Red Devils

20

Within the hour the Brits had all made it across the wire. They leaned against the wall which stood between them and Polonezköy’s inmates. They were making plans to go over the top when Barton grabbed hold of Harris. ‘Guard approaching,’ he hissed, and the message was quickly passed from man to man. They each pressed themselves against the wall, hidden in the low light and shadow, and watched as the lone figure neared. The Nazi officer was moving lethargically and aimlessly; not so much patrolling, more like staggering…

Nervous glances were exchanged. Barton reached for his pistol but Wilkins stopped him and took his knife from the pocket of his Denison smock. He held a finger to his lips.

The enemy officer lurched closer, and though the limited illumination made it hard to discern any great level of detail, they saw enough to know that he was in a wretched condition. His face was covered in blood, one eye bulging from its socket as if it was trying to escape. ‘He one of them?’ Jones whispered to Lieutenant Wilkins.

‘Almost certainly,’ Wilkins whispered back as he readied himself to strike. But Sergeant Steele had other ideas.

‘This bastard’s mine,’ he announced, and he stepped out in front of the Nazi. He grabbed Jerry’s head in a tight neck lock.

‘Watch his bite…’ Wilkins warned, but Steele wasn’t listening, nor was he concerned. He took a fistful of the German’s hair and pulled his head back, then drew his own blade across his throat. A large, dark gash appeared in the dead man’s pale flesh, curved like a lecherous grin, and thick, dark semi-coagulated blood flowed like glistening mud down the front of his grubby-looking uniform tunic.

Steele pushed the Nazi away. Job done.

Yet Jerry didn’t stop.

His head lolled awkwardly, and the glutinous blood continued to seep, but his progress and intent appeared otherwise unimpeded until Wilkins took control. He shoved the Nazi’s face against the wall, then stabbed his knife into the man’s exposed right temple. He withdrew the blade then did it again, then a third time to be sure, then he let him go. Jerry immediately collapsed like a half-stuffed rag doll. Henshaw shone a torch into his face, checking for any reaction. The flow of blood had partially obscured the Totenkopf symbol patch on the guard’s right collar. It was clear that this man had been a member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände. ‘Good Lord,’ he exclaimed. ‘If evil bastards like this have been overcome by this hideous disease, what hope is there for any of us?’

‘So I take it that you believe everything you’ve heard now, gentlemen?’ Wilkins asked. ‘This is no joke, no trick… These creatures are the reanimated bodies of the dead, and I’ll wager there are many, many more of the damn things waiting for us on the other side of this wall. We need to have our wits about us. We must treat everyone and everything we see in there as a potential threat, do you understand?’

He didn’t need to hear their replies to know that they did.

The soldiers moved quickly and quietly to scale the wall. Henshaw had deliberately chosen this spot as he considered it to be the part of the camp under the least amount of scrutiny and guard from the Nazis. This was the area where they disposed of bodies. And here there were many, many bodies to dispose of.

Henshaw ordered Harris to use a grappling hook to scale the wall. The clattering of metal on brick was unnaturally loud against the all-consuming quiet of everything else. The soldiers stood silently with their backs against the wall for several minutes until they were sure the noise hadn’t attracted more unwanted attention. Harris climbed up and paused at the top to look down over the other side. ‘Courtyard’s empty,’ he hissed to the others. ‘Should be all right, sir.’

‘Good. Drop down and keep out of sight.’

He did as he was ordered and the rest of the men followed in quick succession. Steele was the last one. Perched precariously on the top of the wall until he was sure the others were down safely, he detached the grappling hook and spooled the rope, then dropped it down to Harris who stashed it in Barton’s pack.

Behind the imposing castle entrance and within the vast encircling wall of the camp were several clearly defined areas. Nearest the castle were the barracks of the SS-Totenkopfverbände. Next to the barracks, a half-full vehicle compound. Beyond that, more than half the total area of the site was occupied by large factory buildings where the prisoners were put to work by the Nazis. Most of the smaller, squat, dank-looking huts were almost certainly where the prisoners were housed, separated into sub-areas: one for men, the other for women and children. The part of the camp where they’d gained access, though, was unspeakably grim. Wilkins was glad of the lack of light. There were things here he had no desire to see. Jones, on the other hand, exhibited far less self-control. ‘Bloody hell,’ he cursed, forgetting himself. ‘Look at all this…’

He shone a torch in a wide circle over a space to the rear of where they were standing. They knew the Nazi’s preferred methods of extermination from the intelligence which had been gathered, but what they could see now was way beyond anything they’d been told.

