The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: The Butcher and the Black Tide, Part 8 of 13

Lucky Ford learns that the scars this war leaves on the world are slow to heal when he wanders into tierra muerta, the dead lands on which even el Gallo Rojo dares not tread.

The Butcher and the Black Tide is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is Part 8 of The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: The Butcher and the Black Tide. If you haven’t read Part 1. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, or Part 7 yet, check them out before reading any further.

Content Warnings: Violence, Gun Violence, Animal Violence, Death, Gore, Mild Swearing

TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 13, 1943
LA TIERRA MUERTA
THE SIERRA ESPUÑA MOUNTAINS, SPAIN

The swarming creatures were the size of pigs, all gnashing fangs and leathery green skin, and they surged for Lucky in chittering banzai waves.

He dropped the first with a single shot to its head, but the next came diving at him from behind and took two bullets to stop. Both animals dropped like bags of crap, smacking into the ground with spurts of green blood and pitiful squeaks.

A hiss to Lucky's left brought his Colt around again, just in time to drive a pair of slugs through another pouncing creature. It was right on him when he tagged it, momentum sending all forty-some pounds of its dead weight into his chest, bowling him over and knocking the air out of his lungs. He hit the ground with the still-hissing animal on top of him.

This close, Lucky couldn't help but recognize it: a gremlin, the mutant creation of none other than Department Three's Doctor Metzger. The thing had once been a rat, but strange chemicals and surgeries had turned it into a territorial living weapon. Long flaps of skin stretched between its front and back legs, and its skin was pea soup green. The Nazis would load swarms of them onto high-altitude balloons where they’d lurk, waiting to glide off and latch onto passing aircraft. The little monsters lived to gnaw through aeronautical sheet metal and feast on the men within.

A single gremlin had brought Lucky's plane down in Sicily, and two officials had died when a swarm tried to take down The Express over the Mediterranean.

There were dozens of them surrounding him.

Another gremlin hissed. These things were no less deadly on the ground. Lucky heaved the carcass off his chest and rolled onto his stomach to find his next attacker. He lined up his Colt and fired; his first two shots went low and hit nothing but tree, but his third pierced the swooping creature's heart. The slide locked back on Lucky's pistol, but he didn't have time for a magazine change. He dropped the old Colt and jammed his knife deep into another pouncing gremlin, but the foul thing caught his blade between its ribs and disarmed him with its death spasms. Quick as he could, Lucky snatched up his rifle and scrambled to his feet.

The next gremlin was already on him. He had no time to aim, so he just jabbed the rifle like it was a spear, jamming the muzzle into its gaping mouth. Lucky pulled the trigger, throwing the screeching gremlin off the barrel and spraying the rest of the perched swarm with green blood.

Lucky racked back the rifle's bolt and brought it to his shoulder, ready for another wave. No new targets presented themselves. They had ceased pouncing while waiting for their pack to assemble in full. Those who had already arrived sat in the gloom and watched, clicking their long, bucktooth fangs in unison. For every one Lucky had killed, another three sets of glowing red eyes had appeared.

Lucky studied his enemy and caught his breath in the gloom. Two types of creatures were stalking him.

The largest were the green-skinned, hairless gremlins with gliding flaps that he had seen in the skies. They hissed and clicked their teeth in the shadows. They were urging their smaller pack members forward.

The more numerous gremlins were only the size of large cats, with patchy fuzz covering their gray skin. These lacked their green brethren’s wings. Instead of gliding, they scrambled up trees, across the ground, and upside down on the lattice, hissing as they inched closer to Lucky.

They had to be a younger brood, descendants of the gremlins that Nazis had left in Spain years before. Most of what the Nazis had done to these rats was surgical, but some of Metzger's genetic tampering had been passed down. These feral gremlins were far larger, smarter, and more ferocious than any rat was supposed to be.

Every second Lucky waited to catch his breath, more showed up. They reminded him of the wolves that used to run through the country, back home in Jonesboro. Each pack had a leader, an alpha wolf, and they'd fall into disarray without it.

Lucky latched onto the assumption that these gremlins hunted like Indiana wolves. It was his only hope of getting out of this scrape alive. One decisive shot against an alpha gremlin. He didn’t have the firepower, the manpower, or the time for anything else. His Colt was dry and his knife had was lodged somewhere in a green corpse. With this rickety rifle, he'd only have time to get off one shot before the whole swarm went crazy.

It would have to count.

Lucky craned his neck around to study the creatures, careful not to startle them. If the big ones were the original Nazi creations, it made sense that the biggest would be the boss. Lucky found it perched on a thick poplar branch at his six.

