Berlin or Bust

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO} HELL RIDE

Gefreiter Steiner didn’t have breath or energy to scream.

He staggered through a snow drift blanketing rubble torn from a bombed-out building near the Opera House. He gripped his MG42 in one hand and a bloody entrenching tool in the other.

He thought he was losing his mind. That he’d wake up in a hospital, far from the front, with a metal plate in his skull from a brain operation. The doctors would tell him the bad news that Ivan had broken the line, and he’d laugh and say, Is that it, Herr Doctor? That’s the worst news? The Russians are coming?

Steiner had lost his squad. Watched the Führer’s bodyguard swarm over his platoon, feasting. Hacked over a dozen skulls in his pell-mell flight from the slaughter. And saw Hitler himself turned into a raving ghoul, reminding him nobody was running his country.

He reached the street, its snow stomped into something like rock by thousands of marching feet. The footprints led south, toward the airport.

A terrible vista greeted him. Allied bombings and plague battles had stripped downtown Berlin into an alien landscape of skeletal buildings, single walls, and delicate structures.

This wasn’t just Berlin. It was Germany, and, soon, the entire planet. Though dead, the Führer might still carry through on his promise to conquer the world, though there’d be nobody in it but the living dead.

The only thing that might stop them was the evil little bug in the steel canister looped around his neck.

“Wake up,” he muttered. “Wake up, wake up.”

What he was experiencing was something far more horrific than a sense of humor could cure.

A stroke of luck—a bicycle half buried in a wind-sculpted snow drift stacked against a blasted apartment building. He headed over to it, staggering like a draugr himself.

Dream or no dream, he had to reach the British at the airport. For all he knew, he was the only Fallschirmjäger left. Until he woke up, he had to play along.

A large figure spilled out of the doorway to tumble in the snow. The matron righted herself, still gripping a rolling pin.

“Pay your bill,” she snarled.

“You’re not real,” Steiner shouted in her face.

He lunged and swung his spade. The tool’s edge bit into her neck, half-severing her head, which flopped onto her shoulder. He struggled to tug it out.

The entrenching tool ripped free in his hand as the rolling pin crashed against his helmet. Steiner bit his tongue and saw stars.

Fueled by rage, he finally found the energy to scream, letting loose every obscenity he knew. The head finally tore free under his frantic blows and rolled across the ground. The ghoul’s mouth continued to open and close until it came to a stop like a wind-up toy.

Steiner punted it across the road. “Not real!”

A headache bloomed in his battered skull. He returned to the bicycle, which at first glance seemed to be in a condition suitable for riding.

As he laid hold of it, something big thrashed under the snow. Steiner caught a glimpse of grasping blackened fingers and the stumps of legs. Gibbering, he reached for his spade and hacked at the snow until it became bloody and the thing stopped moving.

“Danke, mein herr.”

Steiner righted it and climbed on. He flung his bloody entrenching tool away in revulsion and propped his machine-gun on the handlebars.

“Look out, everybody. I’m a Macaroni tank.”

Steiner started pedaling toward the sound of the guns. The compacted snow made the road suitable for riding, though keeping his balance with his MG on the slippery road sucked even more of his limited energy. He winced at the ruts, which made his headache even worse.

The bicycle sped down Dresdener, eating up meters. After crossing the Landwehr Canal, the ghouls began to thicken.

If he swerved too hard, the slick road would send him into a crashing tumble.

He braced his machine-gun and fired a burst. The rounds struck a ghoul in the chest and knocked it to the ground, where it immediately struggled to rise.

By the time it did, Steiner had already zipped past.

He fired again, adjusted his course, and then again, working his way down the street through the moaning draugr. His arms already ached from the effort of firing like this and keeping the bicycle stable against the recoil.

He braked to a skidding halt.

“Now would be a good time to wake up,” Steiner said, laughing and crying at the same time.

Ahead, the road swarmed with draugr.

The ghouls were laying siege to Tempelhof Airport. The Luftwaffe had fortified it during the bombings and the plague, surrounding the airfield with sandbag walls topped with barbed wire. The Red Devils had stormed the airport, overwhelmed the defenders, and taken over these defenses. Steiner could see the British paratroopers in the watchtowers, shooting into the ghouls when they pressed against the walls in too great a number.

There was no way he could make it to the up-armored three-ton truck serving as the airport’s gate.

The Red Devils would have to help.

Trusting British paratroopers with his life. That put the apple in the strudel in all the insanity of this mission.

Moans behind him. The draugr he’d passed were catching up and looking hungry. He couldn’t go back now even if he wanted. He was going in.

Steiner took out his flare pistol, inserted one of the fat rounds, and shot it into the air. Then he started pedaling, gaining speed, feeling the freezing wind in his laughing face.

He was going to make it to the airport with the Overman serum or get eaten alive.

Either way, he was waking up from this nightmare.

The machine-gun bucked in his hand, clearing a path he sailed through at an alarming speed. If he lost control now, he was done.

The Red Devils signaled him from the watchtowers, but he couldn’t spare a second to see what they wanted. The throngs of milling ghouls grew larger with each passing second. One by one, they turned with delighted smiles toward his MG’s ripping sound. The creatures growled words that blended into an eerie murmur, as if the draugr were all a single entity praying to a dark god.

Steiner was going to ride full speed right into the thick of them, and there was nothing he could do to stop.

The three-ton rolled out of the way—

“Waho Mohammad!” came the Red Devils’ strange battle cry.

A bolt of fire shot into the crowd, turning ghouls into shrieking human torches. A paratrooper with a flamethrower emerged, followed by two more. They blasted the throng with arcing sheets of flame.

Steiner ducked his head and rode straight into this fiery hell.

The draugr were all around, trembling as they screamed in fiery torment, radiating heat like a furnace.

Then they were gone, and the freezing cold returned.

Steiner laughed at the surprised faces of the Red Devils on the other side of the gate as he burst through, streaming sparks and smoke from his smoldering jacket.

Then a paratrooper tackled him, hurling him off his bike to land hard in the snow. Other Brits gathered around to pack snow against his burning uniform. His raw face began to sting.

“Get this bloody Kraut on his feet,” a man snapped.

Hands raised him up and held him fast. Steiner stood on wobbly feet, grateful for their support. His jacket was still smoking as he sketched a salute. “Gefreiter Steiner reporting, Herr Hauptmann.”

“What are you doing here? Where is your unit?”

“I have it.”

The officer fixed him with a fierce glare. “You have the Overman serum.”

Steiner tapped the thermos dangling from his neck. “Ja. Here.”

The Brit’s stiff upper lip broke into a smile. “Lieutenant Clarke!”

Another officer rushed over and stomped his feet as he saluted. “Sah!”

“Inform Colonel Westall we have the serum.”

“Sah!”

“Then kindly ask the jockeys to warm up their planes. We’re going home.”

The paratroopers let up a ragged cheer and dragged Steiner past some big flak guns toward one of the hangars, where they set him on the cold floor with some blankets. Somebody gave him a steel cup of hot tea, and then they left him alone.

Reeking of smoke and his face still stinging and flushed, he sipped the tea and watched the RAF crews ready their big transport planes. He was a hero now, which made sense in this insane world but not in any other.

Setting down his cup, he curled up and went to sleep, hoping that when he awoke, he’d be back in the real world.