Chapter 1

Damn, that shelling was heavy! My squad had just hunkered down in a little lane between two hedgerows. It was June 9, 1944, and we were somewhere in Normandy. That somewhere was well advised, because our platoon sergeant was the one with all the maps, and they had been blown to shit along with him, yesterday, when that mortar round landed on top of him. MSgt. Oliver Hopkins had been the acting platoon leader ever since we got half way up Omaha beach, and he had been doing a damned good job of it, too. Lt. Sawyer had taken a line of slugs across his belly from an MG42 before he had hardly gotten his feet out of the water. I hope he was dead before he hit the ground, considering how much morphine he would have needed just to last until the medics found him.

My squad was very damned lucky—we had lost only one man, Jerry Anson, and I hoped that I could keep the rest of my boys alive until we could get rotated back to where the bullets didn't fly so damned heavy. There were seven of us, now: five riflemen, a BAR man, and me with my Tommy Gun and .45 automatic. Shit, I got tired of carrying that heavy Thompson, but it did have a hell of a stopping power, so I just put up with the weight.

Anson had been our bazooka man, and that bullet that killed him had also ruined his weapon, so we were in a pickle if we ran into a tank. Neither the .30 nor .45 caliber stuff we had, nor the grenades, would do us any good against a tank, or even a halftrack.

The Krauts were holed up in a cluster of trees about 100 yards down this lane, and I knew that it was up to us to take them out. The trouble was, they had at least one MG42, and that was no machine gun to take lightly. They were well dug in, and the only reason that we had spotted them was we saw that MG42 in action against a squad of GIs just 10 minutes ago. Well, like it or not, it was up to us to clear them out.

OH, SHIT! Here comes a Panzer IV down the lane we're on. It's so God damned wide that it's rubbing the hedges and trees on both sides. It's behind us, so we are pinned between the tank and the MG42. We've got to get our asses in gear right now! We can't get through the hedgerows along here, they are simply too dense. "OK, Guys, follow me as fast as you can run! Our only hope is to get passed that MG42 before he wakes up that we are here. Bring just your weapons and your canteens, drop everything else and run like hell!"

Luckily for us, the Krauts in the tank hadn't seen us yet, so we just might make it. It only took a couple of minutes for us to be ready. "COME ON!" I ordered. We jumped up and ran as hard as we could go. We got about 15 yards down the lane when there was a deafening noise and a red and white flash.

I came to in what looked like a foxhole back in the North African desert. The main difference was that this sand was green! I looked around and saw that my whole squad was there, complete with our weapons and packs, just as we'd had before we dropped the stuff to run. It seemed to be high noon, and it had been mid-morning in that lane. What the shit was going on!?! Then I heard a voice in my head.

Shit, I didn't know what the hell the voice was rattling on about. I never heard of a place called Augsen, but this sure as hell was not like any place I had ever seen before. Hell, I guess I better take the voice's word for things right now until I find something different.

There was something in my shirt pocket that was not there before. I looked and found a map and a funny looking thing that looked like a glorified compass. It had a dial with something on it looking a lot like a compass rose. At the edge of the dial was a flashing red light. I guessed that we were supposed to go in that direction.

The map showed that we had to follow a path that wound among some low hills until we reached a cave. If I read the map correctly, the cave was about four miles away in a straight line and about seven miles away if we followed the indicated route. Well, if the day is the same length here as what we were used to, we needed to get started immediately. If we had to do much fighting, we could be late getting to the cave.

I woke the men and gave them the story I had heard from the voice that had contacted me. Joe Connolly nodded his head sagely and said, "OK, Sarge, I get it. We have been picked up by aliens and they've transported us to another planet away from Earth. I know that sounds crazy, but we can't argue with what we can see."

I had to admit that Joe had some good points, and he did keep his nose stuck in his science fiction magazines, so I mentally appointed him an expert on any monsters we might meet. It was time to go, so I said, "OK, Boys, saddle up and lets get a move on. Keep your eyes open for anything that might twitch. If it does, shoot it, and we'll wonder about it later." That brought some chuckles, but I wondered how funny it would seem when we met our first monster.

We had gone only about 200 yards when we saw our first monster; at least, I guessed that's what it was. Off on the sand to our left was a rippling motion along the ground. We watched closely, and we could see the edges of something that was kind of oval shaped. We were squatting down and perfectly still when a something or other came running across the trail we were following. It ran up onto the thing that was rippling along the ground, and there was a sudden convulsion, sort of like a handkerchief being pulled up by the edges.

The thing must have been 15 feet in diameter, and it sort of rolled the little "animal" up inside of it. We watched in fascination as the sheet-thing moved around a little bit like it was chewing, and then we heard something that sounded like a big burp. There was another convulsion of the thing, and some bones went flying. Shit, that thing was hard to see, and we sure as hell didn't want to step on one accidentally, or, on purpose, for that matter. Its top was an almost perfect match for the green sparkling sand, and we never would have seen it if it hadn't moved. For lack of a better name, we called it the Rug Monster.