Shadows Will Fall (4 page)

Literally.

He was sitting in a folding lounger on the starboard wing of the
Raposa
and had his bare feet propped up in front of a little portable fan. Today he was wearing a vented black bowler, a green velvet waistcoat, pin-stripped trousers rolled up to the knees, and a crimson blouse. His leather harness and belt matched the bowler, which also matched the boots he'd doffed.

Chuy had watched at least a dozen airships of all sizes arrive and depart. He'd fiddled with the engines. He'd restocked the usual payload, food, medical supplies, and ammunition. He'd packed additional equipment that might come in handy in Romania, like climbing gear, considering the mountainous terrain on the border between Wallachia and Transylvania. He'd also packed wooden stakes, silver bullets, glass vials of concentrated wolfsbane and garlic powder, a rosary, and a supply of holy water straight from the Vatican. One couldn't be too cautious. Of course, he always packed them on almost any job. Rucker had his ideas about being prepared by bringing lots of guns. Chuy had his own ideas on what being prepared meant. Rucker thought mostly in terms of earthly foes. Chuy knew there was more on earth and in heaven to deal with.

Chuy wanted to take off, but he was still awaiting a priority delivery from Austin. From the Prometheus Society, to be precise.

When he turned his gaze back to the main terminal, he saw a porter pulling a dolly bearing a wooden crate that was about eight feet to a side. He was heading straight toward the
Raposa
. The crate was marked fragile and
THIS END UP
!

“Finally,” Chuy said, packing up his folding chair and fan, then leaping to the tarmac.

Loading the crate would be tricky. But tricky was exactly what the
Raposa
was. While the porter pulled the crate around to the tail, Chuy fired up the plane's generator and pulled a switch in the rear cargo bay.

The porter stared in awe as the entire upper tail assembly rose upward and folded on hinges and a ramp extended from the open tail to the tarmac.

“Load her up,” Chuy said with a wink.

He didn't know what was in the crate, but he knew it was important. He'd expected written instructions from Lysander. But there was nothing. Just the crate.

Grabbing a crowbar, he went to work where it said
OPEN HERE.
When he yanked the side panel it opened like a drawbridge.

He was more than a little surprised at the contents.

Inside the crate, a man sat in a padded lounging chair, writing notes by means of a battery powered lantern. He wore a wrinkled purple linen suit and a fanciful dress shirt with green trim on the collar. Despite the comfortable spring temperature, he wore an overly long and colorful scarf and a floppy wide-brimmed hat. He was writing something down on what looked like an old napkin.

“Ahem?” Chuy said.

“One second,” the man responded, finishing his note.

The man looked up, saw Chuy and smiled.

“Lysander Benjamin, as I live and breathe,” Chuy said. “Welcome to Rome!”

“I told you I considered the cargo the most valuable thing you'd ever carried.”

Chuy noticed that Lysander wasn't the only thing in the crate. There was something under a tarp behind him.

“Sorry for the roundabout and the scuttle-doo,” Lysander said. “I can't have agents from the Third Reich seeing me travel about. Takes the whole ‘covert' out of ‘covert operation.' ”

“So you're the cargo I'm taking back to Wallachia? Or wherever? Because I haven't heard from the team in two days now.”

“Oh heavens no. Er, yes. But, no. There's this,” Lysander said, yanking the tarp away.

Chuy whistled.

“We'll be taking that, too. To a place north of Tigovista. Poenari Citadel.”

“What is that thing?” Chuy asked. He was already revving up the
Raposa
's engines.

“It's . . . it's, er . . . it's Tesla's latest. It's . . . untested. But it may be the only thing that stands between us and the apocalypse.”

Poenari Citadel

Wallachia Region

A
truck stood between where Skorzeny was reclining and the tower with the torture chamber. Workers were offloading boxes of additional components for Dr. Übel's spear device. Skorzeny didn't like the idea of Project Gefallener, but he could see its value strategically, and he would, of course, do his duty.

Stubbing out his cigarette, he saw Untersturmführer Bonhoeffer and a storm trooper walking across the courtyard toward the dungeon. Odd, Skorzeny thought. The requirements for acceptance in the Waffen-SS were strict and extensive, as was training. One of the requirements was that a storm trooper had to be at least five-foot-eleven, but the SS man walking alongside Bonhoeffer looked a little short.

The truck fired up and rolled out, blocking his view of the two in the courtyard. When it passed, they were nowhere to be seen.

Skorzeny reached toward his pistol belt and grabbed the bottle of schnapps. Another drink.

R
ucker needed something to drink. Badly. The Senf mask he wore—a black rubber gas mask with goggle eyes and breathing filters, filtered out natural moisture in the air and left him parched. He was already dehydrated from the torture, and the respirator made it worse. It also made him feel all closed in.

