Chapter Four

“It’s no use. The bastard thing will nae start!” Martin gave up trying to turn the jeep over. The engine was thoroughly flooded and his frantic attempts to start it again had only made the situation worse. “Sergeant, we’ve got to get out of here. If you can’t get the jeep started, we’re going to have to run.” Reuter again looked through the field glasses. The approaching throng of people wending their way out of the tiny village of Ornel was gradually growing closer, now less than 100 yards away.

“Are ye daft, ye fookin’ tosser?” Clive yelled from the back of the jeep. “I’m nae hoofin’ it! They’ll back off once I put a few warning shots from the .50 across them.” To demonstrate, Clive fired off a rapid burst from the .50 caliber. The slugs impacted into the ground directly in front of the mob to no discernible notice. They continued to press forward, the entire crowd moaning in an unearthly chorus. As they drew nearer, the grisly wounds of each person seemed to magnify before the two British and two German soldiers sitting in the jeep.

“My God…” Martin intoned in a hushed breath. “There’s no life in those eyes, is there? They’re…they’re not right. Why are they walking? Why aren’t they dead?” He began to shake involuntarily. After nearly five years of seemingly endless campaigns this veteran soldier had finally seen something that shook him to his core. In all his experiences, the dead stayed dead. That was the nature of the world, and as horrible as it often was, it also provided a certain comfort to him. If you got your number punched, the horror was over for you and that was that. But this? This was an abomination and yet he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. There were children in this crowd, young women, and grandfathers…people who should be laughing, talking and going about their daily business. Never mind that they were Germans, because when you got right down to it, there weren’t many differences between the normal everyday folks of Britain and Germany. The normalcy of their bland, day to day lives united them in a way that politics and war never fully divided them. And to see this horror shambling before them, it was unthinkably tragic. He couldn’t take his eyes of these pitiful, horrible things.

Reuter slapped the British sergeant away from his reverie. “We can’t stay here! Come on! Raus!” Rudi, the young German Sani was the first to bolt. With his breath already coming out in a ragged, almost hyperventilating wheeze, he leapt from the backseat of the jeep and began tearing up the road away from the approaching throng. Martin jumped in his seat as the staccato roar of the .50 began to renew. Clive began firing indiscriminately into the crowd, high velocity rounds punching violently into their midst. Three of them fell to the ground as the bullets tore into their legs and shattered their kneecaps. The crowd continued pressing inexorably forward, walking over their fallen brethren, even as the stricken rose up onto their elbows and began crawling. Two more went down for good, their heads exploding as slugs slammed into their craniums.

“Clive! Dinnae mess about! Run, dammit!” Both Martin and Reuter were already out of the jeep. Martin tugged at Clive’s leg and continued shouting at the man, even as the crowd continued to slowly close the distance. “Bugger off! You run! I’m not letting these bastards spook me!”

Reuter grabbed Martin roughly by the collar and dragged the Englishman away. “Leave him! If the fool won’t come, at least let him cover our escape!”

Reluctantly, Martin let himself be led away. Almost as an afterthought, he grabbed the Thompson submachine gun nestled in its leather holster attached to the side of the jeep. As Reuter and Martin raced away, Clive fired wildly. Bullets stitched their way across the front row, tearing large holes across the crowd’s chests. An arm flew off, a hand, another fell as their head was punctured. Still they pressed forward, arms outstretched and moaning with an incoherent longing. He finally queued to the fact that head shots seemed to take them down for good a moment too late. Aiming with deliberation, he managed to down three more when he noticed he was nearing the end of the ammo belt and they had finally closed the range.

Greedy hands grasped at him from all sides. He kicked the first in the face, the hobnails in his boots crunching the man’s nose inward. He punched another in the mouth, tearing his knuckles and knocking out teeth. This was how any Welshman worth his salt did things in. You gave the punter a good thrashing to the face and they usually left you alone. But these weren’t the pubs he used to fight in anymore and this crowd was not a group of surly drunks. He cursed loudly as the first set of teeth sunk into his forearm. Screaming, he bashed in his assailant’s head with an entrenching tool. Even as the woman fell, more hands grabbed him from all sides. They dragged him down and began to feed, even as he continued to rain blows upon them with the last of his desperate strength. There wouldn’t be anything left of Lance Corporal Clive Bellows to come back. The ravenous denizens of Ornel picked him clean.

Those not able to occupy themselves on the feast surrounding Clive continued to surge forward. Both Martin and Reuter quickly realized that they were clearing a decent distance between themselves and the hungry crowd. They were unbelievably slow, yet relentlessly single-minded. They never took their eyes off the fleeing men, and only slowed and turned their attention briefly away from their targets when another sound issued forth from behind them. Martin strained to make out what the noise was and cursed the fact that he’d left the field glasses back in the jeep.

A man riding astride a large horse broke through a gap in the crowd. He waved a large hatchet in his hands, cleaving at his neighbors, clearing a path for a horse-drawn wagon coming up full-tilt behind him. The undead of Ornel converged upon the wagon, but with a surge of speed it burst through, knocking aside six of the approaching ghouls. As the wagon cleared the crowd, the man wielding the hatchet kicked his horse forward and attempted to follow suit. He got no more than a few yards before the crowd tore and clawed at his horse. It kicked frantically, suddenly too spooked to run. It’s flailing back legs smashed into two of them, before the rider lost his balance and fell off. He had no time to react before the crowd pounced upon him and proceeded to devour him. The horse’s own screams drowned out those of the fallen man as the crowd grasped its flanks and neck and ultimately overpowered it, dragging it to the ground.

Reuter waved his arms at the woman driving the wagon, ordering her to pull to and let them on. “Auf halten! Dammit, woman! Stop and let us up!” The woman showed no signs of acknowledging him until Martin put a burst from the Thompson into the ground before the horse’s path. With a frightened whinny, they abruptly halted. Martin and Reuter quickly hauled themselves aboard and Reuter screamed for Rudi to stop his headlong flight and rejoin them. The medic was nearly thirty yards ahead of them and showed no sings of hearing. Martin raised the Thompson to fire a burst into the crowd when Reuter placed his hands over the barrel, forcing him to lower it.

“Nein! Don’t fire, Sergeant! They’re ignoring us for now! Let’s just get the hell out of here while we can!”

Reuter nodded to the woman holding the reins and motioned her to get going again. With a start, the horses galloped anew and they quickly left the distracted crowd behind. Leaning over the side of the wagon, Reuter reached out and grasped Rudi as they hurtled by. Grunting with the strain, he hauled the panicked Sani up into the wagon.

It wasn’t until they were a good 100 yards away that Reuter finally noticed that there were other people in the wagon with them, an old man and two children. One of the children held her hand against a gaping wound on her arm which bled profusely. “Rudi, help out the little fraulein here, jah? She looks hurt. Trodle nicht.”

Despite his panic, Rudi reacted automatically. “Jawhol, herr scharfuhrer.” He reached into his bag and began to clean the wound on the sobbing little girl.

Reuter nodded to the old man, who looked about as pale as a sheet and crawled up onto the buckboard with the woman driving the wagon. “Danke. We appreciate the rescue.” She glared at him. “I wouldn’t have stopped if the verdammt horses hadn’t halted. You should thank the Englander.”

Reuter shrugged. “All the same, I’d rather be here than back there. What happened back in the village? Why did everybody suddenly go crazy like that? And who was that man who covered your escape?”

The woman bit down on her lip and slapped the horses with the reins again with deliberation. Her face was hardened with the refusal to cry. “The man was meine bruder. He had a game leg so he was exempt from conscription. The two in the back are my sister’s children and my father. I don’t know why everyone went so fucking verruckt. I was at the morning market, buying eggs and milk when this small crowd wanders into the village square and starts attacking people. They were biting everyone they could get their hands on…and…eating them. And those…those that were being eaten got back up and started attacking too. Don’t look at my like I’m insane, damn you! I saw it!”

Reuter shook his head. “No, I don’t think you’re insane. I have to trust my own eyes. I saw that madness too.” Reuter looked back down the road. Martin had his eyes glued upon that path also, machine gun at the ready. He liked the Tommy sergeant. He was a professional and seemed like a fair man. It was a stone pity about his man back there, but his sacrifice had helped them escape at least.

He thought hard, picking over the last few hours. Obviously whatever had caused that old man to go mad had infected herr Leutnant Johannes. In turn, Johannes succumbed to it himself and passed it on to all those he met on the way into the village.

“Tell me,” he said, turning back to the woman. “What do you know about the castle ruins a few kilometers back?” She looked at him incredulously. “Why in the hell do those ruins matter? I don’t care about sightseeing or small talk! I just watched all my friends die and come back as monsters!”

“I think it relevant. Trust me on this.”

She shrugged. “I don’t care about that place. Ask meine vater about it. He’s like all the other old-timers, caught up in the legend.” She turned away, immediately dismissive. He left her to her unspoken grief. Frowning, Reuter turned to the old man, who had been listening in.

“Grossevater…tell me about the castle ruins. There’s something to them, isn’t there?”

The old man shrugged, even as he held onto his granddaughter, consoling her as Rudi cleaned and dressed her wound. “Jah, so they say. It was once a mighty keep centuries ago, during the days of the black death. When the plague hit, all the peoples from the surrounding communities flocked there for protection and sanctuary against the pestilence. But somebody got in who was carrying something even worse than the plague. There was an uprising of some sort, deep in the bowels of the castle. The lord of the castle and his men fought those afflicted with this new madness and managed to seal them off in the lowest dungeons, but it was said that the lord had kept his treasures hidden down there as well. He died a pauper, convinced that it would be insane to try and go back down into those tunnels to try and retrieve it. As the years passed, the legend grew about the treasure hidden in there, as well as the monsters guarding it. We used to joke as boys about going in there and becoming wealthy lords ourselves. I never took it all that seriously, but after what I’ve seen today…” the old man trailed off, shaking his head.

“Here, listen up.” Martin clasped Reuter on the shoulder. “Let me up there with the lady. If we go bouncin’ around the corner after all that donnybrook and Joe doesn’t see me up there, he’s liable to err on the side of caution and fill this wagon full of holes and us along with it.” Reuter nodded and moved aside to let the British sergeant forward. Rudi had finished dressing the young girl’s wounds and was finishing putting the last of his kit away. “How is she?”

Rudi just looked at him. “She was bitten, no different from herr Leutnant. I can’t speculate beyond that.   I think she’s collapsed from the shock. Her breathing was incredibly shallow, her skin very cold. But between you and me, I would put her out of her misery right now if I were you, herr Scharfuhrer.”

Reuter paled at that thought. He couldn’t think about shooting a child, even one possibly carrying this affliction. It was too horrid to contemplate. “Not yet. But keep an eye on her just the same.”

They rode on in silence for another few minutes before rounding a wide curve in the road and coming upon the parked kubelwagen and the second jeep in Sergeant Knight’s entourage. Reuter flinched when he saw his brother and the two remaining men in his group lying on the ground with their hands over their heads and the nervous Private Allen training a sten gun on them. He didn’t say anything though. Despite his initial anger, he would have done the same thing. After all, the British didn’t know what had gone on back in the village.

Sergeant Knight bounded down from the wagon and waved to his companions. “Joe! Where the bloody hell is the column?”

Kirk looked chagrined. “The news isn’t good, Martin. The column ran into a patrol of SS back up the road that’s got them tied down. They estimate it’ll be at least an hour before they can clear the tree line of their snipers and get underway again. What the fook happened back there anyroad? Where’s Clive and yer jeep?”

“Och, bloody Christ. Get on the wireless and tell them to get their arses up here immediately. We’ve got a bloody pack of madmen up the road coming this way. Tell them it’s not just urgent, but a goddamned priority!”

Martin rushed over to the kubelwagen and began tossing the German weapons out of its back. He threw the MG42 to Reuter, who caught it on the fly and began to feed a new belt into it.

