The Front: Red Devils

by David Moody

  Jones nervously edged further and further down, then stopped when he saw it. A semi-solid mass of writhing flesh, like a scab blocking the stairs. An apparently endless number of bodies had become entangled and had formed an impenetrable blockage, no way up or down. Steele had made things certain by dropping furniture on top of them. Chairs. A desk. The staircase was permanently out of action, but there was clearly no way the dead would get through. Disfigured faces stared up at Jones from deep within the horrific mess. Dead eyes filled with desperation to get at him, and fury because they were trapped.

  ‘Where now?’ Wilkins asked.

  ‘This way,’ Steele answered, and the three men followed him into what was, unmistakably, a laboratory. It was like nothing any of them had seen before. A hellish place, the bloody remnants of abandoned experiments lay everywhere. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ Steele warned. ‘The entire place is almost certainly contagious.’

  At one end of the room was a grey, bullet-marked wall which had been drenched with numerous splashes and fountains of blood. Nearby, parts of eviscerated cadavers still lay strapped to metal trollies and tables. Much of the medical equipment appeared to have been smashed to pieces and lay in ruin all around them.

  ‘So it seems our Doctor Månsson may have been a victim of his own creations,’ Wilkins said, surmising from the chaos.

  ‘That’s what I thought at first,’ Steele replied. ‘I think there’s more to it than that, though.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Take a closer look. Much of this equipment has been deliberately wrecked. From what we’ve seen of the dead, would they really be interested in doing anything like this? Electrical equipment has been smashed, the innards torn out. All these test tubes and phials... there’s not a single one that’s been left undamaged. No, gentleman, I believe this laboratory has been systematically destroyed, perhaps by the doctor himself.’

  ‘And what about Månsson?’

  ‘It’s my belief that he’s being held hostage, if he’s still alive that is.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By the last Nazis left alive in this godforsaken place, that’s who. Allow me to show you.’

  Sergeant Steele doubled-back and exited the laboratory, then followed another passageway which led in the opposite direction. They were now on the easternmost edge of the ancient building, overlooking a vast swathe of Polonezköy which had, until now, remained largely unseen. The four soldiers peered down through narrow slits in the stonework.

  ‘Good Lord,’ Wilkins gasped.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Barton cursed. ‘You reckon our man’s in the middle of that lot?’

  ‘If he’s anywhere at all, yes.’

  Below the east wall of the castle, stretching out all the way to the wall running around the entire perimeter of the concentration camp site, was a crowd of bodies the likes of which none of them had ever seen – nor had ever wanted to see – before. It reminded Wilkins of movie-reel footage he’d seen of Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies: an apparently endless sea of heads, all crowding together in a show of slavish devotion. Unlike those Nazi events, however, the crowd here behaved entirely differently.

  Less a crowd, more a swarm.

  Nazis, prisoners, men, women and children...

  Hundreds. Thousands.

  Dead. Every last one of them.

  When flocking to hear the Fuhrer speak, the faithful (or fearful, or both) remained largely stationary to listen and observe. Here, the vast numbers of people pushed ever closer to something just left of centre of the immense gathering. At first Wilkins couldn’t make out what it was he was looking at, but then the details began to come into focus.

  There were a number of buildings in the midst of the chaos. Some had clearly already been overrun by the enemy: doors hanging open, crammed with corpses trying to get in whilst others forced their way out. The movement of the rotting masses around these wooden huts appeared strangely like eddies in white-water flows, turning in on themselves again and again, many of the creatures being dragged underfoot and being trampled by many, many more.

  But there remained one building which was resolutely closed-up. It was also the one which appeared to be attracting the most attention from the decaying hordes. Steele saw that his colleagues had identified it as quickly as he had. ‘If our scientist chappie is still alive, I’ll wager that’s where he’ll be. Right in the middle of all that damned mess.’

  ‘Then we might as well give up and get out of this hellish place right now,’ Jones said.