‘Crikey,’ Barton mumbled, barely able to string two words together. ‘It’s like they ran out of space and time.’

He was right. His description was remarkably apt and succinct. Many of the bodies appeared to have been carved up, limbs dismembered and stacked in hotchpotch piles. Jones was transfixed by the horrific sight, and it took his sergeant’s firm grip to drag him away. ‘Come on, lad,’ Steele said. ‘Focus.’

Jones tried, but it was difficult. Before turning away he looked again at a particular mound of flesh which had been momentarily illuminated by his torch. He was sure he’d seen fingers moving on a hand sticking out from the bottom of a pile. And he could see the remains of Nazi uniforms too. He wondered what had really happened in Polonezköy, and wished with all his heart that he was anywhere but here.

Focus!

Another figure was moving across the courtyard now, coming towards the British soldiers with the same uneasy slothfulness as the German guard they’d already dispatched. Wait… more than one. Wilkins counted three of them. It was clear that their overall physical condition was very different to the undead Nazi. ‘Good Lord,’ said Henshaw, ‘they’re prisoners. What in heaven’s name are they doing out here like this? They’ll get themselves killed.’

But they were already dead.

The three men approaching were each dressed in the same loose-fitting, shapeless uniforms, and whilst the colour might originally have been relatively standard, it was now anything but. Harris shone a flashlight at them, and the sorry state of these poor lost souls was clearly revealed. Their smocks were stained and smeared, deep red and brown patches where blood and other discharge had seeped from open wounds which would now never heal.

‘What do we do, Lieutenant?’ Harris asked, clearly unsure. Henshaw glanced at Wilkins before answering.

‘We get rid of them. We don’t have any choice.’

‘But they’re innocent men…’ Steele started to protest. Wilkins cut across him.

‘They’re dead, Sergeant, and you need to remember that. Ending this eternal misery is the kindest thing we can do for them now.’

Wilkins stepped forward with his knife again and went for the nearest of the three. The man’s awkward gait and poorly controlled movements resulted in him virtually stepping onto Wilkins’ blade and skewering himself. Wilkins quickly yanked the knife clear then went for the dead man’s head. He pushed the suddenly lifeless figure out of the way and was ready to move onto the next but Jones was there first.

‘Don’t!’ Wilkins exclaimed, but it was too late. Jones shot both of the other prisoners in the head in quick succession.

The noise echoed around the emptiness of the concentration camp, seeming to take forever to completely fade away.

‘What the hell were you thinking, Jones?’ demanded Henshaw.

‘Dealing with the situation, sir.’

‘And did you not listen to anything Lieutenant Wilkins had to say about the threat we’re facing?’

Wilkins himself was furious. ‘Good grief, man. Do you realise what you’ve done?’

Jones shone his torch from side to side, and the true extent of the situation he’d created quickly became clear. All around them there was movement now. The shadows seemed to be detaching themselves from the walls. Unfolding. Unfurling. Untangling themselves from the darkness and creeping towards the light. And the longer the men looked, the more of them they could see, as if scores of the infernal creatures had been woken by Jones’ two shots. The way they moved made their appearance all the more terrifying. They lurched and listed, contorted and twisted as if they were barely in control of their own physical form.

The nearest of them reached out for Jones and grabbed his smock with gnarled fingers, snagging the drab material. He hadn’t realised and tried to back away, but was pulled back. Henshaw saw that one of his men was in trouble and instinctively moved to help him. Although he managed to prise the wretched ghoul away from Jones, all he did was drag the creature closer to himself, and when another one of them came at him he lost his footing in the gloom and was down before anyone realised.

‘Blades, not bullets,’ Wilkins hissed, and this time the other soldiers did as he instructed, fishing knives, daggers and even entrenching tools from their kit. Wilkins himself waded into the melee, and the others followed his lead.