“Martin! What the kiddin’ hell are ye doin’? Put that down!” Joe Kirk began to level his Webley at Reuter. “Joe! Leave off! Let the man be and get his men back up on their feet right this minute! I’m not daft, but I swear to ye, we’ll need every man we can spare in a bit. There’s a bloodthirsty mob heading this way and we’ve got to get ready! Goddammit, follow me orders, man! They’ve killed Clive already and they’ll tear ye apart too if ye don’t get ye’re arse in gear!”

Kirk began to speak when a scream punctuated the air behind them from the wagon. All turned at the sound as the wounded little girl suddenly turned and sank her teeth into her grandfather’s throat.

Chapter Five.

Rudi leapt forward and wrenched the snarling girl away from her struggling grandfather. The girl came away with blood caked to her mouth and a large chunk of flesh still clutched between her teeth. “Verdammt!” He flung the child over the side of the wagon without a backwards glance and was already pulling his scarf from around his neck to somehow staunch the bleeding erupting from the flailing old man’s neck.

The old man had already gone into shock, his body trembling as the blood poured freely in every direction. Rudi had barely wrapped the scarf once around the man’s neck and was applying some direct pressure until he could get some proper bandaging out of his bag to halt it when an unexpected shot rang out so near as to make him fall back on his rear end and nearly topple out of the wagon. When he looked up again, the old man was slumped onto his back, an enormous bullet hole in the side of his head. “Grosse Gott…vas ist?”

The woman who had been driving the wagon calmly re-aimed the pistol she’d been concealing in her skirt and fired another round into the head of her niece. The girl had landed hard, face first when Rudi tossed her aside. She appeared utterly oblivious to her shattered nose and had been clambering back up the sides of the wagon with a mad intensity up until the moment the bullet hit her. Stunned, the German and British troops hadn’t even moved to respond to her actions before she yelled at Rudi, waving the luger at him. “Idioten! I just saw my entire village ripped apart and turned into these things! You cannot try to save them!”

Reuter calmly approached the frantic woman with his hands up. He shot a glance at his remaining men to stand down and not shoot her. Behind him, Sergeant Martin Knight did the same. “Never mind the daft lassie! Keep yer eyes on the road ahead. That’s where the troubles comin’ from. Let the jerry sergeant handle her.”

The near-hysterical woman turned the pistol towards Reuter, even as she grabbed her nephew and pulled him close to her. “Don’t come any closer! This kleine kinder is all I have left! I’m not letting those demons have him too!”

Reuter nodded soothingly. “Aber naturlich, fraulein. We won’t let them get him. But we can’t hold the road and fight them off if you’ve got a pistol aimed at us, now can we? Besides, you’re pretty good with that thing. We could use the extra hand, nicht wahr?”

The woman glowered at him before hesitantly lowering the luger. “I…I got this off an officer who was one of those monsters. A man in the village tried to grab the pistol from his holster and had managed to get it free before he was bitten. It lay in the street where I picked it up. I’ve…I’ve never fired a gun before in my life.”

Reuter shrugged. It looked like in some way, herr Leutnant Johannes was still helping their little band out. “All the same, you’re pretty good with it. Now don’t point that thing at my Sani anymore, eh? He was only doing his job.”

“But you don’t understand! The bite is what turns people into those things! I saw it with my own eyes back in the village. He can’t try to help them once they’ve been bitten. I didn’t even realize my niece had been bit. I thought she’d been cut trying to run from them. If I’d known, I’d have shot here then and there before we even tried to run. I…I couldn’t let meine vater come back like that…”

“I know,” Reuter replied. “Ich vershtehen, now. We’ll know better when the time comes. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. But we don’t have time to grieve, jah? You must understand that.”

The woman slumped back onto the buckboard and held her nephew all the tighter, turning his head away from the carnage in the back of the wagon and the even greater horror she knew was coming down the road. “Jah. I do understand it.”

Reuter turned away from the woman and helped Rudi to his feet. “Are you alright?” The Kriegsmarine Sani glared at him. “I warned you, didn’t I? I told you that little girl was done for. And now that old man’s death is on your head, Herr Scharfuhrer. Don’t make that same mistake again or it’ll be the death of all of us.” Rudi wrenched free from Reuter’s grasp and stormed off. He waved away any attempts at conversation with Horst, Burkhardt and Hans.

Sighing at the rebuke, mainly because the man was right, Reuter rejoined Martin. “Sergeant, we’d better tell all the men to aim for the head. That seems to be the only thing to take these monsters down.”

“Aye. I’ve kenned to that. That might be a problem with the fifty cal we’ve got left. That’s nae the sort of weapon used for precision firing. Ye’re bolt actions on yer Mausers are more the sort for this business, d’ye think?”

“Jah. I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right.” Reuter turned to Horst and Burkhardt. “Look, I don’t have time to explain this to you. You’re going to have to see this to believe it. There’s a bloodthirsty mob coming from that village, our own people. But you can’t think of them that way. They…I don’t know any other way to say this, but they are monsters out for blood, any blood. They won’t care if it’s the Tommies or the Amis or us they feed on. They’ll tear great bloody strips out of you regardless of what uniform you’re wearing. Shoot them in the head. Remember that! It’s imperative that you shoot them in the head!”

Horst spat on the ground incredulously. “Du bist verruckt! That woman back there and the little girl are sure as hell crazy, I’ll grant you that in a second. And I don’t know what kind of deal you struck with the Tommies to get our weapons back, but let’s take advantage of this and just leave! We have to look out for our own skins! We’ve already deserted! The goddamned war is supposed to be over for us.”

Reuter threw him against the side of the kubelwagen. “What must I do to get it through you’re thick head! We’re in a totally new war now! And if we don’t stop this mob here and now, you don’t want to envision what they’ll become if they spread to another town.”

“Why should I believe anything you have to say?”

“When that mob rounds the bend in the road, you can ask me that question again.”

Sergeant Martin Knight climbed aboard the hood of his remaining jeep and addressed all those present. “Reuter, ye’d best have yer brother translate to the others in yer company. This is to all ye lot. The village of Ornel has become…infected I guess is the word I’d have ta use…infected wi’ somethin’ that’s driven every last one of them mad as hatters. The whole lot of ‘em is actin’ like cannibals, I swear ta ye. We’ve seen it. Me, the jerry Sergeant and his medic, tha’ poor woman and young lad in the wagon. We watched ‘em tear apart Clive back there. They ripped the poor bastard ta pieces and nothin’ seems ta stop ‘em but a blow to the head. Save yer shots for the head, I’m tellin’ ye now. Don’t go daft firin’ full auto into that lot, cuz I swear to ye now, it won’t bring ‘em down. Now, Joe. What’s the word on the column? Give us some good now, eh?”

The man shrugged through tight lips. “I told ‘em to hurry their arses up, that we were about ta run into some major resistance. They told us to disengage if we could and get back, but that’d mean runnin’ right into those Jerry snipers that’ve got the column tied down anyway. They told us to stand by while the conferred the situation with the higher-ups.”

“Poncy bastards. It’ll take ‘em hours to get their twats in gear and get up here. You tell them to send us somethin’…anything at all, as long as it’s got a bastard amount of firepower to it! A single tank could take out that entire lot piecemeal, I’d reckon. Tell ‘em exactly what I’ve told ye, Joe. There’s at least two more villages and God knows how many farms in the way between Ornel and the column. Reuter’s right. This mob’ll only get larger if we don’t do somethin’ to thin ‘em down. Git on it like ye’ve got a purpose, man!”

Martin turned away from Joe as his friend dashed back to the radio and reestablished contact with the armored column to their rear. Exhaling with a snort of anger and frustration, he joined his German counterpart. “What d’ye think the odds are on this lot comin’ down the road? Smart money would be on them cuttin’ through the woods and hittin’ us from the flanks.”

Reuter considered this. “Jah. That’s how we would do it. But something tells me they aren’t thinking about anything but food. Hell, I don’t believe they’re thinking at all. It looks like some sort of drive…instinct, maybe? I think they’ll follow the road because it’s the obvious thing to do.”

“Ye’re right. We should completely block it. There’s fences on either side of the road, so that should provide us with some impediment ta them getting’ around. If we line the wagon up end ta end wi’ ye’re kubelwagen and the jeep, that’ll at least slow ‘em down and bunch ‘em up enough fer us ta’ take ‘em out one by one.”

“I can’t think of anything better. It’s as good a plan as any.”

As Reuter directed Burkhardt to move the kubelwagen into position, Joe approached Martin with a bitter expression on his face. “I dinnae want ta be the bearer of worse new, Martin. But I spoke wi’ the column again, made contact with Captain Lewis himself. They aren’t movin’, not till that nest of Jerries is cleaned out. I think I fooked us well and good when I said it was a mob of crazy civilians comin’ towards us. They say we’ve got plenty of firepower to intimidate a crowd of civvies and want us to pull crowd control. They’ve gotten into contact with a force of Yanks farther to our north. They said they’d dispatch an observation plane that’s already up in the air to further assess our situation. I’m sorry, mate.”

“Goddammit! Typical officer shite! We get back there, I’m gonna rip that bastard poncy Oxford dilletante’s tongue out! Call ‘em back up again! I’ll give him a piece of me mind directly!”

As Martin stormed off towards the wireless set in the back of the jeep, Hans scanned the road ahead of them with a pair of field glasses retrieved from the kubelwagen. “I know you think my brother is mad, Horst. But I’m telling you, you won’t meet a more down to earth man. He is very practical and doesn’t have the imagination to make up such outlandish stories. If he tells you there are insane cannibals coming towards us, believe him.”

“Jah, don’t be so dour, Horst.” Burkhardt agreed. “Obviously, something happened back there to spook herr Scharfuhrer and that Tommy Sergeant. Why else would they give us our weapons back? Rudi looks frightened out of his mind. He wouldn’t even talk when I tried to approach him. But you have to admit, Hans. It sounds pretty crazy. German citizens going mad and turning cannibal? I can maybe see that in some of the cities. Dresden was hit really hard from what I heard. I heard stories of survivors driven mad by the Amis’ firebombing the place. But this? Aside from Wessel, this area is nothing but farmland. The Amis and the Tommies don’t have anything to bomb here. Food is rationed, but still available. I don’t understand what possibly could have driven them mad. It doesn’t make sense.”

Hans gasped audibly as the first of Ornel’s former inhabitants rounded the bend in the road a few hundred yards ahead of them. “Mein Gott…It’s not possible…”

He handed the binoculars to Burkhardt and shrank back into his seat. The Luftwaffe ground trooper looked through the lenses and swore a long string of profanity before handing them in turn to Horst.

The caustic skeptic couldn’t put the glasses down.   Burkhardt noted that his companion’s face had gone noticeably pale. “How much ammunition do we have left? How much is in those ammo boxes behind the seat? Rudi is going to have his hands full bringing us stripper clips. Ach du lieber…I can’t believe what I’m seeing. They look…dead.”

Burkhardt. Looked down the sights on his Mauser, nervous to fire even though he knew they were still out of range. “I’ve already counted. We’ve got maybe thirty rounds left.”

“Shit.” Horst spat under his breath.

Just then the drone of an engine approaching cut through the air above them. A lone American observation plane shot slowly over the trees of the forest running to the north of the roadside. It waggled its wings in recognition to the British soldiers below before veering off to make a pass at the throng of people approaching their position.

“Jesus Christ, what the hell is going on down there?” The pilot hit the transmit button on his radio. “Kettle, this is Lima Bean. We have reached the coordinates forwarded to us by the Limeys, over.”

“Acknowledged, Lima Bean. What’s the situation look like, Ralph? Over.”

“Kettle, I don’t know what the hell is happening on the ground. It looks like there’s Krauts down there with the Brits. Looks like they’re working together. They’ve got the road blocked off and there’s a crowd of about fifty or sixty people approaching them from about two hundred yards away. Observation of the village shows that there’s fires burning in the main square, lots of bodies lying around, also a couple dozen people just standing around doing nothing. There’s also a jeep parked in the road just outside the village with bodies lying around it too, couple of civvies milling around. Looks like they’ve seen some action down there, over.”

