Battle of the Beasts

by Chris Columbus

  “Because he’s my brother and I miss him,” Eleanor said.

  The hatches on the tank popped open. Out climbed a Nazi soldier dressed differently from the rest. There were red stripes on his helmet and gold-threaded swastikas in his shoulder pads. He was over six feet tall, with broad, muscular shoulders and a huge cleft chin. His hair was bright blond and tightly cropped. His eyes were steely blue. When he opened his mouth, his teeth were blindingly white. Everything about him was perfect.

  “I speak now to the inhabitants of this house!” the Nazi called in a German accent. “My name is Heinrich Volnheim, Generalleutnant of the Fifteenth Panzergrenadier Division! We know you are there; we have seen you in the windows! Come out with your hands up!”

  “What are we gonna do?” asked Eleanor.

  “We can’t go out there,” said Cordelia. “It’s certain death.”

  “We’ll fight,” Felix whispered, drawing his weapon—

  “Felix!” Will scolded. “Guns . . . ?”

  “There’s always a way to turn a battle to your side.”

  “You have thirty seconds to show yourselves!” shouted Volnheim.

  Cordelia gulped. Felix was brandishing his sword, ready to fight, no matter what the odds. Cordelia noticed, and grew strength.

  “All right. If we’re gonna do this, we need weapons. Follow me!”

  Cordelia led everyone into the kitchen, where they grabbed things to defend themselves with against the Nazis. Will picked up the Wusthof knife block, tucked it under his arm, and pulled out a long serrated blade. Eleanor found a battery-operated metal cake mixer. She held it out like a gun and hit the On button. The metal whisks spun quickly.

  “Really, Nell?!” said Cordelia. “You’re gonna bake them a cake?”

  “No,” said Eleanor. “These mixers can really mess you up. I got my finger caught in ’em once . . . remember?”

  “Oh, right,” said Cordelia. “Fourteen stitches.” Cordelia picked up a five-gallon water-cooler jug, about halfway full, and hoisted it over her shoulder.

  “What are you going to do with that?” asked Will.

  “If one of them gets too close, I’ll drop it on his head,” said Cordelia.

  “Heinz, Franz,” came Volnheim’s voice from outside. He was strangely calm, as if he were waiting for some food to finish in the microwave. “The children have not shown themselves and it has been thirty seconds. Go in and retrieve them. And don’t shoot. I want them alive.”

  “All right!” Will said. “We might get the jump on these guys. Cordelia, go upstairs. Felix and I will try to fight them off.” He handed Felix a knife.

  “No,” said Cordelia. “Stop ordering us around—”

  Just then, the front door burst open, and Heinz and Franz stepped in. They had arrived at the front door much faster than was humanly possible—faster than anyone could run. And they looked exactly like Volnheim. Both over six feet tall, with square jaws and blue, soulless eyes. They both held Luger pistols.

  “Get out of this house!” Felix yelled, rushing down the hall.

  He slashed at Heinz’s arm. There was a loud clang. Heinz dropped his gun to the floor and Felix dropped his sword—but quickly retrieved it.

  The Nazi glanced to where Felix had struck him. Heinz’s uniform sleeve was torn and his skin was sliced open, but there was no blood.

  Only a shimmer of bright silver beneath the skin.

  That’s odd, thought Felix—and then he swung at Heinz’s face. The blade cut across the Nazi’s cheek and chin, but Heinz only smiled, as if he were being tickled by a feather.

  Felix stared in shock. “What . . . ?”

  Heinz grabbed Felix’s sword and snapped the blade in two with his bare hands. Franz, who had been standing behind Heinz, punched Felix in the jaw. Dong!

  The gladiator had never been hit so hard in his life. Franz’s fist felt like a can of paint. Felix fell backward and hit the floor. Out cold.

  Will, back in the kitchen, viewed all of this with increasing panic. But he couldn’t abandon Cordelia and Eleanor, and the Nazis had orders to take them alive, so maybe they wouldn’t shoot him. He charged with the Wusthof block under his arm like a football, whipping out a knife—

  When it hit Franz, the blade snapped in two.

  Will lifted the cutlery block over Franz’s head and brought it down. The heavy wooden block just bounced off.