The beast was the size of a prize boar at the county fair, weighing in at a couple hundred pounds, over five times as big as any of the gremlins who had already attacked. It clicked its teeth louder than all the rest, stirring its pack into a fervor.

Lucky steeled his nerves. His next move would set them off, he had no doubts about that.

The alpha gremlin stayed back, ringed by its bodyguards and harem. Its puffy flesh was vivid green, mottled and scarred from years of fighting for its position. Its clacking jaws set the rhythm for the rest, and a low growl jiggled its thick rolls. Its eyes were transfixed on Lucky, like a hungry dog eying a steak.

It would not get the chance to sate its hunger.

Lucky snapped the rifle around as fast as he could. He had only trained and practiced with the M1 Garand, so he was careful to compensate as he swung the longer, heavier rifle around. He'd only get the one shot.

The pack went crazy when Lucky burst into motion, but they weren't fast enough.

Lucky let out half a breath, settled his sights on the snarling beast, and squeezed the trigger. The big alpha only a second to rear back before Lucky's slug drilled through its green snout, spewing green brains out the back of its head.

Every gremlin surrounding him froze in place, their collective exhalation hissing like an old radiator. The alpha's corpse wheezed. Its limp body slid off the branch and thumped to the ground, its piles of flesh and fat shaking ash from the lattice above it. Lucky and the creatures surrounding him watched the dead thing go still.

Lucky flipped the long rifle around in his hands and gripped its barrel like a baseball bat. His movements snapped the silent gremlins out of their trance. He was barely fast enough to clock a diving gremlin like he was sending it out over center field. Another gremlin dove at him but he ducked underneath. He spun around fast enough to give its rear a kick that introduced its mug to a tree trunk. Lucky brought the heavy wooden stock around again and split a third gremlin wide open.

Each desperate swing of the rifle swatted another swooping gremlin out of the air, but they kept coming. Lucky brought the butt down hard on the head of a fallen creature, but in the second his back was turned another pounced on him. Its sharp claws sliced into his shoulder as it tried to latch on. He grabbed it by the scruff of its neck and flipped it over his shoulder to smash it into a tree so hard that two other gremlins tumbled out of the branches above it.

The last thing Lucky needed was to get bit by a gremlin. He'd seen them shred sheet metal and punch through a skull with those teeth; he didn't want to experience that himself.

Lucky whipped the rifle around again, breaking rodents' backs and necks in midair. A small one tried crawling at him, gnashing with its fangs. It came short, only gashing Lucky's shin instead of ripping through his thigh as it had intended. Lucky recoiled in pain, then punted it as hard as he could.

The distraction was enough for another gremlin to crash full-speed into Lucky's chest, knocking his weapon aside and throwing him to the ground. Each of its four clawed feet dug into his chest as it reared back to sink its jaws into Lucky's neck. He tried to get the rifle between those teeth and his throat, but another gremlin ripped the gun out of his hands and began gnawing on the stock like an ear of corn. There was nothing between Lucky's throat and those teeth. He grabbed at its neck, barely holding it back as it gnashed at him.

“Damn,” he grunted.

The gremlin on top of Lucky hissed, spraying his face with hot saliva. It lunged again, its metal-shearing fangs snapping inches from his throat.

A machine gun roared, rattling off a dozen rounds and drowning out all the hissing and screeching around Lucky.

The gremlin on top of him shuddered as bullets buried themselves in its head and abdomen. It dropped dead on his chest, green blood oozing all over him.

Lucky pushed the bloody thing off. More bullets screamed over his head, forcing him to stay low. Green corpses fell out of trees all around.

To his right, the gremlin was still gnawing away on his rifle's stock like a hungry beaver. He swung a fist and socked it in the nose, distracting it long enough to grab his weapon, eject the spent case, and slam a fresh cartridge in. Lucky kicked the gremlin away and fired, putting a round through the base of its neck that dropped it instantly.

With the rifle in hand, Lucky was ready to get back into the fight.

Machine gun rounds continued to howl over his head, keeping him prone. Bullets by the score sliced through poplar trees and screeching beasts alike, forcing the swarm back into the trees and above the lattice.

Lucky charged his rifle again and brought it to bear, ready to take on anything dumb enough to keep coming. He found his sights empty. The only gremlins left lay still, leaking green blood into the forest floor.

The mystery machine gun had gone silent.

Lucky rolled over to find Miller stepping out of the treeline, trailing a a cloud of gun smoke. The stubby barrel of his M3 grease gun glowed orange in the forest murk. Spent brass was scattered all around him, with two empty magazines by his feet.

