Red Devils

23

The ancient building was silent, but not quite quiet enough for the soldiers’ liking. They had uncovered a complex labyrinth of tunnels beneath the heart of the castle, and despite their best efforts to pass through the place unnoticed, the noise their every move made seemed to be amplified beyond all proportion. Their boots echoed off the walls, every step like a gunshot, and even the sounds of their breathing seemed to fill the air with noise. Wilkins took the lead carrying the flaming torch while Harris brought up the rear. The passages they moved along were claustrophobic and tight: dark grey walls, low curved ceiling, dripping damp, a layer of slurry underfoot.

It wasn’t long before they were under attack again.

A sudden sharp right turn led to another long corridor which seemed to stretch the entire length of the castle. It was so long that the light from Wilkins’ torch barely reached halfway, and it was only when the flickering shadows began to move towards them that the British soldiers realised more of the enemy were close at hand. Three more Nazi corpses came at them suddenly as if they’d been woken from hibernation by the unannounced arrival of the Brits. Their faces, withered and drawn into furious expressions of anger and hatred, appeared infinitely more hideous in the wavering light. Barton, now unfazed and increasingly confident when facing the dead, carefully pushed past Wilkins and dealt with all three of the dead Germans in quick succession. He thrust his bayonet through the left eye of the nearest at the same time as dragging the second one down then planting his boot between its shoulder blades. He slid the first creature off his blade, then drove the sharp point up through the chin of the next into what remained of its putrefying brain. Barton finally returned his attention to the ghoul at his feet which he spiked angrily through the back of the head with far more aggression than was necessary.

‘You looked as if you almost enjoyed that,’ Harris said from the rear.

‘I did,’ Barton replied. ‘These things are miserably weak—’

‘—yet incredibly dangerous,’ Wilkins warned, ‘and we’d all do well to remember that. One scratch is all it might take to spread the condition. One bite. Remember, that’s what did it for Lieutenant Henshaw.’

And the men became silent at the memory of their recently fallen officer.

‘Keep moving,’ Jones said, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘Let’s get this done and get home.’

Wilkins checked his watch. Under four hours to go.

They’d realised what they were likely to find down here long before they reached it. The castle keep. Most of the dungeon-like cells were being used for storage (and they took the welcome opportunity to arm themselves when it presented itself), yet other rooms clearly had a purpose more akin to their originally intended use. ‘No sense locking people up in here,’ Barton had observed. ‘Not when this whole bloody place is a prison.’

They’d thought nothing of his words until they’d reached the third cell along. Each of these confined chambers was claustrophobically small. The rough walls, hewn from centuries-old rock, were thicker than a man’s arm and the portcullis-like iron doors appeared virtually impenetrable.

Thankfully.

In the third cell was a cadaver so badly decayed that, at first sight, the men had difficulty recognising it as being human. It was naked, and its discoloured flesh was covered in a layer of dried blood, glistening decay and other, less obvious grime. The floor was awash with seepage and putrescent dribbles. The creature threw itself at the railings when the men neared, and though it was initially held back by shackles and chains, the force with which it lunged was such that one arm was wrenched out of its socket. The stump twitched furiously. ‘What happened to it?’ Jones asked. The smell here was suffocating, like nothing he’d ever endured before.

Harris used the butt of his rifle to shove the monstrous thing back, and it tripped over what was left of its own feet, ending up in the far corner of the cell, thrashing furiously in its own mire but quite unable to pick itself back up and come at the men again.

Wilkins braved the stench and the creature’s fury to get closer. He raised the torch to get a better view, though at the back of his mind was the concern that had the gases generated as a result of this thing’s decomposition not yet fully dissipated, he might ignite an explosive cloud of noxious odour. He covered his mouth and nose and peered into the gloom, only stepping back when he could stand to see no more. ‘I believe this must be one of the very first of them. I presume this is all that remains of one of the scientists’ earliest experiments.’

