At last, a ladder going up. The tunnel kept going who knew where, but according to the intel Adams had given him, this was his stop.
He grabbed the rungs to haul himself up.
And emerged into a utility room beneath the German Reichstag.
Sergeant Wolff’s squad emerged behind him, followed by Reiser.
“Move,” the lieutenant snapped. “Make room for the others.”
Wilkins carried on, mounting a set of stairs that took him up into the parliamentary building itself. He emerged, weapon ready, in a set of offices converted to military use but since abandoned. Large wall maps showed red pins on military units in the Ardennes and Poland, likely distribution points for the Overman serum. Somebody had scrawled on one in big capital letters, like graffiti: THE DREAM IS OVER. No time to collect more documents. If Reiser wanted them, he’d collect them himself. Wilkins was just along for the ride.
The offices led to the empty parliament chamber, covered in dust and masonry dislodged by Allied bombing raids. The walls were still blackened by the 1933 fire. So great was Hitler’s disdain for the institution housed here that the building had never been fully repaired. A row of bodies lay on the floor, covered in Nazi banners used as shrouds.
In the grand lobby, Wilkins raised his fist to signal the platoon to halt.
Reiser came forward. Seeing nothing ahead, his eyes narrowed to fiery slits. “Why are we stopping?”
Wilkins signaled to listen.
Outside, a man was shouting.
And beneath that sound, a steady stomp, stomp, stomp.
A military unit marching.
Reiser grinned and hurried ahead. “Come! The Reserve Army is here.”
The squad rushed after him. Wilkins scowled and followed. So much for slow and quiet. The fact was they had no idea what was out there, friend or foe. The regiment had taken severe losses and broken up. Right now, they were a single company in a hostile city with no intel about threats.
Rushing off was a bad idea.
They reached the edge of the lobby and the grand doors flung open to the late December cold. In the hazy light of first dawn, a man dressed in a Nazi Party uniform stood with his back to them on the Reichstag steps, one fist on his hip, the other pounding the air next to his head.
Before him, on the Königsplatz square, a formation of what appeared to be SS in black uniforms marched in crisp goosestep under eagle standards and Nazi flags, rifles shouldered with bayonets fixed. Behind the soldiers, the Kroll Opera House smoldered.
“Ein volk,” the man cried. “Ein volk!”
One people. Part of the Nazi Party slogan, “One people, one empire, one leader.” Even now, the Nazis dreamed of ruling the world.
Reiser gaped. “Mein Führer?”
The man wheeled to glare at the lieutenant. Behind him, the SS formation stopped and executed a neat about face without orders.
At least 2,000 well-armed Nazi fanatics.
Wilkins barely noticed them.
My God, he thought. It was him. It was him.
Adolf Hitler.
“You’re kidding me,” he said.
Reiser came to attention, clicked his heels, and threw his arm out in salute. “Sieg heil, mein Führer!” The man was glowing. “What are your orders?”
The man who’d persecuted millions, launched a horrific war, and started a global plague slowly raised his fist.
“Ein volk!” he screamed.
The man’s eyes glowed white.
The SS lowered their rifles from their shoulders and began to march quick-time toward the Reichstag in an endless black river, teeth clacking under their steel helmets. The hooked crosses of swastikas unfurled in the wind.
The typical draugr shambled until they closed with their prey, at which time they attacked with a surprising burst of speed. These draugr were different, advancing with energy and vigor.
Eagle Company was in trouble.
Sergeant Wolff raised his weapon. “Permission to fire, Herr Leutnant?”
Reiser opened fire, dropping one of the guardsmen. “Obviously! But do not harm the Führer!”
Even with Hitler being a draugr, the man was still loyal as well.
The front rank of SS collapsed as the squad opened up. Wilkins killed one after another with his jungle carbine, fueled by his hatred of the SS as much as his loathing of the undead. The rest of the platoon poured out of the building and took up firing positions on the squad’s flanks. Then everybody shrank back as the SS charged, mouths wide open in a soundless roar.
“Now would be the time,” Wolff told Schneider.
The big soldier shot a stream of flame across the front ranks of the draugr. Still they advanced until collapsing. On the right, the SS speared First Squad with their bayonets. Screams rang out.
“Fall back!” Reiser ordered.
The platoon retreated into the Reichstag, dropping stick grenades as they moved.
Not Wilkins.
He stayed long enough to send a clip’s worth of hot metal downrange that obliterated the Führer’s face.
CHAPTER TWENTY
RUN
Confusion.
Eagle Company fell back on itself, cramming the lobby as the SS charged inside with a roar. Howls of pain filled the space as the draugr tore into the Fallschirmjäger, bayoneting anything that lived.
Oberfeldwebel Wolff found himself doing something he’d never done before and never thought he would.
He ran for his life.
The English sergeant huffed alongside him. On his other side, Leutnant Reiser ran, his face purple with rage. Wolff spared a final glance over his shoulder and saw Animal at the center of a wide circle of charred and burning corpses, firing bursts from his flamethrower at the swarming dead.
Then he went down under the flashing bayonets.
“We will regroup,” Reiser fumed. “Then return and butcher the bastards!”
The lieutenant was nuts. Instead of taking his time and reconnoitering, he’d led the company to its slaughter. All because of his blind loyalty to the Führer, who’d emerged from his Führerbunker to rule over the undead.
The soldiers pursuing them were Hitler’s Leibstandarte Guard Battalion and Führer Escort Battalion, his palace guard, 2,000 strong. Like Hitler himself, they’d all injected themselves with the Overman serum and continued to follow him even after the bacterium had destroyed their minds.
They’d carried on miming their pageants and rituals, like a cartoonish caricature miming their former glory.
Wilkins pointed. “There!”
Wolff didn’t wait for orders. He veered onto a side corridor and headed toward daylight flooding in through a hole blasted in a wall.
Gunfire echoed through the hallways. The remnants of Eagle Company were falling back in good order towards the tunnel.
Where they’d be trapped.
Wolff scrambled over the rubble and reached the outside. From here, he had a clear view of SS pouring into the building, which was now smoking.
The last stragglers came out of the hole. Besides Reiser and Wilkins, he counted Beck, Weber, Braun, and Engel. They were missing Schneider, Schulte, Muller, and Steiner.