Twilight of the Dead

by David Bishop

  "Sighisoara," the Rumanian said. "He's at his ancestral castle in Sighisoara."

  "Why's he gone there?" Hans asked, moving to stand beside his brother.

  "There were rumours King Michael has been negotiating an armistice. This war could be over before Christmas if the Wehrmacht continues to retreat so quickly. Lord Constanta went back to Transylvania to prepare for the next war."

  "The next war?" Gunther asked from nearby.

  "The war of blood," Cringu replied, a cruel smile spreading across his repellent face. "The war that will decide the fate of us all. The war that has been coming for a thousand years."

  "Humans versus vampyr," Ralf said quietly.

  "The final conflict," Hans added.

  "The time of revelations is almost upon us," the Rumanian continued. "The vampyr shall rise up to claim their rightful place as rulers of this continent, and then all the continents. They shall achieve their destiny, becoming the true master race, establishing a new world order."

  "And where will you be in the midst of all this glorious triumph?" Gunther asked. "I notice his lordship hasn't seen fit to grant you equal status."

  "What happens to mankind when the vampyr take charge?" Hans added.

  "The chosen ones will be awarded places of honour in the new world order, given dominion over the human cattle, allowed to pick and choose those they wish to live and those they condemn to death." Cringu looked at the Panzergrenadiers gathered around him. "You shall be culled, your blood taken as sustenance for my masters, and your carcasses burned. It is no more than you deserve. We have tolerated your presence on our soil long enough!"

  "Trust me, we can't wait to leave this godforsaken country," Ralf replied.

  Cringu laughed at him. "I shall reserve a special kind of hell for you."

  "The Führer beat you to it. I've already been to Stalingrad," Ralf said, and pulled the trigger. A third eye appeared in Cringu's forehead. His other eyes tried to look up at it before glazing over. The third eye appeared to blink once before a trickle of blood ran down the Rumanian's face. He collapsed to the ground, the rear of his head sporting a gaping hole. The body twitched and spasmed for a few moments, and then a wet stain appeared around the crotch as his muscles relaxed and his bowels voided themselves. Then Cringu was still, his insidious life at an end.

  Ralf shoved his pistol back into its holster. "What happened to the other driver?"

  Berkel pointed at the singed remains of a corpse protruding from beneath the still burning remains of the other truck. "The Russians took care of him for us, and whatever was in his cargo."

  "Then I think it's time we got a good look at what Obergefreiter Cringu was taking to his undead master in Sighisoara, don't you?" Ralf peered past the remaining shower of paper still fluttering down from the sky. The sun was getting ever closer to the mountains, but twilight was not yet upon them. "Yes, while we still have time to deal with whatever's in there."

  Ralf sent out runners to call back the remaining Panzergrenadiers from sentry duty. He told those present to form into groups surrounding Cringu's truck, ensuring they were back far enough to be safe from immediate attack but close enough to fire on anything or anyone that might emerge from the cargo.

  Ralf himself went to the back of the vehicle and peered inside, counting half a dozen crates. Three of the long, rectangular boxes looked more like coffins than military equipment, while the others were stamped with Rumanian phrases. Finally, Ralf asked for three volunteers to help him open the crates and deal with whatever was inside. Hans was first to step forward, closely followed by Gunther. Ganz found himself propelled from among the others, the point of Berkel's bayonet jabbing the portly Panzergrenadier between the buttocks.

  "That's very noble of you, volunteering for such a potentially hazardous task," Hans said.

  "I didn't," Ganz protested. "It was Berkel!"

  "Then both of you can help," Ralf decided. "Hans, I want you to stay back with the others. If this goes wrong, you're to take charge of them."

  "But I want to-"

  "That's an order, Vollmer!"

  Fuming, Hans saluted his brother and marched away to join the others keeping watch from a distance. Meanwhile Ralf, Gunther, Berkel and Ganz carefully removed the large tarpaulin covering the rear of Cringu's truck. The four men slowly lifted each of the coffin-like crates outside and leaned them against the side of the vehicle, so they faced the setting sun. Once all three boxes were in position, Ralf used a bayonet blade to break open the heavy metal padlocks keeping each container sealed. Finally, he had Gunther, Berkel and Ganz stand opposite the crates, each man armed with special ammunition and ready to fire.