“Please repeat that first part again, Lima Bean. The Brits and Krauts are working together? Acknowledge, over.”

“That’s an affirm, Kettle. The British and German troops on the ground appear to be working together. They’ve got a roadblock set up, a kraut vehicle, a civilian horse-drawn wagon and another jeep. We’re coming around for another look at their position, over.”

“Lima Bean, assess how many troops appear to be on the ground, over.”

“Kettle, we can spot four Brits and five Germans. They seem…holy crap! Jesus God! Kettle, they’ve begun firing into the crowd! Say again, the troops on the ground are firing at will into the crowd approaching them. They don’t look like they’re armed! Those people were just walking towards them! Please advise, Kettle. Repeat, please advise! What the hell are we supposed to do, sir?”

Back in the CP tent of the American camp, Lieutenant Colonel David Kaplan of the 413th Regiment, 104th infantry Division’s reconnaissance detachment rubbed his eyes in disbelief and weariness. When was this shit finally going to be over with? Four days after crossing the Roer, the division had gone through hell fighting for Mannheim. Then there was that mess in Operation Grenade, taking all those friggin’ dams in the Roer valley. Now this? What in God’s name was wrong with those goddamned limeys?

“Lima Bean, this is Kettle. Maintain position and keep us posted. Get some photos of this shit while you’re at it. We’ll advise momentarily. Kettle out.”

Colonel Kaplan sighed and looked to his radio operator. “Son, get me that British column again and tell them I want the frequency of the people they’ve got on the ground down there. I’m going straight to the horse’s mouth on this. I want to talk to the man in charge of that rabble and find out just what the hell he’s playing at. This is beginning to stink like last week’s laundry and I want to know why.”

As the dawn broke, 65 year old Klaus Goddard walked with his cows back to the milking barn on his meager farm. Morning chores would not wait, war or no war. 1944 had been a hard year, particularly with so much of his crops and milk production being diverted away for the war effort. It had been so much harder after the Allies landed in France and began pushing the Wehrmacht back. It seemed inconceivable to Klaus that things could become so unraveled. If anything, 1945 appeared to be much worse. He sighed tiredly. Things had been like this back in the Great War too. It was a vicious cycle, it seemed.

Klaus sat down at his stool and began to milk the first of his cows when he heard the commotion coming from out in the barnyard. All of his animals seemed to be howling, deathly afraid of something out there. With a grimace, he hoisted his tired old bones from the stool, grabbed a pitchfork and ambled towards the noise.

He gasped with a mixture of revulsion and surprise when he beheld the origin of the ruckus. All of his animals not inside the corral were running away, braying and barking and clucking madly. Those still inside, the cows mainly, had cowered into a cluster that threatened to tear down the fencing. A soldier, an officer if Klaus’ dim recollection of his own time in uniform was accurate, seemed absorbed in devouring one of his chickens. The officer had ripped the chicken’s head off with one bite. Feathers and blood, along with a huge stain of vomit clung to the officer’s tunic. He seemed oblivious to Klaus till the old man yelled at him.

“Vas der teufel? What are you doing to my chickens? Stop that this instant!” Klaus brandished his pitchfork and confidently stepped forward to defend his property. Aged or not, he wasn’t going to let anybody destroy his hard-earned gains. The soldier dropped the chicken with a moan of longing and awkwardly began staggering towards him. “Now stand back! I’m warning you!” He didn’t want to attack a member of the German military, even if he was defending his home. He’d heard stories of reprisals from the Gestapo and the SS. But this was different. Surely the authorities would see that. This man was a lunatic!

Klaus leapt forward and plunged the pitchfork deep into the soldier’s chest. To his astonishment, it had no effect. If anything, the moans increased in intensity the closer he got to him. When the man’s hands fell onto Klaus’ forearm, he gasped at how cold his assailant’s grasp was. “Let go of me!” He screamed, suddenly becoming frantic. He struggled, but the grip was as steadfast as it was freezing. His screams rose in pitch as the impaled man with the blood, puke and chicken feathers plastered on his face and clothes bit deep into his arm.

The man pulled away from Klaus with a large hunk of his forearm in his mouth, his jaw and chin coated anew in blood. The mewling moans descended into satisfied grunts as he ate heartily. “Mein Gott….. He is a madman! Helfen mich, bitte! Anyone!” Klaus flailed away from the soldier and began to stagger back to his farmhouse. He had a hunting rifle in there. Surely he could reach it in time, if only he weren’t in such horrible pain from that bite! He reached the door, but his hands were too slick with blood to turn the knob. Trying to fight down his panic, he concentrated and grasped it again. Just as he felt the knob turn beneath his fingers, a pair of hands clamped down on his shoulders and the man who only a few hours ago answered to Johannes sank his teeth deep into his throat and began to feast again.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes for Klaus to come back himself, equally ravenous. The cows had managed to break down the corral in their panic and began racing up the road, mooing loudly and kicking up a cloud of dust. Johannes and Klaus followed dutifully. One was now two.

Ten minutes later, farther up the road Heidi Braun emerged from her widow’s farmhouse. Her young husband, Heinrich had died on the Ostfront two years before and Heidi had done her duty to the Fatherland by reporting to a Lebensborn camp with the intent on giving Germany as many healthy children as she could bear. She’d been there two weeks and endured with patriotic resolve, the rough caresses of many an SS officer before it was discovered her womb was barren. Afterward she worked in a munitions factory till the damned British had bombed it into rubble. Now, devoid of purpose she had returned home to the small farm she’d shared for oh so brief a time with her now cold and dead husband, who lay forgotten in some hole in Stalingrad. Since returning from the Lebensborn camp, she’d not felt a man’s touch. Despite the crudity of many of the men she lay with while there, she found she missed the feeling. It was lonely here.

Her brow crinkled as amidst a cloud of dust, several cows came running up the road. They made a horrible din. She clucked in disapproval. Klaus was far too old to be running a farm by himself. He could no longer control even his own livestock. That was a disgraceful waste of resources. She laughed ruefully at the thought. He was a widower too. Too bad he was so old because they might have made a good match.

As she stepped out into the lane to watch the cows vanish around a bend, two figures emerged from the dust and fell upon her greedily. Heidi now had the touch of two men upon her, but it was hardly the reception she’d been expecting. A few minutes later, she stood up. Her bodice was bloodied and torn open, revealing several large bites and gouges across her neck and breast. One arm dangled from torn ligaments. With eyes gone milky and opaque, she joined Johannes and Klaus on their trek. Two was now three.

Just outside the village of Ornel, Mannfred Kleine contemplated how lucky he had been in the last few years as he drove his horse-drawn cart to market. As the town’s butcher, he was perhaps not well off, but affluent enough that his family did not starve. And he provided a specialized service to their small community. He was needed and not necessarily conveniently replaced without some effort. Hermann Schmidt, their fat village burgermeister remembered that and had been kind enough to ignore the fact that Kleine’s grandmother had been named Mandelbaun before she married. Of course, some prime head of cattle delivered to the greedy bastard had served to fuel his selective memory and misplace those marriage certificates when the Gestapo began nosing around their town’s genealogical records. Having a quarter Jewish blood in his background was ample grounds for being deported and never heard from again to one of those camps people talked about under their breath. Yes, Mannfred was lucky, but he always felt that somebody was looking over his shoulder. Maybe one day that greedy bureaucrat would get tired of covering for him and denounce him. It had happened to others he knew, after all. If his luck held out, the Amis and the British would get here and he wouldn’t have to worry about his distant lineage anymore.

“Whoa!” Mannfred pulled the reins tight. To his astonishment, a herd of cows stampeded across the road, blocking him from proceeding. What were they doing running loose like that? He glowered. What a shame. They were probably branded already. There was probably little chance that he could catch one or two of them and supplement his losses a bit. Still…it couldn’t hurt to check.

He got down from his cart and scanned the road. Some of the cows had finally stopped their headlong flight about thirty yards to the east. He looked around. No one seemed to be about. This bit of thievery might just be worth the effort if he was swift about it. Before he could take another step, his horses began to scream and wheeled off down the road in a panic. Likewise, the cows again began their loud mooing and renewed their headlong flight once more. “Dammit!” Mannfred yelled dejectedly. “It’s barely 8 o’clock and already my day is ruined! Could this get any worse?”

He turned with another string of curses on his lips and walked right into Johannes, Klaus and Heidi, who promptly fell upon him noisily. Their pure Aryan stock was not offended in the least by Mannfred’s one-quarter Jewish blood. On the contrary, they seemed to relish it. Three was now four.

Within minutes, their quartet stumbled upon a brother and sister, eight and ten years of age who had just left their cabin for school. Four became six. The children’s hysterical mother, screaming her children’s names over and over became the seventh. A minute later their father, who had managed to actually blow away part of Mannfred’s lower jaw with a hunting rifle before being overpowered and devoured, became the eighth.

Drawn outside by the gunshot, three more villagers emerged from their small houses along the lane and were welcomed into Johannes’ growing troupe. The eleven had swelled to eighteen by the time the first one of them set foot within the village of Ornel proper.

At the same time, not far away at the castle ruins last occupied by the late Johannes and his charges, Horst awoke to Reuter Dietel kicking him in the rear end. “Wake up, idioten! Didn’t the Leutnant place you on guard duty?”

Horst glowered at him. “What does it matter? There isn’t anybody around here anyway! The locals steer clear of these ruins! The Yanks and Tommies are miles away and so are our own people! What is there to watch out for?”

“Look around, fool. The Leutnant wandered off while we all slept last night. If you’d been awake, you’d have seen him. He was getting sick from that bite.” Reuter pointed towards the vomit and blood that had dried into the dirt and grass along the shoreline of the river. “See for yourself. The man was not well.”

Horst visibly paled. He owed a great loyalty and sense of gratitude to Johannes and this lack of discipline instantly made him feel guilty. “Ach…I’m sorry herr Scharfuhrer. I should have stayed awake!”

Reuter waved his apology away. “Jah, you should have. But what’s done is done. We need to find him, but we have no way of knowing how many hours ago he wandered off. And knock that rank crap off. We’re all deserters now. The only man here worthy of being called by rank is out there somewhere, probably out of his mind with delirium.”

“What’s going on?” Hans asked with bleary eyes as he emerged from an arched doorway leading back to their bivouac farther in the castle ruins.

“Johannes…the leutnant disappeared last night. We need to go find him, but I’m not happy with the idea of us tromping around in the woods. He’s going to need a doctor and I’m afraid that’s going to mean traveling into the closest village.”

“There’s a village not far from here called Ornel,” Horst said as he pulled out a map from a case at his feet. “The leutnant didn’t want to go there if we could avoid it, but if he’s hurt…I don’t see any choice either.”

Reuter considered as Hans rushed back into the ruins to awaken the others. “Horst, how far away was your column when the Amis strafed it? Do you think we might be able to salvage any vehicles from it?”

The man snorted with a laugh. “No need. We drove here in a kubelwagen after the column was attacked. Herr leutnant had me park it behind that wall to your left and cover it with branches.”

Reuter nodded. “Sehr gut. Go uncover it. We leave for Ornel in ten minutes.”

CHAPTER 3

“Are you sure we’re going the right way? This bloody map is nae tellin’ me a fookin’ thing.” Corporal Clive Bellows tossed the map dejectedly into his lap and folded his arms across his chest. He seemed for all the world like a frustrated, petulant child. Sergeant Martin Knight shook his head at him in a patronizing manner. Bellows was a fairly decent solider, but was always getting his arse in a bunch about something.

“Ease up, mate. The map is perfectly fine and we’re on the right road. Dinnae worry. Now enjoy the scenery and leave the navigating to me.” Martin, by contrast had been in the British Army a lot longer, and was generally a calmer, more centered individual than the younger soldier who sat in the front seat of the jeep with him. Two American-made Willy’s jeeps bounced along the dirt road some miles outside of the village of Ornel. Their occupants were an advanced recon patrol from the rapidly advancing 9th Battalion, 2nd Devonshire Regiment. A few miles behind them were an entire infantry division and an armored column of over a dozen Sherman and Churchill tanks. While the Yanks were busy engaging the Jerries in Wessel, the British had begun a sweeping southerly envelopment to cut off any resistance or reinforcements trying to reach the besieged city. So far, the Brits had encountered little resistance, but many, many prisoners. German soldiers by and large were giving up in droves.

