Primrose & Brimstone

by Mueller, Jason

  As he continued he nearly flew into a rage as he noticed that no one was paying attention to him. How dare these peasants ignore him! But then he noticed his guards were all looking in the same direction as they were.

  Walking in the cold blustery morning a lone figure made its way toward the camp just barely visible in the weak light of dawn. Giant search lights swung toward the figure. Hess nearly lost his mind as he watched the young girl make her way back to the camp. What pissed him off was the sight of nearly twenty of his prized shepherds following her. Hess loved dogs and found putting the dogs through their paces daily to be one of the few things he really enjoyed in this God forsaken hell that was Poland.

  They all watched in silence as the girl made her way to the gate.

  Bold little whore, isn’t she? Hess thought as he commanded the gate to be opened. He would make this gypsy whore pay for the disrespect she had shown him. Hess didn’t care about the guards who had been killed, he cared about what he perceived was an attack on his authority.

  With a wave of his hand he sent men running for the gate. Anna took off at a run leaving the dogs behind even though they ran after their new mistress but were not able to keep up. She met the guards at the gate never stopping; exploding the gate inward sending the unsuspecting guards flying.

  Anna slashed them with claws that seemed to materialize out of nowhere, the blood flowed fueling her rage. She made her way toward Hess; his men unable to stop her. Their bullets had little effect as she slashed and fed her way through the men who were now trying to run out of fear as now the dogs were in the compound tearing guards apart.

  The prisoners watched in fear and amazement as the scene unfolded before their eyes. They marveled at the young woman who could so easily kill so many of the men, the monsters that held them captive, raped them, and tortured them all the while killing them daily.

  It started as a small murmur of approval but it built as months of rage took over and the blood lust began. Even more Nazi’s were slaughtered as the prisoners vented their rage and as they made their way to Hess Anna stopped them.

  "Stop!" Her voice louder and stronger than she remembered thundered. The prisoners looked at her with questions in their haunted eyes as countless evil acts by the Nazi's flashed before their eyes.

  "Leave him, the Russians are advancing, we know this, the world must learn of what has happened here, what has happened to us. I will go to the Russians and tell them about you and about Hess."

  One of the men, nothing more than a skeleton dressed in rags asked her how she could get to the Russians without getting caught since they were still hundreds of miles away and the Germans stood between them. She knew she could make it, what could happen? Her body had absorbed countless wounds from being shot and yet had healed itself. She knew she was immortal. It sounded crazy to her and her mind was still trying to grasp all the changes that had come over her and the feeding but still there was instinct overriding logic and common sense.

  “Did you not see what I did here, the Germans nor the Russians can do anything to me. I will tell the Russians about this place and clear the way for them. They will come for you. Stay here none of you are strong enough to leave or, to defend yourselves.”

  The crowd mumbled to each other but no further objections were made. What could they say the young woman was right they were too weak to leave and where would they go? Hopefully, the Nazi’s would stay away from the camp long enough for the girl to make it to the front and tell the Russians of their plight.

  Anna jerked Rudolf Hess to his feet as if he were nothing. He looked down at her with questions and contempt in his eyes. If he had his way, this little half breed would pay for what she’d done, for humiliating him.

  “You will tell me where the local garrisons are.” She snarled.

  “Fuck you Jew whore!” He spat back.

  He watched in horror as the fangs descended. The look of evil that came over her face made him piss his pressed uniform pants. He tried to fight her off, but he was like a baby against her power. Anna fed on him not wanting to kill him but to drain him, to taste his fear.

  She released him, he stumbled backward holding his neck. She looked like a demon from hell with his blood running down her chin and the evil fanged grin plastered on her face.

  “Tell me where they are!” She barked.

  Hess shook his head no. Anna stepped toward him again. Like before his struggle was in vain as she fed on him once more draining the life from him. He had a moment of clarity when he considered his fear, his desire to live and what his victims must have felt as he had sent them to their deaths. When she released him again, he told her what she needed to know. He didn’t want to die this way. The Russians would hang him if they got a hold of him but at least this monster wouldn’t slowly drain him. He would have lived for a while longer.

  Anna committed the whereabouts of the local German troops to memory. It shocked her to realize how few there were in the area. All reinforcements had been sent to the fronts. The Russians and Americans were steadily advancing rolling the German army up as they went.

  There was one more piece of information she wanted and she would get that too.

  “Where is Mengele?” Her voice quivered with emotion and she hated the weakness in it. Hess stood there studying her. He understood her need for revenge, to make Mengele pay for the monster she had become.

  Anna walked out of the front gate grateful that she had held onto her tears until the others couldn’t see. She would make sure the others were safe by killing the remaining Germans in the area and then she would end Mengele and repay him for taking her baby and what he’d done to her. She would have been better off she thought being shot with Mari.

  Anna watched through the dirty window as the rape and abuse continued. A large breasted Jewish woman whimpered as a German soldier’s pale ass pumped up and down with each stroke.

  The woman had been badly mangled in their quest to use her for their pleasure. Her face was a mass of bruises as well as her breast, arms, belly, and thighs. Anna could see the same belt marks she herself still bore, this woman was a fighter like her and that made Anna want to avenge her. The three drunken soldiers took turns making lewd comments further shaming their victim.

