Red Devils

6

Most of the population of Bastogne had fled when the siege had ended and the allies had opened a corridor of relative safety between the town and Assenois. Most of the population. Some had been unable to get away, others too scared to move until their hand was forced. Henri Mercel, who had, up until a couple of weeks ago, been a well-respected and oft-frequented tailor, ran through the rubble-strewn streets as if his life depended on it.

Because it did.

It had been such a foolish and unnecessary mistake to make, and now he cursed himself for having been so vain. Even after all the horror, brutality and bloodshed he’d witnessed here recently, he’d learnt nothing and had continued to give undue importance to his business and its associated frippery. And now it seemed his misguided approach was going to cost him everything.

When the dead army had begun to surge through the town, Marcel had initially run as fast as anyone, despite his rotund belly and short legs. But it had occurred to him that he’d left a good amount of money and numerous trinkets unguarded in his shop, including a valuable broach bequeathed to him by his recently deceased mother, and the thought of them falling into someone else’s hands – British, American, German or other – was intolerable. Against his better judgement he’d cut through an alleyway and doubled-back. He’d simply collect his belongings then disappear again. What was the worst that could happen?

Take the worst that could happen, and multiply it by a factor of several hundred.

Being caught in the cross-fire between the Nazis and the US soldiers defending Bastogne had been bad enough, but what had followed had been immeasurably worse.

The dead.

Hundreds of them, possibly even thousands. Foul, obnoxious, ill-mannered things, their numbers ever growing. Mercel had made it back to his tailor’s shop, but only by the slimmest of margins before the ungodly army had filled the street outside. The mass of dead flesh had clogged every escape route. He’d sunk to the ground behind the counter and covered his ears and screwed his eyes shut as the unnatural encroachment had continued. Their numbers had been such that they had blocked out almost all the light, leaving him more frightened than ever. Mother had always been there before to keep him company and help him cope with his irrational fear of the dark, but Mercel was completely alone now. And despite being in his late forties, he was resolutely terrified.

He’d remained curled up on the floor in a ball for hours. It might even have been longer than a day. It was only when an unavoidable call of nature forced him to get up and visit another part of the shop did he see that the street outside had all but emptied. Once his ablutions were complete he filled his pockets with the money and trinkets he’d risked his life for, took a deep breath, then left the shop and ran (as best he could).

It was cold outside, and the snow was falling heavily. The covering of white combined with the absolute ruination in parts of Bastogne to disorientate Mercel to such an extent that he headed in completely the opposite direction to that which he’d originally intended. His choice of direction was further limited by the great crowds of blood-stained and battle-worn Nazis which seemed to be on the periphery whichever way he turned.

At one point he found himself face-to-face with a fellow countryman who appeared to have been completely traumatised by the bloody chaos which had consumed the town. The man had been severely injured (his dust-covered trousers glistened with blood which continued to seep from a vicious-looking wound on his belly) and his shock was such that he couldn’t speak, could barely even focus his eyes on Mercel. ‘We must leave here, Monsieur,’ Mercel had said. ‘Can you help me get to Assenois? I can pay you…’

He’d shown the man a pocket full of francs, and the desperate fellow had made a sudden and unexpected lunge for Mercel’s cash. He’d gripped his arms with a dogged persistence which belied his moribund state, and Mercel had struggled to free himself. In the melee he’d slipped on ice then tripped over rubble and had been on his back with the wounded man bearing down on him before he’d known what was happening.

A priest came to his aid.

Father Jacques had elected to remain with his church despite the rest of the town being evacuated, and seeing the overweight tailor struggling in the snow with his assailant was proof positive that staying behind to care for the last few sheep of his flock had been absolutely the right thing to do. His vestments keeping him warm and a pair of hobnail boots keeping him safe, he strode out from the church with a heart full of God and the very best of intentions. When the man attacking Mercel had failed to respond to his requests to desist, Father Jacques put a hand under each of his shoulders and dragged him away.

The good Samaritan paid the ultimate price for his selfless act. The wounded man turned on the priest with predatory speed, reversing their position and slamming Jacques against the outside wall of his church before biting into his throat and crunching through his oesophagus, silencing his screams before they’d even begun.