Clive seemed amazed and incredulous at this, the orderly procession of prisoners marching down the roads and highway, their discipline and esprit de corps still surprisingly intact. This was an army that knew how to give up with dignity. Martin, on the other hand wasn’t surprised. He’d fought the Germans since North Africa, back when things hadn’t been going so well for England. He remembered many a bloody battle, but always a gallantry of sorts in the enemy he fought. Of course, some of the Jerry units they’d encountered since Normandy were downright nasty. The SS for instance had all the discipline, but none of the soldierly…well, camaraderie wasn’t the right word. Both sides were trying to kill the other after all. But he’d always felt that the difference between the Wehrmacht and the SS was that one group at least respected their enemy while the other was nothing but contemptuous and thuggish.

All of this still caused a surprised intake of breath and a startled “Shite!,” when the lead jeep driven by Martin rounded a long winding curve in the road and the British soldiers came face to face with a kubelwagen parked across the road and five German troops standing calmly in the middle of it. Martin barely managed to brake the jeep and downshift before they careened into the Germans standing before them.

Private Allen, the youngest soldier among their group immediately leapt up from the seat in the rear of the second jeep and grasped hold of the .50 caliber Browning M2HB machine gun set up on a pedestal. He was already in the midst of cocking it when Martin shot him a withering glance. “Are ye daft, ye wee idjit? Do they look armed to you, Bobby?”

Allen had already broken out into a sweat. He was far too green to be this far forward with the action in Martin’s estimation. “No sir.”

Martin nodded. “Aye. But still, stay up there and be ready just in case.”

Allen nodded, still sweating profusely as Martin withdrew his Webley sidearm and casually got out from the behind the wheel of the jeep. In front of him, driving the second jeep in their entourage was Martin’s long-time mate, Joe Kirk. He nodded to Allen. “Ease up, lad. Ye’ll be alright. Just stand ready but make no hostile move unless the Germans do.” Martin and Joe had been together a long time and rarely needed to speak in order to communicate. A look or a gesture often sufficed. Martin was pleased to see that Joe had already caught the look and was directing his attention to cover each side of the road in case this was an ambush. He needn’t have bothered. This lot had clearly been waiting for them. All of their weapons were neatly stacked already in a pile far out of reach. Four of the Germans already had their hands in the air and the fifth was slowly approaching Martin with his hands out to his sides. “Guten Morgen. Wie gehts, Tommy?”

Martin nodded. “Jah. Ich bin gut. Sprechensie English?”

“Yes…a little anyway. Meine bruder…my brother is better at it.” The German who appeared to be in charge motioned for a second man to come forward. The man who responded was short, a little scrawny and bespectacled. “My name is Private Hans Deitel. My brother is Scharfuhrer…I mean, Sergeant Reuter Dietel. We and the men with us wish to surrender to you.”

Martin studied them, attempting to look as casual as possible. This looked like a pretty motley lot. These two were regular German Army, the other two had gulls on their collar tabs, so that meant they were Luftwaffe. The Medic in their company had anchors on his shoulder boards. That meant Navy. What the hell was a swabbie doing here? Martin waved the thought away. The Germans were pretty much on their last legs at this point. It shouldn’t surprise him that coastal units were now this far inland. They were most likely deserters, which would explain their eagerness to surrender so quickly.

“Alright then, Fritzy. I accept your surrender. What’s yer story, mate?”

Reuter and Hans exchanged glances and spoke in a rapid clip of German that Martin only caught patches of. “We left Wessel when the Amis attacked. We met up with this group last night and were hiding out in some castle ruins a few kilometers back. We have one request we wish to make.”

“I dinnae recall granting any conditions on this surrender, sunny jim. But speak yer piece and I’ll decide, eh?”

Hans nodded. “We had a lieutenant in our company. He was very good to us, but he took sick last night and we think he wandered off into the village of Ornel. We were on our way there when we heard your jeeps approach. We were intending to surrender anyway to whatever Allied troops we first encountered, so we decided to stop and wait for you. Bitte…please, we ask for the opportunity to at least make sure Herr Leutnant is alright.”

Martin chewed this thought over slowly. “You lot wait right here and keep yer hands on ye’re heads, eh? I’m going to consult me mate.” Martin re-holstered his webley and pointed at Clive and Allen. “You watch them, Clive. Allen, search the lot of them and make sure they’re not carrying any nasty surprises. And don’t be nervous nellies about it. I don’t need any dead Jerries right now if I can avoid it.”

Clive nodded and pointed his sten gun at the Germans as Allen began nervously patting them all down. He chewed methodically on the end of a cigarette like some Yank gangster in the cinema. Martin just shook his head again.

“Joe, come down here, mate. Looks like they’re a group of deserters. They seem alright enough, but they want to go into that village we’re heading to and check up on a wounded officer that supposed to be there.”

“I dunno, Martin. There’s only four of us. I’m none too keen on draggin’ five Jerries in tow behind us if we hit that village.”

Martin nodded. “Aye. I was thinkin’ the same thing. I don’t think they’ve got any more stomach for fightin’ though. I’ve got a feelin’ their story is no fib. I ken we could send one jeep into the village with two of ‘em and the rest of ye stay put till the column catches up. Radio our position and tell ‘em to build a fire under their arses and get up here.”

“Aye. Fair enough.”

Martin turned back towards Reuter and Hans. “Alright, gentlemen. Here’s how we’ll play this. You and yer Medic will come with me in me jeep and we’ll check yer man out in the village. The rest of you lot stay where ye are. We’re taking ye’re weapons and as soon as our column catches up to us, ye’ll be evacuated to a prisoner collection area in the rear.”

Reuter saluted the British Sergeant, who returned it with a grin and an offered hand. “Thank you, Sergeant,” Reuter said in halting English. “I am glad to see these men make it out alive. They’re not a bad bunch. Herr leutnant ordered me to take charge of them and see them through and I was worried there for awhile.”

“No worries,” Martin replied. “Allen, stay here with Sergeant Kirk and guard these prisoners. Clive, get in back and mind the machine gun. Move like ye’ve got a purpose, ye twits!”

A moment later, Sergeant Knight’s jeep roared again to life, circumnavigated the kubelwagen blocking the road and headed once more towards Ornel.

“What was wrong wit’ yer officer if ye don’t mind me askin’.

Reuter frowned. This might be hard to explain, and not just because it was a strange story. Remembering this much English was difficult and Rudi spoke it not at all.

“He had been bit by an old man who was acting crazed back at the ruins we hid in. I think something was wrong with him and the bite got infected. Herr Leutnant was lucid when I last saw him, but he must have gotten worse in the night. When we woke up, he was gone. There was a trail of blood and vomit leading in the direction of the village.”

Martin pursed his lips. “That could be rabies, mate. That’s not good. But lucky fer you lot, aerial recon has already shown us there’s no troop concentrations in that village. Its just civilians, otherwise we wouldn’t be goin’ anywhere near it.”

Reuter nodded grimly. “Jah. We figured the same thing. But…some of the villagers might have decided to hold us for the Fepos…our military police units…that would be bad for us.”

“Aye”, Martin agreed. “I’ve seen their work. A nasty bunch. Not to worry.  We’ll check on yer man, then light out, quick as ye please.”

The jeep rolled on for another two minutes before a sudden fireball appeared on the horizon. Black smoke began to fill the air as tongues of flames could be seen poking above the tree line. Rudi almost shot up from his seat. “Mein Gott…that’s got to be the village. Is it being bombarded?”

Reuter made the medic sit down. It wouldn’t pay to make these Tommies nervous. So far, their surrender had been a bloodless one and he wanted to keep it that way. “Nein. Sit down, Rudi. Look around you. There aren’t any planes in the air. And you didn’t hear any artillery, did you? Think, dumpfkoff.”

Rudi nodded nervously and sat back down. “Jawhol, herr Scharfuhrer. I’m sorry. It’s just…”

Reuter waved him quiet. “I know. Hold tight. We’ll see in a moment.”

Martin gunned the jeep and sped it up towards the village. “What in the hell is that all about? Clive, be ready in case there’s trouble.”

The jeep rounded another curve in the road and the four men aboard it beheld the small town of Ornel. It was beginning to burn. Three buildings in the central square of the small town were already in flames. Even from a few hundred yards away, all aboard could see figures milling about in the streets. Some appeared to be running haphazardly about, while some seemed to sway and stagger as if drunk. Screams and cries floated out of the town, mingled with the occasional retort of a rifle.

“What in God’s name is going on in there?” Martin eased the jeep forward very slowly. All of a sudden he was in no great mood to hurry this humanitarian gesture.

They passed by a handful of cabins and small houses along the lane leading into the town. Some of the homes had their doors flung wide open as if their occupants had rushed outside to see some commotion and hadn’t bothered to close up shop behind them. A flurry of a half-dozen cattle rushed past them, kicking up a cloud of dust. All four of the men coughed and choked on the dust as they drove through it. “Bloody hell, this is a right mess. Sorry to disappoint you two, but I’m not driving us into that donnybrook.”

Reuter nodded. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t want to either. If Herr Leutnant is in the middle of that, I don’t even know how we’d find him, let alone get him out of there.”

Martin stopped the jeep and stood up in the seat. He got out his field glasses and scanned the village’s interior. “My God. They’ve all gone barmy.” It looked like a bloodbath in there. People seemed to be trying to fight off the ones staggering around. All of them looked like they had horrendous wounds on them, bloody and open gashes all across their faces, necks and torsos.

“Let me see,” Reuter said. Martin handed his German counterpart the field glasses without a word. Reuter looked for the better part of a minute and when he put down the binoculars, he slumped back into the seat. His face was incredibly pale. “I…I don’t understand any of that. What’s wrong with them?”

“I dunno, mate. I’ve seen some horrible things in the last few years, but this takes the cake. I couldn’t even begin to explain that one.”

“Let’s take a closer look. Carefully.”

Martin looked at him cautiously. There was no way in hell he was going to pull into that village directly, but he did want a better look. Maybe they could figure out what started the whole thing if they got closer.”

Rudi shot up from his seat in a complete panic. “Wohin gehen Sie? Sie konnen dort nicht hineingehen!” Reuter held onto him and forced him back into his seat.

“Calm down, idioten! We aren’t going in there! We’re just taking a closer look, then turning around.”

Martin eased the jeep back into gear and slowly pulled forward. They advanced another 100 yards till they came across a man hunched over the body of a cow. With his back turned, he seemed oblivious until Martin tapped on the horn. “Here you! Turn around! Hande Hoch!”

Slowly, the man turned his head, causing instant revulsion in all four of the jeep’s occupants. Blood and viscera dripped from his mouth. It covered his hands and dribbled down his chest. A milky glaze covered his eyes and his skin looked almost gray. He staggered to his feet with a gurgling moan and began hobbling towards them with his arms extended as if inviting an embrace.

“Gor Blimey! He’s a right monster! Stop right there! Don’t you come any closer!” The man ignored Martin’s warnings and continued to stumble towards them. Both Martin and Reuter recognized what was wrong with this man almost simultaneously. Both were long-time veterans of this war and both knew immediately what a dead body looked like. And despite all logic, here was one stumbling towards them.

Clive didn’t bother to wait for an order. He let loose with a short volley from the pedestal-mounted .50 caliber Browning, causing all of them to jump in surprise at the sudden burst of noise. The bullets slammed into the man’s chest and torso, punching enormous holes in him and throwing him violently back to the ground in a pirouette. Astonishingly, he sat back up and struggled to his feet again.

“Jesus God above,” Martin swore loudly. He threw the jeep into gear and pushed down hard on the gas. The jeep sputtered and stalled, the engine flooded. “Oh, Goddammit! Not now!”

