Black Ceremonies Read Online Free PDF Page B

stomach wound.
    Yet Trotter raised a hand, grasped Prendergast by the throat, began to squeeze and pull the private down towards him.
    Shock kept Prendergast frozen momentarily, and then realisation that a dead friend was choking the life out of him spurred the private into action. He struggled free, and smashed the butt of his rifle into Trotter’s face.
    Around him men of both sides – including Trotter – were slowly rising. Men with terrible wounds. Dead men. Private Prendergast began to back away.
    They were closing in on him. Staggering and shambling, men that no longer breathed yet groaned and moaned. Some missing limbs, others with gaping wounds spilling entrails.
    Staring with sightless eyes. Ruined faces; one corpse entirely headless.
    Prendergast watched dazed and amazed. “This can’t be happening,” he muttered. Hands reached out for him but not all of them.
    A Hun, with his guts hanging out, grabbed and pulled free some of his intestines. His intent to use them as a garrotte.
    Prendergast fired, his bullet hitting one of the living corpses in the eye. Prendergast was amazed for two reasons. Normally, he would not have achieved such accuracy even if he had tried to aim for the eye. Secondly, the shot had little effect – the walking dead man staggered at the impact, paused a moment, then continued its shambling advance.
    Prendergast began to lay about him then.
    “I’ll be damned if I let a bunch of dead men kill me!” he shouted, stabbing and thrusting his bayonet wildly.
    Though bullets had little effect, the blade proved more effective.
    Prendergast fought as if possessed by the spirit of a Viking berserker.
    Thankfully, whatever perversion of nature that had caused these dead men to rise had only affected this small corner of the battlefield. And hacking and slashing, Prendergast was able to fight his way free.
    The zombies continued to pursue him, yet they moved slowly and despite his wounds, and the treacherous conditions of the battlefield, the private was able to outdistance them. Ahead were his own trenches. He would be safe there, he told himself. Realising this he began to laugh.
    But Prendergast had become disorientated in the fog of war. And he did not find his way back to the safety of his own lines.
    He saw a group of men scouring the battlefield. Perhaps they were searching for wounded, Prendergast thought. They looked up at his approach.
    “God almighty!” Prendergast gasped.
    There was something wrong with them.
    They stood hunched, lean, and grey. Whilst some wore blood-drenched uniforms, others were dressed in tattered rags, the remnants of charnel shrouds. Skin discoloured, faces misshapen, snout-like. Creatures of nightmare, they did not carry rifles in their hands, the talons of these scavengers held gobbets of bloody flesh.
    They grinned, exposing stained, canine teeth. Private Prendergast began to scream. And then the ghouls pounced.
     
     
    “… And my last memory is of the charnel stench of the foul creatures, the agonising pain as their fangs bit into me, and their claws tore the flesh from my still-living body. My body rent apart, and the internal organs ripped free. Thankfully oblivion eventually overcame me, and I found myself Andrew Maitland once again, back in London, in the here and now of nineteen seventy-two,” Maitland concluded.
    “Good God! I’ve heard of the horrors of World War One but zombies and ghouls!” Hilton brought his fist down on the arm of his chair. “This Liao, it sounds like it took you on a particularly wild trip. Had you been watching too many damned horror films?”
    Dr Maitland ignored the question. “I can understand your scepticism, Roger, and I might too accept your verdict of drug-induced fantasy. But tell me how would you explain this?” Maitland rose from his chair.
    “Explain what?”
    Maitland took off his jacket. He had lately taken to wearing black polo neck shirts; and he pulled off the one he now wore – to reveal a body