Two more were disposed of by Wilkins in quick succession. He took the first one out through his tried and tested method of a sudden stab to the temple, then rammed its decaying face hard against the side of the nearest hut. He turned to take out the next one, but was immediately filled with uncomfortable, conflicting emotions because this figure had clearly once been a young woman. For a split second he felt overwhelming guilt, then remorse, then desperate fear when he realised this poor wretch couldn’t have been very different in age when she’d died to his love, Jocelyn.

No room for emotions now. Everything depended on what happened here tonight. The pressure was immense. Almost unbearable.

It was impossible to be sure how many of the unspeakable fiends were converging on them now. Between them, Harris and Steele dispatched several more, the efficiency of their kills increasing with each one. Contrary to how the papers and the movies often portrayed it, there was nothing easy or glamorous about killing anyone in battle. In films you didn’t have to deal with the blood or the stench or the cries for help or mercy. Films made killing look easy, effortless. Steele had just about become used to the guilt-tinged adrenalin rush he felt whenever he faced the Hun, but this was a different matter altogether. And as he struggled to deal with an emaciated prisoner’s remains which fought with the tenacity of a trained SS Obersturmführer, he knew this was an even more terrifying enemy they were now having to face.

All of the doubts and misgivings these British soldiers might have had, the unspoken suspicions that Wilkins was wrong or that he’d exaggerated the situation in Europe, were all undone in the space of several frantic minutes.

A gap in the oncoming crowd. They must have faced twenty or thirty between them now, though numbers were unclear in the dark. Wilkins dashed across to Harris and Jones to help put down two more frenzied attackers. ‘We need to get under cover,’ he gasped breathlessly. ‘Otherwise we’ll be fighting like this all night. That’s if we last that long. We’ve no idea how many of them there are.’

‘The huts,’ Steele shouted over the chaos, gesticulating wildly once he’d twisted the neck of a dead SS guard and put a blade through his eye.

‘But we don’t know what’s in there, Sarge,’ Jones said.

‘No, but we do know what’s out here,’ Wilkins immediately replied.

He ran towards the nearest of the shabby wooden buildings, shoulder charging more of the dead out of the way now rather than wasting time and effort trying to deal with them more comprehensively. The others followed as best they could, kicking and lashing out at the hellish creatures which swarmed around them in huge numbers, apparently without end.

Wilkins yanked at the door. The handle was stiff but, to his surprise, opened relatively easily. Jones piled inside after him, followed by Steele. ‘Where’s Barton?’ asked the sergeant, realising he was the last one who’d made it to cover, immediately concerned for the men. ‘And Harris and the lieutenant? Where the hell are they?’

He had a Sten gun slung across his back. He swung it around and held it ready.

‘Think about the bloody noise, man,’ Wilkins said, doing his best to dissuade him from firing. He knew his words would inevitably have little effect.

‘Bit late for that now, Lieutenant,’ Steele said, and he kicked the door open again and charged back outside. Wilkins tried to stop him, but he was already running headlong into the still advancing crowd, firing wildly and filling the air with noise. It was clear that he was trying to create a distraction so that his colleagues would stand a chance of surviving. And it seemed to be working too, because those members of the army of the dead that Wilkins could see – prisoners and Nazis alike – were staggering further away from the hut now and following Steele into the impenetrable darkness elsewhere.

‘Help me!’

The remaining Brits heard Harris’ distinctive voice calling. Jones illuminated him with his torch and saw he was standing over the injured Lieutenant Henshaw, doing everything he could to keep great swathes of venomous corpses at bay. He was swinging a shovel he’d happened upon from somewhere. The head of the spade made contact with the skull of one of the dead, filling the air with a sonorous clang and sending the pitiful creature spiralling away.

Wilkins punched his blade hard into the face of one of the undead. He moved forward, but was then forced to rock back on his toes to avoid being caught with the edge of the scything shovel blade. ‘Steady on, Harris,’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s me, Wilkins.’

No time for pleasantries. ‘Help the lieutenant,’ Harris yelled. ‘Get him under cover. He’s hurt.’

Barton appeared from nowhere and helped Wilkins pick the fallen officer up off the ground. The two of them half-carried, half-dragged him back to the hut. Harris followed, still wildly swinging the shovel as he backed towards the others, cutting down more relentless bodies with every vicious swipe. The moment they were all inside Barton snatched the shovel from him and used it to wedge the door shut.