  “What?” said Will.

  Franz pulled back his arm, hitting Will square in the jaw with his elbow. There was a sound of metal connecting with flesh, and Will hit the floor like a sack of potatoes.

  Cordelia and Eleanor were confused and horrified.

  “What’s up with these Nazis?” asked Eleanor, clutching her cake mixer. “They’re like Superman, only meaner!”

  “I think I have an idea—” started Cordelia, but she had no time to explain, because Heinz and Franz were aiming their guns.

  “Come with us,” said Heinz, “and no one will get hurt.” Eleanor and Cordelia ran up the spiral stairs, with Cordelia struggling mightily to bring along the five-gallon water jug she had brought as a weapon.

  The Nazis followed, their boots hitting the floor with mechanical precision as they went through the kitchen and up the stairs. Cordelia raised the water jug over her head. As soon as the Nazis came into view, she threw it. The water bottle hit the stairs directly in front of Heinz and Franz and burst open, drenching them in two-and-a-half gallons of water. It dripped off their faces as they stopped and shook their hands to get it off.

  “Deal, you missed! That’s just gonna make them mad—”

  “Watch.”

  There was a sizzling sound. It got louder and louder, echoing from inside the Nazis’ bodies. Smoke began to seep from their ears, mouths, and nostrils. Loud, crackling pops and grinding whirs came from their chests. “What the . . . ?” Eleanor said.

  Showers of bright sparks suddenly shot out of the Nazis’ bodies, spewing up the stairs. The kids ducked away as Franz and Heinz fell backward and tumbled head over heels, hitting the wall as the staircase curved down to the kitchen. When they reached the bottom, they remained still, lying on their backs, their bodies smoking and crackling. Cordelia and Eleanor went halfway down the steps to look at them. Every now and then, stray sparks would shoot from their open mouths and ears. But the Nazis stayed motionless. Silent.

  “What just happened?” asked Eleanor.

  “We found their weakness,” said Cordelia.

  The sound of metal—whirring, grinding, clicking—continued to come from the Nazis’ bodies. And then, without warning, the front of Heinz’s face literally popped off and bounced across the floor.

  It came to a stop in the corner of the room. The metal face wasn’t a face at all, but a faceplate. It resembled a sophisticated Halloween mask, no more than a quarter-inch thick. Cordelia and Eleanor looked down at the wide opening that was now Heinz’s head. Inside, there were no visible muscles or blood vessels.

  Only a mass of wires, gears, and black oil.

  Will and Felix were getting back on their feet, rubbing their heads in pain. They joined Eleanor and Cordelia over the bodies of the fallen Nazis. They stared in horror at the complex mechanical workings of Heinz’s head.

  “Poor chap’s got a rather nasty complexion,” said Will.

  “He’s a cyborg,” said Cordelia.

  “A cy-what?”

  “That’s the title of Kristoff’s book. Assault of the Nazi Cyborgs!”

  “What are cyborgs?” asked Felix.

  “Robots.”

  “What are robots?”

  “Oh boy,” said Eleanor, doing a facepalm. “This is gonna take a while to explain.”

  “Never mind that—what do we do now?” asked Will.

  Outside the house, Volnheim spoke—now the kids recognized his voice as not just calm, but robotic—“Beckler. Dingler. Heinz and Franz have not returned from their mission. Go and see what is taking so long.”

  Two identical Nazis
stepped forward—and then they warp-walked to the house, their feet moving so fast that they were a blur, appearing at the front door in an instant. This time all the kids saw it.

  “That’s messed up,” Eleanor said.

  “I’m on it,” said Cordelia. She was kneeling, holding the faceplate of Heinz, searching for something. There it was: the serial number.

  Cordelia ran into the living room.

  “Deal?!” shouted Eleanor. “Where are you going?!”

  “You will come with us,” said Beckler, pointing his gun from down the hall.

  “One moment,” said Will, who quickly dove to the floor and grabbed Heinz’s gun. Will rolled onto his stomach, propped himself on his elbows, and took aim. He fired several shots at the two Nazis.

  The bullets just bounced off.

  The two Nazis grinned.

  Will got to his feet and tossed the gun on the floor.

  “German engineering,” he muttered.

