‘Shine your torch down there, Jones,’ Steele said, and Jones did as instructed. ‘It’s all right. They’re not getting up this way.’
Jones nervously edged further and further down, then stopped when he saw it. A semi-solid mass of writhing flesh, like a scab blocking the stairs. An apparently endless number of bodies had become entangled and had formed an impenetrable blockage, no way up or down. Steele had made things certain by dropping furniture on top of them. Chairs. A desk. The staircase was permanently out of action, but there was clearly no way the dead would get through. Disfigured faces stared up at Jones from deep within the horrific mess. Dead eyes filled with desperation to get at him, and fury because they were trapped.
‘Where now?’ Wilkins asked.
‘This way,’ Steele answered, and the three men followed him into what was, unmistakably, a laboratory. It was like nothing any of them had seen before. A hellish place, the bloody remnants of abandoned experiments lay everywhere. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ Steele warned. ‘The entire place is almost certainly contagious.’
At one end of the room was a grey, bullet-marked wall which had been drenched with numerous splashes and fountains of blood. Nearby, parts of eviscerated cadavers still lay strapped to metal trollies and tables. Much of the medical equipment appeared to have been smashed to pieces and lay in ruin all around them.
‘So it seems our Doctor Månsson may have been a victim of his own creations,’ Wilkins said, surmising from the chaos.
‘That’s what I thought at first,’ Steele replied. ‘I think there’s more to it than that, though.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Take a closer look. Much of this equipment has been deliberately wrecked. From what we’ve seen of the dead, would they really be interested in doing anything like this? Electrical equipment has been smashed, the innards torn out. All these test tubes and phials… there’s not a single one that’s been left undamaged. No, gentleman, I believe this laboratory has been systematically destroyed, perhaps by the doctor himself.’
‘And what about Månsson?’
‘It’s my belief that he’s being held hostage, if he’s still alive that is.’
‘By whom?’
‘By the last Nazis left alive in this godforsaken place, that’s who. Allow me to show you.’
Sergeant Steele doubled-back and exited the laboratory, then followed another passageway which led in the opposite direction. They were now on the easternmost edge of the ancient building, overlooking a vast swathe of Polonezköy which had, until now, remained largely unseen. The four soldiers peered down through narrow slits in the stonework.
‘Good Lord,’ Wilkins gasped.
‘Bloody hell,’ Barton cursed. ‘You reckon our man’s in the middle of that lot?’
‘If he’s anywhere at all, yes.’
Below the east wall of the castle, stretching out all the way to the wall running around the entire perimeter of the concentration camp site, was a crowd of bodies the likes of which none of them had ever seen – nor had ever wanted to see – before. It reminded Wilkins of movie-reel footage he’d seen of Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies: an apparently endless sea of heads, all crowding together in a show of slavish devotion. Unlike those Nazi events, however, the crowd here behaved entirely differently.
Less a crowd, more a swarm.
Nazis, prisoners, men, women and children…
Hundreds. Thousands.
Dead. Every last one of them.
When flocking to hear the Fuhrer speak, the faithful (or fearful, or both) remained largely stationary to listen and observe. Here, the vast numbers of people pushed ever closer to something just left of centre of the immense gathering. At first Wilkins couldn’t make out what it was he was looking at, but then the details began to come into focus.
There were a number of buildings in the midst of the chaos. Some had clearly already been overrun by the enemy: doors hanging open, crammed with corpses trying to get in whilst others forced their way out. The movement of the rotting masses around these wooden huts appeared strangely like eddies in white-water flows, turning in on themselves again and again, many of the creatures being dragged underfoot and being trampled by many, many more.
But there remained one building which was resolutely closed-up. It was also the one which appeared to be attracting the most attention from the decaying hordes. Steele saw that his colleagues had identified it as quickly as he had. ‘If our scientist chappie is still alive, I’ll wager that’s where he’ll be. Right in the middle of all that damned mess.’
‘Then we might as well give up and get out of this hellish place right now,’ Jones said.
‘We can’t do that and you know it, Jones,’ Wilkins snapped at him. ‘Good Lord, man, do I really have to remind you again what’s at stake here?’
‘No, sir, you don’t, you’ve already told me enough times and I know it anyway. But that don’t change anything. I don’t see how we’re going to get anyone out of that mess down there alive.’
‘It gets worse,’ Steele said.
‘How can this get any worse?’
‘If Doctor Månsson is down there, then he’s not alone. I believe he has plenty of company in that building, both Nazi and civilian.’
‘Why would the Nazis allow prisoners in there with them?’ Jones asked, perfectly sensibly.
‘Collateral,’ Wilkins answered quickly. ‘It makes sense. They’re desperate – desperate to survive and desperate to get out alive. There’s a perfectly good reason for them to keep hold of the doctor and any number of prisoners too. The doctor would be a bargaining chip, because I’m sure his significance to our side won’t have gone unnoticed.’
‘And the civilians?’
‘A cushion, if you will. A safety net between either us and them or, more likely, between Jerry and the dead.’
‘Way I see it, we’ll struggle to get anyone out of there,’ Barton said, sounding increasingly dejected.
‘We can do it,’ Wilkins said, eternally optimistic. ‘I have an idea.’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ Jones said, ‘but we’ve less than two hours and…’
‘And what, Lance Corporal?’
‘And there’s likely to be quite a number of Nazis down there along with several thousand or more of those horrible dead things. What hope do the four of us have against all of them?’
‘You’re absolutely right, soldier. That’s why we need to take a different tack and even out the odds. We need to get the dead working for us.’
26
‘This is never going to work, Sarge,’ Barton whispered secretively to Steele, keeping his voice low for fear of being overheard by the lieutenant.
‘For all our sakes we’d better hope it does.’
Wilkins sensed their unease. ‘I’m sure I know what you’re whispering about, chaps, but I need you to have a little faith. I’ve done something like this previously.’
‘We do have a little faith in you, Lieutenant. Problem is, right now it is just a little…’
Jones looked up from his work and watched nervously for Lieutenant Wilkins’ reaction to that. He’d have laughed out loud himself if he hadn’t been so damn frightened.
‘You’re really going to do this?’ Barton asked. Wilkins nodded.
‘I don’t believe I have any choice. And I certainly wouldn’t ask any of you fellows to do something I wasn’t prepared to do myself.’
‘Then good luck to you, sir.’
He stepped forward and the two men shook hands.
‘And to you too, Barton. Now, you all know what I need each of you to do?’