  A little further down in the soldiers’ barracks one hundred and fifty men slept peacefully and without fear they were so far away from the front and the much-feared Auschwitz-Birkenau work camp was only fifty miles away.

  Anna relished the thought of killing the rapist and the rest of the hated Germans. These three she would feed on. Anna exploded through the door catching the soldiers with their pants down literally. She swatted them to the dirty floor with single blows grabbing the man who had been on top of the woman she jerked his head back and sank her fangs draining him and then moved on to the next two before they could regain their senses after being stunned by the power of her blows.

  Anna stood there covered with blood, reveling in the intoxicating afterglow until a moan from the bed pulled her back to the present. Anna looked down at the pitiful creature. The poor woman had been mutilated much worse than she realized and it broke her heart. Her hands were cut off, her tongue cut out and her teeth removed. Anna assumed that the hands and teeth were removed to keep her from being able to fight them during their perversion and the tongue so she could not shout, cuss them and to stop the begging. Then Anna noticed her feet no longer resembled feet but just masses of lumpy twisted flesh. She must have tried to escape. Her feet were shattered and left to heal without being set. The woman would never walk again without considerable pain if she could at all.

  Tears of shame slid down the woman’s face as she watched Anna study her monstrous form. She wished that Anna could have seen her the way she used to be. Beautiful, vibrant and full of life instead of looking down at her with pity. Maybe this beautiful blood covered monster would release her from this prison that was now her body? She didn’t want to live this way and this fearsome woman must unde
rstand that.

  The woman tried to speak but the words only came out a moan but Anna knew by the two syllables that what she was asking. She wanted her to kill her, to set her free from the pain and degradation that was now her life and always would be.

  Anna tenderly stroked the woman’s head noticing that a flea had jumped to her hand from the dirty matted hair.

  “I won’t leave you like this.” She whispered struggling to keep her composure.

  The woman continued to beg in her moaning way afraid that Anna would leave her despite her promise.

  “Stop! Anna snapped. I’ll come back for you.” The woman calmed down praying the end was near for her and her suffering would be no more. Anna covered her with the coats of the three soldiers.

  “I’m going to go kill the others, I will be back.” Anna left the shack, her heart felt as if were breaking. Having gone through all of what she herself had endured she understood what the woman had gone through. Anna knew she was lucky that she was still alive and beside some scars from her abuse early on she was fine, better than fine she was forever changed into a powerful killing machine. She wondered if she was like the vampire she read about when she was a little girl?

  As she thought of the woman, a frenzied rage up inside her as she stalked to the barracks where the sleeping soldiers would soon pay for their sins. She wasn’t worried about being caught or seen as the sentries had been killed first as she entered the camp.

  She smiled a fanged grin straight out of a nightmare as she sped up toward the barracks. Her anger increasing with every step, and every step coming faster and faster as she sped toward the door of the building.

  Anna slammed into the door so hard that it came off its hinges and splintered sending pieces flying through the darkened room. She hadn’t known she could crash through doors so easily until the gate of the prison camp. Anna found she rather liked making that kind of entrance; it made her feel powerful. Cries of fear and pain filled the night as she went about her deadly task, biting, clawing, slashing and smashing her way through the men. Some had the courage to draw their weapons and fire but they could not hit her in the dark and only hit their comrades.

  A few jumped out through broken windows as Anna made her way killing and maiming as she went. She wasn’t worried about finding them, she knew she would have no problems finding them if she wanted to even if they were to flee in vehicles.

  Blood ran freely on the rough sawn floorboards. Dripping through the cracks to land on the frozen ground below where it would stay until the world thawed and the ground would claim its prize. Ashes to ashes dust to dust.

  The coppery scent of blood and gunpowder hung heavy in the air. Moans and cries for help from those still alive broke the silence. Anna made her way through the building finishing those she found to still be alive. Many tried to pretend to be dead hoping the death angel would pass them by but it was not to be. With her new-found abilities, she could hear their heartbeats, breathing and the sound of their blood as it whooshed through their veins and she could smell them. The dead had a different smell than the living even within minutes. Soon the remaining wounded fell silent as the last one was dealt with. Anna stood there admiring her handiwork. She knew she should feel remorse for killing so many but she didn’t. She felt nothing she wasn’t sure if it was from all the trauma she had endured since the day she arrived at the death camp or the changes to her body from the chemicals and experiments. Either way, she was as cold as the winter wind and one hundred times deadlier.

  She pulled a pistol from a leather holster that hung on a nail pounded into the frame of a bunk bed. She slipped it into her pocket and left the carnage behind her. Anna had one more chore to do and for some odd reason, she felt an anguish she did not understand. She stopped to look at the sky. The stars were brilliant in the crisp winter air against the black backdrop of the milky way. She used to spend hours looking at the sky before the war, the camp. Now as she studied the stars, she could see further and clearer than she ever could. Her new eyesight enabling her to see things a normal person couldn’t. She stood there lost in the wonder of it and a thousand memories running through her head all more painful than the next.

