Dead Jack and the Soul Catcher: (Volume 2)

by James Aquilone

I kneeled beside the big Nazi. “Turn around.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve seen it all.”

  “Fine with me.” I bent over the Nazi and dragged my tongue over his jacket, lapping up his blood and chunks of his brain.

  Zara threw a hand over her mouth. “Fookin gross! Are you really doing that?”

  I wiped my lips with my sleeve. “How else am I supposed to clean up your mess?”

  “I’ll turn around.”

  Zara made an about-face and pulled off her armor. I dove back in. The blood had cooled enough to ruin the flavor, but the brains retained enough warmth to spark my taste buds. I salivated as I gulped down the succulent gray matter. It had been years since I chowed down on brain, so my opinion may have been skewed.

  Once I had licked those Nazis cleaner than a whistle, save a few stains, I slid the big guy’s uniform jacket over my clothes, but not before shoving my fedora into my magic inside pocket and taking outThe Book of Three Towers. I put the grimoire in the uniform’s breast pocket.

  I handed the other uniform to Zara.

  “I think I’d rather have worn clothes covered in blood and brain than zombie drivel.” She cringed as she slipped her arms into the brown shirt.

  I took the small guy’s glasses and slid his cap as far down on my face as possible, hoping I could hide my ugly mug.

  We left the carpool.

  A commotion erupted in the direction of the town square. People streamed toward the eastern end of the camp in great excitement, hopefully, too excited to notice us. We walked along a gravel road, as far away from the crowds as possible. Gray one-story buildings flanked the road. Nazi flags and banners flew every few feet. For neo-Nazis, they sure didn’t change much. The flags were still red and black and white and covered in their beloved swastikas. I didn’t know what Nazis loved more: their uniforms or their flags.

  A truck barreled down the road kicking up gravel behind us. We jumped out of its way. I thought they had gotten wise to us, but the truck kept flying right on by. A bunch of Nazis stood in the bed waving and shouting like children on the way to the circus.

  We followed the truck to the edge of the square.

  Dozens of people gathered around a huge bonfire that roared behind a bronze statue of what can best be described as a winged werewolf Hitler. I had to admit it was an improvement. Das führeralways reminded me of an angry tax attorney. But this version had muscles and, well, wings. The little postage stamp mustache kinda ruined it.

  Black and red banners hung over the buildings circling the square. Torches burned. At the head of the crowd was a platform upon which stood a little man behind a podium. Thankfully, he didn’t have a werewolf head or wings, but he did have that creepy mustache, as well as a creepy little mouth that resembled the pucker of a kissing fish. Unlike the Nazis in the crowd, he didn’t wear a uniform but a black suit with a swastika armband around his right bicep. It looked like a rally. Great, a Nazi rally.

  A hand clamped down on my shoulder. I spun around, my fist cocked. A fat, balding Nazi smiled at me. He looked like he had a sack of potatoes under his brown shirt. He glanced at Zara and grinned wider, his double chin tripling.

  “You’re missing the festivities,” he said, his terrible combover flapping in the wind. “I was late myself. Come on, before there’s nowhere to stand.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. The creep pulled us along and we pressed into the rally. The obese Nazi stood beside me, beaming up at the guy at the podium.

  “I’ve been waiting all week for this,” said the fat Nazi while holding up a book. He probably wanted the Nazi’s autograph.

  A public address system crackled to life, and the man on the podium spoke, his voice booming like a gong.

  “The era of monsters is now at an end. The breakthrough of human innovation has again cleared the way on our righteous path.… The future human will not be a servant or summoner of demons, but a virtuous man. As a supernatural, to already have the courage to face the unknown, to overcome the limits of mortals, and to triumph over all―this is the task of our cast.” He paused and the Children of Thule cheered. “And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of this world and all others to come. This is a mighty and symbolic deed―a deed which shall trumpet to the old world that the infernal and corrupt foundation of Pandemonium is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage, the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise. A new age, not of gods and monsters, but of gods and men.

  “No to decadence and moral corruption!” He shouted. “Yes to decency and morality in family and state!”