Mercel was up and on his feet and running again before the priest was dead. He stumbled into a street so heavily bombed that he struggled to place it at all. A street name lying on the ground helped him fix his location, but the familiar view he associated with that name had been all but obliterated. There were gaps where there used to be buildings, like a mouthful of rotten teeth, and those homes and shops which still remained standing seemed to be doing so by the grace of God alone. Mercel fancied that if he was to lean too heavily against any one of them, the whole town might come crashing down around him.

There were mountainous, snow-capped piles of rubble everywhere, and deep puddles where impact craters had become filled with dust and ash and melted snow to leave a claggy, paste-like mud which coated everything. He looked down at his shoes and the bottom of his trousers with real disappointment. He would never normally have allowed himself to be seen out in public in such a bedraggled state.

It was while Mercel was staring at his shoes that he realised the area was splattered with blood and body parts. The remains of people mixed freely with the remains of the buildings they’d previously inhabited, and it was a gruesome sight which caused his stomach to flip. He’d not eaten this morning (not as much as a normal morning, anyway), and it took all the self-control he could muster not to vomit and further ruin his already grubby shoes. But when he caught sight of a hand and part of a forearm, flesh clearly having been chewed and bones snapped just above the wrist, his limited self-control was lost. Mercel emptied the contents of his stomach onto the pavement with a semi-solid splatter, the noise and taste of which did little more than make him heave again. He’d never had the strongest of constitutions, and Mother had always been there to hold the bowl whenever he’d been ill. The fear and isolation caused him to wail for help like a little girl.

In the otherwise all-consuming silence of this dead part of this dead town, his noise travelled a surprising distance. Far enough to be heard by those few people still sheltering in the ruins, and by many things.

A scream was a scream, thought Wilkins. Though he’d have rather heard friendly voices and local accents, right now any noise (as long as it wasn’t German) was better than no noise at all. He left the cover of the trees and ruined buildings and broke into a gentle jog along the road into Bastogne.

Wilkins sensed he wasn’t alone.

He’d seen more and more of them the closer he’d got to town, and here there were hundreds. Driven, faceless, emotionless creatures. Dead soldiers and dead civilians, all fighting for a horrific new army, all as keen as he was to find the lone survivor who’d cried out in fear or pain or both.

Lieutenant Parker watched the pitiful man through his binoculars from up high. He lowered the glasses. ‘Damn fool’s gonna get us all killed at this rate.’

‘So whadda we do?’ Kenny Gunderson asked. ‘Take him out?’

‘That ain’t exactly playing by the rules, Gunderson, much as it would please me greatly at the present time.’

‘So just leave him to it?’

‘Ain’t you got a single bone of compassion left in your body?’

‘Not today, Lieutenant.’

‘Look,’ Parker said, his interest piqued. ‘He’s already calling them to him. See how they’re drifting? They’re moving like a herd of cattle.’

Lieutenant Parker was right. They could all see it. The Belgian’s noise was attracting the attention of a huge number of the cadavers still gathered in the square outside. It was like a chain reaction rippling through the masses. Heads were turning on the outer fringes of the huge pack, and those closest to his location were moving away to investigate. ‘We’re gonna have to go down and get him,’ he announced.

‘I’ll go,’ Lieutenant Coley volunteered.

‘Appreciate that, but I’d like you up here keeping tabs on your German friend, make sure he don’t get up to nothing he shouldn’t.’

‘I’ll go, sir,’ Escobedo said, knife ready.

‘That’s what I like about you, Escobedo. Volunteering before I can volunteer you.’

‘Yeah, well I fancied a walk.’

‘You too, Johnson.’

‘I figured as much,’ Johnson said, less enthusiastic.

‘I’ll provide the downstairs cover, Gunderson’ll keep you both safe from up here.’

‘Damn right,’ Gunderson said, readying his rifle. ‘More than happy to do my part and get rid of a few more of them.’

‘Just the dead ones and any stray Nazis, Gunderson,’ Lieutenant Parker warned.