  With a heavy sigh, she made her way back to the shack and the woman. Hopefully, she’s already dead Anna silently hoped but knowing the woman was waiting for her. She entered the shack, she was still there and still alive, unfortunately. The woman’s eyes bugged out when she saw Anna at first. Anna was now covered in blood and parts of entrails and flesh and must have looked gruesome. When she realized that it was Anna she relaxed.

  “I told you I would come back.” She pointed out cracking a forced smile as she sat on the filth encrusted bed next to the woman. She sat looking in the woman’s eyes trying to convince herself that she was ok with doing this. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? I can take you home or anywhere else you want to go?” The woman shook her head yes and then no in answer.

  “OK,” Anna answered softly wishing she didn’t have to do this but knowing in her heart it was the right thing to do and that she would want someone to end her suffering if it were her.

  The woman had tears running down her cheeks, Anna wasn’t sure if they were tears of fear, or relief that the end to her suffering was near. Anna bent down and kissed the woman on the forehead. She had suffered so much shouldn’t she be shown compassion at the end? She stroked her hair and whispered a Hebrew prayer she had learned as a child. The woman closed her eyes at peace with what was to come.

  Anna drew the pistol from her pocket and fired. The woman who had been so abused that she could not even tell Anna her name and had fought so bravely against the Germans took one final breath and was gone.

  Anna let the gun drop from her hand. She detested the feel of the steel in her hand. She understood that the gun was not evil and could harm no one without the direct actions of man. What had hit her so hard was when she pulled the trigger the face of her sister Margi had looked back at her with the same look of fear as when she had died in the corpse-filled trench.

  Anna staggered back out into the starlit night unable to see their beauty from the tears in her eyes.

  February 1979, Eldorado, São Paulo, Brazil

  Anna sat in the sweltering heat of the hotel waiting. Today was the day she had waited for thirty-four long years. Her long-awaited revenge on the man who had saved her and doomed her in the same moment. Today she would kill Doctor Joseph Mengele and hopefully find peace and some closure for herself at least and the pitifully few survivors of his experiments. She doubted it though.

  She loved her abilities although she hated the feeding, the monster inside her, and the monster she had become. The loneliness and exile she was forced to live in didn’t help the situation.

  She had spent the last decades wandering the world and hunting Nazi’s. She also had a large part in the creation of the state of Israel and protecting it during the Arab War of 1948 and the Six Day war of 1967, working for the Israeli government and the MOSSAD as an agent and assassin.

  But the memories, the nightmares, the images of thousands of people going to their deaths, the sounds of the firing squads, and the screams of those in the gas chambers as the Zyklon B did its deadly work along with the smell of the crematoriums that ran twenty-four hours a day. And always the memory of Margi and the baby dying over and over in her mind, the look of fear in her sister's eyes, the gunshots, the screams, and how her body slumped still holding her dead baby. Anna relived their deaths a hundred times a minute it seemed. She knew she didn’t but, it was always so close and no matter how much faster she could run now, she could never outrun the memories.

  Anna took a deep breath and tried to bury the memories flooding her mind. A knock at the door brought her back to the present it would be her companion Edu. They had worked together since Anna had joined the MOSSAD decades ago. Anna took in his Jewish features. Sometimes she was startled at how much he’d aged even though he was powerfully built, strong as
an ox and still lethal. Not as lethal as Anna but she witnessed him snatch the life from many who deserved it over the years. Never an innocent, and he always grieved when he’d killed. Not for the life but for what it did to him. She understood how he felt.

  Anna loved him, she had since the day she’d first met him. He had no fear of her while everyone else tiptoed around her. They shared the nightmares of the holocaust in common along with the serial numbers tattooed on their arms, and their hatred of the Nazi’s as he too watched his family die when he was a child at one of the other camps.

  He was human she guessed was the correct term since she was no longer sure what to consider herself. Her origin was human but the changes she’d undergone what they meant for her humanity she wasn’t sure. They had been romantic, but both knew it could never be. Edu could be killed on any mission and he would and had grown old while Anna was still young and beautiful. Plus, they were both too haunted by the war and too dedicated to hunting down the Nazi’s that had escaped trial.

  That begged the question “How do you bring justice to men who had a hand in the murder of millions?” Anna had been there for the commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Hess’s hanging. She had stood in the crowd and even locked eyes with him before the executioner did his work. She watched him beg for mercy and try to escape the noose even though he was bound and surrounded. Anna had watched him drop, his legs kicking in vain to find purchase and life-giving air. She had smelled his fear and the piss and shit as his body relaxed and still there was no feeling of justice for Anna and the other survivors present.

  Today was Mengele’s day. There would be no trial. She would be the judge and jury; and if she killed him a thousand times it still wouldn’t bring Margi back or stop the nightmares.

  Anna looked out the window as people and places she would never see again whizzed by. Edu sat beside her meticulously going through work in a tattered yellow file folder. That’s what he would do until Anna returned from her mission. He was methodical by nature where Anna would just run into a situation. She could afford to be brash she was immortal he was not. They had learned hard lessons about rushing into situations in the beginning when brashness, lack of planning, and arrogance had gotten members of their team killed.