  ‘We can’t do that and you know it, Jones,’ Wilkins snapped at him. ‘Good Lord, man, do I really have to remind you again what’s at stake here?’

  ‘No, sir, you don’t, you’ve already told me enough times and I know it anyway. But that don’t change anything. I don’t see how we’re going to get anyone out of that mess down there alive.’

  ‘It gets worse,’ Steele said.

  ‘How can this get any worse?’

  ‘If Doctor Månsson is down there, then he’s not alone. I believe he has plenty of company in that building, both Nazi and civilian.’

  ‘Why would the Nazis allow prisoners in there with them?’ Jones asked, perfectly sensibly.

  ‘Collateral,’ Wilkins answered quickly. ‘It makes sense. They’re desperate – desperate to survive and desperate to get out alive. There’s a perfectly good reason for them to keep hold of the doctor and any number of prisoners too. The doctor would be a bargaining chip, because I’m sure his significance to our side won’t have gone unnoticed.’

  ‘And the civilians?’

  ‘A cushion, if you will. A safety net between either us and them or, more likely, between Jerry and the dead.’

  ‘Way I see it, we’ll struggle to get anyone out of there,’ Barton said, sounding increasingly dejected.

  ‘We can do it,’ Wilkins said, eternally optimistic. ‘I have an idea.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ Jones said, ‘but we’ve less than two hours and...’

  ‘And what, Lance Corporal?’

  ‘And there’s likely to be quite a number of Nazis down there along with several thousand or more of those horrible dead things. What hope do the four of us have against all of them?’

  ‘You’re absolutely right, soldier. That’s why we need to take a different tack and even out the odds. We need to get the dead working for us.’

  26

  OVERLOOKING THE DEAD

  ONE HOUR UNTIL RENDEZVOUS

  This is never going to work, Sarge,’ Barton whispered secretively to Steele, keeping his voice low for fear of being overheard by the lieutenant.

  ‘For all our sakes we’d better hope it does.’

  Wilkins sensed their unease. ‘I’m sure I know what you’re whispering about, chaps, but I need you to have a little faith. I’ve done something like this previously.’

  ‘We do have a little faith in you, Lieutenant. Problem is, right now it is just a little...’

  Jones looked up from his work and watched nervously for Lieutenant Wilkins’ reaction to that. He’d have laughed out loud himself if he hadn’t been so damn frightened.

  ‘You’re really going to do this?’ Barton asked. Wilkins nodded.

  ‘I don’t believe I have any choice. And I certainly wouldn’t ask any of you fellows to do something I wasn’t prepared to do myself.’

  ‘Then good luck to you, sir.’

  He stepped forward and the two men shook hands.

  ‘And to you too, Barton. Now, you all know what I need each of you to do?’

  ‘We know what to do, but we’re not sure about when. Will you give us some kind of signal?’

  ‘You won’t need a signal, believe me. Now I’ll wish you all well and I’ll be on my way. I’ll see you back at the rendezvous point in little under an hour.’

  And with that, he was gone.

  Wilkins was soon outside again.

  It felt good to be beyond the imposing enclosure of the castle walls, but unnerving to be out
in the open again like this. No cover. No defence. Just him, a handful of Nazis, and the entire remaining undead population of the Polonezköy prison camp.

  He’d retraced his steps as best he could, weighed down with the necessary supplies they’d half-hitched from the cellars earlier. Once he’d reached the small enclosed courtyard where Steele had found them, he’d used the grappling hook to scale the castle wall and climb down into the main part of the camp again.

  The sun was about to rise. It would be daylight soon: a relentless countdown. If Captain Hunter and his men had managed to hold the airfield, how long would they wait? Every second mattered now. Wilkins knew he was working against an unstoppable clock. It felt like this was an impossible task.

  Keep moving.

  Never stop.

  He had only to remember the responsibility which rested on his shoulders to know that he had no choice. He simply had to keep going.

