Escape From Metro City

by Mandel, Richard

  "I know," Cy said. "I read about some of this stuff myself."

  "And it was during one of those that they came up with this undergoat virus or whatever?" Lisa asked.

  "Untotenvirus," Mercy corrected, as she stowed the last of her gear in her bag. She picked it up, walked over to the workstation next to Lisa, set the bag down by it, and took its swivel seat next to Lisa's, talking as she moved across the room. "You can call it the U-virus for short. That's what both the Nazis and later the Allies called it in almost all of the official reports." She let out a soft laugh. "Even today, we don't know exactly how they came up with it, when they did, or where. Those records were destroyed before the Allies could get their hands on them. All we know is that the U-virus was developed shortly before the war, because by the time the Allies heard about it Project Regenschirm was already well underway."

  "What's that?" Cy asked.

  "It was the name for a series of various related efforts connected with developing the U-virus as a biological weapon for multiple applications in the coming war. Regenschirm is the German word for umbrella, so that's why they used it. A lot of different stuff but all under the aegis or umbrella of the Nazi's weaponizing the U-virus for use against their foes."

  "That's incredible," Lisa said. "Why isn't any of this in the history books?"

  "Well, look around you," Mercy said with a sad smile, "and imagine all of this happening back during the war, or coming very close to it. Can you imagine how different the world would be today had the Nazis succeeded? That's why it isn't in the history books. The Allies suppressed knowledge about both the U-virus and Regenschirm, along with where it was being developed, for the common good."

  "Where was that?" Cy asked.

  Mercy gave a little laugh. "At a place the history books will tell you never existed. At an installation that the official Allied war record says was never built, and was nothing but a big propaganda bluff instituted by Goebbels at the end of the war to fool Allied intelligence. It was real, though, and its name was the Alpenfestung. The English term is National Redoubt, by the way."

  "The National Redoubt?!" Cy said incredulously. "Oh, come on. You're yanking my chain."

  "No I'm not," Mercy said. "I've talked to people who went to the ruins after the war was over, and I've read the official post-war Allied reports of the investigators they sent there. The ruins are buried so deep in the Bavarian Alps in southern Germany that you won't know they're there unless you know where to look. The Allies made sure of that after the war. All you'll see these days are a series of rock falls, but it's there. It was real, and it really existed, and if you could get away with getting there and digging down deep enough, eventually you'd find what's left of the Alpenfestung and Project Regenschirm."

  Lisa snorted. "I don't know if I can buy all that. I mean, it's a pretty tall story, and we have only your word for it."

  "And the U-virus," Mercy added. "Don't forget the U-virus."

  "How can I?" Lisa shot back fiercely. "My brother's dead because of people who got infected by it."

  "And so is Mercy's fiancé, and everybody in my convoy save me," Cy said hurriedly, "not to mention the whole town and almost everyone in the surrounding countryside." He had noted the anger in Lisa's voice. "Settle down, okay?"

  Lisa gave him a look and then continued. "May I ask a pertinent question?"

  "Sure," Mercy said. "What is it?"

  "How do you know all of this? That's pretty offbeat stuff for a nurse at a hospital to know. And assuming your story is true, which I'm still not sure of, a lot of that stuff would have been classified. How come you know about it?"

  There was a pause as Lisa locked eyes with Mercy. Both Lisa's anger and skepticism were plain to see on her face. For her part, Mercy smiled faintly, cleared her throat, and then spoke again. "I may as well tell you now, because it would have come out sooner or later anyway. I'm not a real nurse, although I know how to do the job. The fact that I could do my own blood tests should have tipped you off. Real nurses don't do that. They hand that work off to lab technicians." She again paused, noting Lisa's suddenly furrowed brow and Cy's intent look, and then continued. "My nurse's job was merely a cover for my real work. I'm a senior biogenetic research specialist with Pandora Corporation on loan to Metro City--"

  Mercy never finished her sentence. In a flash Lisa leapt out of her seat, grabbed the older woman by the throat, knocked her out of her chair, and bore her down to the floor with both hands locked tightly around Mercy's windpipe. "PANDORA?!?I" Lisa screeched. "YOU'RE WITH PANDORA, BITCH?! THEY KILLED MY BROTHER!!! YOU KILLED MY BROTHER!!! YOU AND ALL OF THOSE SONS OF BITCHES KILLED MY BROTHER!!!" She would have screamed more, but Cy was on her in an instant and pulling her off of the half-strangled Mercy, forcing Lisa to unlock her fingers from around the woman's throat as he did.