  Standing to one side of the first coffin, Ralf ripped open the lid and let the fading sunlight flood the interior of the box. Inside was a figure dressed in the garb of the Rumanian Mountain Troops, the familiar bat and swastika emblem visible on its peaked cap and tunic. The creature was human in shape but the hands and face were like nothing any of the Germans had seen before.

  There were claw-like talons where fingers and nails should have been, and the skin was black and leathery with thin white hairs protruding from it. The face was closer to a jackal than any human, with elongated features and yellow slits for eyes. As the sunlight entered the coffin, the creature awoke and screamed an unearthly cry of anger and torment. The monster tried to emerge from its confinement but the black flesh was burning and boiling from its bones, hissing and spitting like so much hot fat on a griddle. The thing began to howl and thrash, its vile body going into spasms, still screaming, still raging at its own death. Most of the soldiers turned away, unable to bear looking at this grotesque spectacle as it perished.

  "Finish it off!" Ralf snarled.

  Gunther opened fire, emptying his magazine into the monster. When the last silver-tipped bullet penetrated its torso, the vampyr exploded, showering his executioner with green bile and seared black skin. Gunther stumbled backwards, retching and vomiting, trying to get the horrific stench from his nostrils and lungs.

  By now the creatures inside the other two coffins had sensed what was happening but both were powerless to escape their fate. Ralf ripped open the second crate to reveal another monster cowering inside, uselessly trying to shield itself from the sunlight.

  "Shoot it," Ralf ordered Berkel and Ganz. They both fired repeatedly at the vampyr until it exploded.

  The procedure was quickly repeated for the occupant of the third and final coffin. Only when the trinity of vampyr was destroyed did Ralf stagger away to one side, the contents of his stomach violently vacating his body to coat the crushed grass. Hans emerged from among the gathered crowd of soldiers to see how his brother was doing.

  "I'll be okay in a minute," Ralf gasped. A thin stream of green bile hung down from his lips and chin.

  "The sun's nearly down," Hans said. "Ganz and I will open the other crates and make sure there are no nasty surprises waiting inside for us."

  "Be careful," Ralf muttered. "If those things were vampyr in their true form, I hate to think what they were taking back to Transylvania with them."

  Hans and Ganz clambered up into the back of Cringu's truck, both of them armed with bayonets for opening the crates. Hans prised off the lid of the first box, peering inside cautiously before revealing the contents to Ganz. Within were dozens of glass bottles, all of them carefully sealed with corks and crimson wax. Each was filled with a heavy, dark liquid that resembled thickened red wine.

  "It's blood," Hans realised. "Litres and litres of it. They must have drained this from their victims and brought it with them in case they needed to feed during the journey."

  Ganz tapped a foot against the second crate and was rewarded with the sound of glass bottles clinking together. "This one's the same."

  Sure enough, when the lid was removed they could see that there was enough bottled blood to fill a bath. Hans removed one of the containers and threw it to Ralf who was slowly recovering from his close encounter with the vamp
yr.

  "What do you make of that?" Hans asked his brother.

  Ralf broke open the bottle and sniffed at the contents. "It's blood all right, but mixed with something else... almost a sweet smell. Maybe they use an additive to stop it from spoiling."

  In the distance the last rays of light gave way as the sun dipped behind the mountains. Clouds on the horizon were becoming shades of pink and orange, while twilight was already creeping across from the other side of the sky. Ralf gave orders for the others to gather wood and start fires. With Cringu and his charges eliminated, it was safe to spend the night at this location.

  Ganz didn't bother tapping the final crate on the truck and simply shoved his bayonet beneath the lid and ripped it open. "Guess we should be grateful they brought their own supplies to drink, otherwise they'd have started on us tonight."

  He lifted the lid away from the crate and cried out in surprise. A small girl clad in a white nightdress was cowering inside, her body trembling with terror.

  "What the hell is she doing in there?" Ganz said.