Henri Mercel was aware of them closing in from all directions. Everywhere he looked he saw them, and there was no question that they had seen him. Trudging and trampling. Moving with lethargy but no lack of intent. Desperate, he crawled under the wreck of an upturned Panzer. Its gun turret had wedged in the mud, leaving just enough space for him to hide and remain out of the reach of grabbing hands. And he knew what damage those grabbing hands could do too. Whenever he closed his eyes to try and block out the immediate horror of his surroundings, all he could see was that poor priest who’d helped him being brutally eviscerated.

The crowd seemed to be thinning out the longer he was out of sight. Had he confused them by disappearing, or had they found another poor soul to hound instead? One of the dead things lost its footing and hit the ground next to him with a nauseating thud, like meat on a butcher’s slab. Mercel caught his breath when he recognised the monster.

‘Monsieur Lefebvre?’

He immediately cursed his own stupidity in speaking out, but he’d been taken completely by surprise when he’d recognised one of his neighbours. An ex-resident of Bastogne, Monsieur Lefebvre had, until a few days ago, been a quiet and inoffensive boulanger whose shop had been a little way down the street from his own. Monsieur Lefebvre’s transformation was remarkable and terrifying. Now he was base and degraded, just like all the rest of them. Blood-soaked and blood-thirsty. The old man dragged himself closer on his belly through the snow, and Mercel saw that his right leg was mangled, broken bones jutting through rips in the flesh. It turned his stomach (again). He screwed his eyes shut, then opened them when he felt Monsieur Lefebvre’s cold hands on his feet. He kicked out at the elderly boulanger and, quite by chance, cracked him across the jaw. Another bunny-kick broke the old man’s nose. Three more in quick succession and Monsieur Lefebvre was no more. Unfortunately for Mercel, unsighted as he was beneath the Panzer, he hadn’t bargained on the effect his uncharacteristic show of resistance would have on the rest of the undead nearby. Almost as one they turned and converged on the wrecked tank, and as the forest of feet and legs grew ever closer, Mercel curled up into a ball again and tried to pretend that none of this was happening.

Escobedo climbed over the wall and landed in the slushy snow on the edge of the town square. Johnson followed close behind. ‘What the hell’s that no good idiot doing?’ he whispered, watching Mercel squabbling with the undead.

‘Heads down, fellas,’ Lieutenant Parker hissed from over on the other side of the wall, and he ripped the pin and threw a pineapple grenade as far as he could across the square.

A couple of seconds of silence, then the blast. Body parts were hurled in all directions, and the noise echoed off what was left of the town’s walls.

Almost as one, the dead forgot about the cowardly Belgian hiding under the tank and surged towards the blast zone. ‘Are those things as stupid as they seem?’ Johnson asked.

‘Yep, pretty much,’ Escobedo said. ‘Don’t matter how dumb they look though, they know how to fight and they know how to bite.’

Parker appeared over the wall again, looking like one of those Mr Chad cartoons the Brits were so fond of (wot no action?). ‘The hell are you two waiting for? GO!’

Escobedo led the charge. With most of the creatures heading away, it was comparatively easy to get around them. Johnson took out a couple of stragglers with a knife to the nape of the neck (a tip he’d picked up by chance that had unquestionably helped him stay alive). Escobedo followed suit, and the two of them were at the Panzer wreck in no time and with relative ease.

Mercel, however, panicked at the sight of military boots. It was only when Escobedo crouched down and offered his hand that he realised these men were here to help him, not kill him. He gratefully took the soldier’s hand and squeezed back out from under the wreck. He stood up and brushed himself down, still breathing, but heartbroken at the state of his jacket and trousers. ‘Bonjour…’ he stammered, fishing in his pocket for a white handkerchief to wave in case there was any doubt as to his intention to surrender. ‘Je suis tres desole. Je suis—’

‘Nice to meet you, sir. Please shut up.’

‘We got company,’ Johnson warned. He had his rifle raised ready. The shadows were beginning to swarm back towards them. Hundreds of them.

The close proximity of the dead soldiers elevated Mercel’s panic to new heights. He tried to squirm free from Escobedo’s grip and get back under the tank. Escobedo again implored him to shut up and calm down, but he was too delirious to listen. He became even more frantic when Kenny Gunderson started picking off more of their would-be attackers from the top floor window.

Mercel flapped and moaned and fought, and only became silent when Escobedo laid him out with a well-aimed right-hand slug. It took all the soldier’s strength to heft the deadweight up and carry him back towards their top-floor hideout.