  "NO, Lisa!" Cy cried. He somehow managed to pry Mercy free of Lisa's grip and pull the angry young woman off of her. "Calm down! Don't do it, you hear!!"

  "Let me go!" Lisa howled. "I'm gonna kill that bitch for lying to us!! She's with Pandora, you hear?!! PANDORA!!!"

  Cy dragged the kicking and struggling young woman back to the weapons locker and forced her to sit down on the floor, his arms still gripped tightly around her. "No she didn't," he said, loudly but evenly. "She just didn't tell us the whole truth right away, but don't forget we didn't ask and we didn't have any reason to. Now she's doing it entirely on her own, and without us making her." His voice now dropped to a conversational tone, although it was still laced with emotion. "Don't blame Mercy for what her bosses did, Lisa. She's helped us and answered every question we've asked her so far. Remember that she's stuck in the same boat we are. She's just a link in a chain, and she and her people were left to die by that same bunch that was behind the death of your brother, my outfit, and everyone else in Metro City. Just because she really works for Pandora doesn't make her an evil person, okay? If it did, then I'm a baby killer for what the Army did to Vietnamese civilians back in 'Nam, and you're guilty for all the killing done among the white settlers and soliders by all of the American native peoples back in the Wild West. Neither one of us are killers, and neither is Mercy, so settle down. You're better than this. I know you are." With that he looked straight into her eyes. "Please?" he asked.

  Cy's words had the desired effect. Lisa had stopped struggling to get free as she listened. At the same time, the still-gasping Mercy had struggled back to her seat, righted the chair, and sat back down in it, massaging her throat and taking deep breaths. As for Lisa, she was sitting still in Cy's arms by the time he finished. She looked back at him for the longest time, until he saw the anger melt from her face. It was replaced by a thoughtful expression. "This is all crazy, you know," she said in a very small and contrite voice.

  "I know," Cy said. He let go of Lisa, then reached up and put two comforting hands on her shoulders. "Just remember. All of us have lost in this. Her too. We're all caught in this, and we're all stuck here together. That we have in common. What we've got to do now is work together for our common good so we can survive ... and we need her." He looked over at the recovering Mercy, and then back at Lisa. "I mean, where else are we going to get someone to play doctor for us if one of us gets hurt really bad?"

  Lisa looked at Cy and he back, and then she let a smile begin to form on her face. "Okay," she said softly. "You're right. I just kind of got carried away, I guess. You know?"

  "I know," Cy said with a smile. He gave her shoulder a small squeeze.

  Lisa lifted a hand and put it on one of Cy's own. They looked at each other for several seconds, and then Lisa turned to Mercy. who had finally quit spluttering and had started to breathe normally again. "I'm sorry, Mercy."

  "It's all right," Mercy said in a hoarse voice. "I understand. Had I been in your shoes, I might have done the same. I feel the same way about John. For what it's worth, you're forgiven." She stopped and coughed several times while a look of remorse began to fill Lisa's face. Mercy saw it, s
miled and nodded, coughed again and cleared her throat, and then continued in a voice that was still touched with hoarseness. "Anyway, I know what I know because it was part of my job. You see, it was Pandora who was contracted by the U.S. military after the war to redevelop the U-virus for us, once they got their hands on it."

  "But how did they do that?" Cy asked, as he guided Lisa back to her seat. "I mean, get the virus? You said yourself that the National Redoubt was destroyed during the war and all traces of it covered over afterwards."

  "Well, they must have gotten their hands on it somehow in spite of that," Lisa noted.