  He raised both his arms high and the bonfire flames shot twenty feet above the gathering of Nazis.

  From behind the podium, he raised two books. “I consign to the fire the infernal writings of a corruption and decay.” He tossed the books into the bonfire and the flames streaked into the burning sky.

  “Join me, comrades, in baptizing the grimoires,” he said.

  The Nazis flung books from all sides, feeding the hungry conflagration. My face burned from the heat.

  I never cared much for reading. I had always been a cinema guy myself. Douglas Fairbanks was a personal hero. But I still didn’t like this one bit.

  The fat Nazi tossed his book into the bonfire. He turned to me. “Where is your grimoire, brother?”

  I patted my body and shrugged.

  “If the minister discovers that you have kept your grimoire, he won’t be happy,” the Nazi said. “They’re tools of the infernal. Everyone was obligated to bring a grimoire to the burning.”

  “I must not have gotten that memo. I was kind of busy doing other Nazi stuff.”

  “Yeah,” Zara said. “Nazi-ing is a full-time job. Sieg heiling, polished jack boots, hating stuff.”

  “I was hating a load of stuff all day,” I said. “I was just spitting mad. We should go get a couple of grimoires and come back.”

  The Nazi jabbed me in the chest with his forefinger. Thunk! “Sounds like there’s a book in your jacket, friend. Feels a bit magical, too.”

  “That?” I said. “No. It’s my personal diary.”

  “What do you write in it?”

  “Mostly my musings. My hopes and dreams for the Fourth Reich.”

  “The Fourth Reich?” He looked at me queerly.

  “The Fifth Reich? I get my Reichs mixed up sometimes.”

  “What’s wrong with your face?”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “You’re not a zombie, are you? Zombies can’t be officers. Why are you wearing that uniform?” He looked closer, reading my nametag. “Captain Gereheart?” The Nazi paused. “Now that I think of it, zombies can’t speak.”

  “I can even count in German. Eins, zwei, drei…” I nodded at Zara, and we started backing up. “I’m heading to my sleeping quarters to get that grimoire. We’ll be right back.”

  The Nazi said, “No. Wait there,” then shouted, “Minister Eich, we have―”

  I walloped the bastard with a mighty right. I must have really leaned into the haymaker, because the Nazi flew straight into the bonfire. The meatball flailed his arms like he tried to do the backstroke, and then his combover went up like a Roman candle. He must have used a ton of hairspray to keep that thing in place. The flames quickly engulfed his face, and that’s when the screaming started. The Nazis turned in our direction.

  Then, as so often happens in a situation like this, someone shouted, “Get him!”

  Zara’s hands fluttered like electrocuted birds. A blinding flash of light exploded in front of us, and like a couple of magicians, we disappeared in a cloud of smoke the pixie/witch had conjured.

  We ducked into the first building we came across, which turned out to be a big mistake.

  CHAPTER 17: Caged Fury

  Thousands must have died here. The stench of death and decay filled my nostrils. It mingled with an antiseptic hospital smell, like they had tried to wash away the slaughter, but did a bad job of it.<
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  We stood in a large, brightly lit room. Cracked white tiles covered the floor. Puke green paint peeled from the walls in long strips. An empty gurney and a steel chair stood against the back wall.

  I jammed the chair under the doorknob. “That won’t hold them for long.”

  “Come on,” Zara said. “Maybe there’s a bonfire back here where you can push in all the Nazis.”

  “Sounds like you’re jealous.”

  “Did you hear that guy scream?”

  “Neo-Nazi? More like well-done Nazi.” We both laughed. Punching Nazis is fun.

  We went through a pair of swinging doors and followed a long hallway past windows that looked into rooms containing surgical tables, medical equipment, and strange machines equipped with thick wires and tubes.

  At the sound of approaching footsteps and voices, we turned left into a side corridor.

  “So an ogre comes home to find his pixie wife with her suitcases packed in the living room,” a woman said.

  “I think I heard this one,” replied a man.

  “‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ the ogre says. ‘I’m going to ShadowShade. A pixie can earn four hundred gold coins just twittering her wings there, and I figured that I might as well earn money for what I do for you free.”