  Beckler and Dingler moved toward Eleanor, when suddenly they stopped in their tracks, held still for a moment . . . and began to walk backward.

  They moved in a herky-jerky motion, like characters being rewound on a DVD. They started to speak. It sounded like gibberish, like someone was playing a recording in reverse. When they reached the door, they stopped again. Frozen.

  Will, Felix, and Eleanor exchanged a stunned look—and then Cordelia stepped out of the living room. She was pointing a high-tech universal remote at the Nazi cyborgs.

  “Deal!” shouted Eleanor. “What are you doing?”

  “I programmed the cyborg’s serial number into the remote,” said Cordelia. “I figured it might be able to control them somehow . . . and it worked!!”

  Cordelia hit Reverse four times on the remote.

  The Nazis moved backward at four times their normal speed. They resembled an old Charlie Chaplin movie as they skittered out the front door, backing away from Kristoff House and speaking to each other in reverse chipmunk voices.

  Outside, Volnheim and his Nazi brigade watched in disbelief.

  “Beckler! Dingler! Have you lost your minds? Get back inside!”

  But the two Nazis kept walking backward, oblivious to their leader. They reverse marched all the way through the assembled troops and across a field, disappearing into a forest hundreds of yards away.

  “What just happened?” asked Volnheim, looking at his equally perplexed troops. “Anyone?”

  The Walkers, Felix, and Will stepped out of the house. Everywhere they looked, there were Nazis. Standing in the four trucks, on top of the tank, lined up in formation . . . nearly one hundred of them. And they all looked exactly like Volnheim.

  “Stop right there,” shouted the Generalleutnant. “What did you do to my men? You played with their minds. It’s witchcraft—”

  Cordelia hit Pause.

  Volnheim shut up immediately, and the entire Nazi cyborg army froze in place.

  “That’s awesome, Deal!” said Eleanor.

  “Dad spent a really long time researching this remote,” said Cordelia. “He got the best one.”

  “But why does it work against those Nazi cy-bros?” asked Felix.

  “Cyborgs,” corrected Eleanor.

  “I put in the Nazi’s serial number, and he came up as being a brand Loewe AG television,” said Cordelia. “I don’t know how much time we have. Let’s grab as many of their weapons as we can and go back inside to figure out our next move.”

  “Good idea,” said Felix.

  The four of them began walking through the army of statue-like Nazi cyborgs and taking all their Luger pistols. Also their grenades and daggers. It was a difficult task to remove the weapons from the mechanically clenched metal hands of the soldiers. As Eleanor tried to pry a gun from one Nazi’s fingers, it fired!

  Eleanor stared at the hole in the ground, inches from her foot.

  She was frozen in fear. “I’m sorry!” she said, starting to cry.

  “Don’t worry,” said Cordelia. “Hopefully we won’t have to use the guns. Let’s head back to the house.”

  The four of them were a few feet from the front porch when a hand reached out and grabbed Eleanor’s shoulder.

  Eleanor whirled around. One of the Nazis had come back to life. He was gripping her shoulder with one hand, holding a knife to her throat with the other.

  “Deal!” cried Eleanor.

  Cordelia saw motion out of the corner of her eye—all the soldiers were coming back to life. She dropped what she was doing and pulled out the universal remote.

  She hit Pause.

  It didn’t work this time. The Nazis were moving, looking for their missing guns and daggers.

  Cordelia hit Pause again. And again.

  But it was useless.

  The Nazis were very much alive.

  And that’s when she noticed the flashing Battery Low light.

  “No way!”

  The Nazis who still had their guns surrounded the kids.

  “Drop the weapons,” said Volnheim, pushing through the group with a Luger pointed forward. Cordelia, Eleanor, Will, and Felix complied. The Nazis slowly took every single one of their weapons back from the children. Then Volnheim stood in front of Cordelia.

  “Hand over the device.”

  Cordelia gave him the universal remote. Volnheim took it, turned it over, and carefully examined it from all sides.

  “What is this magic? Clever. Very clever.”

  Volnheim tossed the remote high in the air, raised his gun, and fired, blowing it into several pieces. He turned back to Cordelia. “Are you the owners of this house?”

  “Well, technically, my parents, but yeah.”