  "God in heaven! She must have been their evening meal. Vampyr prefer to take sustenance from living humans," Hans replied in complete horror.

  When he saw what his brother and Ganz had found in the final crate, Ralf tossed the bottle of blood he was holding to Berkel. "Hans, get away from that child. You too, Ganz."

  "Why?" Hans asked, perplexed by his brother's stern tone of voice.

  "Get down from the truck. Now."

  Hans did as Ralf commanded. "Come on, Ganz. You heard what he said."

  "But she's a little girl, nothing more," the rotund soldier protested. "Look at her! Poor thing's scared out of her wits."

  Ralf drew his pistol and aimed it at Ganz. "I said get out of the truck. Do it."

  Ganz waved Ralf away, crouching on one knee beside the crate to talk to the child. "You've got our big, bad commander worried! What do you think has got him so scared, eh?"

  The little girl smiled at him, her eyes gleaming. "Come closer and I'll tell you."

  "Why? Is it a secret?" Ganz replied.

  She nodded, beckoning him nearer. "I'll whisper it in your ear."

  "Ganz, you fool. Don't get any closer to her," Ralf snarled.

  "Come on, commander," Ganz said, glancing over at Ralf. "You can't be frightened of a child, can you?"

  He didn't notice the little girl's lips drawing back into a grin, gradually revealing the elongated fangs protruding downwards from her upper jaw. Ganz turned back to hear her secret. He was still smiling expectantly as the child bit deep into his neck, blood spurting from the twin puncture wounds. By the time Ganz fought his way free of the girl's deadly embrace, she had drained half the blood in his body. The soldier crawled away from her, one hand clasping weakly at the holes in the neck, trying to staunch the bleeding. But crimson skirted from between his fat fingers as his terrified heart pumped the blood out of Ganz's body.

  The child rose up from her crate, her pure white nightdress now stained scarlet. Ralf put three silver-tipped bullets into the little girl's chest and she exploded into a cloud of ash and dust which slowly settled back into the crate where she'd been kept.

  Ralf looked sadly at Ganz. The sobbing soldier was sprawled in the back of the truck.

  "I told you to keep away from her," Ralf muttered, shaking his head.

  He shot Ganz twice through the head and once through the heart.

  "You didn't have to do that!" Berkel protested from nearby.

  "Yes, he did," Gunther said. "You know what happens to the victims of vampyr. Sooner or later, Ganz would have become one of them. Better to put him out of his misery now."

  Hans approached his brother, still startled by what had happened. "How'd you know?"

  "Her crate didn't have any air holes in it. A normal child would have suffocated long ago if they'd been locked in there, but vampyr don't need to breathe. Not like us."

  Ralf shoved his pistol back into its holster. "Let's get the camp established for the night. In the morning we'll go through Cringu's documents, see if they can tell us what he wouldn't. If the Rumanians do decide to switch sides, we'll need every advantage we can get against those bloodsucking bastards."

  THREE

  Three days after King Michael told the world his country had surrendered to the Allied forces, the announcement we'd all feared came to pass. On the 26th of August, Rumania formally declared war on Germany and the other Axis forces. In other circumstances, Eisenstein and I would have been cheered by the news. While the addition of the battered Rumanian Army would not significantly augment our efforts to defeat Hitler's forces, every new ally was welcome to join our side. But we knew the true consequences of the Rumanians switching sides. Somewhere in Moscow the Red Army's commanders had decided to make a deal with the devil, as German generals in Berlin had done three years before. Now Constanta and his vampyr would be fighting alongside us against the Axis forces. Our most bitter enemy had now become our ally, but how could we ever trust a cadre of undead fiends?

  A second announcement was made on the same day, one much less widely circulated. As a consequence of the Rumanians joining our side, the Red Army was disbanding its smert krofpeet units with immediate effect. Those who had fought against the vampyr menace were given a choice. Most of them had come from a shtrafroty, so they could return to the certain death of a penal company for the rest of the war.