  He used the burned out hut where Lieutenant Henshaw had met his unfortunate end as a marker, then looked up to try and make out the walkway between the castle towers from which he’d observed the direction of the dead a short time earlier. There were only occasional bodies here, and they appeared to have as little interest in him as he had in them. They were distracted instead by the low noise coming from the massive crowd to the east. Although singularly quiet, the cumulative noise was again extraordinary. Thousands upon thousands of slothful, dragging footsteps.

  And it was closer to the repellent crowd that he now forced himself to move. Tucked in tight against the castle wall again, he crept slowly around until he found himself mingling with the fringes of the undead hordes; as near as he could get to the festering masses without becoming part of the crowd.

  Here goes nothing, he thought. Then he stopped and corrected himself. Here goes everything.

  Wilkins pulled the pins of grenade after grenade after grenade and hurled them as far as he could towards the outermost part of the crowd. The first explosion came in seconds, sending bodies flying in all directions, and at the same time causing huge swathes of the dead to surge towards the sudden disturbance, more of them starting to move with each subsequent blast. Their interest in the chaos allowed him to move with a little more freedom and he moved deeper into their number. Using the first detonations as a marker point – similar, he smiled to himself, to when he and the boys played darts in the squadron social club – this time he shifted his aim slightly to ensure the next munitions he threw exploded alongside the outer wall.

  In the split-second flash of one powerful ignition he saw that he’d successfully punched a hole through the wall, then he threw several more grenades to make that hole larger still.

  Was it his imagination, or was the light improving more quickly than he’d expected? Did he have even less time than he’d originally thought?

  In the brief gaps between explosions, he’d thought he’d heard voices. Now he could hear them clearly. It was the Nazis in the hut at the centre of the chaos fighting amongst themselves. Squabbling. Arguing. Some panicking because they thought they were under attack, others doing everything they could to keep the noise down because they recognised the effect it would have on the hungry dead outside.

  To Wilkins’ immense relief, however, the first part of his plan appeared to be working. The majority of the dead were continuing to move away from the Germans and towards the epicentre of the blasts. ‘One more for luck,’ he said quietly to himself, and he lobbed his penultimate grenade through the air. This one landed on the edge of the advancing crowd and blew scores more of the abhorrent creatures to kingdom come.

  If the Nazis were watching him and trying to follow his plan, he thought, his next move would throw them into even more confusion.

  Rather than heading straight for the Germans in the hut, he instead ran in the opposite direction towards the hole in the outer wall. He was moving in the same direction as the dead, but with far more speed and control, and though the ground was increasingly uneven – littered with craters and lumps of burning flesh – his progress was largely unimpeded. A stormtrooper corpse managed to wrap one decaying hand around his arm as he tried to side-step it, but his speed was such that it couldn’t keep its balance and it fell. Wilkins found himself dragging the ghoul behind. Its grip on his sleeve was tenacious, and he resorted to punching it in the face to get rid of it. His hand stung with pain and was drenched with blood and gore.

  Made it.

  He’d reached the hole in the outer wall, and there he stopped – just for a moment, just long enough to turn back and holler ‘Come and get me!’

  He waited as long as he dared, enough time to be certain that enough of the dead had seen him and were now following, hopefully starting a chain reaction, before running along the gap between the wall and the electrified fence. He paused and looked back again, long enough this time to be sure his audacious plan was working. The dead appeared to be flooding through the hole he’d made, and at once the air began to fill with sparks and crackles and foul-smelling smoke as cadaver after cadaver collided with the wire-mesh and began to burn. Those which didn’t reach the fence were now spilling out in either direction, filling the gap between the wall and the fence.

