“Jawohl, Herr Oberfeldwebel.”
“Schneider, I want you up here with me. We see a ghoul or even a few, leave them to me. We see a big crowd coming at us in close quarters, I want you ready to torch them. Verstehen sie?”
Animal grinned. “Verstanden, Herr Oberfeldwebel.”
Wolff shouldered his FG42 and stepped into the administrative area. Their boots stomped against the dead quiet. A thick layer of trampled paper covered the floor, some of it burned in a pile of ash and charred sheets.
The area was clear. He ignored the lift and proceeded to the stairs.
The next level was clear as well.
The paratroopers found bodies and a harsh chemical stink on the third level. From a side room came a strange drumming. The sound of fists pounding a door in a tireless frenzy.
As the squad filled the space, the pounding stopped.
Something growled deep in its throat.
The paratroopers spread out, weapons raised.
“Come and get it,” Wolff called.
Two figures sprinted howling into the room. The squad dropped them with a salvo.
One was an SS fighter, the other a British paratrooper, his shredded sleeves revealing arms gnawed to the bone.
“They’re Tommies,” Steiner said, surveying the dead carpeting the floor. “Tommies and SS and scientists.”
“What are the Red Devils doing here?” Muller said.
“They don’t trust us,” Reiser said behind them. He turned to address the squad coming down the stairs. “Keep going. Secure the serum.”
“Jawohl, Herr Leutnant.”
“Now we shall see who these two unlikely comrades were trying to get at,” the lieutenant told Wolff.
They entered the side room, another lab space. Test tubes and other glassware had toppled from the metal shelving and had been ground into glass dust.
Wolff knocked on the door. “Fallschirmjäger!” He added in his poor English, “You let us inside.”
The door opened to reveal a wide-eyed British paratrooper in a cramped storage closet.
“Herr Wilkins,” Wolff said in surprise.
“Thank you, Herr Wolff,” the man said with British aplomb. “You saved me quite a lot of bother.”
Another Red Devil lay shivering in a ball with a bandaged leg, his face flushed and glistening with sweat.
Wilkins glanced back at his comrade. “This is Lieutenant Chapman. He’s wounded.”
“This is it, Wilkie,” the British officer said. “Thank you for everything. Carry on.”
“Ask the English if his man is bitten,” Reiser said.
“He is,” Wilkins said in German, “but—”
Reiser stepped into the storage room and shot the British lieutenant twice in the head.
“Christ!” Wilkins shouted.
The lieutenant swung the Luger to aim it at the man’s face. “Were you bitten?”
“I’m clean,” the sergeant said. “Honest! Now put the bloody gun down. Nicht schiessen!” Don’t shoot!
“As you wish.” Reiser holstered his pistol. “Herr Wilkins, a pleasure to see you again. Now explain your presence here.”
Wilkins said the brigade had dispatched a commando team to the facility as insurance in case the Fallschirmjäger failed.
“Just ten of you,” Wolff grunted. “That was your first mistake.”
Wilkins shrugged. It obviously hadn’t been his call. He’d followed orders.
“We made contact with some SS who’d barricaded themselves in the bottom level,” he said. “Hoping to entice them out, the lieutenant told them Hitler had been infected, and if we had the germ, we could cure him.”
“That was your second mistake.”
If the Führer died, the SS might have gone out in a blaze of glory or simply shot themselves where they stood.
But the Führer hadn’t died, not quite. They believed he’d become infected with the Overman germ.
They’d injected themselves so they’d be draugr too.
The British paratrooper shrugged again. He hadn’t made that call either. “We waited an hour. Strong ambush position, clear lanes of fire. The SS charged in like wild animals. There was no stopping them.” He looked down at his dead lieutenant. “At the end, Chappie and I lost our weapons and made it into this cupboard. I was hoping to give him some comfort before ending it for him with my knife. He was a good man. He’d earned that much.”
“A touching sentiment,” Reiser sneered, “which easily could have resulted in your death. You have two choices now, English. Run along and join your comrades at the airport, or come with us.”
“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’ll tag along with you and your men. The devil I know, so to speak.”
“You will submit to my authority as your superior.” Reiser glanced at Wolff. “Oberfeldwebel Wolff will see to it.”
Wolff crossed his arms and nodded. “We’ll put this English to good use.”
“Since he does not trust us to do our duty, give him the most dangerous tasks so he can show us how they’re accomplished. Ja?”
A paratrooper rushed into the room and saluted. “We have secured what we believe is the original serum, Herr Leutnant.”
“That is good news,” Reiser said. “Prepare to move out.”
The Fallschirmjäger exchanged grins. They’d fought to their objective and obtained it.
Now they just had to fight their way out.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BIVOUAC
They made it as far as the top level before a messenger from Hauptmann Werner told them the regiment was bivouacking here for the night.
“Billet where you stand,” Reiser said.
Muller sat on the floor exhausted. Steiner moved along on his hands and knees, sweeping as much of the loose papers as he could into a pile.
“What are you doing, Otto?”
The machine-gunner grinned. “Making a bed.”
The squad exchanged glances then dove to the ground to sweep up the paper. Tonight, these pages documenting the Reich’s secret weapons projects would make great bedding and future kindling. The British sergeant watched them with amusement before joining in to fashion himself a pillow.
“Herr Leutnant, should we dispose of the bodies?” Wolff asked Reiser.
“We achieved our objective,” the lieutenant said. “Heroes do not clean up. Let the other platoons deal with the mess.”
Muller picked up a random sheet from the dusty floor. The top of the page was stamped with a swastika and the words, TOP SECRET. He read:
Once the body’s surface is penetrated, the Overman bacterium, like any foreign bacterium, scavenges for free iron required to multiply, invading tissues and encountering complex defense mechanisms that respond with inflammation.
The Overman bacterium then distinguishes itself, in several ways. First, it is encased in novel proteins that protect it from opsonization and phagocytosis—
He crumpled it up with disgust. The corruption of the Wehrmacht, the fall of Berlin, the threat of creeping extinction for Germany, none of it just happened. It was the result of dedicated effort by minds far brighter than his. A grand scientific endeavor documented in fifty-mark words typewritten on thousands of sheets of paper.
Given time and resources, the scientists might have succeeded. They might have created the Overman, a super soldier of limitless strength and endurance. They might have conquered the world.