A middle-aged woman dressed all in black with a scarf over her head made a rude gesture in the direction of the spokesman and then climbed to her feet, leaning heavily on a teenage boy seated beside her.
“Fortezza,” she said, staring intently into the sergeant’s face and looking for any sign of recognition. She motioned with her hands as if miming the outline of a box or building, and then pointed a bony finger towards the Alpine peaks to the north. “Si? Fortezza.”
“Sergeant?” Jun chimed in as the sergeant scratched his chin and scowled. “It sounds as if she’s saying…”
“Fortress? Right, I got that much,” he answered. “But what the devil does that…?”
The sergeant was interrupted when Werner dramatically cleared his throat, signaling for attention. He and Jun turned to look over in his direction, where the German had finished reassembling his freshly cleaned and oiled Karabiner.
“You are correct, sergeant,” Werner said, sounding at once bored and annoyed, “fortezza translates as stronghold or, yes, fortress.”
Jun just blinked in Werner’s direction.
“Hang on.” The sergeant put his hands on his hips and tilted his head to one side, a quizzical expression on his face. “You speak Italian?”
Werner shrugged. “And a little French that I picked up in Normandy. But I had to learn Italian to coordinate with our allies in North Africa during the last war, when I served under Rommel.”
The sergeant lowered his head, eyes closed, shoulders slumped with a weary sigh. “That’s information that might have been useful a while back now, Werner.”
Jun didn’t bother pointing out that Werner could have just as easily translated for the one or two German speakers in the group. That he was conversational in both French and Italian meant that he could obviously communicate with almost any of the refugees, and had simply kept that information to himself before now.
“Would you mind?” The sergeant gestured towards the refugees while shooting a hard look in Werner’s direction.
The German soldier just arched an eyebrow. It was almost as if he didn’t have a clue what the sergeant was asking him to do and was genuinely confused. Jun was half-convinced that was an actual fact.
“Talk to these poor bastards and tell me what they’re saying,” the sergeant said through gritted teeth.
“Those are your orders?” Werner carefully set his rifle down on his pack, careful to keep its barrel up and out of the dirt.
The sergeant nodded, gritting his teeth even tighter. “Yes, I’m ordering you.”
Werner stood up and dusted off his palms as he walked around the edge of the fire toward the spot where the refugees were gathered.
“As you wish,” he said with a quick nod towards the sergeant.
Then he turned to address the refugees.
“Sprechen sie Deutsch?”
A few hands tentatively rose.
“Parlez-vous français?”
Werner nodded, noting a few more hands rising.
“Parla Italiano?”
Several more hands flashed in the air.
Werner turned his attention back to the sergeant. “Yes, I believe that I can translate for you. What is it you wish to know?”
The sergeant’s shoulders shook with a ragged sigh of exasperation, his jaw tightening as he fought to maintain his composure. Jun didn’t think that Werner was the type to intentionally antagonize a superior officer, but had he really been paying so little attention to the sergeant’s abortive attempt to interrogate the refugees all of this time? Or was he just a stickler for the rules and for orders, and wouldn’t dream of interviewing the refugees on his own recognizance when the sergeant had just specifically requested that Werner instead simply translate what the ragtag bunch was saying?
Jun thought that she detected the hint of a smile at the corner of Werner’s mouth, and suspected that the answer might lie somewhere in the middle.
“Ask them,” the sergeant began with exaggerated deliberateness, “under what circumstances”—he paused long enough for a deep breath, in and out—“they came into contact with such a large party of the enemy Dead, and where this happened. My fear is that there might be an even larger number of the bastards lurking around up there, and if so, the Resistance brass will want to know about it.”
Werner stood to attention and replied with a short nod—and Jun thought that the man might have even clicked his heels together as he did, parade ground style—and then turned his attention fully to the refugees.
He began to question the group in sections, directing careful and deliberate inquiries in one language after another to the little pockets among them, sometimes following up with additional questions that appeared to be for clarification or additional context. Werner would nod meaningfully from time to time, and even appeared to be surprised on several occasions, a note of skeptical disbelief in his tone as he asked a follow up question. But there came a moment when he was stopped short all together, eyes widening and mouth hanging open a fraction as he stared at the group of refugees with an expression of slow-dawning alarm on his face, that slowly melted into a mask of fierce anger. He asked one final question in German of a pair of refugees, and when they nodded with assent he turned and took several steps away from the group, looking up at the Alpine peaks which dominated the northern skies, eyes narrowed with determination as he stood still and silent as a statue.
“Well?” the sergeant finally said, gesturing broadly in Werner’s direction.
“I will explain, but first…” Werner turned in the sergeant’s direction, a deep frown lining his face. “I will need a stiff drink,” he finished, in what seemed to Jun an uncharacteristically dark tone.
###
A SHORT WHILE later the five members of the deadhunter squad sat huddled close together near the edge of the razorwire fence. They were lit from above by a pair of brightly burning torches so that two sets of shadows fell on the ground before them: one from the left of the group and one from the right, shifting and skewing as the night’s wind fanned the torches’ flames and caused the shadows to flicker and dance across the hard-packed earth, like a pair of tiny armies battling to control contested ground.
