The doctor opened his mouth, wordlessly, impotently, as the second Japanese locked his glassy gaze upon him. Deciding the man unworthy of a bullet, the attacker drew back his clenched, sword-wielding fist, then brought the blade down with a deliberate, sudden slash, instantly severing three fingers from the doctor’s right hand, then clattering through his rib cage and opening up the skin and fat from his collarbone to the crest of his pelvis. The doctor collapsed, soaked wet with his own warm blood, the slime of yellow fat dripping from his too-generous gut.
Doctor Goering jammed his wounded right hand into his armpit, trying to stop the freely flowing blood as the two Japanese officers slowly marched towards the engine compartment, deliberately popping off one deadly-aimed round after another as they massacred the retreating German crew.
The doctor had seen slaughter before, yes, but this was something different. Not animalistic, not the deeds of men trapped within the jungle mist of hatred, but mechanical, dissociative extermination without bloodlust or fury, a single-minded focus on utilitarian butchery. The crew might have been ants under a heel, not of a cruel schoolboy, but beneath an unfeeling actuary who’d precisely timed the seconds he’d need to reach his next appointment. No doubt they already had a submarine in the area, preparing to intercept the U-3531 and take her over.
From his prone vantage, the doctor could only watch as Diesel Obermaschineit Baeck jumped from behind the battery bank, heavy wrench held high above his head like a war-mallet, only to be felled by a continuous burst of 9mm bullets into his solar plexus.
Swiveling, the first Japanese took aim at the battery bank; the other, a seawater pipe, bursting both with a single salvo, electrical arcs sparking as the battery acid met the foamy, white brine of the ocean. Doctor Goering dragged himself toward his cabin as the influx of water swirled around the base of batteries already beginning to flood the engine room.
Once he’d dragged his girth into his medical cabin, he pushed the door closed with a foot, attempting to shut out the sight of his own bloody drag marks out of his mind. With his one good hand, he reached up to his medical cabinet, swiping his fingers along the wood as glass pill-bottles rained down upon him. Several hit the metal deck and shattered, slivers of broken glass the least of the splendid hell.
Morphine — where was the damnable morphine? The pain was too much. He felt as if he’d been sliced in half, only his weary bones holding his feeble, desiccated body together. And then he found it — Temmler Pharmaceutical’s methamphetamine pills, already loose on the deck amidst the broken bottles. Three pills. Then they were in his mouth, along with a single shard of glass, where he ground all between his teeth and swallowed, burning and cutting their way down his raw throat.
The ecstasy hit almost immediately, a sudden convulsing high that dwarfed the rapture found within a morphine blot. The doctor rose to his hands and knees, his ruined chest and gut spilling down his uniformed blouse and trousers.
An acidic smell burned his nostrils as he drew in a breath — metallic pineapple, a fearful odor he’d never thought he’d sense again. Green, low-hanging chlorine gas gathered about the compartment, just like in the trenches of the Great War. The burning sensation increased as the mucus membranes in his nose interacted with the chlorine molecule changing it into a powerful hydrochloric acid. In the nose, it was painful. In the lungs, it would soon be fatal, essentially melting the tissues from the inside, until finally, he would drown in his own bodily fluids. But why? A long-forgotten explanation flashed through the doctor’s stimulant-addled mind: battery acid mixing with seawater produced the deadly gas cloud. The Japanese had done this purposefully. Discontent with the labor of methodically shooting the unarmed crew, they’d simply opted to gas them all.
More gunshots echoed from both ends of the submarine as the Japanese stalked in opposite directions, eliminating the convulsing survivors. Still crawling, the doctor dragged his frame out of the medical cabin, holding his breath, taking air into his lungs with little gasps. Around him, wounded men clutched their throats and writhed, their lips flecked with pink foam, every choking breath sucking in more of the poison gas.
The doctor grasped a pipe and dragged himself to his feet, holding in his ruined guts with his two-fingered right hand. Pharmaceutical fire coursed through his veins as he stumbled through the engine room, eyes closed against the burning gas clouds, feet wet with battery acid and pooling seawater, every muscle twitching as sparks and electrical arcs danced while dead men floated face-down all around him.
Yanking an emergency gas mask from the wall, the doctor pushed it to his face and tried to breath, but found no air. He ran a finger through the mouthpiece, finding a thick wad of hardened epoxy over the filter.
Sabotaged. Days ago, maybe even weeks ago.
Shaking uncontrollably, the doctor staggered into the galley, once again collapsing. He reached up to the counter and pulled free a washcloth, spilling a pile of potatoes about his prone form. He pushed the washcloth down towards his crotch, underneath the bloody beltline of his trousers, and against his penis. With all his might, he forced himself to urinate, just drops at first, then the warm liquid flowed freely against the washcloth and into his hand. Summoning long-unused willpower, the doctor thrust the washcloth against his face, breathing through the piss-soaked rag, knowing that the water and ammonia would filter out the acidifying chlorine gas. The same trick had kept him alive through the gas-shellings of the Great War. Breathing now, he secured the filthy cloth behind his head with a single hand.
Footsteps — the doctor quickly laid his head upon the ground and closed his eyes as one of the Japanese officers passed.
And then a single, brilliant thought entered the doctor’s mind.
Wunderwaffen.
The crates in the rearmost torpedo room, the source of seaman Lichtenberg’s affliction. The ray gun.
Crawling, the doctor pushed his way through heaps of dead and dying men, mouths foaming, broken bodies bleeding from sword piercings and bullet wounds.
Wunderwaffen. Doctor Oskar Goering would seize the ray gun from its crated nest. He would turn it upon the two Japanese officers for this sudden betrayal — maybe even the whole of the Japanese nation. He would roast them, explode their bodies, turn them to blowing chimney ash.
Hope fueling his bled-out body as much as the stimulants, the doctor collapsed a final time before the wooden torpedo-room crate. He pulled seaman Lichtenberg’s bedroll from the box and pried open a corner of the box, hammered-in nails screaming as he forced open the lid with inhuman, drug-induced strength.
Inside lay four identical lead-lined steel boxes. The ray gun — the wunderwaffen—this was his prize, his Valhalla reward for survival, his single chance at vengeance. In the dim emergency lighting, the doctor wrenched open the nearest metallic box, the sickly blue light illuminating the dim compartment as the lid fell free and clanged to the deck.
Blue powder. Nothing but glowing blue powder lay within.
The doctor ran his hands through the heavy substance and felt a prickling, stabbing heat, but no other contents buried within. The cloth slipped from his face, his lungs burned, tears now streamed unstaunched down his cheeks, disappearing into the ineffectual glowing powder.