‘Why keep it locked up?’ Barton asked. ‘Why not just get rid of it?’

‘I assume they were studying it. By keeping it isolated down here, away from everyone else, they might have been hoping to observe its behaviour and condition.’

‘You think it did all this to itself?’

‘Almost certainly. The natural process of decay is responsible for much of what you can see here, but the effects have been magnified by the inherent fury of the beast. Remember, these things are only able to reason at the most basic of levels. They are only interested in fighting. Self-preservation is an unknown concept to them. That’s if their brains are even capable of considering concepts.’

‘You’ve lost me again,’ Barton said. ‘Pardon me, Lieutenant Wilkins, but you have a frustrating habit of using a hundred words where one or two would probably do.’

‘He’s saying that because this thing was locked away, it tore itself apart,’ Harris explained.

‘Then that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ asked Jones. ‘Won’t they all end up like this then? Or they’ll all rot down to nothing at least.’

‘That may be so,’ Wilkins said, ‘but it’ll take time. And as long as they’re left to their own devices out there, they’ll continue to kill and to multiply. It makes them even more of a threat, not less. Can’t you see, they’ll stop at nothing to spread this infernal condition around the globe. Nothing!’

The group moved on, leaving the furious inhuman beast eviscerating itself on the cold stone floor of its cell.

Steps. Another heavy wooden door.

‘Thank the lord,’ Wilkins said under his breath, and he allowed himself to lower the flaming torch at last. His arm ached with the effort of keeping it aloft, but he hadn’t dared not use it. The corridors under the castle were like a maze. It wouldn’t have taken much for them to lose all sense of direction and keep going around in circles.

Harris went to start climbing, but Wilkins stopped him. ‘Come on, sir, the sooner we get on with this the better. I can’t stand all this waiting around. If there’s going to be a fight, then let’s get fighting and let’s get home. All this talk of deadly germs and super-weapons is just making matters worse.’

‘We need to keep our wits about us,’ Wilkins warned. ‘If there are any Nazis left in this building – dead or alive – they’ll be gunning for us. We can be assured of a pretty grim welcome, whoever and whatever we find up those stairs.’

He was right, of course, and no one argued. Wilkins climbed to the top of the stairs and readied himself. He glanced across at Harris who nodded to show that he was ready, then opened the door.

Both men recoiled when a shocking number of large brown and black rats scurried through the suddenly open doorway and flooded down the stairs, a tidal wave of dirty fur and yellowed teeth. At the bottom of the steps, Jones’ nerve almost broke. He aimed his weapon into the undulating mass crawling hurriedly over and around his boots. ‘Hold your fire,’ Wilkins ordered. Jones’ finger tightened on the trigger, but he didn’t shoot.

‘I hate rats,’ he grumbled, watching them surge down the corridor, looking like a bizarrely undulating carpet. Squeaks of fear and spiny, lashing tails.

‘They’re clearly not interested in us, are they?’ Wilkins said. ‘They’re leaving the proverbial sinking ship.’

Barton took hold of Jones’ collar and turned the young soldier to face him. ‘Look at me, Jones.’

‘Get off.’

‘Not until you calm yourself down, lad. The rats are the least of our problems. You need to forget about them and focus on whatever it is they’re running away from.’

Eventually the steps became clear, and Wilkins and Harris went through the door into the main part of the castle. They were surprised to find that there was some illumination here. Electric lamps which glowed dull yellow were strung along the wall like fading Christmas lanterns. Wilkins extinguished the torch and tossed it aside. He felt infinitely better carrying a pistol in one hand and his trusty knife in the other. Holding the flame had hampered his ability to defend and attack.

Although still uncomfortably quiet, after the cramped confines of the level below-ground, the increased space up here felt strangely liberating. No more stooping. The ceilings were high. No longer enclosed by unending solid walls on either side. Space to move. Options. And yet, despite its size, the whole place felt foetid and filthy. There were marks and smears everywhere they looked. Bloody handprints. Drag marks. Drips and pools of crimson gore.