The advancing ungodly army became more riled and aggressive with every single gunshot. Some of them were trying to run. Others fought with each other to be the first to get at the retreating Americans. Johnson struggled to contain his mounting terror. ‘These damn things don’t know when to quit…’ he said, and he watched in disbelief as Gunderson took out another with a perfect shot to the side of the head from above, while another one standing alongside continued oblivious as if nothing had happened. It didn’t even flinch when its face was covered with a bloody spray of bone and brain matter from its fallen comrade.

Shot after shot after shot. But for every one of them that Gunderson felled, ten more took their place.

‘Keep moving, Johnson,’ Escobedo said. ‘We gotta keep moving.’

The Belgian was beginning to come around. Escobedo lowered him and put a hand over his mouth, pre-empting another stream of frightened gibberish. Immediately alert again, Mercel began to struggle. Escobedo threatened him with his fist, then pointed up to where his colleagues were watching and waiting. Mercel didn’t know where he was going or who he was going there with, but he knew it had to be better than this and he stopped arguing.

The advancing undead army was closing in fast. From Lieutenant Coley’s high vantage point he’d noticed a very definite quickening of pace. He’d also noticed other things. He’d noticed how some of the huge crowd, mainly those in uniform – Nazi and allied – moved with more speed and purpose than most of the others. Some of them, he also saw, still carried weapons. Was this a vestigial holdover from before they’d been like this, or something more sinister? Were these damn things still capable of fighting soldier to soldier?

The guys on the ground were struggling. They were in danger of being cut off by the dead, isolated like an island. Coley looked over at von Boeselager and caught his eye. They both knew what had to be done and then pounded down the rickety stairs to ground level.

‘I asked you fellas to stay up outa harms way,’ Lieutenant Parker said as the men appeared on either side of him.

‘Thought you could do with a hand,’ Coley said, and he immediately started firing his M1 into the advancing hordes.

The combined firepower coming from in and around the ruined building was just about enough to keep the dead at bay, but all involved knew it was nothing more than a temporary reprieve and that when the shooting stopped, the dead would surge at them again. Escobedo reached the wall first and fairly hoisted Henri Mercel over onto the other side. The overweight Belgian’s feet kicked furiously as he tried to get himself over. Coley and Parker hauled Escobedo up. Although von Boeselager offered Johnson a hand, he wouldn’t take it. ‘Don’t need help from no kraut,’ he said with the venom in his voice of a man who’d spent too long fighting.

‘Quick!’ von Boeselager shouted. ‘They are close!’

It was clear Johnson wasn’t going to let him help, so instead he returned to firing into the crowd. The dead were almost up to the wall themselves now with only Johnson’s firepower holding them back.

‘Get over here, you dumb bastard,’ Lieutenant Parker yelled at him, but Johnson was too busy fighting to listen. From here their numbers appeared endless: thousands where he thought there’d been hundreds. He shot more and more of them, as many as he could, but it was never going to be enough. Parker, Coley and von Boeslager screamed at him to back away, but their voices continued to go unheard.

A white-suited Nazi, pock-marked by bullet holes, came at him at speed, bursting out from the masses. Before anyone could react, the crazed creature had dropped Johnson and squatted on his chest. The dead man attacked with predatory speed, tearing the soldier’s throat and chest open.

The last thing Johnson saw was Parker reaching out for him over the wall, and Coley and von Boeselager pulling the lieutenant back the other way. ‘Get outta here, Lieutenant,’ Johnson wanted to say but couldn’t. ‘I’m done for.’

He’d heard the cries and the gunfire and fighting all right, but he hadn’t bargained on the full extent of the effect the noise was going to have on the swarms of deadly creatures still trapped in the ruins of Bastogne.

Wilkins was in trouble and he knew it. I’ll take a hundred krauts over just a handful of these things, he thought as he skulked through the shadows. The dead were unnatural and unstoppable. He’d been warned to expect as much, but seeing it with his own eyes was a different matter altogether. He’d witnessed horrifically damaged and disfigured bodies continuing to fight with the venom and animosity of an entire Nazi Einsatzgruppen.

