Blood Red Army

by David Bishop

  Sophia was sobbing again so I helped her back to the bunker. I looked away as she got changed, not wanting to intrude on her pain. Once she was ready to face the others, we emerged into the cool night air. Ahead of us Brodsky was standing over Strelnikov's corpse, demanding answers from Yatsko. Eisenstein waited nearby, paying little attention to them.

  "There's something you should know about Grigori," I whispered to Sophia. "It can't change what's happened, but it might make a difference to how you feel about him."

  "I doubt that," she said mournfully.

  "When we were escaping from Ivanovskoe, Eisenstein was-"

  But my next words were drowned out by the return of the inhuman wailing noise. The previous night it had been insistent, but still sounded as if the source was some distance away. Now it was all around us, so close it felt like whomever or whatever making the howling was a few metres away. We looked round, searching for the source, our nerves set on edge by the cacophony.

  "Lenin's beard, what is that?" Brodsky asked, bellowing to be heard.

  Uralsky ran into view, sprinting back to camp from the front line, pointing over his shoulder. "They're coming for us," he gasped between breaths. "All of them!"

  "Who's coming for us?" Brodsky demanded, moving to see what had so perturbed the normally implacable sniper. Uralsky grabbed the captain by the arm, refusing to let him pass.

  "Our own men and women," he said, terror in his eyes. "The Germans are sending our own dead to kill us!"

  Chapter Twelve

  "That is impossible!" Brodsky shouted, still struggling to be heard over the inhuman howling coming from all around us. "The dead do not rise from their graves. Even if they did, they are already dead. They have no will, no life left in them. You must be mistaken. The Germans have obviously dressed themselves up in Red Army uniforms and are attempting some macabre deception to-"

  The wailing suddenly stopped, catching the captain by surprise. Like the rest of us, he looked around, trying to deduce why the shrieking had ceased. When no answer was obvious, Brodsky resumed talking.

  "As I was saying, this is obviously a fanciful ruse by the Germans, nothing more."

  Uralsky shook his head. "I saw a face I knew amongst them - Borodin. At least, what was left of him. These resurrected, they're coming for us. All of us."

  I could never recall seeing the sniper scared before, not even when we had been surrounded by vampyr in enemy territory. Uralsky rarely showed his feelings, preferring to keep calm and cool. I had decided that the sharpshooter must not be afraid of anything, even his own demise. But the sight of our dead comrades crossing no-man's-land had rattled him badly.

  "Nonsense," Brodsky insisted. "I'll prove it to you. If the dead are rising up to attack the living, why isn't Strelnikov among them?"

  "Perhaps his corpse is too fresh?" Yatsko speculated. He crouched beside the body and drew back the rain cape to reveal Strelnikov's face. It was bloated and purple, and red welts were visible around the neck. The eyeballs had turned black, something I had seen with corpses that had been killed by asphyxiation. But from what Sophia had told me, Yatsko had broken Strelnikov's neck, not strangled him. I was about to ask Sophia about this, but she could not bring herself to look at the body. The memory of what he had tried to do to her was still too fresh, too recent.

  "See?" Brodsky asked triumphantly. "I told you it was nonsense. This-"

  Suddenly Strelnikov sat upright, his body folding forward like a puppet controlled by invisible strings. His head swivelled round to stare at Yatsko with those bleak, black eyeballs. Strelnikov drew back his lips, revealing a pair of vicious fangs in both his upper and lower jaws. He hissed hungrily at Yatsko.

  "Get away from it," I urged Yatsko. "Bojemoi, get the hell away from it!"

  But Yatsko seemed to be mesmerised by the spectre of his dead comrade, unable to break eye contact with it. The thing that had been Strelnikov smiled gleefully, tipping back its head a fraction, like a cobra about to attack a victim. Then the back of the corpse's head exploded. A bullet had entered through the left eyeball and exited through the rear of the skull, taking blood and brains and bone with it. What was left of Strelnikov slumped over backwards, dead again.

  I turned to see where the shot had come from. Uralsky was crouched on the ground, a wisp of smoke curling from the end of his rifle. "I didn't even know Strelnikov was dead," he said quietly. "But there are dozens more like him, all marching across no-man's-land towards our front line."