They moved as a pack along the wide corridor, covering all angles between them. The first doorway they came across led into a large kitchen, and they entered to briefly stop and take stock. Food had been left half-prepared and unattended on counters and stoves. There were several large cooking pots, the unidentifiable contents of which had been baked solid. The flesh of a pig on a spit was black and hardened. Wilkins checked the enormous oven at the centre of the kitchen. ‘No residual heat,’ he said. ‘This oven’s as cold as this poor unfortunate soul.’ He nodded at the body of a woman slumped in a corner of the room. She wore a simple grey pinafore dress which was heavily stained with blood from what was left of her head. It also covered much of the wall behind her. She appeared to have been shot at extraordinarily close range, and Wilkins wondered if she’d perhaps done this to herself to escape whatever nightmare had unfolded around her.

The only sound in the kitchen came from dripping taps and dripping blood, but they could clearly hear noises coming from elsewhere in the castle. Barton led them back out into the corridor, but soon found that he could go no further. There was a blockage up ahead. A heavy piece of antique-looking furniture had been pulled away from the wall and dragged across a doorway. ‘We’ve no option but to keep going, far as I can see,’ he said, and Wilkins agreed. They could hear movement on the other side of the door which increased in frequency and volume when Barton spoke.

‘Do it,’ Lieutenant Wilkins ordered.

The men took up position back along the corridor and Barton began to move the dresser. The fury of the dead was incredible. They hammered against the door to get through, and the sheer force of the weight of dead flesh pushing forward was such that by the time Barton had shifted the dresser just a few inches, the first few grabbing hands were shoved through the gap, reaching out for him and his colleagues. Harris ran forward and began hacking at them with his bayonet, intent on doing as much damage as possible before they were released. Flesh was slashed, bones were broken, and hands and fingers were sliced off, but the dead continued to fight undeterred.

Another brutal shove forward from the other side.

The heavy oak dresser was shunted back another six inches, leaving almost enough of a gap for the first cadaver to get through. It was the reanimated body of another SS-Totenkopfverbände guard, replete in its blood-drenched uniform, tunic still done up to the neck, silver buttons shining brightly amidst the gore. The vicious creature appeared to be straining to get through, but it quickly became clear that it was trapped, snagged on the door, and was being pushed forward by the force of other ghouls trying to get through from behind. Harris came at the monster again, this time stabbing it through its clouded right eye and doing enough damage to immediately extinguish all aggression and render the corpse completely useless. It dropped heavily, but even before it had hit the ground it had been shoved out of the way by more of the rabid dead surging forward. With no communication between them, just a terrifying, unspoken desire, they pushed the door open further and another two broke through. Harris gestured for the others to stay back. ‘I’ve got this. No point us all getting our kit grubby.’

He managed the faintest of laughs, but all thoughts of humour disappeared in a heartbeat. As he leaned forward to dispatch another of the hellish monstrosities, a rogue hand reached through the half-open door and grabbed hold of his over-jacket. He didn’t notice at first, so distracted was he by the vile soldier writhing at his feet which he kicked repeatedly in the face. Harris’ momentary delay in reacting enabled another one of the corpses to snag a loop of his belt with several rotting fingers.

And then another caught him.

Then another.

And another.

It happened so fast that there was nothing anyone could do. The smell of fresh blood seemed to drive the already wild crowd into an utter frenzy, and in seconds even more of them had reached through the gap and taken hold of Harris’ clothing and kit. He tried to fight back, but it was already too late. The more he fought, the tighter their grip on him became.

Barton, Wilkins and Jones rushed to help their colleague, but there was little they could do. Wilkins and Jones were caught up with other dead soldiers which had managed to squeeze through the gap. Jones tried to re-kill one of them which towered over him, but its frantic movements were so unpredictable that whenever he thought he had a clear chance of shoving his bayonet into its skull, it either moved or managed to push the barrel of his rifle away.