His pistol was useless – more trouble than it was worth. He’d already established that the creatures reacted to noise, and he knew that to fire his weapon out in the open like this would be tantamount to suicide; a kamikaze act (to coin a painfully relevant phrase he’d picked up from recent briefings back home), but one which would result only in his death and not in any perceived tactical gain.

He had to get up off ground level. Being down here was killing him. The vast numbers of the dead limited his visibility to an extraordinary extent and he knew that putting a little distance between him and them would help immeasurably. More than that, his speed had now reduced to little more than a painfully slow crawl, matching the slothful movements of the majority of the creatures surrounding him. He’d found that moving this way had, for the time being at least, been enough to convince his unnatural enemy that he was just like the rest of them.

The sounds of nearby fighting (he was sure he could hear Americans shouting) gave him a focus to head towards, but in the chaos of this battle-damaged town, roads had become blocked and routes abruptly truncated by collapsed buildings. He came across one such obstruction unexpectedly, and inadvertently made a sudden about face. He regretted it the moment it had happened, for his deliberate change of direction immediately attracted the attention of a dead woman who tripped along the fringes of another group of bodies. Her cold, emotionless eyes locked on to Wilkins and he felt an icy chill run the length of his spine. She threw herself at him with a sudden burst of speed.

No time to think.

Wilkins took an open door at the front of a house immediately to his left, but immediately found himself outside again, as the building had almost completely collapsed in on itself. But there was opportunity in this wreckage – there had to be! – and he scrambled up the side of an enormous, pyramid-like pile of broken bricks, struggling with the ice and the uneven, constantly shifting surface under his boots. A quick, breathless climb and he was up, walking along what remained of a supporting wall between two terraced homes, balancing with his arms outstretched like an inexperienced tightrope walker at a particularly macabre circus. He ducked through a hole and dropped into a neighbouring building. This one was in a worse state than the first and he could feel its foundations shaking with his every footfall. He knew he was committed. He had to keep moving. Whatever happened next could be no worse than the savage hell he was fleeing.

Wilkins jumped down into what had previously been a family’s living room, but was now open to the elements. There was a sideboard where once-prized possessions and framed photographs lay under a covering of dust, snow and ice. It was surreal to see the inside turned outside like this, but Wilkins forced himself to ignore the distractions and keep moving, still listening out for the sounds of the battle nearby.

This dilapidated house had become something of a puzzle; a maze where nothing was where it should have been. In the next room, the upstairs was downstairs. A heavy, wooden-framed bed was sitting uncomfortably astride a few sticks of wood which had, until the shells had hit, been a relatively grand dining suite.

Out of one door and in through the next.

He was closer now, but the gunfire had stopped and the fighting was over. Was he too late?

He threw himself across a narrow alleyway which was swarming with the dead. His speed and strength seemed to take all of them by surprise, and though several tried to grab at him, he was too fast and too strong. He burst through another door into the next building along, only then stopping to think what might have happened had it been locked and he’d been stuck outside with those damned, merciless creatures.

Up again… a staircase which went nowhere. On the top step he took a leap of faith across an unexpected chasm, then ran through the first floor of this building before leaping again, this time from one house to the next. The gap was perfectly manageable, but there was a considerable drop waiting for him, with nothing but the dead to cushion his fall.

There was a church up ahead.

Wilkins used another enormous pile of rubble to climb back down to street level, then ran for all he was worth to reach the grey-stone church. Sanctuary, he thought, in more ways than one. He weaved through the milling crowds outside, knowing that if he dared slow down or stop, his number would be up.

A Nazi with half its face missing.

A barely-clothed local woman who he might once have found attractive, but whose body was now so consumed with gangrenous rot and decay as to render her completely abhorrent.

A child with a twisted visage who came at him with the ferocity of an SS killer.

A GI that tripped over his own innards which spilled out like glistening paper-chains from an ugly-looking hole in his belly.

A priest who’d had his throat torn out…

The sights surrounding Wilkins were relentless and uniformly horrific. So terrifying, in fact, that he became disorientated again. He reached the church and frantically climbed the steps, but paused before pushing his way inside through the heavy wooden doors. He looked back and surveyed the horrific landscape through which he’d just travelled and wondered if this torture was some kind of divine retribution for the countless lives he’d taken in the name of freedom since this damned war had begun?