“We thought it was a myth,” Werner finally said, staring somewhere into the middle distance. “Himmler’s last bit of propaganda to bolster the flagging confidence in the future of the Fatherland amongst the population in the final days of the war.”
He paused and looked once more north towards the peaks of the Alps, which were now silhouettes standing against a star-spangled sky.
“Damn Hitler,” Werner added in a low, vicious tone. “Damn him and the bootlicking toadies who stood beside him, damn them to hell.”
“Well, now,” Curtis put in, sounding a little skeptical, “you might well be a fountain of regret now that your side got us all in this mess, but weren’t you the good little Nazi during the war?”
Werner bristled, and turned a dark gaze in the young American’s direction.
“I was a loyal German soldier, and for my sins I allowed myself to believe the lies we were told about the Fatherland, and about our enemies. But I never had any faith in the Führer’s cult of personality, and do not for a moment think to lump me in with those unprofessional zealots in the Waffen-SS.” He paused for a moment, bringing his temper back under control. “I spent the last days of the war in a penal battalion after I put a bullet in the brain of an SS Ahnenerbe occultist I discovered committing an unholy occult rite in Carentan. My only regret was that I was arrested before I had a chance to put a bullet in the brain of Standartenführer Hermann Ziegler, the Waffen-SS colonel who had ordered him to perform the rite in the first place. As it was I would have ended up before a firing squad if not for Field Marshall Rommel, who felt that I could still be of some use to the war effort. As it was I was hard pressed to remain alive after months on end of suicide missions and operations against impossible odds. And all the while I had to endure endless talk from our SS ov
erseers about their beloved Führer, and about his toady Himmler’s plans to defeat the enemy no matter how long it took.”
Werner’s eyes once more darted towards the Alpine peaks to the north, and then looked back to Curtis before shifting his gaze to each of us in turn.
“Himmler planned to continue fighting the war,” Werner continued, “even if Berlin fell. Even if Hitler himself were to die or be captured by enemy forces.”
“And just precisely how did he intend to do that?” Sibyl cut in, an acid edge to her tone. It was clear that she had little faith that anything Werner was telling them was true, and even less patience for hearing him out. “Beyond raising the dead from beyond the grave to fight his war for him, of course.”
Werner shook his head, a bitter expression on his face.
“This was long before any of us had heard anything about Plan Z,” he clarified. “Though to be honest, the idea of dead Nazis rising from their grave to wage war against the living would have seemed scarcely less difficult to credit that the notion of Himmler’s supposed Alpine Redoubt.”
“The Alpine what now?” the sergeant asked, sounding fairly skeptical himself.
Jun could see a flicker of recognition light in Curtis’s face, though, and even Sibyl was beginning to display a begrudging level of trust.
“The last bastion for the Third Reich,” Werner explained, “a fortress somewhere in the Alps. If German military command were to be defeated… If Berlin were to be overrun, and the Führer himself perhaps to fall… Then the party faithful and a handpicked army of Waffen-SS officers and Hitler Youth would make a strategic retreat to a fortified stronghold somewhere in the Alps with enough food and supplies to remain hidden for years on end, and enough arms and ammunition to continue waging war against their enemies for as long as the circumstances demanded.”
“Is such a thing possible?” Jun found herself asking, unable to keep a tone of breathless disbelief out of her voice.
“As I say,” Werner answered, “in the penal battalion we all thought it was a myth. Propaganda, intended to convince the German people to continue fighting long after hope would otherwise have been lost.”
“It was a myth,” Curtis cut in, “but it wasn’t the German people they were trying to fool, but the Allies. Do you all have any idea how much time and energy the Americans wasted trying to find that Alpine Fortress after the invasion of Normandy? One of the other prisoners-of-war who were at Dresden with me had been on an expeditionary force that spent ages trudging all over those damned mountains looking for the blasted thing. The whole thing was intended to fool the Allies and send ’em off on a wild goose chase, to give the Nazi forces time to retreat and regroup.”
Curtis shot an angry look at Werner, who only gave him a gentle smile and a nod in return.
“Fooling Germany’s enemies would have been an added benefit, perhaps,” Werner replied, “but I assure you, no one needed fooling more than the German people, who somehow still allowed themselves to believe that we had not become the villains of our own narrative, but were heroes who would clearly be victorious in the end. Who somehow clung to the delusion that God himself was on our side…”
A dark shadow fell across Werner’s face and his jaw tightened, eyes narrowing to slits as his thoughts seemed to drift back to some unwanted recollection. He swallowed hard, and regained his composure.
“That’s all well and good,” the sergeant cut in, sounding a little impatient, “but what’s all that got to do with the price of tea in China? Myth, propaganda, whatever you want to call it… what’s that got to do with us in the here and now?”
Werner stood in silence for a moment before answering, his gaze travelling across the faces of his squad mates.