“How did I know you would somehow find trouble, Private Ford?” he asked. He picked up the empty pair of magazines from the ground and pocketed them, along with a third that he pulled from his grease gun, freshly spent.

“Looks like you know me pretty well,” Lucky answered. He began kicking over dead gremlins until he found the one he'd planted his knife in. He pulled the blade free and wiped the green viscera off on a hairier carcass.

“For one with a sobriquet such as yours, you do seem to run into every conceivable obstacle on the way to your destination,” Miller pointed out. He inserted a loaded magazine into the grease gun, ready for the next challenge.

All Lucky could do was chuckle. He surveyed the blood-soaked grove, trying to catch the breath he didn't realize he'd lost.

TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 13, 1943
LA TIERRA MUERTA
THE SIERRA ESPUÑA MOUNTAINS, SPAIN

They reloaded their magazines while they walked, inserting fresh rounds from the stock of ammunition Father Mandario had given them. Lucky felt safer with his Colt full and on his hip again.

Lucky was silent for a long time. He knew he had abandoned his friends to whatever fate Las Encrucijadas was to meet. He did not know what had happened there after he left, only that Miller had come alone to find him.

“I saw the bolseteros on the road,” Lucky said quietly, “Headed to the town.”

“Yes, they went to the town,” replied Miller. “Every one is dead.”

Lucky wasn't sure he'd heard him right. He stopped in his tracks, nearly losing a handful of bullets in the ash.

“They set up an ambush,” Miller continued. “The trucks never reached their destination.”

“All of the bolseteros are dead?” Lucky was taken aback.

“Almost ninety men. The townspeople truly had no need for us. They were dead before Miss Emilia, Sergeant Hall, or myself were aware there was an imminent threat.” Miller spoke quietly. He seemed reluctant to speak of the incident.

“So the town is safe?” Lucky asked.

“For now,” Miller said. “Mister O'Laughlin, Captain Espada, and the I-soldiers were conspicuously absent from the attack. Danger still remains for Las Encrucijadas.”

“Then why'd you leave?”

“Father Mandario insisted, and Emilia and I concurred. When armed, Mandario's congregation are vicious and efficient fighters. Unfortunately, most of their resources were expended furnishing us and mounting their ambush. Their best hope is for us to delay Espada long enough for them to regroup and re-arm.”

“So Emilia and Bucket...” Lucky started, and Miller finished his thought.

“They have gone ahead to visit one of her hidden weapon caches. I split off where the bolseteros spotted you by the road and then tracked you to the kobold swarm,” Miller said. He was always careful to speak properly and referred to Department Three's mutated rats by their official designation. It was the RAF crews who had survived their early attacks that had coined the term 'gremlin.'

“Well, you found me just in time,” Lucky said. “I know you said the krauts tested weapons here, but how'd those things end up in a, I don't know, a colony like that? Ever seen anything like that?”

“We do know that Doctor Metzger performed extensive genetic modification on these animals. They are very intelligent and take to training quite spectacularly. It is no wonder they were able to adapt to this environment so well.”

“But why weave this nest into the trees? What use could it serve?”

There was a lot Lucky didn't understand about the gremlins, but this activity on such a massive scale seemed to have taken Miller by surprise as well. They had been walking for half an hour and still hadn't reached the edge of the gremlins' woven structure.

“I expect you to submit a report on our observations of the feral kobold to the Bureau for Research and Development, just as I will. If we could, we would be expected to retrieve a kobold corpse, but that is not tenable at present. Thus, without physical evidence to the contrary, I am sure that they will come to my same conclusion: it relates to their chlorophyll.”

“Chlorophyll,” Lucky repeated slowly, trying to remember the word from biology class. It was the chemical plants use to collect sunlight and convert it to energy. “So that's what makes them green.”

“Indeed,” Miller responded. “Bacteria in kobold tissues and blood consume sugars created by the chlorophyll in their skin and produce carbohydrates that sustain them.”

“So they don't have to eat while they're hanging on the balloons waiting for targets. They can just lay out in the sun,” Lucky concluded.

“Exactly correct,” Miller responded happily. “My assumption is that the older, first-generation kobolds weave these platforms to collect solar energy as easily as they can, while the younger, second-generation animals use the latticework to corner prey.”

“The smaller ones have more hair and are less green,” Lucky said, trying to follow his logic. “Meaning less chlorophyll in their skin. They aren't able to get all their energy from the sun and they have to eat the old fashioned way.”

“My conclusion, as well,” Miller replied.

“They really are adaptable,” Lucky added, the only bit of admiration he'd ever express about the blood-thirsty things.