‘That should hold the buggers back for a while,’ he said. He could see shapeless figures crowding on the other side of the windows. He couldn’t make out any level of detail, but just knowing they were there was terrifying enough.

‘What about the sarge?’ Jones asked. He could still hear the Sten gun being fired repeatedly in the distance.

‘Sergeant Steele will find his way back here soon enough,’ Barton said. ‘I hope,’ he added under his breath.

The group’s full attention shifted to the wounded officer writhing in pain at their feet. Wilkins crouched down next to him, checking his wounds. Henshaw’s right arm was badly broken, that much was clear, and in the little he could see from the limited light of Jones’ torch, his skin had already developed an unhealthy pallor.

‘What do we do?’ Jones asked. He sounded panicked, like a child.

‘The first thing we do, Lance Corporal, is shut up,’ Wilkins told him in no uncertain terms. ‘Now get some more light down here, and someone find something I can use as a splint.’

Barton happened across a length of wooden baton. He propped it against the wall and snapped it in half with three hard stomps of his boot. Harris found two Feuerhand Hurricane lamps which he managed to get lit reasonably quickly, filling the hut with light.

‘Where’s the blood coming from?’ asked Harris, and he moved closer with one of the lanterns. Blood was pooling behind the officer’s back, spilling out across the wooden floor like a slick.

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Wilkins, and he carefully rolled Henshaw towards him to look at his back. Henshaw’s smock and other clothing had been torn: slashed during the frenzied attack. With his heart in his mouth and fearing the worst, Wilkins lifted away several layers of blood-soaked material until Henshaw’s bare skin was exposed. He looked like he’d been clawed by a bear.

‘And here, sir,’ Jones said, gingerly rolling up his commanding officer’s crimson stained trouser leg. ‘Look.’

In the glare of the kerosene lamp, Wilkins saw an unmistakable semi-circular mark. He’d been bitten. He stepped back from the fallen officer with a heavy heart. ‘He’s not going to make it,’ he said.

‘It’s just a broken bone and a few scratches,’ Jones protested. ‘He’ll be all right. We’ll leave him here and—’

‘You don’t understand, Jones, he’s infected. It’s too much of a risk to leave him here like this. We have to deal with him in the same way we deal with those hideous things out there.’

‘He’s not dead.’

‘He’s as good as.’

Wilkins held his clasp knife ready, but Harris blocked the way. ‘Lay one finger on Lieutenant Henshaw and you’ll have me to answer to.’

‘Listen to me, if the lieutenant dies, he’ll come back. And your uniforms and allegiances and past histories will count for nothing. He’ll attack and—’

‘No, with all due respect, sir, you listen to me,’ Harris interrupted. ‘The lieutenant has seen me safely through many a scrape. I’m not going to turn my back on him now when he needs me most.’

Wilkins was ready to protest, but he knew it would do no good. He understood completely, but that didn’t make the situation any easier to deal with. He reluctantly stepped away from Henshaw, but kept his clasp knife gripped tight in his hand.

The group’s hasty entrance and subsequent bickering had aroused plenty of attention from the undead hordes outside, and whilst Steele had been able to draw many of them away, there were still a considerable number gathered around the front of the hut. ‘We’re blocked in,’ Barton whispered. He’d been looking out through a small window. ‘There’s loads of them out there. We either fight our way out, or we wait.’

‘We can’t wait,’ Wilkins reminded him. ‘There’s no time. If we’re not at the rendezvous point by dawn, I fear we’ll be spending the rest of our days here in Polonezköy.’

‘Here,’ Jones hissed from the other side of the shack. ‘There’s another door.’

He hesitated before opening it, fearing what he might find on the other side and picturing swarms more reanimated guards and prisoners emerging from the shadows and rushing towards him.

It was empty.

The connecting room was much larger than the first, and it was almost completely bare. Its purpose was immediately apparent. The stench of death hung heavy in the air, even stronger here than in the rest of this damned place. The remaining men left Henshaw and followed Jones inside. It was easy for each of them to stand here and picture it packed to the rafters with confused and frightened prisoners of war, brought to Polonezköy to be exterminated in their thousands.