“He’s still coming!” Clive whipped the machine gun around and again fired at the gruesome figure staggering drunkenly towards them. This time he crisscrossed the burst, stitching a line across the man from his knees to his neck. At that range, there wasn’t much left of him. His head imploded as the bullets pounded into him and sailed on through the other side. This time when he went down, he didn’t get back up again.

“Got ‘im! That bastard won’t bother us again, eh?” Clive spit for good measure, but everyone could see that his hands were shaking like leaves on a tree.

Martin screamed at him. “Quit braggin’ ye daft bugger and keep a lookout, goddammit! I’ve got to try and get this bastard started again.”

Reuter grabbed the field glasses. He stared through them back towards the village. With the shifting of the wind, he could hear a loud moan go up from its interior.

“Hurry, Sergeant. I think those lunatics heard us! I can see them through your glasses. They’re starting to head this way…” Reuter adjusted the magnification on the field glasses. He began to make out detailed features on the faces of the approaching horde and he gasped at the horrifying nature of their wounds. There were at least fifty of them that he could see. Their shuffling pace was not quick, but it was persistent. Near the vanguard of the throng, he could clearly make out the bloodied uniform and now sunken features of Leutnant Johannes Hauser. Blood and gore coated his face, and in that instant, Reuter could scarcely envision the jovial and good-natured man he’d met less than twenty-four hours before.

“Well, to hell with it,” Reuter thought. He still had his MG42 strung around his neck, even if the belts of ammo for the light machine gun were starting to run low. If those SS field police bastards tried some of their drumhead trial nonsense, he’d show them a bit more resistance than they were used to. Hans was his little brother and there was no way he was going to allow him to die for some stupid cause that was all washed up anyways. Welcome to Germany. March, 1945.

It took them more than an hour to evade the patrols of roving Feldjaeger once they got past the perimeter of the American bombardment. Already they could hear the chatter of small arms fire breaking out behind them as the Allied armored and infantry forces pushed their way forward into the beleaguered city. It was only a matter of time before the city fell, though he was certain the fighting would be hard on both sides. It was madness to keep on fighting at this point. The Amis and the Tommies were already well within Germany’s borders and the damned Ivans were rapidly closing in from the east. Anybody with a lick of sense knew that the game was up. If they could have, Reuter would have gotten he and his brother through to the Ami lines and surrendered to them outright. He shuddered to think what his Uncle and older brother were going through on the eastern borders. The Ivans weren’t known for their kindness to German prisoners. He shrugged. Just as well, really. It’s not like they invited us into Russia.

The two brothers had kept to the riverbanks and smaller creeks and tributaries. Staying near the water masked their scents from the Fepo’s dogs. After another hour of stealthy walking in knee deep cold water, Hans tugged at his brother’s sleeve.

“Was ist das heir? Is that a boat?” Reuter strained his eyes. It was getting close to dark and the light did not penetrate well through the smoke of battle and the tall forest trees.

“Jah. Das ist richtig…I think so.” The two brothers cautiously approached the small fishing boat, nestled beneath an overhang of moss and tree roots. The boat had obviously been scrupulously hidden by its owner. You couldn’t see it from the shore at all. Reuter had never considered himself a thief, but these were desperate times.

“Get in Hans. We’ll make much better time paddling in this thing than we will walking in the muck.”

“But won’t we be visible from the shore?”  “Aber naturlich, dumpfkoff! But everybody else is going towards the fighting. I think we’re far enough to the rear that our chances of running into any Fepo’s are scant. Besides, it’s getting dark. Now start rowing.”

Hans nodded to his younger brother and clambered up into the boat. Reuter handed him the MG42 and shoved the boat clear of its mossy shelter. Hauling himself aboard, Reuter again took the machine gun and scanned the shore as his brother rowed.

As the sounds of gunfire faded into the distance, he began to relax a little. Time passed slowly for Reuter and Hans Dietel as they made their way down the river. They’d managed to come a good ways, though he had no real way of gauging how far. Rowing with the current behind them made for a swift journey, or at least it seemed to. A thick pall of smoke hung in the new nighttime air and it obscured all landmarks. They could be heading in any direction at this point, maybe right into the arms of another German unit who would almost certainly shoot them as deserters, or hopefully into some Allied encampment. Reuter didn’t want to think about how much of their luck he’d used up at this point.

After nearly another hour of rowing, fog began to settle in. Visibility quickly dwindled. The brothers rounded a bend in the river and beheld a large spectral shape materialize out of the mists along the shoreline. Its ramparts were largely obscured, but both could easily recognize the remnants of a medieval castle. The landscape in this part of Germany was dotted with them, but Reuter had always considered them a part of the local color, just something that had always been there. Now he saw other possibilities.

“Hans, steer towards the shore. There’s no sense in us trying to row further in this fog. Those ruins up ahead will make for good shelter. If nothing else, we can hole up there for the night and get our bearings come first light.” Something bumped against the underside of the boat as they cleaved through the water. Both brothers exchanged questioning glances as they felt something hammer against the planks briefly before the current swept whatever it was away. As it vanished into the night, something broke the water for a moment and Hans cringed as he heard something that sounded like a clearly audible moan.

“Reuter? Was ist? Did you hear that?” Reuter shrugged. Whatever it had been was gone now.

“Who cares. Let’s get ashore and hide this damned boat.” The brothers hauled themselves up onto the muddy ground and pulled the boat up with them as silently as they could. Reuter set the machine gun down as they found a suitably shadowed area beneath a fallen tree to conceal their boat. Hopefully, some other resourceful absconder wouldn’t come along in the next few hours and liberate it anew. Reuter didn’t think so, but why take chances? The two had barely begun to hide their boat when the sound of someone clearing their throat behind them made them freeze in place.

“Hande hoch, meine kinder. And keep those hands where I can see them. Turn around. Schnell! I don’t have all night.”

“Great,” Reuter thought ruefully. “Captured by our own. Sorry, Hans. I tried.”

The Dietel brothers turned around as ordered and beheld three German soldiers, all with weapons trained on them. Two of them held standard-issue K98′s and were Luftwaffe groundpounders if their breast eagles and shoulder boards were any indication. The officer with them was a squid, a Kriegsmarine. That didn’t surprise Reuter to see a naval officer at this point. There were lots of former coastal artillery people this far inland. There wasn’t any damned coast to defend anymore except for those isolated outposts in the Channel Islands. He figured it was a safe bet that he wasn’t from there.

“I thought you Heer boys didn’t go near boats. That’s my province, nicht wahr?” He grinned at them. “Speak up, boys. Like I said, I haven’t got all night.”

“I think we can figure them out, herr Leutnant,” one of the Luftwaffe troops, a gefreiter by his sleeve chevron intoned warily. “I’d say they’re in the same spot as us. They’re on the run too.”

“You are deserters?” Hans asked with wide eyes.

The officer shrugged. “Aren’t’ you?”

Reuter nodded. “Jawhol, herr Leutnant. Wessel was all but lost…”

The officer nodded indifferently. “Jah, jah…and you didn’t want to hang around for the Fepos to drag you back in or string you up from a tree. It’s a familiar story, meine freund. It’s all gone to hell. Join the club.” He gestured towards the MG42. “You two can come with us, but Horst will relieve you of your toys until I’m certain we can trust you. Kommen sie. Come check out our accommodations.”

The lieutenant continued his tale as they walked. Introductions were made. The officer, Johannes was indeed part of a Kriegsmarine artillery forward observer detachment. His whole command had been wiped out two days ago, their column strafed by Yank P-51 Mustangs. Horst and Burkhardt were part of an artillery battery accompanying them. With their 88′s knocked out, they had little taste for joining the infantry.

“We’ve been here at the castle for less than a day. We thought this might be a good place to hole up and hide till the Amis or the British reach this area. There’s plenty of game nearby for forage, but I wouldn’t go into the village. The likelihood of some sympathizers loyal to the fanatics in Berlin would love to turn us in to the Fepos. Local legend has this castle as something of a cursed place. Most of the villagers shun it.” He laughed. “It’s like something out of Bram Stoker, jah?”

Reuter shrugged. He’d been a poor worker all his life. Reading for pleasure had never been much of a priority. Growing up during the depression that ensued following the Great War had been hungry years before Hitler got into the chancellery. Reuter didn’t particularly care for the little corporal, but the revitalized Army at least had offered regular food and shelter. Hans had been the one the family had their hopes hinged on, but the war eventually dragged him away from university all the same.

“If you say so, herr Leutnant. I saw the movie with Lugosi once.”

The officer laughed again. “Jah, that was a good one. This castle seems much like that one. We found an old man living in the ruins when we arrived, wretched fellow. He was something of the village outcast, I think.” He made a corkscrew gesture with his right hand, which Reuter saw was freshly bandaged. “A crazy man. Verruckt.”

The five men approached the castle and waved to another soldier, this one a wearing the Red Cross brassard of a sani, who nervously held an MP40 submachinen pistole in his hands.

“Calm yourself, Rudi. We have guests. Rudi here was my unit’s sani. Having him along has been a godsend. That lunatic old man took sick and eventually deranged. We could not communicate with him at all.” He pointed at his wounded hand. “The old bastard gave me this. It still hurts like hell. Danke Gott for morphine, jah?”

“What did you do to him? We didn’t hear any shots.”

“Of course not! Do you think we want to draw attention to ourselves? Nein, we beat the old man, weighed him down and tossed him into the river.”

Hans and Reuter exchanged glances. That might have been what they’d heard strike their boat.

“At any rate, here is our home for the forseeable future. We managed to grab enough rations for a few days. There’s a little wine, bread and cheese. Make yourselves comfortable.”

The Dietel brother settled in with their new companions and ate well. Hans quickly unclasped his bedroll from around his gas mask container and lay down upon it as soon as their feast was done. Reuter couldn’t sleep. The lieutenant grinned at him and tossed him a cigarette.

“Here. A misdrop from the Tommies landed near us full of supplies a week ago. We threw away that horrible bully beef, but there were plenty of lucky strikes to go around.”

Reuter eagerly accepted the smoke and inhaled deeply. Life was beginning to look good again.

“Do you want to see something interesting? I’ll show you what the old man was doing when we got here.”

Leutnant Johannes grabbed a torch from their dwindling fire and wrapped several strings of rotting tapestry around it. It lit up their dim path enough to see by, but not by much. The officer led Reuter down a corridor that descended downward into the castle’s lower chambers. They soon came to a large chamber. At the end of the room, barely made perceptible in the gloom, Reuter beheld the outline of a stone door that had been long walled up. Loose stones had been pried free and littered the floor.

“You see? The old lunatic had been excavating this room for some reason. When we got here, he’d been down here unblocking this ancient door. What we found on the other side was interesting.”

Johannes handed Reuter another torch from the floor and lit it. The room was soon illuminated somewhat better, though it still made Reuter incredibly uncomfortable. On the other side of the long-blocked doorway was a long hall that descended back into pitch blackness. At their feet were piles of human bones, complete skeletons and pieces of skeletons. The remains stretched back far into the gloom. It was impossible to say how many bodies had choked this narrow corridor. At the very edge of the corridor, butting up against the remains of the stone door lay two skeletal figures clad in full armor, once resplendent but not pitted with rust. Piles of crossbow bolts, two fragile, broken crossbows and large broadswords lay beside them. Several of the skeletons had crossbow bolts sticking out of their skulls.

“Mein Gott…. What happened here?”

Johannes shrugged. “Who can say? It was certainly one hell of a fight, I can tell you that. These two must have held off the attackers while the door was walled up behind them. It must have been a suicide mission for them. Poor bastards.”

Reuter frowned with concentration. “This castle is old enough. Could they have been plague victims trying to escape? Could the door have been sealed to prevent the contagion from spreading?”

Johannes nodded. “Jah. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to also. But what I don’t understand is why the old man was down here trying to uncover it all. He didn’t seem like an archaeologist. He was already half-crazy when we got here, sick as a dog from something he came into contact with while rummaging around in this hole.”