Bonhoeffer—Robin—gave orders to the guards to open the main door to the dungeon. At the loud clacking of the latch, Terah, Deitel, Filotoma, and Amria hid their tools and pretended to be asleep, praying or sitting listlessly. Out of the corner of her eye Terah saw a young SS officer and a storm trooper close the main door behind them.

“I hope you folks are busier than this when the boss isn't looking,” the storm trooper said, his voice deepened by the mask. And yet it sounded . . .

“Because the boss man is here,” came Rucker's voice as he pulled off the Senf mask.

“Fox!” Terah said.

“You're alive!” Deitel said.

“Apparently,” Rucker said smiling.

“Who's the
boche
?” Filotoma asked.

“Ladies and gentlemen, meet Lysander's man in Wewelsburg,” Rucker said.

“You have a plan?” Terah said.

“I . . . uh . . . No. You have any ideas?” Rucker said.

Terah just stared at him. It turned into a glare.

“Easy,” Rucker said. “We can't just walk you out of here. In fact, Robin here needs to get back to his post. Look, I do have a plan, but you're not going to like it.”

“Why not?” Deitel asked.

“It involves me getting out of here and you four having to stay,” Rucker said. “I have to get to Nick's portable shortwave and get outside the citadel.”

Bonhoeffer said to the others, “All of your personal effects and equipment the guards took is stored in the alcove outside the main door.”

“What do we do in the meanwhile?” Terah asked. “Wait for them to take us out and shoot us?”

“No,” Rucker said. “From what I heard, they want to make you the first victims of Project Gefallener. So you'll all be safe until at least tomorrow night.”

“Hoffstetter wants you all to witness the transformation of the Death's Head Legion into
draugrkommandos
, and to be the undead soldiers' first kill,” Bonhoeffer added. “You and the handful of villagers the storm troopers captured in their patrols of the countryside. The people of the tiny Arefu hamlet. There are women and children among them.”

“Draugrkommandos?”
Terah asked.

“Walking dead,” Rucker explained. “Only smart. Perfect soldiers.”

Everyone started talking at once, arguing about what was happening. There was fear in their voices. Their anxiety fueled each other.

Amria, who hadn't said a word yet, finally spoke. Her eyes were alight with anger, but there was something else there.

“Captain Rucker?”

Everyone stopped talking and listened.

“Can you really stop them?”

They all looked at Rucker.

Rucker looked Amria in the eye.

“Just you watch me,” he said.

For the first time, Amria smiled. She was starting to believe him.

The alarm klaxon in the courtyard started to bleat. Over the hastily installed loudspeaker, a German voice shouted.

“Alert! Prisoner has escaped! This is not a drill! Prisoner Rucker is missing. Storm troopers to the assembly area! Prepare to release the
wehr-wolves
and
nachtmenn
!”

Rucker cursed.

“What does this mean?” Terah asked.

“It means that little bald little snake Übel found out I'm missing from the torture chamber,” Rucker said. “Look, Robin and I have to go.”

Terah reached through the bars of her cell and pulled Rucker to her. She kissed him deeply.

Bonhoeffer was at the door.

“Rucker!” he said impatiently.

“I'll be back for you, for you all, by tomorrow night,” Rucker said, putting the Senf mask and his helmet back on.

“I'll order the guards to the muster area,” Bonhoeffer said. “You get the shortwave and your other equipment and put it in this duffel. They're already mustering out squads, so just tag along with one to get out of the citadel, and then slip away. You'll need to be at least five miles away before you use the shortwave. The command center is jamming shortwave signals all around here. And stay downwind from the
nachtmenn
, if at all possible. I have to get back to the command post. Good luck.”

“What do I say if someone asks about the duffel?” Rucker asked.

“I've heard your German,” Bonhoeffer said. “Don't say anything.”

Rucker turned to look at his friends. “Be strong. You have it in you” he said.

The door opened. He banged his helmet on the low frame.

When they closed and latched the door, the four prisoners listened, hoping they wouldn't hear gunshots over the blaring klaxon, which would mean that Rucker and Bonhoeffer had been discovered and shot.

None came. They all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“He's completely insane,” Terah said.

“That, and a bit magnificent,” Amria said.

Terah noticed there was still a dour hatred in Amria's face, but now, a glimmer of hope there, too.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Poenari Citadel

Wallachia Region

T
he engineers and technicians who set Dr. Übel's work site in the southern tower of the castle were not without wit. They called it “Dr. Frankenstein's Laboratory,” after the gothic and science fiction setup in the Cabo Madera motion pictures about Mary Shelley's mad scientist and the monster he created.

Of course, they wouldn't call it that in front of Dr. Übel—intelligence, after all, was a prerequisite to become an engineer, and anyone possessing even a modicum of that trait knew better than to make a joke in front of the doctor. But whatever the work space was called, it was a fully functioning, modern laboratory with everything needed for the kind of transgenic and alchemical work the doctor required. At the center was a smaller version of the machine they were building in the courtyard.