  "That's true," Mercy said. Again the sad smile returned to her face. "They got it during the war, before the Redoubt was destroyed, and in one of the most daring commando raids of the war. That too was part of the real history that got suppressed by the authorities, but I had to know it as part of my job. It's quite a story, really." She started to laugh, coughed instead, and then settled back down. "I won't tell you all of it because it would take too long, but I'll try to hit the high points. Back in 1943 an Allied deep undercover agent by the name of Anne Bradshaw, who was working as a communication technician at Luftwaffe headquarters in Berlin, began spotting some rather unusual message traffic regarding the National Redoubt. She began to monitor them under the cover of her job, and that's when she found out about Regenschirm. She let the Allies know at once, but they were skeptical at first and you can understand why."

  "I'll bet," Cy said. Lisa simply nodded.

  "They had a lot of freaky things going under the aegis of Regenschirm, but the two that concerned the Allies the most and us now involve what was being done with the U-virus. The first and most practical use the Nazis saw for it was to develop a weaponized form that they could use on the battlefield, and have the dead fight for them in the Nazi cause. Anybody's dead," she added, emphasizing the word anybody. "The second was using it in conjunction with applied eugenics and what little they knew of genetic engineering and cybernetics back then to create a race of super soldiers that they called ubermensch, stronger and faster and more powerful than any ordinary soldiers." Mercy gave a little laugh. "Actually the correct term is supersoldaten, but they used ubermensch because it was a racial term and they knew that would throw off Allied intelligence for a while, given the Nazi's own kooky racial doctrines and all. Put all of those new super soldiers together with an army of the undead for ready cannon fodder that could potentially number in the millions, and now you know why the Allies were so worried about Regenschirm."

  "Good lord," Cy said. "That would have been like what MacArthur had to face in Korea back in 1950, when a big part of the Communist Chinese Army came over the border to support North Korea and to keep him from beating them. The Allies would have been overwhelmed."

  "Precisely," Mercy continued, "and when the Nazis had the Wehrmacht conduct a small-scale test of the U-virus on part of the Russian front earlier that year, they were able to punch a hole clean through it with the help of a local undead army of zombies they raised on the spot. The only thing that stopped them was that the Russians responded by calling in every tank, piece of artillery, and rocket truck into the area and hit them with everything they had. It was a close thing, but the Russians eventually succeeded."

  "So what happened next?" Lisa asked.

  The sad look returned to Mercy's face as she continued. "The Gestapo eventually figured out Ms. Bradshaw was a spy and she was arrested. It was too late for the Nazis, though. She had already supplied the Allies with enough intel on Regenschirm that they knew what they were facing, and they also had the hard data from that battle with the Russians to back it up. The icing on the cake was when they got the plans for the Redoubt itself, which was part of her last data drop to them before the Gestapo captured her. That's when the Allies put together a commando team to take out Regenschrim at its very heart: within the Redoubt itself."

  "So what happened to Ms. Bradshaw?" Lisa asked.

  "A lot," Mercy said, looking down. She swallowed hard, and then continued. "They tortured her just because they could, and for betraying what they were planning on doing to the Allies. She was eventually rescued, but she had been tortured pretty bad. Fortunately one of their own test subjects saved her life, and he took care of her until her brother came to rescue her."

  "Her brother?"

  "Yes. Major Jack Bradshaw. He was the leader of the commando team, and had been hand-picked for the mission because of her involvement in the whole thing. He was quite a guy, according to the official reports, and he had a really good team to help him rescue his sister and take out Regenschirm."

  "We could use somebody like that right now," Cy commented.

  Lisa managed a smile. "I thought we already had someone."

  Cy caught her smile, then turned away with a sheepish grin. "Oh, I'm nobody. I'm just a soldier doing my job."

  "You know, that's what he and all of the survivors from his team said after the war, when they finally got back from Switzerland after being interned there once their mission was done," Mercy said with a chuckle.

  "Switzerland?" Lisa asked. Her face had taken on a strangely intent look that surprised both Cy and Mercy.

  "Yes," Mercy said. "They had to flee over the border to Switzerland after the mission was over to escape getting captured themselves, since it was close at hand, and that's how they got interned there. Standard procedure for the Swiss, they being neutral and all that. That's where Major Bradshaw, his sister Anne, and the survivors of his commando team wound up spending the rest of the war. Why?"