  "I'm convinced," Yatsko announced, scrambling to his feet, backing away from the remains of Strelnikov. "Grab your weapons and every box of ammunition you can carry. We've got an army to fight!"

  "But how do we kill soldiers who are already dead?" I heard myself asking.

  Uralsky walked towards the dead man, having regained his composure. The sniper nudged the body but it did not respond. "Head shot works well."

  "Uralsky's right, aim for the head," Yatsko snarled. "Now grab your weapons and get to the front line! Do it!" He snatched up an ammunition box in one arm and a machine gun in the other and then ran forward with Uralsky close behind him. I glanced at Brodsky, curious for his response. It was days since I had last seen the captain and he looked ill and undernourished. His skin was washed out and rubbery, so loose it was hanging from the bones of his face. I would not have recognised him but for the uniform.

  "You heard Yatsko. Get to the front line, both of you!" Brodsky shouted at Sophia and me. "I want to have a word with Eisenstein before I make my report on what's happening to HQ. Go!" We grabbed our weapons and sprinted after the others, leaving the captain and Eisenstein together beside Strelnikov's corpse.

  As we ran, Sophia tugged on the sleeve on my gymnastiorka. "You were going to tell me something about Grigori."

  I shook my head. "It doesn't matter now."

  "Yes, it does," Sophia insisted. "Tell me."

  I slowed to a halt, my mind racing. We were running towards a battle with an unknown number of foes, from which neither of us might return. Looking back now, I still don't know whether I should have told her the truth. But I thought she deserved to hear it from somebody, after all she'd been through. So I told her what had taken place on the railway tracks near Ivanovskoe, what Constanta had done to Eisenstein and what had been happening since that tragic day. Sophia's shoulders sagged and she took a step back, shaking her head, trying to grasp it all.

  "I... I suppose I knew," she whispered, her voice just audible over the sound of gunfire and men screaming on the front line. "But I... I didn't want to believe it. Not him... Not Grigori..."

  "I shouldn't have told you," I said regretfully.

  "No, you were right," she insisted. "Go. Go and help the others."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Back to see him," Sophia answered, already running towards the camp. "I have to talk with him before it's too late."

  Again, I agonised, unsure whether to follow her or continue on to the front. It was the sound of men dying ahead that solved my dilemma. Eisenstein and Sophia would have to resolve their own problems. I had other battles to wage. Grabbing the ammunition Sophia had abandoned, I hurried towards the fighting.

  The front line was chaos with a dozen different squads scrambled together, all facing an implacable enemy. Uralsky and Yatsko had dived into whatever gaps were available when they arrived. I followed their example, forcing my way between two burly sergeants armed with sturdy machine guns. The one on my left glared at my uniform, noticing the lack of insignia.

  "Did you bring more ammunition, convict?" he asked. I planted the box between us and ripped open the lid. He glanced inside and nodded. "Then you're welcome here. Any idea how we stop these things?"

  I looked out over no-man's-land. The normally barren, soulless expanse of wasteland was a swarming, pulsating mass of movement. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of corpses were stumbling towards us. This army of the dead extended as far as I could see to the east on my left, and to the west on my right. Whe
re had so many Russian corpses been found to make such an army, I wondered? Then I saw there were as many German uniforms as there were Red Army uniforms among the throng. Amidst them were civilians, too, also raised from the dead to attack us. Those that could not walk crawled across the ground, pulling themselves ever nearer. I did not believe in God but I had once read the Bible, thinking it essential to make an informed decision about religion. The grotesque, horrific scenes I witnessed that night were like some Biblical vision of the Apocalypse.

  "Shoot for the head," I eventually replied.

  To prove my point I aimed my PPSh at the nearest corpse and opened fire, blowing the top of its skull off with a volley of shots. The thing that had once been a private in the Red Army went down and stayed down.