Dr. Übel and Major Hoffstetter were sitting at a worktable. Colonel Uhrwerk stood behind them.

A blond-haired, senior ranking noncommissioned officer in a maroon coverall marched into the lab and gave a stiff-arm salute to the two officers.

“Hauptscharführer Joran Hauser, reporting to the major as ordered, sir!”

“Stand at ease,” Hoffstetter said.

The master sergeant's one-piece coverall bore a black collar patch with two silver pips and one stripe, indicating his rank. On the other collar were the skull and crossbones of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, which designated his previous assignment as an internment camp guard. He looked to be in his late forties.

According to his service file, Hauser was the ideal kind of candidate for Project Gefallener. Born in 1879 in Hammelburg, he had enlisted in the German Imperial Navy in 1914, where he served through the end of the war. Like many German veterans, he blamed the intellectuals and bankers in the capital of Germania for the nation's surrender. He believed they had sapped the will of the people, turning popular opinion against the conflict.

After the armistice, Hauser began an apprenticeship as an auto mechanic, but failed to achieve certification. It was during his apprenticeship that he met his wife, Hilda. Desperate for work in the arduous years after the Great War, he took a job first as a grammar school custodian and then later as a police officer in Munich. During his time as a policeman, Hilda bore him three sons. After the third was born, she left him for another man, and the three children often suffered the wrath of Hauser's many frustrations.

In 1923 he was jobless again, owing to an altercation with a superior officer. Bitter, destitute, and angry at the world, Hauser was the perfect recruit for Hitler's emerging National Socialists. Hauser joined the Sturmabteilung, the Storm Detachment, where his penchant for violence and thuggery was considered a great asset. As the SA evolved into the SS when Hitler seized power, Hauser—from a pure Aryan family going back to well before 1750—evolved with the organization. He was eventually promoted to his senior noncom rank and assigned to the SS-Totenkopfverbände.

His iron hand was an even greater asset in the internment camps, and he soon found himself promoted to sergeant of the guard, overseeing such projects as the T-4 euthanasia program for those deemed mentally or physically unfit, and the infamous 23f15 sterilization programs for dissidents, Jews, and gays.

Hauser rarely saw his three children anymore, but it didn't matter to him, and was all the better for them. He was free to take out his frustrations on any prisoner in the camp, and he certainly didn't have any problem with the executions, as some did. Hauser believed that none of the failures in his life—his marriage, his jobs, his children—were his doing. Always, someone was holding him down, holding him back, or out to get him; no different, as he saw it, with how Imperial Germany lost the Great War.

But the New Order would fix all that. It was stamping out those who would undermine German men like him, held a place them. It gave them the opportunities he'd never had.

Still, he was getting on in years and starting to feel his body slowing down. Seeing so many prisoners rotting away, subconsciously made him all the more aware of his creeping age. When his superior officer, Major Joachim Hoffstetter, told him about Project Gefallener, he jumped at the chance.

“Hauser, explain what you know about Project Gefallener,” Hoffstetter said.

“Sir, Project Gefallener is a project designed to create a new type of supersoldier that will serve as the vanguard of the Third Reich, sir,” Hauser said.

Hoffstetter nodded.

“What do you understand about the process itself?” he asked.

“Sir, I do not understand the process itself,” Hauser said. “I only know it is supposed to make us stronger, nearly invincible, and impervious to pain. We will no longer age. We will have all the experience of the seasoned soldiers we are, but in a body even better than when we were at our physical peak. We will become
draugrkommandos,
sir.”

“What does that mean to you?” Hoffstetter asked.

“It is a name, I presume, chosen to strike fear into our enemies. For much the same reason our elite SS units are called ‘Totenkampf'—Death's Head—units, just as we of the Death's Head Legion. It's why our uniforms feature the skull and crossbones. Psychological advantage, sir. Striking terror in the hearts of the enemies of the Reich. Loyalty unto death and beyond.”

Hoffstetter nodded.

“Very well,” he said. “You and five other volunteers have been chosen to be the first to undergo the process, a day ahead of the rest of the legion. You six were chosen because of your service records and senior rank. You will form the senior leadership corps of the Draugrkommando Legion. The technicians in the next room will prepare you for the conversion. We commence in fifteen minutes.”

Hauser saluted, performed a right face, and marched into the next room, where the other five soldiers were already being processed.

Once the door closed, Hoffstetter directed his gaze at Übel.

“They don't know what the process involves, Doctor?” he said. If it was a question, it was purely rhetorical.