With Henshaw wounded, Wilkins assumed command. He knew this would be a test of his diplomatic as well as his military skills. He stood with the others in the ante-room and cleared his throat to speak. ‘Let’s not forget why we are here, gentlemen. This camp, and other camps like it, are places of unspeakable horror where despicable acts are carried out with alarming regularity. The Nazis who operated this facility have shown no mercy to these innocent people, and now we shall show no mercy to them. If, in the hours ahead, you ever have cause to doubt what we are doing and why we are doing it, remember this room. Remember the awful feeling in your gut which I know you all have right now, just as I do. Remember the sense of dread that sits in your belly like vomit because you know you are in the presence of true evil.’

‘Well said, sir,’ Barton mumbled.

‘Keep your heads, men, and remember what’s at stake. We’d already been told that Polonezköy had fallen largely silent, and now we know why. What we have here is a microcosm – a scaled-down version of what will inevitably happen to the entire world if we don’t do the job we’ve been sent here to do. Do you all understand?’

Even though their collective responses were low and subdued, it was clear that they did.

‘So what’s the plan?’ Jones asked.

‘Given the importance to the Reich of what was developed here, I’m convinced that Doctor Månsson’s laboratory must be somewhere in the castle. Given the lack of human resistance we’ve encountered since arriving here, I suspect the Doctor himself has either been incarcerated or abandoned or both. I don’t know what we’ll find in there, but the castle and its keep is where we need to start our search. Once we have the doctor or, failing that, his research, we simply have to get out of this hellish place and make our way to the rendezvous site.’

‘You make it sound so simple,’ Barton said, barely managing to contain his sarcasm. Wilkins was not impressed.

‘Mr Barton, I am under absolutely no illusions, and nor should you be. I knew this mission would be nigh on impossible from the outset, and nothing I’ve seen so far has convinced me otherwise. However, as we all know, the importance of what we’re doing here cannot be overstated. Without us, the entire civilised world is as good as lost forever. The dead will inherit the Earth. Our families, friends and other loved ones will be slaughtered by the dead and will almost inevitably join their ranks. And if we are unsuccessful, we too face the same foul fate. We simply cannot afford to fail. The success of the mission must come first, no matter what the cost.’

As Wilkins spoke and the others listened, transfixed and terrified in equal measure, Lieutenant Henshaw gave out his last breath and died. Lying on the floor in the adjacent room, he became completely still.

‘I suggest we find an alternative way out of this building,’ Wilkins continued. ‘If we’re clever about this, we might be able to get out without those damn buggers on the other side of the door knowing what we’re up to. With any luck they’ll remain focused on this building in the belief that we’re still inside.’

‘Do we have any idea about the layout of the castle?’ Harris asked.

‘Barely anything,’ Barton said.

‘What’s where don’t matter,’ Jones added. ‘We just keep searching ’til we find what we want.’

‘Exactly,’ Wilkins said. ‘We just need to—’

He was silenced by a godawful clattering from the room next door. It had been less than a minute, but the deadly germ already coursing through the late Lieutenant Henshaw’s bloodstream had already caused him to reanimate. In his infected stupor he’d tried to support himself on his badly broken arm and had fallen heavily against a wall, riling the corpses outside still further.

Harris lifted his lamp and illuminated the deceased officer’s death mask. It was a terrifying sight; so completely unnatural. So familiar, yet so unfamiliar at the same time. Dead Henshaw picked himself up again and staggered towards the light, his mouth hanging open, ready to bite and spread the deadly infection he carried. Harris froze.

Wilkins grabbed Henshaw by the scruff of the neck and spun him around, pushing him back against the wall. Yet more excitement rippled through the ranks of the foul crowd amassed outside at the noise. He raised his knife and did what he had to do. Henshaw twitched and jerked for a moment on the end of his blade, then dropped heavily to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been suddenly severed.

Wilkins turned to look at the others, who gazed back at him with conflicting emotions. He’d saved their lives, but he’d also just hacked down the commanding officer who’d led them into and safely out of many a nightmarish scrape over the months they’d been under his charge. Wilkins completely appreciated the enormity of what he’d just done.

‘We have no choice in this, men. As I said, failure is not an option. And if I or indeed any one of us should become infected like the poor lieutenant, then I expect each of you to fight to be the one who ends the poor bugger’s infernal existence. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’