Outpost Season One
Page 67
“Generalstabsarzt Ebersbach,” the driver told him.
The guard nodded and stepped back. Waved and the gate began to open. Klaus largely ignored the exchange, reading the physician’s report and accompanying scientific data.
The Mercedes pulled forward. Moved along the road. Around it chain-link ran high on both sides. Beyond it men in striped pajamas looked back with baleful expressions. Klaus ignored them, too. Closed the folder, put it back in his case and set it on the floor. Looked up just as the driver pulled the car in front of the main administrative building. Above the double doors was the camp’s number: 417, stenciled in white against the wood.
The driver turned off the car. Got out. Came around and opened the door for Klaus, who stepped out and looked around. Sharp, eagle eyes taking in the surroundings, the prisoners, the winter and then snapping back to the double doors as they opened.
“Heir Ebersbach,” Eric Gottlieb began. On the late side of fifty, plump, with a massive mustache that wrapped around his mouth and ended in a point under his chin like some sort of goat, he served as Camp 417’s chief scientific officer.
“Medical General Ebersbach,” Klaus corrected.
“I’m sorry, sir, I had no idea you had been promoted.”
“The Fuhrer has a habit of promoting accomplishment,” Klaus sneered. “And punishing incompetence.”
Eric nodded slowly, digesting the comment. Then said, “Of course. We hadn’t expecting you until next month.”
Klaus passed him and began walking into the building. “The Americans will be coming to the aide of their British cousins soon,” he told Eric as they entered, “and there is currently very little we can do to stop it. The Americans are not a tiny island, doctor, and they are not a corrupt communist whore like the Soviets. They seem to have more money and men than they know what to do with, and will certainly be ready to send some in our direction. The Fuhrer wants a way to stop that, and he doesn’t want to wait for it.”
“I understand that, general,” Eric explained as he kept pace, “but this is science. Unfortunately, science – unlike most other things on this planet – does not bend to the will of Adolph Hitler.”
Klaus stopped and stared at him. Leaned forward, looming over the scientist, said: “Then it must be made to.”
Started walking again.
“You don’t understand,” Eric pleaded with him. “The virus isn’t ready. It spreads too quickly. The gestation period is too long. There would be no way to contain it if we dropped it on America. All it would take is a single infected paratrooper jumping behind the lines and we could have our own epidemic.”
“Not if we have a cure.”
“But…” Eric sputtered, “I don’t even know if it’s deadly yet.”
Klaus stopped again. Leaned forward again. Said, “What?” very slowly.
Eric sagged. “No one has died yet. It’s infected the entire group, but as yet there have been no fatalities.”
“How can you engineer a plague,” Klaus asked him, “that does not kill?”
Eric just looked at him blankly. After a moment, he recovered with: “I’m certain it will kill them all shortly. We’ve only been doing human trials for a week. We need much more time. By next month, we could have solid findings on how effective the strain is. Then, hopefully we can create an inoculation, mass produce and distribute it. But none of that is possible until we know what percentage of the infected actually die and how quickly.”
Klaus studied him with predatory eyes. “Do you have any idea how much this little experiment of yours’ has cost this empire? Money that could have been spent on things like bombs and bullets and – I don’t know – things that actually do kill people.”
Eric shrank.
“I’m shutting you down…”
“No!”
“I want the subjects executed by firing squad…”
“Please.”
“At least I know that will be the end of them.”
Klaus nodded to a guard, who disappeared with the order. Turned a hundred and eighty degrees and started out the way he had come. “And I want all of your files and observations,” he continued. “Everything. I want it on my desk by the end of the week.”
They passed through the double doors and Klaus went out to his car. His driver coming around and opening the door for him. He watched as a group of prisoners were brought out and lined up. They looked very sick. That wasn’t good enough for Klaus. The guards stepped back, lined up. Brought their rifles up.
Fired.
The prisoners fell back into a trench.
Klaus smiled.
Turned to Eric Gottlieb. Said, “And, as for you, they always need cannon fodder on the Eastern Front.”
“But, it will work.”
“Too little, too late.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly well, Doctor Gottlieb, that it does not work and it has never worked, by all estimations will never work. It is my responsibility as Medical General to ensure that our resources go to projects that do work, have worked or at the very least might work. The object is to kill human beings, doctor, not make them ill.”
“But you didn’t give us a chance! You just shot them.”
“That is what we in the medical community call a ‘sure thing.’ When you shoot someone in the heart, they die. Every time. There’s no gestation period. No statistics or percentages to worry about. Take a Jew and shoot him right here,” Klaus told him, and tapped his chest, “and you no longer have a problem.”
“But you can’t expect me to replicate that sort of trauma. This is biology. It takes time to fully understand these organisms. Years even.”
“The Japanese are having tremendous success with their poisoning of Chinese water supplies, I see no reason to hold you to lesser expectations. You are a German and by that very measure should be surpassing the little yellow devils three fold.”
He turned halfway and pointed at the trench. The firing squad now mostly dispersed, milling around smoking cigarettes.
“I want those kinds of results. I want a mortality rate of one hundred percent…”
He saw something odd, and squinted. A hand coming out of the trench. Grasping the frozen soil. Then a head, being pulled up by the arm. Now a body emerging. Standing. Moving toward one of the guard.
Klaus sighed. “Excuse me,” he called to the nearest guard, “will you please take care of that.”
The guarded nodded and brought his rifle up. Fired. Blood spattered behind the prisoner as it was hit again in the chest. But it didn’t even slow down. Just lumbered – faster now – toward the guard. The man fired again. And again. The prisoner still coming. He shot it one more time – this time in the head – and it fell to the cold ground with a sound like a sack falling.
Klaus turned back to Eric. “As I was saying,” he said, and then heard a scream behind him. Spun around and saw more prisoners descending on the guards. All coming out of the trench. The entire group that had just been executed. All back up and out for blood. Two of them got hold of a guard and took him apart. With their bare hands. Just tore at him until there was blood and flesh everywhere.
And then they started eating it.
Klaus took a step back.
The guards were shooting but it was having no effect. The prisoners just kept going – so fast now – at the guards. Tearing at them. Consuming them. Klaus and Eric watched, speechless, as the final guard was devoured.
A moment passed in silence.
Then another.
Then, one of the guards started to move. Slowly.
Then it started to rise. Then more. All of them. Getting back up. Their bodies torn and shredded and still bleeding. But they were up, and they were heading for the fence.
Klaus tried to decide what it all meant. How were they all still alive? He had watched them die. With his own eyes. He hadn’t imagined it. It wasn’t possible.
“I forgot to mention,” Eric Gottlieb sa
id. “In the animal trials. After they died, there were… complications.”
Klaus blinked twice, suddenly brought back to their earlier conversation. He whirled around and said, “What sort of complications?”
“They didn’t stay dead.”