“They are able recognize a threat and alter their behavior quite rapidly to respond to changing circumstances,” Miller observed. A constant tail of ten to fifteen gremlins snaked their way through the inter-woven branches behind them. The creatures were careful not to get too close, but they never let the officials out of their sight.

“It's like they're making sure we leave their territory.” Lucky added. Miller nodded in agreement. “So, how do you know so much about all this? Chlorophyll, Mandario, your time with Emilia? I couldn't keep all of this straight.”

Miller slowed for a moment, but recovered and caught up before Lucky had to adjust his pace.

“That is a long story,” Miller responded finally.

“We have a long walk,” Lucky countered.

“Indeed we do,” Miller chuckled. He saw that Lucky's curiosity about his unique qualities had piqued. He pulled the device from the case on his gear, the thing that looked like a silver cylinder with a crank on one end and a set of wires ending in alligator clips dangling from the other.

“And after this long walk we have a stressful encounter awaiting us at our destination. If we can take a quick rest so I can recharge, I'll tell you what I can.”

They stopped and Miller sat down with his back against a tree. He threw his gun strap off his shoulder and handed Lucky his grease gun. The latticework of the gremlin colony ended a hundred yards ahead, with the gray blizzard of ash visible at its edge. He nodded back behind us at the pack of escort gremlins that still stalked them through the interlaced trees.

“Keep watch over them,” he said.

“Won't take my eyes off 'em,” Lucky said. He aimed the M3 at the quietly hissing creatures, but snuck a peek at what Miller was doing.

Miller had opened a disguised flap on his chest to expose two electrical leads. He attached the device's clips to these leads and took the silver cylinder in his right hand. He began slowly turning the handle with his left. It hummed like a little dynamo as he cranked. It was the buzz Lucky'd heard when Miller stepped away for a spell back in Emilia's hideout. A small red light glowed on the base of the device.

“'Recharge' isn't just a figure of speech, is it?” Lucky asked. Miller looked up at him, his blue eyes smiling behind his gas mask.

“As you may have surmised by now, this suit, and to an even greater extent, this battery, they are what keep me going,” he said, and unbuttoned a flap on a larger, heavier pouch hanging on his webbing. The battery pack was much smaller than the back-pack-sized ones they used in their walkie-talkies. He nodded to the buzzing cylinder in his hands and continued turning the handle as he spoke: “This little alternator is what keeps them going.”

“I figured you work a little different than the rest of us,” Lucky said, attempting a vastly understated joke. Miller kept working the alternator, not even gracing Lucky with a chuckle.

“Did you know that before Eduardo Rosales designed this suit, I had only been outdoors beyond the grounds of Calparock Manor once in almost twenty years?” he asked. Lucky shook his head, and Miller continued:

“It is actually the root of the reason why I understand so much of the Office's history and affairs. During the Great War, I alone was the central researcher and dispatcher for the entire organization. My... condition, makes me uniquely suited for such work.” His uncharacteristic stumbling over the word 'condition' stood out like a sore thumb among his otherwise specifically-chosen words.

“The Great War?” Lucky asked. “How old are you?”

The ice-blue eyes behind his thick lenses didn't look old enough to have lived through the war to end all wars.

“That is the point at which this story crosses from the territory of ‘Top Secret' to that of 'Most Secret,'” he responded. “Officials Second Class are not privy to such information, but it seems unfair that I would entrust you with the preservation of my life yet deny you the whole truth of it.”

“I understand if you can't tell me,” Lucky told him. There were certainly things about himself that he didn't want to talk about, even if they weren't classified. Lucky wasn't one to push that kind of thing, no matter how curious he was.

“No, this you need to know,” Miller replied. “The more you know about me, the more effective our field work will be. I know you have been quietly observing and absorbing everything you have seen in the past days. What have you surmised thus far?”

“Well, outside to in, you never take off the suit, and the suit is cold as an icebox inside, same as your quarters on the Saint George,” Lucky said. There were so many odd things he'd noticed about Miller that it was hard to name them all. “You are always formal, always using full titles, but I have yet to hear anyone address you with a rank or even a first name.”

“All true.” Miller said.

Everything Lucky'd listed was odd, but he only really wondered about one last thing:

“And you got stabbed in the heart two days ago,” Lucky said. He recalled Miller's slow heartbeat reverberating up the sword and through his palm like its grip was still in his hand.

“That most of all, is what has come to define me,” Miller agreed. He paused and considered how he'd tell this tale. It wasn't one he shared often, so he didn't quite know where to start. Another long, hesitant breath rattled through his gas mask before he asked:

“Private Ford, are you familiar with the works of Mary Shelley?”

Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres. Spanish translations by Caitlin Gilmore.