  “It’s quite beautiful,” said Volnheim. “Our spies spotted it yesterday, just after the Great Time Disturbance.”

  “Great Time Disturbance?” Cordelia asked.

  “Yes. The Great Time Disturbance that caused Germany to suddenly be connected to ancient Rome.” Volnheim’s eyes narrowed. “Are you responsible for that as well?”

  “No . . . ,” said Cordelia, but Volnheim didn’t buy it.

  “You’re lying. It’s your house and you know all its secrets, which is why I’m keeping you alive. I want you to show me everything about this residence. Lead the way.”

  The group exchanged worried glances as they led Volnheim, and only Volnheim, into the house. There he proceeded to pace and examine.

  “Who ransacked this house? The Romans?”

  Cordelia nodded.

  “Typical Italians,” said Volnheim. “No elegance, no artistic sensibility. You do know that the entire Renaissance was a hoax?”

  “No,” said Cordelia. “I wasn’t aware of that—”

  “Yes,” said Volnheim. “The Sistine Chapel was actually painted by a German.”

  “Interesting,” said Cordelia, who had decided it was a good idea to agree with anything said by the Nazi cyborg.

  “Is there an attic?” asked Volnheim.

  “Yeah . . . ,” Eleanor said.

  “Wonderful!” Volnheim clapped his hands, making a metallic ringing noise. “Der Führer loves attics!”

  “Uh . . . Der Führer?” Cordelia asked. “You don’t mean . . .”

  “Of course,” said Volnheim. “My master and creator. Der Führer is the only one worthy of living in this house. Which is why he sent me to appraise it. You see, he has purchased a lakeside lot. Several acres. This will work quite well as his summer home.”

  Felix whispered to Cordelia: “I don’t understand, who is this Führer?”

  “Only the most reprehensible and evil dictator in world history,” said Cordelia. “Certainly one of the top five.”

  “Silence!” shouted Volnheim. “How dare you speak that way about mein Führer!”

  Volnheim suddenly stopped in the kitchen, looking down at Heinz and Franz. He frowned, brow tightening.

  “I assume you are responsible for this?” he asked.

  No one said a word. Volnheim clenched his j
aw. Then he led Felix, Will, and the Walkers back outside, addressing his army.

  “I have found the home to be satisfactory. We will bring it to the Führer’s lakeside property. And these four—”

  He looked at Cordelia, Eleanor, Will, and Felix.

  “We shoot.”

  The Nazi cyborgs let out a hearty cheer, which sounded a little robotic, like someone yelling through a fan. Eleanor screamed. Will and Felix tried to shield the Walker sisters. Cordelia squeezed her eyes shut. The Nazis drew their guns. But before they could fire off a shot, a loud laugh stopped everyone in their tracks.

  In the past, Cordelia had felt a range of emotions when she heard the Wind Witch—terror, anger, resignation—but now, for the first time, she felt excitement. There was only one person who laughed that way, high and cackling.

  She flew down from the sky with her wings flapping and her bald head glistening in the sun.

  “Leave them alone!” she commanded. “The Walkers belong to me!”

  Commander Volnheim was taken aback by the sight of her, but he wasn’t too surprised. He was a cyborg, after all.

  “Stay out of this,” he ordered.

  In response, the Wind Witch pointed one of her false hands at a Nazi truck and let fly a blast of concentrated air. The truck flew upward, flipping end over end, sending Nazis flying everywhere.

  Volnheim screamed to his men: “Kill her!”

  Nazis opened fire on the Wind Witch, using rifles and pistols and machine guns from the trucks. Volnheim ducked into the Tiger I tank; within moments, the turret began rotating, the cannon pointing upward.

  The Wind Witch took off, climbing up, up, up, far away from where the bullets could reach her. She was lost in the clouds within seconds, able to see the entire panoramic view of Kristoff House and the trucks below. But she saw something else. Something fast, coming toward her with a flurry of deafening propeller noise.

  And it had a star painted on its side.

  Meanwhile, the Walkers, Will, and Felix ran back inside Kristoff House, racing for their lives as Nazi cyborgs streamed in. Cordelia led them into the attic. Eleanor was confused.

  “I thought the Wind Witch was bad, so why is she helping us now?”