  "Pass it on," I told the sergeant, selecting another target. The soldier on my right saw what I was doing and followed my example. He told the private on his right where to aim and ordered him to pass the information on. Within a minute or two the message must have filtered a hundred metres in either direction, because the firing from our front line changed. Instead of randomly blasting anything that moved, my comrades were choosing their targets and firing in single shots or short bursts. The shuffling corpses went down in droves, dozens collapsing to the ground until they created a carpet of the dead. Still the ones behind them kept coming, walking on the remains of those that had already fallen. We kept firing, taking out wave after wave of shambling, listless creatures, until the carpet grew into a mound, and then into a wall of dead bodies. Still more of these things kept coming, until our rifles and submachine guns were running out of ammunition.

  "Bojemoi," the sergeant on my left said. "How many more of these bastards are there?"

  "Hundreds," a voice behind me replied grimly. I swung round to see Eisenstein, a PPSh nestled in each arm. For the first time in weeks he looked alive, his face full of vigour, his eyes hungry for the fight. He opened fire over the top of us, sweeping his weapons from side to side, decimating the front ranks of the resurrected, and the ranks beyond them. When his submachine guns ran out of rounds, Eisenstein tossed them aside and drew his silver-edge sickle from the sheath on his back. He looked along the front line, studying the faces of the men and women as one by one they exhausted their weapons' supply of ammunition.

  "From now on, we'll have to resort to hand-to-hand combat!" Eisenstein yelled out to everyone. "Keep clear of their mouths, it seems to be their main weapon. Those who have them, use bayonets. Otherwise, get out your entrenching tool, or anything else you might be carrying that can be used as a weapon. If you haven't got anything else, turn your rifle around and use the stock as a club to beat these bastards back to the hell they came from!"

  Eisenstein smiled with satisfaction as his order was followed. Yatsko and Uralsky moved from the front line to stand on either side of Eisenstein. I went to join them, hastily assembling my entrenching tool with its sharpened edge. As I did so, Sophia emerged from the shadows, clutching a rifle with a bayonet fixed to the barrel. I smiled at her but she did not smile back, her face pale and drawn. She's been through a hell of a lot, I reminded myself. Was it any wonder she didn't smile?

  "Ready?" Eisenstein asked us, but we did not need to reply. "March!"

  We strode forward in a V-formation, Eisenstein taking the lead and the rest of us flanking him. As we reached the front line, the soldiers guarding it divided to let us pass. The sergeant who had been on my left resumed that position, moving forward with the rest of us, a bayonet mounted to his weapon. More and more of the others joined us as we advanced on the resurrected. The dead shuffled closer, their lifeless eyes staring past us. The nearer we got, the more I could see of these horrible creatures. Some were little more than walking skeletons, a few desolate scraps of skin and cloth and dried tendons connecting their bones. Others were more recently buried, maggots and worms falling from empty eye sockets or porous wounds.

  The worst part was the smell: rotting flesh and putrid decay hung in the air like a fog, polluting every breath, stifling our senses. I felt my stomach turn over and retched a stream of pale yellow bile, but I kept my place in the wedge as it marched relentlessly towards the throng ahead of us. When we were all a few metres from the resurrected, Eisenstein raised his voice and his sickle.

  "Charge!" he bellowed, accelerating into a sprint.

  We all ran after him, all shouting our traditional war cry: "Urrraiii!"

  Then we plunged into our enemy, bayonets stabbing through skulls, Eisenstein's sickle mercilessly scalping the dead. I swung my entrenching tool through the air as if it was an axe, crunching the blade through skin and bone, trying to block out the sound of skulls cracking open like boiled eggs. At first we drove a wedge deep into the ranks of the resurrected, forcing them back until we had almost broken through the army of the dead. But their numbers were too great and not enough of those defending the front line had come with us. Many had stayed behind, determined to stand their ground but unwilling to risk their lives out in no-man's-land. Eisenstein paused from culling our enemy to see what was happening.

  "Form into a circle!" he shouted. "Stand shoulder to shoulder!"

  We did as he commanded, those at either end of the wedge collapsing inwards, coming together to form a vast circle. The dead surged in around us too, cutting off any chance of escape. We would have to fight our way free or die trying; there was no other alternative now.

  "You've led us to our own deaths!" Yatsko snarled at Eisenstein, using the stock of his PPSh as a club to cave in the skull of another lifeless foe. "We were safe while we stayed behind the front line!"

