The Dusting of Aharon

Lance Corporal Elliott Allen sat in the muddy trench huddled up against his Lee-Enfield rifle. He shivered in the cold light rain. His stomach growled, his last meal had been more than 16 hours earlier and it wasn't much. Just a single of can of Maconochie, a watery broth of turnips and carrots. He took his helmet off for a moment to scratch his lice infected head. He struggled to keep his eyes open as he waited for the order to climb out of the trench and attack.

Finally the order came. His 2nd lieutenant signaled the attack. Elliot turned to the other eleven men in his section. "Boys, it's time to get those Huns."

He led the way up the ladder and into an landscape cursed by God. Barren, desolate, a desert of mud, barbed wire and the occasional body. No one lived here, they only died here. Corporal Elliott signaled his section to advance. Walking crouched over he weaved his way around burned out stumps and water filled craters trying to find footing in the ankle deep mud. He passed the rotting carcass of a horse. The place smelled of decaying flesh and cordite. It was strangely quiet. He glanced behind him to see his men making their way towards the enemy's trenches. When he turned back he froze. He knew why it was quiet. A dirty yellow cloud drifted towards his lines like a fog bank rolling in from the sea. It was HS, Hun Stuff, mustard gas. He reached to his side for his gas mask. It was gone. It must have fallen off when he crawled out of the trench.

He turned to run back to get it but slipped face down in the mud. He struggled to get up but before he could stand he was engulfed by the cloud. He tried not to breath it in but the skin on his face broke out in mustard colored blisters that burned as if he had been dipped in fire. His eyes watered and soon he fell back into the mud to vomit. He had to take in a breath. It burned his throat. He heard his men screaming. He cried out to God. The gas was too thick to see anything ... until ... he saw a dark form walking almost gliding towards him. He raised his hand and thanked God for rescuing him. When the form got closer he saw it was a man without a gas mask but seemly unaffected by the poisonous cloud that surrounded them.

Lance Corporal Allen tried to focus through stinging eyes on the man. "Help ... me."

The man stood over Elliott smiling. "Your God will not help you. If he had any sense he would wipe all of you off the face of the earth like he almost did in the time of Noah."

The man looked up and scanned the battlefield. "Maybe he doesn't have to. You seem to be doing a pretty good job on your own."

Elliot could no longer see. He threw up again. He heard the man take a deep breath. "Ah ... mustard gas ... it has kind of a sweet taste to it don't you think?"

As he heard the man walk away, Elliot dropped his head back in the mud. He knew who the man was. There had been rumors. He'd heard stories from men who had taken days to die from the gas. Stories of a 'yellow devil' that walked in the gas. He threw up again. Someone with a gas mask found him and pulled him back into the tench. He was evacuated to a field hospital behind the lines where a week later he died but not before he whispered the story of his encounter to a small middle eastern man who seemed to believe him.

***

Having confirmed there was indeed a UD stalking the battlefields around Somme in gas clouds, I determined to hunt him down and dust him. On April 2, 1918 near the end of the First Battle of the Somme, I entered a battlefield that had just been covered with mustard gas. It was painful to the point of irritation but my body fought off the effects of the gas. I must have wondered the field for over an hour when I first caught sight of it. It was standing over a fallen soldier. As I approached, it looked up and smiled at me, standing its ground. That's when I knew this was not an ordinary UD and this would not be a routine dusting.

It greeted me. "Ah, Lazarus, I wondered when our paths would cross." It scanned the battlefield. "Don't you just love what mankind has accomplished here."

"Who are you?"

"That's a good question. I go by so many names." It ginned. "But you can call me Aharon." It looked me straight in the eyes, something no UD had ever been able to do. It sickened me. "I suppose you've come to dust me. Well, I'm tired of this piece of real estate anyway, so let me save you the trouble. When we cross paths again, I will be in a form you can not touch. For now I will neither bless you nor ask for a tithe from you like that carpenter asked of Abraham." At the word carpenter it spit into the ground.

Then it suddenly dissolved into dust without contact from me. I sucked in a deep breath something which was quite painful in the gas filled air. In some way it dusted itself.

I stepped forward to collect the dust when someone behind me said, "Don't." I turned and saw the two men I had first seen thousands of years ago in the plaza where Jesus was beaten.

"We will take that dust."

I walked away leaving the dust to them.

Awakened Incident Manual (AIM) Report #1120. The Dusting of Aharon, the self-proclaimed exalted one, 1918 A.D.