By the time he’d dealt with it and the others had managed to wipe up the other stragglers who’d broken through, it was too late.

Harris screamed as a smaller corpse, that of an imprisoned child, sank its yellowed teeth into the exposed flesh on the back of one of his hands. ‘Bastard!’ he screamed, and he dropped his rifle with the pain, then instinctively reached for the pistol he carried holstered on his belt.

‘No, Harris, don’t!’ Wilkins yelled, but it was too late.

Harris was a seething mass of grabbing hands now. It looked like there were hundreds of them pulling at his body, trying to drag him closer to their snapping mouths and deadly germs, but somehow he managed to make a half-turn to face his attackers and began firing indiscriminately into the writhing, squirming mass. The noise riled the despicable crowd to new heights, causing them to push harder and harder until the door was completely open.

Harris was swallowed up. At the last possible moment he slipped the pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The back of his skull exploded outwards, showering Jones and the others. The young soldier stood his ground for a moment, too stunned to move, but the sight of the dead crawling over his colleague’s fallen corpse was enough to force him into action. ‘Run!’ he screamed. ‘Just run!’

The three remaining Brits sprinted back the way they’d just come, pursued by a slow yet unstoppable tsunami of the dead.

Jones hurtled past the kitchen door. Wilkins shot out an arm and pulled him back. ‘In here, lad. Quick.’

‘We need to get out of this place.’

‘No, Jones, we need to find the scientist.’

‘The lieutenant’s right,’ Barton said as he shut the door behind the other two. ‘After what just happened to Harris, there’s no way I’m going to let those damn things win.’

‘But the kitchen’s a dead end,’ Jones protested.

Barton shoved Jones out of the way. ‘Help me block the door, Lieutenant.’

Wilkins grunted with effort as he began to push a heavy table across the stone floor towards the door. Barton held it shut for as long as he could, then moved at the last possible moment. The dead army was already outside; he could hear them and feel them as they fought to gain access. Jones’ fear seemed suddenly to imbue him with superhuman strength and, like a man possessed, he snapped out of his malaise and helped shove the table into position then stack more kitchen furniture against it. The dead were hammering to get at them now but, for the moment, the door was holding fast.

‘They’ll get through eventually, won’t they?’ Jones said, watching the door as it rattled in its frame.

Wilkins was quick to reassure him. ‘There’s far less space out there. The last door was at the end of the corridor, not halfway along it. They’ll struggle to get enough numbers and weight behind them to push their way through.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘As sure as I can be.’

‘That means no, he isn’t,’ Barton added unhelpfully.

The three comrades stepped back from the door and waited nervously, panting hard with the effort of their exertion.

A pause.

A brief moment to collect breath and compose thoughts.

Six men down to three, Wilkins thought, and we’re no closer to finding Doctor Månsson.

‘About that wooden thing that was blocking the last door,’ Jones said.

‘What about it?’ asked Wilkins.

‘How did it get there?’

‘What kind of a ridiculous question is that? How am I supposed to know?’

‘I think it’s a very sensible question,’ Barton announced, siding with Jones. ‘Think about it, Lieutenant. Someone moved it from this side, they must have. But as far as we know, the only way of getting to it was the route we took to get in here.’

‘Then maybe it was that poor wretch,’ Wilkins suggested, gesturing at the cook’s headless corpse in the corner.

‘I don’t reckon you’re right. She don’t look like she had the strength, and where’s the weapon she used to kill herself? And why would she kill herself just after she’s got safe?’

‘There could be any number of reasons…’

‘Granted, but I don’t reckon she did it. I reckon it was someone else.’

‘So where are they?’

‘My question exactly. Either they’re in here with us, or there’s another way out of this kitchen.’