  Wilkins crept back into the courtyard, heading straight for the back of the occupied hut. Several of the Nazis had already emerged from their shelter into the space where the dead had been. A sizeable number of rogue bodies remained close, and the Germans were forced to defend themselves from frequent attacks. Wilkins watched in horror as a screaming prisoner was sacrificed in the vain hope of distracting more of the masses – kicked out into the open and made to run for cover. He’d barely made it twenty yards before he was overcome by corpses, unable to defend himself in his miserably weak, emaciated condition. A lone Obergrenadier stranded near to the hut was also caught out in the open, and another pack descended on him and tore him apart. His screams helped divert more undead attention away from his officers and other remaining countrymen who tried to work out what was happening in the midst of the inexplicable chaos. Watching events unfold from on high, Steele put all but a couple of those he could see out of their misery with quick-fire, well-aimed precision shots from a Mauser Kar 98k they’d taken from the keep.

  As a result of Steele’s stealthy attack, the remaining Germans retreated back into their hut which was immediately sealed again. Jones and Barton watched events unfold intently, waiting at ground level for Wilkins to give them their signal to move.

  One of the Nazis spotted Wilkins as he sprinted towards the lowly building. The German took pot-shots at him from a window and he was forced to zigzag wildly to avoid being hit. He ran straight past the hut and took cover behind another, further confusing the already bemused krauts. Several of them emerged again, only to be driven back by Steele shooting from high in the tower. The soldiers looked up for him, trying to work out the angle of the shot which had taken out their colleagues, then firing up at the castle walls. They missed the window from which Steele had been shooting, but their bullets were close enough to make the Brit pull his head back and duck out of sight.

  Their confidence returning, the Nazis stepped further out into the open, but they hadn’t reckoned on Barton and Jones and they were brought down by a volley from Jones who came screaming at them from out of nowhere.

  No more Germans. Jones peered in through the window, but could see only a mass of prisoners inside. ‘All clear,’ he shouted to the others.

  But it wasn’t clear.

  Jones threw the door open, only to be mown down by several more Nazis who’d remained inside the hut, hiding amongst their captives. Jones was dead before he hit the ground.

  ‘Bastards!’ Barton yelled, giving away his position. He attempted a run on the hut but was driven back by still more gunfire. Wilkins tried to get to him, but he too was under attack the moment he stepped out from cover, and a handful of approaching bodies were also getting too close for comfort.

  Up high, Steele tried to make sense of what
was happening below him. There was another loud crackle and he saw that the weight of the advancing undead were in the process of bringing a section of the border fence down. They appeared unstoppable from this distance, and when the power to the fence was terminated, there was little left to deter them. The wire-mesh began to bow and sag under their weight, and soon it was low enough for them to trample over and escape out into the wilds. Their progress initially slowed by numbers, many more of the dead had begun to double-back towards the hut again.

  ‘Schnell, schnell... bekommen die Hölle hier raus!’

  Faced with the imminent return of a sizeable number of the undead hordes, the few remaining Nazis made a run for it. They moved alongside innocent prisoners, using them both as cover and bait. Steele set up the Mauser again, but by the time he was ready to take a shot it was already too late. The captors were indistinguishable from their captives from up here.

  He watched as Wilkins emerged from his hiding place and walked out into the open, behind the crowd of prisoners the Nazis were herding towards the castle. ‘I say,’ he shouted, ‘I think you should stop right there. We have you covered from in front, behind and above.’ He glanced over his shoulder nervously. Several of the furthest forward dead were heading in his direction, but he stood his ground. He had a few seconds yet. Steele took a couple of the nearest of them out with aces. ‘Nice shooting,’ Wilkins said under his breath.

  ‘Britische Abschaum Sie sterben!’ a furious Nazi officer bellowed, and he came at Wilkins with his rifle raised. His British counterpart stood his ground and refused to move. Two more Germans separated from the main group and moved closer, leaving only a couple to corral the remaining prisoners who were gathered in an uncomfortable mass in the middle of a relative ocean of space. The light was definitely improving. Wilkins scanned the crowd and, in the midst of all the faces, he caught sight of one he’d committed to memory. Doctor Egil Månsson. The Swedish scientist looked as terrified as those civilians he now stood alongside. He clutched the hand of a dishevelled little girl who appeared completely traumatised, her face devoid of all emotion.