  "My grandfather on my mother's side of the family fought in the war," Lisa said, still with that strangely intent look on her face. "That's the white side, by the way, and why I'm only half-Cherokee. He was a Marine Raider who started out in the Pacific, but wound up in Europe helping out over there. The weird thing is that he only went on one mission after he got over there, but he wound up escaping to Switzerland too and getting interned there, just like these guys you're talking about. It was also in the same year: 1943."

  Mercy's brow furrowed. "Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe not. Tell me, what was the mission on which your grandfather got interned?"

  "That's the thing," Lisa replied. "He never would talk about it. Both he and Grandma Zimmerman said it was classified."

  "Zimmerman?!" Mercy exclaimed. She held her right hand up before Lisa, forefinger up, as if she were a schoolteacher about to make a point. "Tell me. Is your grandfather's name James Zimmerman, and did he hold the rank of first lieutenant during the war?"

  "Yes to both," Lisa answered, "although everyone but us kids called him Jimmy. That's what he preferred. Why?"

  Mercy looked excited. "Jimmy Zimmerman. Lt. James 'Jimmy' Zimmerman, United States Marine Corps. What are the odds? No. It's no coincidence. It's a miracle." Mercy suddenly stood upright and looked at Lisa. There was an almost surreal look to her face as she solemnly spoke her next words. "Your grandfather was the Marine Raider who went on that mission with Major Bradshaw to take out Project Regenschirm. That's why he got interned in Switzerland."

  Lisa looked perplexed. "He was? How can you be so sure?"

  "Because it's in the official records, and because of your immunity to the U-virus," Mercy said triumphantly. She now took in both Lisa and Cy with her gaze. "Listen to me. In his statement after the war to the Allied authorities, Lt. Zimmerman said that both he and Major Bradshaw were inoculated against the U-virus by an Italian scientist at the Redoubt who on her own decided to turn traitor and help them. She's the one who provided samples of everything to Major Bradshaw's team in a nicely packed case to take out with them, by the way. The U-virus, the vaccine, the antidote if infected, initial paperwork, the lot."

  "So what happened to her?" Lisa asked. "That scientist?"

  Mercy gave her a sad look. "The Nazis shot her after it was all over for being a traitor."

  "Figures," Cy said disgustedly.

  "Anyway, Lisa," Mercy continued, "that's why you're
immune to the U-virus. You're immune because of your grandfather, who in turn passed his immunity on to your mother, who in turn passed hers on to you."

  "Now wait a minute," Cy interjected. "I'm not doubting Lisa's immune. That's a fact none of us can argue with, and I guess that's as good as reason as any as to why she's remained clear through all of this. I've just never heard of immunities being passed on from mother to child and such. That's why they give you all of those inoculations when you're kids, right?"

  "Wrong," Mercy replied. "A mother can pass on some of her own natural immunities to her unborn child while still in the womb. This helps the child out for the first few months after it's born, until its own immune system becomes strong enough to take up the load. You also have to consider the fact the U-virus isn't normal to begin with. It's in a class of man-made disease all by itself. Furthermore, it is possible for mothers to pass along conditions they have other than natural immunities to their children. Haven't you heard of crack babies, Corporal?"

  "Yes, but that's with drugs, and this is different."

  "Cy," Lisa said, cutting him off. He looked at her and she looked back. "Let it go. What Mercy is saying is right. We're dealing with something here that isn't normal and doesn't behave by the normal rules. Mercy knows far more about this than either one of us. Besides, according to her and if I heard her right, it's in my genes. I got this from my grandfather through my mother at conception, so you're barking up the wrong tree anyway. Let it go. Okay?"

  Cy looked back at her for a moment or two, thinking of the irony of the situation. A few minutes ago, he had been the one trying to rein Lisa in. Now their roles were reversed. "Okay," Cy replied, emphasizing his response with a slight nod.

  "Thanks," Mercy said to Lisa, and then continued to address them both. "Anyhow, the United States government, being the strongest power among the Allies, we got to claim that sample case as our own. After the war, it was turned over to what eventually became Pandora so they could further refine and develop the U-virus for our own use on the battlefield, if we ever needed it."