Necroscope

The next pill-box was the same, and the one after that. Six of them in all, they were all the same. Harry took them out in less than two minutes.

In the last one, when it was done he found the chaotic mind of one of the fresh dead defenders and calmed him. 'It's over for you now,' he said, 'but the one who brought all this about is still alive. You'd be home with your family tonight if not for him. And so would I. Now, where's Dragosani?'

'In Borowitz's office, in the tower,' said the other. 'He's turned it into the control room. There'll be others with him.'

'I expect there will,' said Harry, staring into the Russian's shattered, smoking, unrecognisable face. 'Thanks.'

And then there was only one thing left to do, but Harry fancied he'd need a little help to do it.

He snapped open the clamps that held the machine-gun in place on its swivelling base, took up the heavy gun and hurled it down to the hard floor, then lifted it and threw it down again. After being dashed to the concrete three or four times the hard wooden stock splintered lengthwise, allowing Harry to break off a jagged stake with a flat base and a sharp, hardwood point.

He reached for his cartridges and found only one left, gritted his teeth and loaded the single cartridge into his shotgun. It would have to be enough. Then he pulled open the pill-box door and stepped out into the swirling snow.

In the near distance, softened by night and the fast-falling snow, the Chateau blazed with light, its searchlight beams cutting to and fro as they searched for targets. Most of Harry's army - what remained of it - was already at the walls of the Chateau itself, however, from which the staccato yammering of machine-guns now sounded unceasingly. The remaining defenders were trying to kill dead men, and they were finding it hard.

Harry looked about, saw a group of latecomers leaning into the snow as they plodded towards the beleaguered building. Eerie figures they were, gaunt scarecrow men, creaking past him in monstrous animation. But death held no fears for Harry Keogh. He stopped two of them, a pair of mummied cadavers a little less ravaged than the

rest, and offered one the hardwood stake. 'For Dragosani,' he said.

The other Tartar carried a great curving sword all scabbed with rust; Harry reckoned he'd used it in his day to devastating effect. Well, and now - with any justice -he'd use it again. He pointed to the sword, nodded, said: 'That, too, is for Dragosani - for the vampire in him.'

Then he opened a Mobius door, and guiding his two sere companions stepped through it.

Inside the Chateau Bronnitsy it had been all hell let loose almost from the beginning. The place had been built two hundred and thirty years ago on an ancient battlefield; the building itself was a mausoleum for a dozen of the fiercest of all the Tartar warriors. And its protection had kept the peaty ground pliant, so that the bodies which had lain there were more truly mummies than fleshless corpses.

Also, Dragosani had ordered the great stone flags in the cellars lifted and floorboards ripped out in his search for signs of sabotage; and so, at Harry Keogh's first call, there had been little to deter these re-animated Tartars as they'd struggled up from their centuried graves to answer his command and prowl the Chateau's corridors, laboratories and conservatories. And wherever they found ESPers or defenders, they had simply put them down out of hand.

Now all that remained were the fortified machine-gun positions in the Chateau's own walls, which allowed the men within them no egress, no means of escape. The machine-gun posts could only be entered from within the Chateau; there were no exterior doors, no way out. The voice of one such call-sign trapped in his fortified position told Dragosani the entire story in every gory detail where he raged and frothed in his tower control room:

'Comrade, this is madness, madness!' the voice moaned over Dragosani's control radio, blocking all other traffic -if any remained to be blocked! 'They are... zombies, dead men! And how may we kill dead men? They come -and my gunner cuts them down and shoots them to pieces - and then the pieces come! Outside, a pile of pieces wriggles and kicks and builds itself into a wall against the wall of the Chateau. Trunks, legs, arms, hands - even the smaller pieces and the naked bones themselves! Soon they will pour in through the gun slits, and what then?'

Dragosani snarled, more animal now than ever, and shook his fists at the night and the drifting snow beyond the tower's windows. 'Keogh!' he raged. 'I know you're there, Keogh. So come if you're coming and let's be done with it.'

'They're inside the Chateau, too!' the voice on the radio sobbed. 'We're trapped in here. My gunner is a madman now. He raves even as he works his gun. I've jammed the steel door shut but something continues to batter at it, trying to get in. I know what it is, for I saw it; it stuck a leathery claw inside before I could slam the door on its wrist; now the hand - oh God, the hand! -claws at my legs and tries to climb. I kick it away but it always returns. See, see? Again! Again!' And his voice tapered off into static and a crackling peal of laughter.

Simultaneous with the idiot sounds from the radio, suddenly Yul Galenski cried out in terror from his anteroom office. 'The stairs! They're coming up the stairs!' His voice was shrill as a girl's; he had no experience of fighting; he was a clerk, a secretary. And in any case, who had experience of such as this?

The DO had been standing at the window, white-faced, trembling; but now he snatched up a machine-pistol and rushed through to Galenski where he backed away from the outer door to the landing. On his way he grabbed blast grenades from Dragosani's desk. At least he is a man! thought Dragosani, grudgingly.

Then came the DO's yelp of horror, his cursing, the chatter of his machine-pistol, finally the tearing explosion of grenades where he armed them and dropped them down the stairwell. And coming immediately after the thunder of the explosives, the last message from the unknown call-sign:

'No! No! Mother in heaven! My gunner has shot himself and now they're coming through the gun slits! Hands without arms! Heads without bodies! I think I shall have to follow my gunner, for he is out of all this now. But these... remains! They crawl among the grenades! No -stop that!' There came the distinct ch-ching of a grenade armed, more screaming and gibbering and sounds of chaos, and finally a massive burst of static following which - nothing.

The radio sat and hissed background static at itself. And suddenly the Chateau Bronnitsy seemed very quiet...

It was a quiet which couldn't last. As the DO backed into Galenski's office from the landing, where smoke and cordite stench curled up acridly from below, so Harry Keogh and his Tartar companions emerged from the Mobius continuum. They were there, in the anteroom, as if someone had suddenly switched them on.

The DO heard Galenski's wail of abject terror and disbelief, whirled in a half-circle - and saw what Galenski had seen: a grim, smoke-grimed young man flanked by menacing mummy-things of black leather and gleaming white bone. The sight of them alone - right here, in this room with him - was almost sufficient to freeze him, unman him. But not quite. Life was dear.

Lips drawn back in a rictus of desperation and fear, the DO gurgled something meaningless and swung up his machine-pistol... only to be lifted off his feet and thrown back out onto the landing, his face turning to raw pulp as Harry discharged his last cartridge at point-blank range.

In another moment Harry's companions had turned their attention to Galenski where he gibbered and grovelled in a corner behind his desk, and Harry had stepped through into what was once Gregor Borowitz's inner sanctum. Dragosani, in the act of hurling the extinct radio from its table, turned and saw him. His great jaws gaped his surprise; pointing an unsteady hand, he hissed like a snake, his red eyes blazing. And for the merest moment the two faced each other.