  "Nowhere is safe from death," Eisenstein replied, decapitating an enemy with his sickle and then slicing the head off another with a flick of his wrist. "But this way we have a fighting chance of seeing another sunrise."

  I looked up at the full moon overhead, the shadows of its craters like the empty eyes of a skull watching us.

  "Watch out!" the sergeant on my left warned, shoving me out of the way as a Russian corpse tried to attack my throat. It switched the angle of its lunge and bit the sergeant instead, its broken teeth plunging deep into the flesh of his right forearm. He cried out in pain before stabbing his bayonet through his. It collapsed to the corpse-strewn ground.

  "What happens if they bite you?" the sergeant asked fearfully, staring at the teeth marks filling with blood on his arm.

  "I don't know," I admitted. I fought off three more of the resurrected, giving us a moment's grace from further attacks before looking at his wound. The blood turned from red to crimson, and then darkened until black liquid was oozing from the bite marks. The sergeant paled, his eyes fixed on the mutating blood.

  "That thing must have infected me," he gasped, incredulity filling his face. "I can't let this spread any further or else I'll end up like one of them."

  "What do you want me to do?"

  The sergeant thrust his arm out in front of him. "Cut it off!"

  "What? Are you insane?"

  "Cut it off! That's my only chance!" He looked at me, his eyes pleading.

  I paused to decapitate another corpse and then swung my entrenching tool through the air in a broad arc, slicing the edge down through the sergeant's arm at the elbow. His forearm fell to the ground, black maggots spilling from the end of the stump, writhing and twisting. The sergeant stared in horror at his elbow. No blood gushed from the stump. Instead, more black maggots were crawling around the freshly severed end. We both watched as they ate their way into the flesh, disappearing inside what was left of his arm.

  "Bojemoi," he whispered, "we're too late..." Realisation dawned in his eyes, a look of bleak desolation. "Kill me."

  "I..."

  "Kill me... Please," he begged, "before it's too late."

  I drew back my weapon, pausing for a moment. The sergeant nodded, a single black tear escaping his right eye. I sliced his head off with a single blow. The soldier who had been on the other side of the sergeant came closer until we we
re shoulder to shoulder once more. Neither of us dared look down.

  On and on the battle raged, our vast circle slowly being whittled away, as one by one the resurrected got the better of us. We must have been a hundred strong when Eisenstein led us out into no-man's-land. By the time we had formed into a circle, a dozen were already lost. Within ten minutes another twenty had fallen, either taken by the lifeless or killed by their comrades to spare them being resurrected. Each of those ten minutes felt more like an hour, the attacks upon us relentless, remorseless and utterly merciless. My arms ached, the muscles screaming for respite from swinging the entrenching tool, but I kept fighting as we all did. We had no choice. To stop fighting was to admit defeat and invite death.

  After half an hour that felt more like an eternity, I was surprised to see a gap in the resurrected. Their ranks were finally beginning to thin out, the decline in numbers accelerated by snipers still on the front line picking off the lifeless from the fringes of those surrounding us.

  "Not long now," a woman's voice said on my left. I realised Sophia was standing beside me, while Uralsky remained resolute by my right shoulder. I glanced quickly round and was shocked to see there were only a dozen of us left alive in no-man's-land. During the course of the battle our circle had collapsed and reformed itself several times. We had been staggering slowly back towards our own front line, but the lifeless kept getting in the way. Now, there was but a single line of resurrected between us and safety.

  We could make it, I realised, before raising my voice so the others could hear me. "We can make it!" I pulled my weapon from the head of one corpse before using it to stove in the skull of another. I heard Uralsky gasp beside me.

  "Yuri?"

  Antonov was standing in front of Uralsky, but there was little left of the man I remembered so fondly. The stake was still embedded in his chest where Uralsky had put it, to stop him from coming back to life as one of the vampyr. That much it had achieved, but Antonov had still been resurrected from his grave to join the forces ranged against us. His empty eye sockets stared mournfully at Uralsky, his hands reaching forward as if to embrace an old friend.