  Laughter.

  Nazi humor.

  “In here.” Zara pushed open a door and slipped in.

  I followed her into a dark and cold room with an earthy smell of hay and shit that reminded me of a stable.

  After fumbling around at the wall, I found the light switch and flicked it.

  The light revealed a small chamber, a surgical table at its center next to a tall gray machine covered in fat dials and gauges. The smell came from a long, narrow extension leading away from the rear of the chamber, lined with cages.

  No lights had come on in the extension, but when I went to pull another lever set in the wall, Zara shouted, “Don’t!” I yanked my hand away. “Can’t you read?”

  A sign next to the lever read, “Emergency cage release,” in big, bold letters.

  “Oops.” On the other wall, I found a second light switch. I flipped it, and the extension glowed with the soft yellow of a dying bulb.

  No sound came from the cages, but shadows flickered on the ground.

  “What do you think are inside those cages?” I asked.

  “I’m sure it’s something harmless and perfectly sane.” Zara rolled her eyes.

  I crossed the room to the extension and peered into the first cage on my right.

  I stuck my face close to the bars and instantly regretted it. The stench was stronger here. Sweat mingled with rot. Whatever the Nazis kept in there had been confined for a long time.

  “Hello,” I said, and gently rapped on the bars. Two yellow eyes blinked open. The creature moved into the light. A goat stared back at me. Its two horns swept back, its ears pointing straight up. The creature crept closer to the bars with a herky-jerky gait, unlike a typical goat. Probably because it wasn’t a typical goat. It had a man’s torso and legs. The half man, half goat stood on its two legs, gave out a bleat like a child whose throat had been cut, and bashed its horns into the bars.

  I jumped back. “I’m not here to hurt you, dunzy.”

  But the thing kept ramming its head into the bars. The noise caused the occupants of the other cages to awaken. They joined the goat man in banging and rattling their cages. Some howled like sirens.

  The knob on the door creaked.

  “Go!” Zara rasped.

  I power-shambled past a zombie with two heads, a fishman with wings, a half ogre/half orc. All the monstrosities screamed and spit at me.

  Even when the Nazis experimented on me back in the war, they hadn’t done anything like this. Apparently, they had upgraded their depravity.

  Didn’t Ilsa Hellstrom say something about hybrids back at the burrow? This must be what she was talking about. I thought of poor Oswald. Lucifer said they wanted him to power a soul sucker. Did they plan to create a homunculus/soul sucker hybrid?

  The door at the end of the hall was locked. I kicked it, but it didn’t budge. Zara laughed at me.

  “I can try, can’t I?” I said.

  She threw her shoulder at it and the door burst open onto an operating theater. I jumped inside, but I didn’t get much of a look at the place, because I came face to rotting face with Zombie Goliath. He tossed me down a flight of stairs that led to a surgery table at the center of the room. My head spun. Nazi zombies swept through the theater, lurching up the tiered rows.

  Zara charged in, her hammer swinging. Undead Nazi skulls burst on impact, spraying dark blood onto the walls and ceiling. She spun and slid and hopped around the zombies delivering deathblows from every angle. Yet dozens of reanimated corpses continued to shamble toward the whirling Ms. Moonbeam, numbers their only strength.

  Zombie Goliath―seven feet of decayed flesh―lumbered down the stairs. The thick cords in his neck pulsed and looked ready to burst. He must have been steaming mad after that Lucius business back in the burrow.

  Back in the Other World, I had been a two-time Golden Gloves champ. My fancy footwork and iron jaw got me a reputation as a real brawler. I could have gone professional if not for the draft. But I never fought a monster. Zombie Goliath might have been stronger than me. And faster. And way over my weight class. But I had a big advantage. Brains. As far as zombies go, I’m Einstein. I wasn’t worried.

  “No honor among zombies?” I asked after awkwardly getting to my feet.

  Zombie Goliath grunted.

  I frantically looked for a weapon. “Listen, dunzy, you’re dealing with a superior class of zombie. I don’t want to send you to the absolute death, so maybe we can work something out.”