Reuter looked hard at the naval officer. Over the last hour, he’d broken out in a profuse sweat. “Herr Leutnant. The old man bit you, didn’t he?”

Johannes nodded. “Jah. That he did. Rudi cleaned the wound very thoroughly, but it was an ugly bite. I’ve been feeling worse as the night has gone on. I cannot show it in front of the boys though. They’ve depended on me to keep them alive. That’s why I’ve confided in you somewhat, Reuter. You’re about my age, jah?”

Reuter nodded. “We seem to be fairly close anyways.”

“Jah,” Johannes continued. “And you see the way things are going as well as I can. The war is over. It has been for months as far as I can see. If I take sick, I’m depending on you to see them through. I can see that responsibility in the way you take care of your brother. I order you to take command and protect them should I become ill.”

Reuter nodded reluctantly. “Jahwohl, herr Leutnant. I’ll watch over them with my life. It’s the least I can do after you’ve taken us in.”

The two men shook and made their way back up the stairs.

Four hours later, full night had descended. Johannes awoke with a feverish chill, his stomach roiling and the wound on his palm pulsating with pain. Aside from that throbbing hurt, the rest of his extremities felt completely numb. It took a supreme effort for him to wobble to his feet and stagger out of the ruins to heave up the small amounts of wine and cheese he’d forced himself to eat earlier. He’d ordered Horst to guard the entrance to their shelter within the castle’s walls, but he’d fallen asleep and remained utterly oblivious as his commander stumbled and moaned as shuddering pain gripped his insides.

“Grosse Gott, bitte…. What is wrong with me? Please let this pain end,” the Leutnant who had survived the Normandy invasion, the bombardment of Cherbourg and that bloody withdrawal from Belgium in January pleaded to the unheeding night sky. His voice depleted to a choked rasp, He fell to his knees and attempted to marshal his waning strength to call out for help. It was no use. Leutnant Johannes Hauser, age thirty-four of Stuttgart collapsed face first into the dirt. Harsh, wracking breaths came out of his trembling form for another minute before he finally lay still and unmoving.

Another two minutes passed before he stirred once more and again gained his feet. He swayed in the night breeze, but the sounds that came from his throat now weren’t cries for help or impassioned pleas to an ignoring God. They were mewls of hunger. And of course, he wasn’t Johannes anymore…

—-

It was the summer of 1870, and Queen Victoria reigned supreme, although not a young man any more I was still within my prime. I had worked for a number of years as a reporter for The Times, a newspaper, I am sure you are aware, of great standing within the Empire.

Unfortunately, at that time, I was a bullish gentleman with more than a little ambition. Therefore I had made an enemy of my employer, a Mr Simpson, who drew the title of Under Editor to the Editor of The Times, (a position I wished to hold myself one day). Hence, when we received a missive from  a Gentleman Scientist in the Caribbean who called himself Dr Baker, which talked about ‘The greatest scientific discovery of the age’ and ‘an experiment to cure the woes of the world’, Simpson had me in mind.

It was vague and meandering letter, scruffily if not hurriedly written and yet it was malodorous, smelling faintly of mould. As I read it I distinctly remember a slick, oily feeling pervading my skin and coalescing into a feeling of dread that made me compelled to place it lightly on the desk and only look at it from a distance. That feeling of dread stayed with me for the remainder of the day, as I remember.  Mr Simpson decided to despatch me forthwith to meet with this man and interview him for an article for The Times. Truth be told, I had made Mr Simpson look like a dullard the week before in the office and no doubt he wished for me to be out of his sight for a time.

This letter may have normally been ignored as the work of a charlatan or madman, however Mr Simpson took it as an opportunity to be rid of me. Not being well travelled within the world at that time, I took it as an opportunity to see some more of the Great British Empire and perhaps make myself more interesting at fashionable London dinner parties. Such parties were frequented by fashionable London ladies in who I took great interest at the time. Yet as I read the letter again that evening, in the comfort of my own home, the oily horror of it returned and I found myself in a drunken state at the effort of trying to remove it from my minds eye.

So it was that I was despatched on the morning of June 12th with a small, nay tiny, allowance from The Times to join, by arrangement, the HMS Endeavour on a voyage to the Caribbean. I would be set off at the port of Montserrat to find my own way to the even smaller Island of St Johns where, according to his letter, Dr Baker resided. A missive had been despatched on an earlier ship to inform the governor of Montserrat of my arrival and beg him provide me with the means to complete Mr Simpson’s task.

Arriving by coach at Plymouth docks I was stunned by the sheer level of activity, of the humanity that swarmed around that great ship. After the French had made the first Ironclad in 1862 the might of British Industry had swung into full motion in the creation of equal or better ships so as to counter the French in their ambitions. The HMS Endeavour was part of a growing fleet of metal monstrosities that now keep the sea-lanes around the globe free of vicious piracy and those vile French.

The docks themselves writhed like a sea of humanity and stank of molten steel and that slightly rotten, brackish air, associated with all ports. Workers busied around like ants carrying ironworks and wood from carts and narrow boats to the place of fitment on the large ships in dock. The air was thick with steam and smoke from the variety of engines and machineries used to construct and bend the heavy steel used in the manufacture of Her Majesty’s fleet.

The carriage could take me no further due to the morass of activity in front but the coachman kindly agreed to carry my travelling trunk to the Endeavour for a small fee. I regret to say that I was not one to travel light and feel I had the better of the deal as I paid the sweating, red-faced coachman his dues. I stood in awe at the huge steel monolith that was the Ironclad before me and for no reason I could fathom, I was compelled to run in panic from the scene, the letter heavy in my pocket as in my mind the ship took on the appearance of a monstrous gravestone. At the time I had never seen such a construction, surely it must have been as large as St Paul’s cathedral. I stood in the shadow of the ship its huge black hull looming like a wall in front of me and there, barely in view above that, the masts and elongated funnel that spewed steam high up towards the Lord himself. I mused that perhaps that God Himself must be in awe of such achievements of The Empire. Blasphemous perhaps but I was a younger man and prone to such flights of fancy. As I gazed I saw the huge rotating blades at the rear of the ship, taller than several men stood atop each other and wondered, as I gaped, what possible machinery could have constructed such items. Truth be known, I was a man more of the arts rather than a scientist or engineer; such things were unfathomable to me.

—-

“She’s a beauty isn’t she” said someone close, making me start.

“Quite wonderful” I replied as I composed myself and turned to see a man about my age, but beardless, dressed in full Admiralty Regalia.

“You must be the reporter,” said the Gentleman.

“And I presume, you sir, are the Captain of this vessel?”

“You are correct Sir, Captain William Burrington at your service”

“Phineas Smith,” I said “reporter for The Times at yours, Sir”

We shook hands. He was altogether not what I imagined from a Naval Captain, in fact he seemed quite personable.

“I do hope you are not writing about Her Majesty’s Navy during your voyage?” he smiled.

“If I do Sir, it will only be complimentary, this is quite a wonder.” said I, glossing over the way my skin crawled and perspired at the thought of the journey ahead.

“Lets see if you say that after several weeks aboard her.” He chuckled.

I smiled politely slightly bemused by the comment.

“I will have a boy come and collect your baggage, you are welcome to join me on the bridge if you like Mr Smith, for you are our only passenger on this voyage, and the tide turns within the hour.”

I thanked him for his hospitality and climbed the long gangplank to the deck of the Ironclad.

The voyage was uneventful except for the constant rumbling of the massive engine and even after all this years I swear my hearing was never the same after that journey. Below decks, bouts of fearful panic overcame me whenever I considered the journeys end. Yet my rational mind could find no cause for this fear and I set it aside as travellers’ nerves.  I found myself bored and wishing I had brought more books. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the company of Captain Burrington and his deck of cards, I may have flung myself to the mercy of the sea.

The Captain and I spent many a pleasant hour in discussion and we quickly discovered that we had a like mind in nearly all matters both political, (Disraeli was a cad of the highest order), religious (God save the queen) and in matters of the heart. (Our ‘dance’ cards were closely matched in terms of ‘conquests’, if you take my meaning). Truth be told, we formed a fine friendship and both commented on a desire to stay friends after this voyage. He had a house in London where he chose to reside when not at sea and by pure chance we both had knowledge of an Ale House of fine repute where we both had occasion to drink but on separate occasions.

After several weeks and a distinct change in the weather for the better, we arrived in the Caribbean. The HMS Endeavour, it turned out, was merely there to show the might of the Empire to our colonial cousins and the colonial cousins of our enemies who inhabited surrounding islands along the Caribbean. This meant that the ship would be returning to England in two weeks. I hoped that my business on St Johns would be concluded within that time and so the good Captain offered to return to Montserrat, or indeed St Johns if no transport could be found, to pick me up for the return journey. I was happy at this thought for a number of reasons: Firstly, I enjoyed his company immensely and secondly, the romance of travelling perhaps outweighed the practicality of it; I longed to return to England with its fine alehouses and busty women. I would also perhaps be rid of the sweaty dreams and irrational panics, for there is nothing more lonely to an English Gentleman than a ship full of sailors. Unless, of course, one was a sodomite. I am happy to say that a succession of beautifully pleased women would testify that I am not.

—-

I bid my farewells to the good Captain and was taken by steam launch to the port of Montserrat. From a distance it looked a beautiful place, the sea a shining graduated green    and blue, golden sandy beaches and luscious green palms. In the misty distance rose the mountainous volcano from which the island itself had been formed. The port town itself a rambling site of white wooden housing, truly colonial in appearance. As we approached I could clearly see a busy market and the juxtaposition of the Negro natives and the white colonials, those brave souls who left Queen and Country for this gorgeous but Godforsaken land.

I spent an uneventful evening with the governor, who was a most frightful bore, demanding news of London society and talk of people I had never heard of and never met. The only light relief from his tedium was the vista of his beautiful wife, a vision if I may say so but unfortunately she was smitten with the fellow and barely cast a glance in my direction. Consequently I made my excuses and went to bed, feigning some form of sickness caused by so many weeks at sea. The only curious event was when I questioned the governor about the Island of St Johns and the good Dr Baker. He would not linger on the subject and gave the shortest, curtest answer available to him. Tired and a little drunk at this point I did not press him on it.

The following morning the weather had not changed and I purchased myself a wide brimmed hat, fashioned from leaves, to protect myself from the bright sunshine. I was transported through the town to a waiting sail ship to take me the 10 nautical miles to St Johns. The hat looked faintly ridiculous I feel but needs must when the Devil drives and I thought the protection would outweigh my mild embarrassment. Besides, I was in a rum mood, as a night in a real bed on land had lifted my spirits somewhat.

At the far end of the beach there was a small sloop, a swarthy Negro standing by it. They were both as scruffy as each other, the man dressed in little more than rags and a contrast to some of the other well tended fishing boats and sloops in the bay. I was not best pleased by this turn of events and asked the coach driver why I must use this boat. Curtly I was told that this was the only boat that would go to St Johns and looking back I feel it was the tone in the drivers voice that began the feelings of foreboding that came to dominate the remainder of the journey. The boat itself needed a lick of paint to say the least and the sails where a patchwork of differing cloths, stitched together at random.

The coach driver loaded my items onto the boat and I approached the ‘Captain’ of the ‘ship’ with my hand out to shake his.  Well, the fellow just looked me in the eye and spat on the floor before turning and climbing aboard. I was shocked but before I made an issue of it I reminded myself that foreigners had different customs and perhaps I had misinterpreted his gesture. However, I am ashamed to say that it crossed my mind that if was what the repeal of slavery resulted in, perhaps it had not been the right thing to do. As I have stated previously, I was a younger man then and prone to such idiotic fancies.

The journey took some considerable hours so I read a little and played solitaire to pass the time. Eventually I saw a small island in the distance, no more perhaps than a mile in diameter. As we approached I could pick out a series of huts dotted amongst the trees that made the verdant paradise of the island look scruffy, the owners seemingly cared little for civic pride.