  Alternatively, each man and woman was offered the opportunity to serve a new master: the Red Army's counter-intelligence division smert shpionam, better known as SMERSH. The vampyr-hunter units were being formed into new squads called gloobokee-nosh - deep knife. These would be responsible for acts of insurgency behind enemy lines, and preparing the way for the rapidly advancing Red Army. In the past the smert krofpeet had been a law unto themselves, and were able to move along the front line as each unit saw fit. But the deep knife squads were to be operated under SMERSH's control, with a new command structure.

  Eisenstein and I did not need long to make our choice. We had both come to the smert krofpeet from a penal company and neither of us had any wish to go back to the shtrafroty. If life as a vampyr-hunter was precarious, it was even more perilous within the penal companies. Such units were given the worst jobs, almost always suicide missions and armed only with whatever weapons the members could scavenge from the battlefield.

  Officers saw the shtrafroty as utterly expendable, often carelessly using them as cannon fodder to test the enemy's strength. Neither Eisenstein nor I knew what life in a deep knife unit would be like, but we reasoned that it couldn't be any worse than that of the shtrafroty. Joining SMERSH was a chilling prospect. It had existed for only a year by then, but the organisation's utter ruthlessness terrified even the NKVD. Despite this, Eisenstein and I rated our chances of survival better with a deep knife unit than as part of a lowly shtrafroty. So the pair of us volunteered for the nearest gloobokee-nosh, willingly handing in our smert krofpeet insignia. We were less happy to surrender our anti-vampyr weapons, but it was a condition of acceptance to the deep knife.

  Once we had been given our new insignia - a blade stained with blood - Eisenstein and I were sent to join the nearest gloobokee-nosh unit near Ploesti. Three other members were waiting for us when we arrived at the appointed rendezvous shortly before dusk: two near identical Mongolians and Mariya Charnosova. She had been ushered away for medical treatment and debriefing after our failed attempt to kill Gorgo five days before. I had been unable to make contact with her since Rumania's sudden surrender had thrown Red Army communications into chaos. Mariya's face lit up when she saw us approaching.

  "I never thought I'd be grateful to meet you two again!" she exclaimed. "Are you both deep knife?"

  "Yes," Eisenstein replied dryly. "Thanks for the welcome."

  "Sorry, I didn't mean..." She almost blushed with embarrassment, something I found quite beguiling. "I just meant I didn't want what happened in that farmhouse... Well, you know." She fell silent, s
o I changed the subject to spare her further shame.

  "Who are these two?" I asked, tilting my head towards the two Mongolians.

  "I think they're brothers," Mariya ventured. "I can't speak Mongolian and their Russian is mostly made up of obscenities. From what I can make out, they're both called Borjigin. That could be their family name, or else they have the same first name."

  "Mongolian communists outlawed first names in the Twenties," Eisenstein said. "As a protest many people switched their surname to Borjigin; Genghis Khan's tribal name."

  "You speak Mongolian?" I asked, surprised by this revelation.

  "Only enough to start a fight," he replied. "We had a Mongolian in the shtrafroty at Leningrad before you arrived. Don't ask how he ended up there. Didn't last long."

  Eisenstein approached the two brothers who were crouched near a fire on the ground, each of them sharpening a wickedly sharp curved sword with a whetstone. He muttered something at the pair in their own tongue and they looked up in surprise. The pair began talking swiftly, words tumbling out of them like water from a newly broken dam. Eisenstein held up his hands, pleading for them to slow down. The brothers smiled and invited him to sit by the fire. Both had the narrow eyes, olive complexion, and thick black hair characteristic of their people.

  Eisenstein produced a small flask of vodka and offered it to the Borjigins. One of them sniffed its contents suspiciously before tipping a single drop on to his tongue. He swallowed and smiled, pleased by the fiery liquid's effect. His brother snatched the flask away and helped himself to a mouthful. Soon the trio were jabbering at each other in a mixture of Russian and Mongolian, sign language filling in the gaps where mutually known swearwords failed to suffice.

  "Looks like Grigori's made two new friends," I commented.

  "Good," Mariya said. "The way those two were staring at me earlier, I didn't like to think what they had planned. The only word I did recognise sounded suspiciously like whore."

  "Don't worry. I won't let them touch you."