  He grinned with his black jagged teeth as he stepped onto the operating floor.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this.” I pointed at my chest and then at Goliath, to illustrate my point. “We’re brothers. You’re breaking an age-old code.” The code didn’t exist, but I hoped he didn’t know that.

  I grabbed a silver bone mallet and flung it at him. It bounced ineffectually off his barrel chest. I power-shambled around the operating table and headed back up the theater. Zombie Goliath came after me. Zara had already laid out most of the zombie horde, working her way around the room.

  I reached the top level when Goliath grabbed me in a bear hug. He squeezed me like an anaconda. I slammed my head back, cracking him square in the face. He released me and I dropped to the floor. I stood, and threw a right, then a left. For good measure, I unloaded an uppercut, connecting with Goliath’s jaw. The galoot grinned and walloped me on my iron jaw, launching me through the open door.

  I landed on my arse and went skidding between the hybrids’ cages.

  I reminded myself that my superiority came in the form of my higher intellect. But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure how that benefited me at the moment. I rose drunkenly.

  The winged fishman hissed at me.

  I’d be in a hell of a bind if that thing got out. Then I thought, “What a great idea.”

  I shambled to the other end of the cages as Zombie Goliath squeezed himself past the doorway at the end of the narrow alcove. He had gotten to the middle of the cages when I reached the emergency release lever and yanked it. All the cages snicked open.

  The hybrids bolted from their prisons and tackled Goliath. He managed to toss a few of them across the room, but their numbers overwhelmed him. Goliath continued to throw punches as the abominations smothered him. The sounds of his flesh tearing and his bones breaking reminded me of a buffet I had once attended on the Zombie Islands.

  It was a brilliant idea, except for one problem: I’d blocked myself off from getting back into the theater and helping Zara.

  The hybrids seemed awfully focused on eating Zombie Goliath, so I took a chance. With a running start, I dashed toward the feeding frenzy. Like a frog, I hopped on the distracted hybrids’ heads and ba
cks. They paid me no mind and continued feasting on the buff corpse.

  I re-entered the amphitheater… and skidded to a halt in shock.

  All the Nazi zombies lay dead―well, truly dead. But Zara had gotten herself into some trouble. Ilsa Hellstrom had appeared and pinned the pixie/witch against the wall beside the door. Thick, slimy tentacles poked out from her uniform. One of them wrapped around Zara’s waist and another wrapped around her throat.

  Zara spotted me and shouted, “Jack! She’s a freak with tentacles!”

  Before I realized it, a wormy appendage lashed out and snaked around my body.

  “Not a hugger, Jack?” the Nazi bitch asked.

  CHAPTER 18: Not Another Psycho Nazi Doctor

  “Big bad Nazi scientist in the room. Dun-dun-DUN!” Ilsa Hellstrom bellowed and stood over me, her face silhouetted by a bright surgical light directly behind her.

  Me and Zara awoke to find ourselves strapped to a pair of surgical tables in the theater. Leather thongs secured our arms and legs. They left us in our Nazi uniforms. Maybe as punishment.

  “You Nazis are like bad pennies,” I said.

  “We never go out of style,” Ilsa said. “Are you comfortable?”

  “I’ve been in worse situations.”

  “I feel like you should be less comfortable. That feels more Nazi-ish, you know. Maybe I should have put spikes underneath you or something. I’m still new at this.”

  “Being a psycho?”

  “No, silly, a Nazi. I’ve been a psycho for as long as I can remember. I used to pull the wings off infernal flies and glue them onto worms.”

  “Your daddy couldn’t afford a doll?” Zara said.

  “My father called me deranged. His deranged little girl. I had always thought it was a compliment. When I found out he didn’t mean it as a compliment, I did worse to him than I did to those flies.”

  “I’ll stick to calling your Dr. Ilsa Hellstrom,” I said.

  “When you’re named Ilsa Hellstrom, you pretty much have to become a Nazi, amiright?”

  “Is that what brought you into the fold?”

  “Not really. The uniforms mostly.”