Chapter Forty: The Butcher's Logic

Jenkins pissed himself when the head rolled past his position. Harrison watched the boy's hands shake on his rifle, eyes fixed on that severed thing in the snow. One of their own - Thompson from Third Squad, if the frozen features told true.

Behind it came more pieces. Arms. Legs. Chunks of torso arranged in a line pointing east. A trail of breadcrumbs made from British meat.

"Sir," Jenkins whispered. "They're... they're laying out our dead like markers."

Harrison studied the grisly compass through his scope. Each piece placed with surgical care, creating a path through the killing ground. An invitation written in frozen flesh.

Or a trap.

The enhanced troops had changed their tactics since yesterday's slaughter. No more direct assaults. No more clean kills. Now they left messages carved in dead men's skin. Now they played with their food.

"Hold position," Harrison ordered. His remaining men huddled in their frozen holes, watching that road of meat point toward the rising sun. Waiting.

The first scream shattered the morning silence. British accent. Young voice. Raw animal sounds that went on too long before cutting short.

More screams followed. Different voices. Different positions. Each one coming from exactly where that trail of bodies led.

Harrison's radio crackled. "Sir! Baker Company reports- oh Jesus they're in the trees they're in the fucking tr-"

Static.

Through his scope, Harrison watched shadows move through his forward positions. Not the enhanced troops' usual mechanical grace. Something different. Something worse.

They'd learned how fear worked.

---

Tanya dug another bullet out of the half-frozen corpse. British brass - good weight, clean powder. Her fingers left red marks on the casing as she added it to her collection. 

"Twelve more here," Mueller reported, working on his own harvest. His blade scraped bone as he carved deeper. "Still warm enough to dig out."

She nodded, moving to the next body. The British squad had died messy - limbs twisted, faces locked in terror. Not the enhanced troops' usual work. Those kills came surgical, efficient.

This was something new.

"Found their tags," Steiner called. He held up a handful of bloody metal. "Want them for the collection?"

Tanya ignored him, focused on her ammunition harvest. Behind her, the remains of her unit worked with practiced hands. They'd learned efficiency since Christmas Eve. Learned that survival meant stripping every resource from every corpse before the enhanced troops came back to study their kills.

A sound pulled her attention east. Not quite a scream. Not quite a laugh. The kind of noise meat shouldn't make.

Mueller's head snapped up. "Sir-"

"Load up," Tanya ordered. "Five minutes till full dark. Then we-"

The rest died in her throat as firelight bloomed through the trees. Not the usual artillery glow. Something closer. Something wrong.

She raised her field glasses. Through swirling snow, shapes moved in that hellish light. British soldiers, running. Behind them...

"Jesus," Steiner breathed. "They're... they're herding them."

The enhanced troops moved through their burning kill zone like shadows through hell. Each one carrying torches made from human limbs. Each one driving terrified British troops exactly where they wanted them.

Tanya watched through her glasses as another British soldier broke ranks. Tried to run. Got three steps before a rifle shot shattered his knee. No kill shot. No clean death. Just precise mutilation that left him screaming as bait.

"Sir?" Mueller's voice held an edge she hadn't heard before. "Orders?"

Tanya lowered her glasses. Studied her remaining men - fifteen where there had been fifty yesterday. Each one carrying scavenged ammunition and stolen weapons. Each one watching her with eyes that had seen too much horror to flinch anymore.

She touched the coat she still wore. Felt Weber's tags clink against the others in her pocket. Remembered a time when she'd wanted her men to be better soldiers.

Now she had different lessons to teach.

"Bring me the British radio," she said. "And get the powder charges ready."

Time to show these enhanced bastards what real monsters looked like.

---

The British command bunker stank of fear and cordite. Harrison watched his men huddle around makeshift heaters, their hands shaking on weapons gone cold from waiting. Waiting for the screaming to stop. Waiting for the burning corpses that lit the night to finally die.

Their radio crackled - another patrol found torn to pieces. Another position overrun by shadows that killed with surgical precision and displayed the remains like artwork.

"Fourth Company gone," his signals officer reported. Voice flat with exhaustion. "Third Company... parts of Third Company still broadcasting."

Harrison stared at his tactical map. Red marks showed where the enhanced troops had been spotted. Blue marks for British positions. The pattern made his guts twist - they were being herded. Driven into prepared killzones by an enemy that had stopped playing soldier and started playing butcher.

A new sound cut through the screams. German radio frequencies, broadcasting in the clear. A woman's voice, speaking English with a harsh accent:

"Harrison. Are you watching? Are you learning?"

His men stiffened. Even the enhanced troops went quiet, as if listening.

"Your men die badly," the voice continued. "We strip their bodies for ammunition. Use their bones for markers. But you already know this. You've seen our work."

Harrison's hands tightened on his desk. "Track that signal," he ordered.

"What you don't know," the voice went on, "is that we're not the worst monsters in these woods. Not anymore. The Reich's toys have changed their game. Started playing with their food."

Through the bunker's observation slits, Harrison watched another explosion paint the night red. Another British position going up in flames.

"So I'm offering you a choice. Keep dying piece by piece as they drive you into their traps. Keep watching us harvest ammunition from your corpses. Or..."

"Or what?" Harrison whispered.

"Or help us teach them how real monsters fight."

The radio went dead. Outside, the enhanced troops' burning signals cast twisted shadows through the trees. Harrison's men watched him, waiting for orders, waiting for-

The first explosion caught everyone by surprise. Not British artillery - something closer. Something that turned the enhanced troops' own kill zone into a meat grinder.

German war cries filled the night. Not the mechanical precision of enhanced troops. Something older. Something worse.

Harrison watched through his scope as Tanya's butchers swarmed the burning forest. Watched them drag enhanced soldiers into the shadows. Watched them demonstrate exactly what they'd learned about making meat remember.

He marked the positions where German smugness turned to screaming. Noted how Tanya's hunters used their own dead as bait. Studied the way they turned the enhanced troops' tactics against them.

Learned what real monsters looked like.

The radio crackled one last time. That same harsh voice, thick with blood and promise:

"Choose, Harrison. Choose while you still have men left to die properly."

He looked at his tactical map. At the dwindling blue marks showing British positions. At the red marks showing enhanced troops herding his men toward prepared slaughter.

At the black marks showing where Tanya's butchers had taught Reich soldiers how meat remembered.

Harrison made his choice.

The night belonged to monsters now.