feeling, I suppose."

He closed his eyes, and slumped down into his makeshift bed.

"Now then, dear child, if you'll excuse me, I do believe I must rest my eyes".

And just like that, right on cue, the centennial veteran fell into sleep's gentle embrace.

Not a bad idea. I suppose I'll follow suit. Taylor thought, doing much the same.

When sleep came for them, it was by far a deeper experience than Taylor had ever know it to have been before. The youth couldn't say why, medically speaking, but it felt as if, for just a brief moment, they'd found some tranquil shelter from the unkind reality they'd been forced to face.

They, and Sir Redmond alike.