The three British soldiers immediately began to investigate their surroundings more closely. The vast kitchen was ice-cold and as silent as the grave and, apart from the solitary corpse they’d found previously, the place appeared completely empty. There were windows, but they had been covered with metal bars from outside, presumably to keep the prisoners working in the kitchen safely locked-up inside.

A heavy curtain hung along one wall. Barton looked under either end and found a discreet doorway which led into a narrow pantry. The shelves had already been largely cleared, but it wasn’t the supplies that interested Barton. Instead, he was intent on tracing a route through the mess he’d found there. It looked like someone had tried to effect an escape, using shelving stacked against one wall, but where had they gone? The light was virtually non-existent in here, and he was having trouble making sense of it all.

‘Here, let me,’ Jones said, and he squeezed past Barton to get through. Barton helped himself to an apple as he watched Jones explore, the little man’s movements hard to discern in the gloom.

‘He was a proper little tea-leaf, by all accounts,’ he said to Wilkins who was now standing just behind him. ‘Been straightened out by the war, has Jones.’

‘Then let’s hope he can find us a way out of here,’ Wilkins said quietly, feeling his way along the shelves to his right. He found this an awfully depressing place. The body of the woman upstairs, combined with Harris’ unnecessary death, had affected him quite badly. The cruelty of Polonezköy appeared to know no bounds, and they were yet to find the cold heart of this place. He dared not imagine what would be waiting for them there. For now he occupied himself with thoughts of the prisoners forced to work in this kitchen; preparing feasts for their captors whilst they themselves starved. This war was inhuman on so many different levels…

‘Got it!’ Jones announced from up high. ‘There’s a window up here. It’s not huge, so you might have a problem getting your belly through it, Barton.’

‘Watch yourself, Jones,’ he warned.

‘Looks like someone covered it from outside once they’d got through.’

‘Then let us get through and we’ll see if we can find them,’ Wilkins said. ‘Lead the way.’

Jones did as he was told, and after much wriggling and holding of breath, he was soon through and standing on the other side. The window, although high on the pantry wall, was only just above ground level. He found himself in an enclosed courtyard about the size of half a football pitch.

‘Give us a hand, Jones,’ Barton hissed, and Jones obliged and helped pull his colleague through the narrow window and out into the open. Wilkins passed Barton’s kit through, then his own, then climbed through himself.

‘Well done, Jones,’ he said. ‘Where now?’

They were looking around for doorways and passages, when someone whistled from across the way. Barton looked up and saw a light flashing in a window halfway up a tower directly opposite them. There was a door at the bottom of the tower which he moved quickly towards.

‘Careful, Barton, it might be a trap,’ Jones said.

‘I’d have expected Jerry to take pot-shots at us rather than invite us up for a chat, wouldn’t you?’

He led the others up a short staircase, his rifle held ready, just in case.

‘It’s about time you chaps turned up,’ an instantly familiar voice said. It was Sergeant Steele. He was sitting on a landing, eating a veritable feast he’d half-hitched from the kitchen on his way through. He offered his food and drink to the others.

‘How the devil did you get here?’ Wilkins asked.

‘I’m guessing you three found another way into the castle. I’m afraid I inadvertently blocked the passage I found.’

‘We had noticed.’

‘I managed to get myself followed by more than a few of those damn things but I outsprinted them and was able to stop them getting through. I found myself in the kitchens and looked for another way out. I didn’t much fancy trying to descend any deeper. Not alone, anyway.’

‘A wise move,’ Wilkins said.

‘I thought I should stay put. This tower’s relatively central, and there doesn’t seem to be as many of them around here. I wondered if you’d find my escape route. Where’s Harris, by the way?’

Jones shook his head sadly. Steele nodded, but said nothing. Harris wasn’t the first colleague he’d lost, and he knew he’d almost certainly not be the last.

‘I take it you’ve done a recce?’ Wilkins asked. ‘Is there a way out, or are we trapped here?’

‘Oh, we’re not trapped,’ Steele told him. ‘But we might as well be.’