“If what these poor unfortunates tell me is correct,” he finally replied, gesturing with a small wave of his hand at the refugees trying to rest on the far side of the camp fire, “then the Alpine Fortress is a reality, and the last war might not be as finished as we thought.”
Chapter 4
JUN KNEW THAT she wasn’t alone in having many questions about Werner Sauer’s cryptic utterance about the Nazis’ Alpine redoubt, but the discussion was suddenly sidetracked when an unholy and inhuman sound drifted in on the night breeze. It was a harsh, guttural susurration, a voice whispering urgently with its dying breath in some unknown and unearthly tongue. It was not the first time that Jun had heard such unsettling utterances. Far from it.
“We’ve got incoming,” the sergeant said, jumping to his feet and retrieving his rifle and shotgun from where they had laid resting against his pack.
Large hordes like those that they had faced earlier in the day were rare occurrences for the deadhunter squad, and they had only encountered groups of similar number a few times before. More frequently encountered, however, were individual shamblers or small groupings of two, three, or four at a time: small bands that seemed to roam aimlessly across the landscape with no rhyme or reason, seeking only to devour the flesh of any living beings that they might chance to come across.
“Sibyl, you keep watch over the refugees,” the sergeant said, checking the action on his Springfield rifle, “and shout out if you need backup. The rest of you, spread out to cover the approaches. I’ll take high noon”—he swung one hand in a chopping motion towards the north side of the perimeter—“Curtis, you take three o’clock”—he pointed due east—“Werner, six o’clock”—he pointed towards the south—“and Jun, you take this side.” And he nodded towards the nearest stretch of the razorwire enclosure, facing the western side of the village ruins.
Everyone retrieved their arms and ammunitions quickly and quietly, and broke off to their respective positions without needing any additional direction.
For the briefest moment, Jun was tempted to douse the torches which burned a handful of paces to either side of her. The light from them hindered her ability to see well or far in the dark, but would at the same time draw the Dead towards her position. If the Dead were driven by any instinct other than naked appetite it was a drive towards light and heat, so often associated with their living prey. A burning torch might serve to scorch the flesh of the Dead into ash, as Werner’s tripwired explosive had done hours before, but a torch’s light also drew the Dead into their orbit like moths to a flame.
Glancing back, she could see that Sibyl was in the process of dousing the camp fire, dumping a shovel-full of dirt over the burning logs and then stomping out the embers. Soon she and the refugees would be sitting in total darkness at the center of the defensive enclosure.
But would they remain hidden from the Dead? Jun wasn’t sure. She had seen shambling corpses whose eyes were rotted out of their sockets who still seemed to be able to perceive where living bodies were in relation to itself. And surely the Dead weren’t operating by a sense of smell, given how many of them were staggering around with noses rotted right off of their ruined faces. Did the Dead have some other sensory capabilities that the living lacked? They did seemed attracted to heat and light, after all. Or were they attracted by some sort of life essence itself?
Jun had heard many a late-night debate in the Woolwich barracks in London the past year while training with anti-necro specialists, and had even participated in a few heated discussions herself on occasion. Several of the more scientifically minded participants had been convinced that the Dead were somehow perceiving the infrared end of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum, and proposed ways in which this could be used to the Resistance’s advantage, were it to be proven true. Others of a more spiritual bent insisted that the Dead were instead drawn by the souls of the living, and that it was some essence of spirit that the undead hungered for, rather than the literal flesh.
When the debates reached the point of outright hostility and arguments threatened to spill over into physical conflict was usually the point that Jun excused herself from the discussion and headed off to bed. But one thing was certain, whichever side of the debate had the correct answer. If she, a livi
ng being, were standing between two brightly lit torches, then she would serve as a kind of decoy, attracting the approaching Dead away from the terrified mass of refugees huddled in the darkness a farther distance away. Whether her own living spirit or essence, or the heat and light of the torches: either way she would draw the attention of the Dead away from the innocents she had sworn an oath to protect.
So Jun left the torches lit and kept her eyes narrowed as she scanned the outer darkness for movement, not failing to realize or admit that she allowed herself to follow such discursive paths of reasoning in part to keep herself from dwelling on any anxiety or fear that she might otherwise be experiencing because of the encroaching threat of the unknown. To keep from thinking too long or too hard about the fact that she was standing alone facing a darkness in which the unquiet Dead were abroad.
She took a deep breath and then expelled it slowly through her nostrils, conscious of the rhythm of her pulse thudding in her ears. Trust the training, she told herself. Trust your instincts. Stay alive. You’ve been through this before.
Her thoughts flashed on the image of her friends and colleagues being swallowed up by a tidal wave of relentless Dead in Moscow as she screamed her throat raw, helpless to do anything other than watch them die…
Jun shook her head, fiercely, as though she could shake loose those unwanted memories. She had already mourned her losses enough for one lifetime, and even if she had tears left to spill she would have to wait until she had the luxury to once again know grief. For now, there was a job to do.
She strained to listen, and there on the edge of hearing she once again heard that harsh inhuman whispering, unearthly and strange, seeming to echo back from all around her. It was impossible to tell just what direction the sound was coming from, but it was clearly growing closer.
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