As we approached I could see that the settlement looked sparsely populated, several old men and women sat in groups and I was unsettled by the rotting carcass of a cow that seemed to have been dumped not too far from the village. As I gazed I thought I saw figures in the trees behind moving away. I tried to use my book to shield my eyes and thought just for a second that one of the figures moved with a deportment different to the others but then they had gone. At this point I distinctly remember having butterflies in my stomach and the urge to jump overboard and swim for my life was nigh overwhelming. Perchance it was the heat and lack of sustenance for the voyage but I remember feeling nothing but foreboding as we landed the sloop on the beach.

—-

The captain jumped off the ship and bade me follow him. I considered asking him to take my trunk, however pride meant that I merely hefted it onto the beach and proceeded to drag it behind me. I made slow progress up the beach but rather than offer to help he merely stopped every few feet and waited. This was quite intolerable and I muttered so under my breath. It occurred to me then that the Negroes of this island looked different to those of Montserrat. Their skin was darker they themselves seemed skinnier and wiry perhaps. From photographs I had seen, I surmised that they could be African in origin. With a great show of effort I dragged my trunk through the village lest the locals felt compelled to help me but none of them did and eventually I came upon a large wooden hut some way along a small track outside the main settlement. It had a western construction and I deduced that this was the house of Dr Baker. My erstwhile Captain wandered off without a word and being an Englishman I felt obliged to thank him. However the combination of his surliness and rudeness meant that, to my shame, I merely poked my tongue out at him when he turned his back. When in Rome and all that.

I dropped the trunk and removed my sodden kerchief from my trousers, discovering it was possibly wetter than the perspiration of my face. Exasperated I left my baggage where it lay and proceeded inside. The shack, if you could grace it with such a title, was dark inside and the floorboards creaked as I entered the door. A musky chemical smell was omnipresent in the room, despite being open to the elements by means of shuttered windows. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, for the shack was deep within the palm trees of the island, I saw that it was simply furnished with two dining chairs, bedecked with antimacassars and a small table that looked unused but was set with a grace unbefitting of the scene. On the wall hung a portrait of a couple, dusty and lightened by age. Small paraffin lamps could be seen dotted about. I was about to call out when, through sheet on the other side of the room, stepped a small man who simply stopped and stared at me for an inordinate time. He was perhaps a foot shorter than I, with long black hair tied back with jungle twine. A skinny fellow his clothes hung from him. I could see it would once have been a respectable suit of tweed, yet now was threadbare with age and use. I pondered if he had other clothing at all.

“Ah. Mr Smith is it?” his eyes cleared as he drew the logical conclusion.

“And you must be Dr Baker” I said with all the heartiness I could muster.

“I am. I am. I am.” He said wiping his hands on his trousers and stepping forward to shake my hands vigorously. I distinctly remember how slick he felt, like freshly caught Trout or such like. His eyes were dark with lack of sleep and he seemed restless, the tone of his voice monotone and dour, but filled with gusto.

“Pray Sir, was your journey a pleasant one?” he said enthusiastically, still shaking my hand.

Distracted by his slickness I replied

“Well no. Not really.”

“Oh” He stopped shaking my hand.

Regaining my composure I answered.

“Actually some water would cure all my ails”

“Of course. Of course.” He darted out of the room.

I flopped onto one of the chairs as he returned bearing a pitcher of water. I drank long and deeply as he sat opposite, just staring at me.

“The fact you have arrived today fills me with joy Mr Smith” he said.

I looked quizzically at him whilst drawing more water from the pitcher.

“Yes. Yes. For this very evening I come to the zenith of my experimentation”

“It was not clear from your letter what the nature of your studies are,” said I.

“Ah well. I am a Chemist by training and an anthropologist by chance. I did not want to enter into too much detail for fear my letter was intercepted by my rivals.”

I struggled to see that this little man would have any rivals but I let this point pass.

“I suggest that we eat and then perhaps I can show you what it is that I have been doing with my time here”

I smiled, though my heart was dreaming of nice ale and perhaps some roasted venison.

Baker left the shack for several minutes while he fetched a meal from the villagers and I took this time to take in my luggage. I changed clothes and for reasons I still do not understand to this day, tucked my loaded service revolver into the inside of my jacket. I could not shake a feeling of horror that seeped into my soul, in the same way London fog soaks through the sturdiest wool clothing, even though the evening was warm and pleasant.

It was then I noticed that the portrait of the couple on the wall showed Dr Baker and I surmised, his wife. She was a fine beauty, taller than Baker perhaps, with blond hair and piercing blue eyes. I realised then that this small shack had indeed at one time showed the touch of a lady. The placement of the furniture, the antimacassars, the china oddities on a shelf. The touch of a woman of taste trying to make the best of a poor lot. Yet, the grubby shack had not been cleaned in some considerable time. As I pondered this Baker returned with a wooden platter of fish and vegetables and we dined whilst he caught up on news of the Empire. The vegetables were nothing to speak of but I must admit I enjoyed the fish; it was moist and succulent, with a fresh flavour and must have been grilled over an open fire. I don’t know why I remember this so clearly; even now many years later in London I can still taste it. Memory is a strange thing. With a full stomach I plucked up the courage to ask about his wife.

“I’m afraid she died of a fever a few weeks after coming to the Island” was all he would say on the matter before hurriedly changing the subject and looking away.

Over a glass of Rum I asked Baker to expand on the reason for my visit.

“Well” he said,  “Several years ago, my wife and I were travelling around Africa, it was our Honeymoon truth be told and I found myself stricken with the most dreadful sickness. I could not eat and keep my stomach contents. Our guide, concerned for my welfare, recommended I consult a local ‘Bokor’, or sorcerer for a cure. Good Christian teaching warned me against this but I must confess that the pains in my stomach were such that I acquiesced and saw the man. After a ritual of some length and complexity I was handed a small bag of powder to consume with water over the following few days. This I did and to my amazement, the following day I ate a hearty meal and felt fully recovered. In awe of this powder I completed a chemical analysis of it and found the most amazing interplay of chemicals and compounds I had ever seen. In order to learn more about the origin of this remarkable chemistry I stayed in Africa for several months until I learned that the most accomplished Bokor in Vodou, the religion of the area, actually lived here on this island.”

“So this remarkable discovery is a cure for illness of the digestive system?” I enquired.

“No, no. Not at all. I was interested in the chemistry of the cures, not the mumbo jumbo they associate with Vodou.” he sighed.

“Tell me have you ever considered what will happen to the Empire now that we have to rely on European workers and not slaves”

“No, not really” I said for truth be told, I failed to see how anything could affect the Empire.

“The way it appears to me is that the Europeans will require a fair wage, that will require more expense for the simple tasks one requires which will inflate the economy, which in turn will bankrupt us all. What we need is a way of creating a labour force that requires no wages and little or no costs to maintain”

“Well surely that would be slaves, and I don’t think your grasp of economics is quite accurate,”

“Nevertheless, a free labour source would allow the Empire to flourish would it not?”

I nodded, now thoroughly lost to the mans point.

“Come with me” he said.

—-

We went outside and walked through an overgrown path, deeper into the undergrowth of the jungle. The light was fading into darkness and I was already struggling to keep my footing in the dense underbrush. Eventually we came to a reed hut built in a small clearing. Outside there were a variety of glass bottles and canisters, smashed and broken and an ungodly smell of rotting meat. I was also shocked to see a crudely made coffin lying on the ground by the entrance to the hut. Resting one foot on the coffin stood a black man of tiny stature, he was dressed in rags that once may have resembled a black suit and smelt of fish as he smoked a tiny hand rolled cigarette. Around his neck was a garland of what appeared to be bones, hair, ribbons and carved wooden effigies. His rheumy eyes looked me up and down and he smiled at me with rotten teeth. I realised the fish smell was most probably his breath.

Baker and this man had a short conversation in a language I didn’t recognise where my name was mentioned and ‘The Times’ newspaper. The gentleman raised his eyes and shook my hand.

“This is Papa Badalou, the Bokor I mentioned previously.” said Baker.

“Charmed, Sir” I said, perhaps a little ungraciously. I tried to smile but I’m afraid it would have been false for the sense of foreboding in my soul had risen to a crescendo of fear at this point. I did not like this gentleman one bit.

They had a further conversation before Baker turned to me and said,

“Bear in mind that what I am about to show you is an automaton, nothing more than a shell, equipped to do ones bidding: Lifting, carrying and such like but without complaint nor rest. It is to all intensive purposes the perfect employee.”

As Baker lit a rough torch that had been left on the ground at his feet, Papa Badalou shouted something at the hut. From inside I heard a terrible low moan. A huge hulking figure stooped through the doorway before emerging into the evening gloom. Unconsciously I stepped back in fright and as Baker raised the torch I saw the full countenance of the creature that emerged. It was a man. ‘Was’ being the operative word. It was a corpse. Its eyes were grey as its skin, no blood coloured his lips and he appeared to have a hole in his chest. It. He had been buried a time for there was mould on his suit which had the shirt unbuttoned. It must have been his burial suit.

“Good God” I exclaimed.

“God has nothing to do with it dear boy. This is pure science, with perhaps a little touch of Voodou,” said Baker, apparently rather pleased with himself.

“But its inhuman” I continued, barely able to form the words.

“No, Mr Smith. It was human. Now it is merely a collection of actuators and structures as lifeless as a fairground mechanical device.”

“Did you kill him?” I asked.

“No. No. No. Nothing unnatural happened. He was in an accident, a boat oar puncturing his thorax.” With this he put his fist into the hole in the creatures chest. I felt the humours rise in my stomach.

“He was buried a good Christian burial, I am merely using the chemical components of his body before the are absorbed into the earth. Can you imagine Sir, cleaned up and perhaps with some sort of mask to make their countenance more pleasing, one in every house in the Empire, a servant for every home” He looked the creature up and down.

I stood agog. The full horror seemed to reflect off me, I couldn’t speak; I just stared at this thing.

“Let me demonstrate.” He continued, now clearly excited.

“Jacob!” He said in a loud clear voice. The thing turned and gazed at him.

“Take the body from the coffin and place it on the workbench please.” The creature stared at him for a second then bent and opened the coffin. The smell was horrendous as the creature reached inside and hoisted the black suited corpse onto his shoulder. Baker wrinkled his nose.

“Fresh, Papa Badalou, they must always be fresh, how many times must I tell you.” The tiny Negro shrugged his shoulders and muttered something.

“Yes. Yes.” said Baker. “Its always the heat isn’t it.”

“See how obedient he is Mr Smith, quite pliable to all but the most complex requests.”

I did not answer but just stared as Jacob entered the hut and placed the corpse on the workbench. Baker lit several more torches inside the hut and I could see flasks and rubber tubing, oil burners and a small cooking stove, it looked like a small laboratory or pharmacists. Baker busied himself lighting oil burners and checking chemicals. As he worked he ushered me in. Morbid curiosity carried my legs forward but my mind reeled.

As he readied the process he continued,

“Now Jacob there was made with a mixture of chemicals, and Voodou. What I intend to do now is the same process but without the mumbo jumbo. If the Zombification can be easily achieved I intend to set up a factory in the North of England where the weather will be kinder to the materials involved until reanimation is complete. At that point Mr Smith their decomposition ceases and one can eliminate the smell. What do you think? I was toying with ‘Bakers Zombie Automatons Ltd’ as a name. What do you think? Eh?”

I wanted to call him a madman and run, flee this place and return to England forthwith but I just stood there, unable to process the macabre scene before me.

Papa Badalou obviously understood some English because he began to query Baker. I do not understand what was said but it quickly became an argument. Jacob and I stood there as they raged at each other, until Papa Badalou stormed out of the hut back towards the village.

“Oh dear.” He said as he continued to run around placing tubes into the corpse and removing stoppers from flasks.

“It appears the good Bokor is convinced that his ritual is as important as the chemical processes. I’ve tried to persuade him that it is just science but he is not convinced. Apparently the spirits must be appeased.”

