Berlin or Bust

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE} HOME

Filthy and frozen to the bone, Sergeant Wilkins hobbled across the tarmac on his crutches until he reached the base’s administrative offices.

Colonel Adams’ orderly greeted him at reception. “The colonel will be with you in just a moment, Sergeant. Care for a cup of char?”

Wilkins blinked. “Char?”

The orderly looked at him with a pleasant expression. “Or would you rather take some time to get cleaned up?”

“I’ll take some char,” Wilkins said.

“Have a seat.”

The sergeant lowered himself into one of the waiting chairs with a pained grunt. A clock ticked on the wall, which only accentuated the grating silence. He studied the small reception room for threats.

He jumped as the door opened and the orderly came in with a steaming mug.

“Here you are, Sergeant,” the kid said. “Nice and hot.”

Wilkins nodded and drank. The thick tea’s heat filled his chest. Instead of sharpening his senses, however, the hot drink lulled him into a mental drift.

Then he was back on the snow-packed street, running for his life from a mob of bloodthirsty ghouls—

He started awake, spilling some of the scalding tea on his lap.

The inner office door swung open to reveal Colonel Adams. “You’d better get in here, Sergeant.”

Wilkins struggled to regain his feet.

“Leave the tea,” Adams added. “I suspect you could use something stronger.”

He hobbled into the colonel’s office and again underwent the painful process of lowering himself into the chair facing the drab RAF desk.

Colonel Adams poured stiff drinks and handed him one. “To your successful mission, Sergeant.”

The brandy went down like fire. “Thank you, sir. We certainly paid for it.”

“You lost good men.”

“We also left the Germans to die.”

The colonel fixed him with an icy stare. “That concerns you, does it?”

Wilkins remembered sitting near the doorway of the Skytrooper transport plane as it bucked its way to altitude. A front-row seat to what would surely be the destruction of the remaining Fallschirmjäger in Berlin.

The Germans had formed a battle circle north of Tempelhof Airport. On the west side of the circle, the draugr had gotten close enough to fight hand to hand. The entire formation broke south. The soldiers rushed toward safety, shedding a delaying rearguard that was overrun and destroyed.

Even then, Wilkins thought they might make it. They were withdrawing in good order, showing the excellent discipline one expected of elite light infantry. The soldiers poured fire and dumped their stick grenades to buy space.

Go, you buggers, he’d thought. You can do it.

The plane had banked and cut off his view, leaving him only with a bare hope the Fallschirmjäger would survive.

Then he’d glimpsed the draugr host.

A massive horde coming from the south. These were the undead that had bloodied the Americans and driven them out of Berlin.

Wilkins had suddenly found himself grateful he couldn’t see the rest.

Still, sitting in Colonel Adams’ warm office drinking his brandy, he had to wonder if the Red Devils could have done more.

“We won’t win if we don’t stop fighting the last war, sir,” he said.

“Sergeant, I’m afraid I must place some unpleasant facts on the table. One is we would have left our own in Berlin if it meant getting the Overman serum and those documents you hauled back even a single minute sooner.”

Wilkins frowned in disbelief. “Sir—!”

“The ghouls broke the line at the Meuse, Sergeant. While you were gone. That’s the second part.”

He sagged. “Christ.”

“The Americans are dropping into northern France to stop them. The same men who got mauled in Berlin volunteered to go straight back out. We sent them. We had nobody else. Do you understand, Sergeant?”

In a week, the undead would be feasting on Paris.

The horrors of his mission, the loss of his team, his wounding by the harsh lieutenant, the justice of killing Adolf Hitler—none of it mattered. If the world survived, historians would care, but right now, the past was pointless.

The only thing that mattered now was the next hour.

“I suppose you’ll be sending the Red Devils back out, sir,” he said.

“We will. They go tomorrow.”

“Right,” said Wilkins and grunted as he stood. “I’ll get myself sorted for it.”

“Sit down, Sergeant,” Adams protested. “You’re excused from duty.”

“With all respect, sir, you’re not keeping me from this party. You need every shooter you’ve got. If we don’t stop the bloody draugr from reaching Paris, we’ll lose all of Europe. We’ll lose it all.”

Europe would become a vast sea of the undead, and all the men who’d fought and died in Berlin would have died for nothing.

He hoped Jocelyn would understand. And forgive him.

“Well,” Colonel Adams said with a hint of amusement, “then you’d better get some rest and have that leg tended. I’ll be glad to have you with me.”

“With you, sir?”

“Everybody’s going, Sergeant. Any man who can shoot a gun. We’ve taken so many losses, all airborne will now operate as a single unit under American command. One way or the other, this is it. The final battle.”

“I hope the eggheads do their part, sir.”

“We’ve got our best minds on it already. They’ll crack it.”

“Until then…”

“Until then, we’ll do ours.”