The SS had sworn to follow Hitler to the grave.
The speaker blared again. “Remain in your present location, British. We are coming to you.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GRUNEWALD
Jäger Muller trailed Leutnant Reiser through the dense woods.
Gaunt pines wherever he looked. Stately oak trees devoid of greenery. Light and shadow played tricks on his eyes, making him see lurching dead everywhere.
The thrashing he heard turned out to be a terrified snow hare.
Muller carried his rifle, bayonet, Luger, and stick grenades, along with a bandolier holding a hundred rounds and additional clips stuffed into every spare pocket. Still, he felt defenseless.
Something moaned in the trees. He looked at the lieutenant to make sure he hadn’t imagined it this time.
Leutnant Reiser shouldered his MP40 submachine-gun and fired a burst. The stream of bullets punched the grimacing ghoul in the head and nearly tore it clean off. The body toppled a moment later in a puff of smoke and dust.
“Good shooting, Herr Leutnant,” Muller said in wonder.
“Ja,” said Reiser. “Send my trophy in the next post. Los, jäger.”
The trooper pursed his lips and followed. Damn it, did the lieutenant have to be so good at shooting on top of everything else? Did he even know what fear was?
It was just one more thing that was intimidating about Reiser. Maybe that was how it was supposed to work. Muller feared failure more than he feared the undead. He feared being a feigling, a coward. And he feared Reiser most of all.
Not just fear. He despised the man, found him almost entirely lacking in warmth and personality. Muller didn’t like officers in general, and not just for that. The higher up in rank you got, the closer you were to being Hitler.
If Oberfeldwebel Wolff were here, he’d tell Muller what to do instead of forcing him to tag along in the middle of the woods, part spectator, part cannon fodder. The sergeant cared about his men as much as he did the mission. Wolff would give him the chance to conquer his fear by drawing blood with a kill.
Reiser couldn’t be bothered. He didn’t care about Muller at all, didn’t even know his name. And every downed ghoul brought him closer to his objective.
“Herr Leutnant, are you sure the platoon is ahead of us?”
The lieutenant answered with a grunt. “Ja.”
In the darkness, they’d stumbled upon the weapons container, already opened and almost emptied of weapons and ammunition. They’d armed themselves and marched east until dawn found them in this thick forest.
Muller was certain they’d overshot the assembly area. This wasn’t a patch of woods. It was the Grunewald Forest, on the other side of the Havel River, which put them far ahead of the regiment and very much on their own.
He was sure enough about it he opened his mouth to tell Reiser, then wisely shut it again. “Surely,” he ventured, “we should have caught up to them by—”
Reiser raised his MP40 and fired again. Two bodies crumpled to the snow among the trees. “Los.”
“Zu befehl.” While obedience was highly valued in the Wehrmacht, the Fallschirmjäger were expected to take initiative, especially if it meant being aggressive. “I’ll take point, Herr Leutnant.”
He ranged ahead before the lieutenant could respond with some scathing rebuke. As long as he was out here, he was going to prove himself.
They crossed a small footbridge over a frozen canal linking two lakes. The distant woods appeared a cloudy gray.
Fog? No, smoke. A fire smoldered deep in the forest.
He advanced bayonet first, ready for anything. The lieutenant tramped behind him. The woods opened up to a meadow shrouded in a thick smoky haze.
Massive pyres of corpses smoldered by several three-ton trucks. Two German soldiers and a civilian dug through the charred bodies with their hands.
His first thought was they were crazy. The ash was still intensely hot.
His second thought was they were draugr.
If he turned around and checked with the lieutenant for orders, Reiser would shoot the infected himself. Muller raced ahead to get his kill.
As he marched, he spared a thought for the morality of it. As a soldier, he’d often questioned when it was right and wrong to take another man’s life. Then he reminded himself these things weren’t men, not anymore.
The draugr turned at the sound of his approach. The civilian’s scalp fell forward in a bloody flap over his face. The thing brushed it out of the way with his clawed hand and let out a sound like snickering.
Any moral qualms Muller might have had died right there.
Then he slid into the pit.
So focused on the draugr and the smoke, he’d completely missed the hastily dug trenches. He’d fallen into one of these to come to a skidding half on top of thick carpet of stiff, lime-covered corpses.
Arms, legs, hands, eyes, bloody torsos, and faces, so many dead faces, all tangled together as if fused together into a single monstrous organism.
He cried out in horror. The draugr sighed as they staggered toward him.
Where was the lieutenant? Why wasn’t he firing?
A hand gripped his jacket and yanked. It was Reiser. The lieutenant hauled him out of the pit. “On your feet, dumb-head! Shoot your weapon!”
“Jawohl!” Muller raised his K98 rifle and fired with a loud report.
And missed.
More than panic affected his aim. Even now, he shied from killing unarmed people at close range.
This didn’t make him a coward. This made him normal.
Muller worked the bolt to chamber another round and fired again, with similar results. The draugr were getting too close for comfort. He backpedaled straight into Reiser, who grabbed him by the back of the neck and shoved him forward.
“Do your duty, jäger!” the lieutenant barked.
They weren’t people. They were monsters wearing the faces of people.
He fired again.
The civilian spun like a top and toppled into one of the lime pits. Emboldened, Muller steadied his breathing and shot the soldiers in rapid succession.
If he felt bad about it, that would have to wait until later.
Right now, he felt good.
He was alive, and they were dead. He hadn’t failed. He could do this. He turned hoping to catch some sign of approval from the lieutenant, but Reiser was already walking away to inspect the bodies in the trenches.
Which was well and good, as far as Muller was concerned. He was glad the lieutenant hadn’t caught him looking for a pat on the head.
He gazed down at the horrific mass of bodies, wondering how they ended up here. Many had their wrists tied behind their backs with rope. Nearly all had broken skulls.
These people had been executed.
Something was alive in the trenches. More than one thing. The mass of bodies appeared to pulse as several ghouls at the bottom tried to squirm their way out.
“Interesting,” Reiser mused. “They have plenty of meat. Why do they want to get out and try to kill us?”
Muller winced at the idea of people being meat. His stomach soured.
“Because killing us is their main passion, Herr Leutnant,” he guessed. “Eating is just a part of it.”
Reiser’s eyes narrowed, and the jäger realized the lieutenant had posed the question rhetorically to himself. Then he nodded. “That may be so.”