The dead were beginning to advance up the steps towards him. He had a couple of second’s grace. Many of them struggled with the coordination required to climb.

The church doors were locked. Or blocked. One thing was certain – he wasn’t going to get inside.

He listened keenly for some kind of clue which might lead him in the right direction, but there was nothing. As he waited, struggling to keep his composure with so many grotesque ghouls now closing in, he became aware of the horrible noises they made. Dragging feet, but little other sound. Silence where he’d expected to hear moans and groans. The occasional rattle of air trapped in lungs, and sounds of deflation when one of them hit the ground. Individually he’d have struggled to hear anything, but this was a crowd of incredible proportions, and the cumulative noise was deafening.

Over the chaos, Wilkins heard another brief burst of noise coming from elsewhere. The Americans. One of them screaming. Was he too late?

No time to lose.

He estimated the battle to be taking place somewhere in the region of a quarter of a mile north-east of his current position. He made a note of the various buildings between here and there, then ran like hell; straight back down the steps and deep into the advancing cadavers. He dropped his shoulder and went hell-for-leather, not daring to stop or slow for fear he’d never get moving again and that he’d be overcome by the relentless waves of rot threatening to crash over him from all directions.

A grimy-looking, white-washed building was his next port of call. He entered through a mouth-like hole in a side wall, pursued by an alarming number of staggering corpses. He felt like the Pied Piper in a nightmarish twist on the old folk tale. He lost his footing and fell. His right foot was caught, and he feared for a moment that he might be trapped. He had, in fact, been caught by a grotesquely disfigured soldier who had himself been partially buried under fallen masonry. The soldier had a hold of his boot and was doing all it could to sink its germ-filled teeth into his leg. Wilkins writhed to get away but the creature was deceptively strong and determined, and it took an un-gentlemanly boot to the dead thing’s face to free himself. In fact, one boot wasn’t enough. Wilkins kicked out again and again, reducing the dead man’s face to a virtually unrecognisable pulp. He felt a pang of guilt when he realised the unnatural beast had once been an American soldier. Satisfied he’d done enough to render the poor bastard completely incapacitated, he checked his dog-tags. Private Owen. What happened to you, Private? he wondered sadly. How did you end up here like this?

Back up and running again, Wilkins weaved around more of the creatures, again slipping through their grabbing hands. He took a sharp right and collided with several more, the force of impact having a greater effect on them than him as they fell like skittles. Another right turn. Still more of them coming from every conceivable angle. So many now that they were all he could see.

And then Wilkins burst out into the open and found himself in the middle of a large space which looked like it had been the scene of the bloodiest of massacres. He was on his own in a decent-sized bubble of space almost at the centre of the area, but his relief was short-lived as the dead came at him from all angles. He could see numerous potential escape routes where there were gaps in and between the battle-damaged buildings, but right now none of them appeared to be viable options. Each exit was choked by throngs of corpses, and it felt like they were all converging on his isolated position. He had about thirty seconds until they swallowed him up, he reckoned, maybe a minute at best.

Sorry, Jocelyn… I tried, but it wasn’t enough…

A wolf whistle.

The high-pitched noise was unexpected and strangely directionless as it bounced off the walls of the buildings which surrounded him. Wilkins looked around, then up. Got them! A bunch of yanks hanging out of an empty top floor window, gesticulating at him wildly.

No time to waste.

The closest cadavers were in touching distance. Wilkins dropped his shoulder and ran towards the ground floor of the building his would-be saviours were sheltering inside, but was halted in his tracks by a sudden stampede of the hideous monsters coming from both his right and his left. In what seemed like less than a second, his way through was blocked by an impenetrable-looking wall of dead flesh. Same behind him now, too. And on either side. His options were rapidly reducing to none.

‘Drainpipe, soldier. Now!’ a deep, southern accent bellowed.