Baker paused, and waved his hands in a mock expression of a magician doing a trick.

“We better get this done quickly so I can prove him wrong, before he returns with his colleagues.” This cryptic answer unnerved me further.

“Jacob be a dear and pass me the sulphur.” The corpse reached over and passed Baker a small dish.

“No Jacob. The sulphur. There. There!” exclaimed Baker, pointing, as Jacob replaced the dish and passed him another.

Finally, he stopped.

“Now Mr Smith, prepare to be amazed,” he exclaimed, more showman now than scientist.

Several stoppers were removed from flasks and taps turned in tubes. Coloured liquids drained into the corpse through tubes placed at various points in the body. Baker just stood there, a wild look in his eyes, with his hands on his hips. Presently he removed his pocket watch from his waistcoat and tapped it impatiently.

Minutes passed and he checked his watch repeatedly.

“Odd.” He murmured.

“How very odd.” he muttered again before leaning into the corpse to look at the face.

“It never normally takes this, errrk”.

The corpses hand had shot up and grabbed him around the throat. I jumped in shock and I am ashamed to say at that point I may have soiled my undergarments slightly. The corpse bit deep into Bakers neck and the little man screamed a gurgling scream. Blood gushed from his neck like a stream, covering the table and workbench as it flowed. Baker gazed incredulously at the amount of blood and removed his hand from his neck to inspect it, whereby the blood jetted from the open wound and Baker looked up pleading at me before gurgling something, bubbles of blood obscuring his words as it dripped from his mouth.

The corpse sat up and proceeded to feast on Dr Baker. In that moment I became painfully aware that I was the only living thing in that hut and feeling the weight of my service revolver, I removed it from my waistcoat and took aim at the head of the creature. The Zombie took the Doctor and laid the stricken man in its lap before tearing gobs of meat from Bakers neck and devouring them greedily.  Through all this Jacob stood impassive, and Baker merely stared at me in panic. Slowly Bakers eyes grew dim and the blood ceased to flow from the wounds. The only sound remaining was the grisly chewing of the Zombies’ foetid jaw.

As the creature turned its attention away from its meal I fired and the noise rang out through the jungle. The blast briefly illuminated the hut and I saw blood and what not splatter the far side of the room. The creature barely reacted and sat up with its eyes locked firmly in mine. Then I saw the corpse of Baker twitch and rise from the workbench.

It turned and both creatures eyed me lustily.

Almost casually and without any emotion in my voice, (after all I am an Englishman), I said to the impassive giant,

“Jacob, be a good boy and stop these two creatures killing me would you?”

As he stepped between the creatures and me I turned tail and ran. As I sprinted through the dark bush I could hear the sounds of combat behind me and as I got further away from the hut I could also hear shouts in front of me. I looked and saw torches heading my way and the voice of Papa Badalou shouting in the distance. Unwilling to meet the villagers of the island, or the creatures behind, I cut directly left and stumbled through the undergrowth in the growing dark.

—-

I dived over a log and peered back towards the path whence I came. I saw the two Zombies lurch from Bakers hut and stumble towards the din of the party of villagers who were coming the other way with torches and spears, shouting with bravado. Baker and his ally fell upon the villagers grabbing one each like wolves and using their hands and teeth to gouge the hapless victims as they screamed. Badalou and the other villagers pierced the bodies of the Zombies with spears to no effect and as the panic rose they moved from villager to villager tearing eyes and throats, biting legs and torsos until all that remained were the dead and the moans of the dying as the two gorged themselves on the last two villagers they had encountered.

It was then, as I watched the grizzly scene unfold, when the first two victims rose from death and fell upon the injured, that I realised that Bakers vision had been wrong in its entirety: Rather than the pastoral scene of dutiful, bemasked Zombie servants attending the great stately homes of London that he envisaged, or the vision of the chaotic, noisy mills of Lancashire in their never-ending toil. I saw waves of these monsters sweeping first through the slums of the East End, the poor too weak to defend themselves as the dead feasted in the maze like back alleys and tenements until the sewers ran red with blood, before this new army did what no nation could do: To stand triumphant at the gates of Buckingham Palace, the British army impotent to defend the beloved Monarchy. Then across the empire and the world they would spread, until the Empire was no more and nothing living remained: Both the highest Lord and lowliest thief standing together, in death, against the survivors of this End of Days.

As the last of the corpses rose, more villagers, intrigued by the screams could be heard coming from the village and as the group shambled of towards their fresh victims I ran as fast and as hard as I could, all the time thinking that I must survive and prevent this apocalypse.

Driven by pure fear I carried on for an indeterminate time, until as I saw a hut in front of me. My foot caught on something unseen in the night and I fell heavily onto some rocks hidden by a large bush of some description. I must have hit my head for I was enveloped by blackness.

When I came to, I was aware that it was day. I had no clue as to how long I had been unconscious but I was sure I was being watched. As my vision cleared I saw, sat no more than a few feet away from me, a woman. She was not a Negro like the others but a white woman, her dress was tattered, her hair matted and her skin unwashed for many weeks. Barefoot and covered in bruises as she was I realised this was the figure I had seen being taken into the jungle upon my arrival. In her eyes a wildness hid behind the striking blue. Around her leg a locked iron band had caused red sores around her brazenly naked ankle and the chain it was attached to lead to another band locked around a sturdy palm tree. More aware of my surroundings now I could hear distant crashing in the undergrowth. Suddenly I was hit by recognition.

“Mrs Baker?” I said incredulously. She nodded glumly.

“He told me you died of a fever.” I said.

“More lies to assuage his guilt at trading me like common cattle.” she said, her voice cracked and ragged.

“Trading you?”

“Yes, he gave me to Papa Badalou for the secrets of the Dead.”

“Well it has been his undoing ma’am, I’m afraid your husband is dead.” I regretted immediately speaking so bluntly, after all this was his wife. Her reaction showed no emotion.

“Good. He deserves nothing less for messing in the black arts,” she said.

“Well his experiments have gone wrong and we are in danger. For the Dead he has raised are murderous in their intent.” I spoke quickly of the nights events realising the crashes in the jungle were nearing our position. With rising desperation we pulled and tugged at the chain to no effect. I looked round for tools to perhaps jemmy the irons free but found nothing. As the cacophony, now accompanied by low moans, came closer we became increasingly more fervent in our effort. I bade her cover her eyes and without thinking used my service revolver to shoot at the lock on the palm to no effect. As the ringing of the gunshots faded I realised we had unwittingly given away our position and the sound of the dead closing on us increased in frequency. Try as we might I could not free the lady and as panic gripped us I stopped. I realised there was but one course of action remaining. She looked up at me, in wonderment as to why I had ceased to free her. Recognition slid across her face and the wildness I had first seen faded into calm resignation.

“Sir. I realise I do not even know your name, yet you must do for me a service. As an Englishman and as I can see, a Gentlemen.” Her voice was placid now. We both knew what was required. She stood tall, taller than I and flattened her dress against her body and returned the strap of the dress to her shoulder. I bowed low to her, as the sounds of the Dead grew closer and more frantic.

“Madam Baker. You are a woman of bravery and grace unbefitting of your husband and this island. It would be an honour to do this last service for you.” Then she smiled the most radiant smile. I remember it to this day and it was if the sun itself illuminated the dark undergrowth of this hell. She closed her eyes. I raised the revolver and shot her squarely through the heart. She fell to the ground and I was filled with remorse as I realised I did not know her full name, nor the names of her family and I could not inform those who loved her of her demise. Since that day I have prayed, every day, that when I stand before the Lord on Judgement Day he will see this act as mercy and not murder.

The undergrowth exploded behind me as numerous dead shambled towards me, I raised the revolver which clicked, empty as I fired. I turned and ran as more of the figures entered the clearing, it seemed whole village had also succumbed to the raging experimentation of Dr Baker.

As I ran I could see light blue through the underbrush, I headed for it at full pelt and exploded onto the beach, shielding my eyes from the bright sunshine. My eyes adjusted slowly for I was still groggy from my fall and yet I could hear my relentless pursuers behind. Frantically I looked for a boat, a means off this wretched place but could find none. As I ran up and down the surf I looked back to see many figures emerging front the jungle, eyes affixed on me, their next meal.

Perhaps a hundred yards or so up the beach I saw some flotsam and jetsam brought in by the low tide. In particular a log jutted from the rubbish. I ran to it as more of the shambling figures emerged from the jungle. With the last of my strength I hauled it into the sea, pushing it out into the breaking surf. As I got out of my depth I clambered aboard my impromptu raft and paddled for my life. As luck would have it the tide was retreating lest I would have been pulled back to the shore. I paddled until my strength faltered and only then did I look back to see the whole village and its lifeless inhabitants crowded at the shore. They did not seem willing to enter the surf but just shuffled listlessly around.

Now I feel I must go fetch myself a whiskey, for it is late but I know I will not sleep until this tale is written. I am perturbed at the memory but driven on to finish this story

—-

I recall little of what happened next. I floated aimlessly in the sea. Starved and hungry I dreamt of fine wines and roasted dinners but the dinners turned to cannibalised human flesh and the wine to congealed blood as my long time dread coalesced in my nightmares. I could not drink the seawater and was not enough of a seaman to know which direction to go. Eventually, convinced I would slip from the tree and drown. I faded into blackness.

When I awoke my throat burned and my eyes stung, yet I could feel a soft coolness envelop my body. I was naked and felt awful.

“There now Mr Smith, you are quite safe, rest awhile,” said a thick London brogue. With relief I realised I was back in my cabin aboard the Endeavour. The sailor tending to me brought water, which he advised I sipped slowly, and some simple bread and meats, which I also was to eat slowly. As I recalled my experience on the island I bade the sailor summon the Captain. As I waited I rested my head but did not close my eyes for fear of what images the minds eye may draw.

I must have slept again and when I awoke Captain Burrington sat upon a chair near the door. I drank some more water then told my tale to Burrington, for even in my weakened state only one course of action became clear. When I finished the tale Burrington accused me of drinking, or hallucinating the whole thing in a fever. I informed him I was not anything but sane and lucid. We discussed what could be done and although he was reticent he agreed to return to the island. For I was retrieved from my raft by the Endeavour on her way to pick me up. Yes, I had floated for many days and nights adrift on the sea.

I was informed of our arrival and against the advice of the ships Doctor I insisted two burly seamen carried me up to the deck. Once there a spyglass was used to view the Island and in viewing Burrington was heard to very loudly utter:

“My God in Heaven.” He forbade any of the Seamen to view the island through their own spyglasses but announced, after affirming my story as the truth, that the island was deigned by the Admiralty to be a place for target practice and they had all been complacent in their duties and not sharp. Instantly the crew leapt into action and for the next eight hours the Island was shelled by every piece of artillery on the Ironclad until not a tree stood standing and the waves took the wretched place back within the bosom of the sea.

Each shell that pounded the shore was a nail in the island of the Dead and a tonic for my soul.

As the waves lapped over the island I realised I still had Bakers letter in my pocket, Shakily, I stood and let the cool breeze waft it into the sea so nothing could remain of Bakers work, nothing that could be copied or repeated. The damn fool should be erased from existence for his madness and ambition, I thought. Yet, as the paper dropped from my hand, the feeling of dread finally lifted and that night I slept dreamless as a babe.

—-

I returned to London but not The Times, for I could not retell the tale again. Sadly I had not the heart to strike up a friendship with Burrington for when he contacted me for a meal or drink I declined, for I could not think of him without the nightmares returning. Eventually I took a post at a provincial paper and met a fine woman who bore me two beautiful girls and we lived for many years in Herefordshire, far from the sea. I still take the papers regularly scouring for news of my dread Apocalypse but the Empire thrives as I near the end of my life, and still wonder what became of Jacob, a creature that was no more than matter yet still saved me life.

Now I must fetch more strong liquor as the telling of the tale has left me wan and fearful. I will not sleep tonight, so a bottle of whiskey must I finish. Tomorrow I may tear this paper to shreds lest I think of Dr Baker again, or then again, I may not.