not what she had expected at all

Valerie walked over to me, and put her hand on my cheek. She bent down and her lips barely brushed mine. She ran a hand under my hair. I could feel her breath on my tongue. Suddenly, she yanked my hair hard. I winced in pain. "You think I can't smell him on you, you fucking little whore!" she said, kicking my handbag across the room.

"Carl!" she called out. The goon outside appeared almost instantly, gun in hand. I tried to cover up, but it was no use. He grinned. "Sap her." His grin faded. He was clearly disappointed with these instructions. I saw him slide the gun back into his coat, and pull a long leather sap out instead. I closed my eyes. I'd never been sapped before. I felt the impact on my skull, and it felt like someone had me on a rubberband, and then I didn't feel anything.

........................................

I was faintly aware of where I was. I'd dreamt this place before. Chanting, candles, nude and spread eagle on the ground in some dark cavern. I glanced around, and felt very real pain my head. There were a few things different this time. Valerie was there with another woman in a dark robe. Her bare leg gave her away.

Dumas was at my head, casually smoking a cigarette and leaning against the wall. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn't dreaming this time. "Hello, Doll. Glad to see you made it awake for the big show." he said, rubbing his thick knuckles against the robe and not looking at anything in particular. Valerie walked up to him. He didn't even glance up at her, just sniffed the air and grinned. "Tasty, isn't she?" He said to me. I blushed, even though I was already naked.

"Your man Mike has been giving my boys Hell. The 35th isn't used to that." he said, as if I had any clue as to what he was talking about. " So far, he's put eight of my men down for the count. No one's done that since France back in '18 in the War, and that was a whole company of Germans." He casually spit out a tobacco seed, and took another drag.

Mike was here somewhere, running around blasting that big .45 of his. I felt hope fire up in my chest. "What are you talking about?" I finally asked, my voice thick from the sapping. He grinned, and settled in the for story.

"It was in France, 1918. We'd just got off the boat and put in the trenches. Steep learning curve those first couple of weeks. Half of us got the machine gun, the other wished it was us. We were ordered to fall back and mine the trench. The Krauts took the bait. Their little spiked helmets nearly hit the black clouds that always hung over the battlefield.

We charged, tossing flames and grenades in front of us. I took a rifle butt to the face and a bayonet in the ribs. When he pulled it back for another stab, I dug my fingers into his eyes and pulled his skull apart. Since it hadn't hit anything vital, they doped me up and sent me over the top again that night. That's the way it was." he said, with the slightest of shrugs.

"It was after that battle we saw them the first time, crawling over the bodies in No Man's Land, drinking the juices of the dead and dying. They wore gas masks and were all gray, impossibly tall. They moved like insects, sucking them dry. Our bullets drove them off at first, but not always. We'd find one in the trench with us sometimes. It'd hide in a tunnel and drag a casuality off when no one was looking. If we heard a grenade go off in the tunnel, no one looked. We knew what happened."

Finally, we were reinforced. We went over the top in the middle of the night, sending flares up. They scattered like cockroaches over the barb wire, and for the first time in weeks it was only humans we had to worry about. The Krauts didn't fire back. We took the trench on the condition that we got them out of there as fast as we could. We'd seen enough of No Man's Land to last our entire lives.

"Only one pocket of the Krauts held out in a reserve bunker. We grenaded the shit out that thing and empty thousands and thousands of rounds down that tunnel before we went in. They were all shredded. At the back, in black robes, was Col. Steinholdt, slit open from belly to neck by a grenade. In his left hand, he held this."
Dumas said, lifting the leather book I'd seen in his office.

"Yeah, we used it. It worked out pretty well. Funny thing is, to bring death, they want death. As you can see, we don't want death. So instead, they want life." He said so casually, so smoothly and innocently, I missed it the first time until Valerie parted her legs a little. I could see the grape juice faintly on her thighs.