Wilkins was momentarily aware of something flying through the air above his head, way out of reach. He looked up but before he could work out what it was, a sudden flash and belly-shaking crack answered his question for him. A grenade, thrown by the GIs as a distraction. And it seemed to work, up to a point. It exploded an uncomfortably short distance behind him, sending grit, rubble and body parts flying in all directions, causing enough of a disturbance to confuse the nearest portion of the crowd at least. Wilkins knew he wouldn’t get a better chance and so he charged forward again. He kicked and punched at the vicious creatures which constantly grabbed at him, closing in on him from all sides again now the effects of the temporary distraction were fading. They surged like crashing waves, and all he could do was drop below the surface and go under. He crawled along the ground, ignoring the pain in his knees and frostbitten hands, and weaving around and between the confusing mass of staggering legs until he found the wall and the cast iron drainpipe. He raised himself up and began to climb, kicking out at any of them who tried to pull him back down. Adrenalin forced his tired body to keep moving though all he wanted to do was stop. But he knew he couldn’t. Funny how so much seems to depend on me climbing up this bloody drainpipe, he thought, feeling like he was a young lad again, shimmying up drainpipes at prep school to escape the wrath of his house master. He allowed himself the briefest of glances down into the decaying hordes looking up, and almost fell back when one of them hooked a couple of rotting fingers into the back of one of his boots. He shook himself free and kept climbing.

Halfway up.

His fingers were numb. He didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to hold on for.

Keep moving.

Almost there.

Hand over hand, and he was nearly level with the soldiers at the window now. One of the yanks was hanging out precariously, gesturing for him to try and get closer. But he was more than ten feet away, and Wilkins was more than twenty feet off the ground. He didn’t know how he was going to make it. Maybe he’d just have to hang here until he could hold on no longer and dropped?

The drainpipe was coming loose.

The hardware holding it in place was giving up under the strain of his considerable weight. If he didn’t move fast, he knew he’d be back down amongst the dead quicker than he could say I don’t believe in Voodoo and superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

‘Use the ledge,’ the American called over to him, and Wilkins looked down at his boots. It wasn’t so much a ledge, more a single row of decorative bricks which jutted out slightly, but it was all he’d got. He used bullet holes and other battle damage as hand- and foot-holds and slowly began to traverse across from the drainpipe to the window.

He looked down again and wished he hadn’t. There were hundreds of rotting faces looking up at him, baying for blood. His water bottle fell from his belt and he watched as it landed in the crowd and caused pandemonium. The creatures violently scrummed with each other to get it. They seemed to be miles below and still dangerously close at the same time.

‘That’s it,’ the American said, doing what he could to keep Wilkins focused. ‘You’ve almost done it, fella.’

With his left hand outstretched, Wilkins felt the edge of the window frame. Pressed flat against the building’s pockmarked fascia, boot-tips resting on the ledge, he slowly slid himself across.

‘Gotcha,’ the soldier said as he dragged Wilkins inside and left him in a heap on the dusty floor. For a few seconds he couldn’t move. His legs were like jelly and he had a burning in his lungs the likes of which he’d never felt before. Self-preservation took a backseat to relief. Better to be up here than down there with them.

His feeling of relief was tested when the first person he saw when he looked up was a Nazi, but the kraut’s demeanour was such that it was clear he didn’t present an immediate threat. Neither did the four Americans he could see, nor the rotund dandy who appeared more concerned with a loose thread dangling from the cuff of his jacket than anything else.

Composure returning, Wilkins remembered himself. He stood up, snapped to attention, and saluted the most senior officer he could see. ‘Lieutenant Robert Wilkins. 5th Parachute Brigade.’

The weathered-looking officer returned his salute. ‘Lieutenant Parker, 969th Field Artillery Battalion.’

‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Lieutenant. And thank you.’

‘You’re a little off the beaten track here. And all alone, too. Care to tell me what you’re doing out this way?’

‘Several of us were dropped in overnight. Unfortunately it seems the wind decided to deposit me over here instead of over there. I’m actually a long way off the correct beaten track, and right now I fail to see what exactly I can do about that.’

‘Seems we’re all stuck here together, don’t it,’ Lieutenant Coley said, introducing himself. ‘If there is a way out of here, I’ll be damned if I can see it.’

Wilkins took the opportunity to peer out through the broken window through which he’d just made his unceremonious entry. The yanks were right. There’d be no getting out of this place without a fight. Endless numbers of corpses lapped up against the base of the building like toxic waves battering the most prone lighthouse imaginable.