Before he had time to breathe, he threw himself onto his back and pushed himself through the hole. Kate was standing on the other side, holding the submachine gun like she didn't know what to do with it.
“Can you fire that thing?”
She nodded, her eyes wide and blank.
Dutch stumbled from the prisoners' bunker carrying one of the Karabiners. AJ saw his friend had outfitted it with a German sniper scope and was about to ask him what the hell he was doing, when Dutch raised the rifle and fired. The first figure to make it through the hole fell at AJ's feet. Half a dozen more were crawling over his body before anyone could blink.
“Kate!” he yelled.
She pulled the trigger of her weapon, but there was only a click.
“Pull the lever!” he yelled. “Pull it!”
She fumbled with the cocking handle, her hands shaking so badly she couldn't get her fingers on it. AJ fired his rifle, taking one of the figures in the shoulder. Another leapt through the fence and charged straight for him. AJ cried out, but his voice was drowned in a hail of gunfire. The MP38 roared to life, slamming his attacker backwards and then chewing a line through the oncoming horde. They dropped like cattle, falling to the ground in a spray of black blood. A few of them kept coming on their bellies, crawling with their arms outstretched. Recovering, AJ walked over and shot the closest one in the head, then did the same to the next figure, and the next. When he was sure they weren't getting up, he grabbed Kate by the arm.
“You okay?”
She nodded, her eyes still swimming. Her left hand reached to touch the muzzle of the gun, as if she couldn't believe what she had done. She yanked her fingers back; the metal burned hot. “I've never shot anyone before.”
“You still haven't. Those things aren't people. Now, I want you to reload. Don't panic, all right? Think.”
“I don't know if I can—”
“Reload!”
As soon as she was finished, a bizarre look crossed her face. She looked back and forth, then dropped the gun and began jogging towards the other end of the base. Dutch shot AJ a glance, and both of them were about to start yelling when they saw what she was doing.
At the gaps in the walls, the Germans had placed strategic artillery cannons, 10.5cm Howitzers, the kinds with the long barrels on two wheels. They could have been used to repel a naval attack, had anyone cared enough to take the island by sea. Guess the joke's on them, AJ thought, wondering how surprised they must have been when Carrion ran through the inside gates.
“Help me!” Kate said. She had begun trying to pick up one the rear beams. The cannons could be pushed like a wheelbarrow, but only if you had four strong men… or a truck. When AJ looked at her, her eyes narrowed. “You told me to think, so I'm thinking! We have to plug that hole or they'll overwhelm us. Now help me!”
AJ lifted one of the legs, but the thing wouldn't budge. It was like pushing a semi. Then, Dutch was there. He grabbed the spare support, and by inches, the thing began to move. It went slowly at first, and then it began to pick up speed. The three of them jogged towards the hole, backs straining and legs heaving. AJ wondered if the women who lifted wrecked cars off of their babies felt the same kind of adrenaline.
Just as they reached the hole, the naked thing emerged from it, the thing that had once been Christian. It whooped a single, bone-chilling howl.
“Keep going!” AJ yelled. “Run through it!”
They barreled into the man-thing, and it fell backwards, the cannon toppling after. One wheel crushed the body where its testicles should have been, and it hissed at them, its tongue black and vermicular.
AJ approached the hole with his gun in hand, intending to finish it off. Then, he saw what was really in its stomach. Mason, who had known the man was useless, had stuffed him full of grenades.
“Get back!” he yelled. “Get back!”
The powder caught less than a second later. AJ felt his feet leave the ground, his body hurtling upwards and then slamming into dirt. When he looked up, he saw his two friends were kneeling next to a bunker unharmed. The walls near the fence, however, were blasted to chunks. So was Christian, who by all accounts, was now liquid at room temperature.
AJ stood and coughed. The fence was in ruin, the metal melted and the barbed wire in disarray. The wire would keep the three of them from getting out, but he had a feeling it wouldn't do much to keep The Carrion from getting in.
“We're trapped,” he said. “Mason just sacrificed his best man to keep us trapped in here.”
His hands fell to his knees, and he bent to catch his breath. He felt anger and despair tugging at him and refused to give in. When he looked up, he saw Kate had another one of those bizarre smiles. She was looking at the front gate, the place clogged and overgrown with black tendrils. He could see the calculation in her eyes. Before he could ask her what she was thinking, an ear-splitting cry thundered across the landscape. It was as if a thousand inhuman voices had sensed the time of the blitzkrieg was at hand.
Chapter 22: Hope and Horror
1
The cry echoing across the landscape stopped Harald cold. There had been an explosion, and then… then a vast and terrible shriek unlike anything he had ever heard.
“Let me go!” Lucja screamed. He still had a hold of her hair.
“Shut up.”
He looked beyond the girl to the vast expanse of the pit. The explosion had been behind them, but the cry — that horrible, shrieking sound — that had come from crater. His mind flashed upon the instant when Richter had lowered his prisoner into the darkness, and how when he pulled the rope back, there was nothing there. The pit had claimed him as a sacrifice, but sacrifice or not, whatever unholy gods lay at the bottom were no longer satisfied.
As he peered over the edge, he saw something move. The shape that came crawling up looked like an abstraction of man rather than a man itself, as if it had been splattered onto canvas with a broken pen. He watched as it worked its way up the incline, its fingernails breaking against the crater's face. When Lucja saw it, she stopped struggling, her mouth agape.
Harald shot the figure in the head, and when it didn't fall, he shot it again. He emptied his clip, watching the thing stumble backwards and topple over the edge from whence it had come.
When it was gone, the girl struck him. “Bastard! Let me go!”
Doing his best to ignore her, he ejected the clip from his pistol and searched his jacket for another. With Lucja yanking on him, he couldn't seem to find one. Or maybe in the struggle, it had fallen out.
Had he ever thought she was pretty? By God, she looked like a mad woman.
Harald brought the butt of his gun down upon her head, and she stopped struggling, her face slackening in bovine anguish. Then, her eyes cleared, and she was clawing at him again. She yanked against his hand, threatening to rip her own hair out to be free. Months of meager rations were no match for Harald's well-fed muscles though, and he held her fast.
“Stop it.”
“Let me go!”
“First, you will stop thrashing like a fool. You are mine, do you hear me? You will stay with me.”