“Oh no,” Dr. Übel said. “You wouldn't get many volunteers if they knew the process involved their death and resurrection. My recruitment efforts conveyed that it was some sort of super enhancement, with a little of the ‘Fountain of Youth' thrown in.”

“And the process—it can be made to work on soldiers who are already dead?” Colonel Uhrwerk asked.

“Theoretically,” Übel said. “But the process I'm employing to create intelligent undead works best on the living. The process is lethal, yes, and resurrection is immediate. It can be transferred to the living by the exchange of body fluids, however.”

Übel went on to explain that direct infection by the spear caused death within a few hours, with the body rising again as a mindless undead feeder that hungered for human flesh. The same would be true of any living human bitten by the feeder. By their nature, these mindless, unrefined creatures had a limited life span as their bodies began to decay.

Übel's process—a combination of medical, mystical, radiological, and alchemical means—had refined and amplified the power of the spear, so it created a thinking undead creature, like the feeders, that was immune to pain, but unlike them, was not in a state of decomposition. Their hunger could be controlled. They could think and reason. They would obey orders.

“Very well,” Hoffstetter said. “Let's get started on these six initial subjects. We have a schedule to keep. The conversion of the legion takes place tomorrow night. The machine, I'm told, won't be finished until tomorrow. And Frau Riefenstahl was specific that the event take place at night, for better benefit when captured on moving picture cameras.”

J
oran Hauser felt cold. He and the five other senior noncoms were stripped to the waist. A series of shots had been administered, and now wires attached to adhesive pads were connected to his chest and temples.

The six future leaders—he was immensely proud he would be one of the leaders of the Draugrkommando Legion, with a field promotion to
untersturm
fü
hrer
—lay on tables reclined at a forty-five-degree angle. The tables formed a circle around a glowing orb that gave off mysterious tendrils of energy. It was a smaller version of the device being assembled in the outer courtyard of the castle.

Dr. Übel stood next to the orb, reciting something in an ancient, long-dead language. Colonel Uhrwerk and Major Hoffstetter watched from behind a shielded lead door with a thick pain of glass. The doctor held a foot-long piece of iron over his head as his chanting reached its climax. Hauser felt every hair on his body standing on end. He could feel electricity in his mouth and taste the ozone building in the room. The constant rising and falling vibration seemed to grow into a loud hum.

His eyes wild behind his thick goggles, Dr. Übel plunged the Spear of Destiny into the orb. A purple light exploded out and washed over the six subjects. The humming was so loud then, Hauser thought his eardrums might break. He squeezed his eyes shut but the light still penetrated as if into his very brain itself.

And then there was silence and utter darkness.

Hauser opened his eyes. The orb glowed dimly. The humming had receded to a soft sound.

He raised his hands in front of his eyes. They looked no different. But he felt stronger. He felt no soreness or pain. The stiffness in his right knee and the constant ache he'd learned to live with in his lower back were gone.

Over the next twenty minutes Hauser and the other five were put through a quick battery of physical dexterity tests. They showed the subjects' reactions were just as fast as during the physicals they'd had upon joining Project Gefallener.

But their strength was amazing. Hauser found himself lifting almost two hundred pounds with one hand. He bent a quarter-inch steel rod like it was rubber. When he punched through an inch thick slab of concrete, he barely felt the impact. He noticed that his hand didn't even bleed where the skin on his knuckles split. In the pain threshold tests, he didn't feel the pokes, prods, and blunt force trauma blows administered.

It worked. He was a true Aryan superman.

The six subjects were then escorted to separate rooms for observation. It seemed like a waste of time to Hauser; clearly the process was a success. He reclined on a bunk and smiled with contentment. He was better, stronger, and, if what they said was true, virtually indestructible. He didn't even feel hungry or thirsty. He just felt . . .

Odd.

He couldn't put his finger on it, but something felt off. Lying on the bunk with his hands behind his head and propped up on a pillow, Hauser looked around the room. Then he gazed down at his body.

That's when he noticed his chest. It wasn't rising and falling. He wasn't breathing. His body was perfectly still. Unnaturally still.

As panic gripped him, he forced his body to inhale. It worked. But he couldn't inhale or exhale without conscious effort. Had they made his body so efficient he didn't need to breathe—some sort of protection against gas warfare?

Then he realized something else.

He placed his hand on his throat.

There was no pulse.

It was hard to tell, but his skin felt clammy. Cold. If he'd had a thermometer, it would have registered him as room temperature.

His vision blurred but then came back. But gone were all the colors. Everything was like a motion picture film. Only—he saw more.

He couldn't know this, but what he saw were the tendrils of the Otherness slipping in and around the shadows like tentacles. He saw the ghostly dark things that live just beyond the vision of the living. This was what had caused the power of the Spear of Destiny to grow and evolve so it now had such a devastating effect. He was inextricably intertwined with the dark energies.

Hauser leapt out of the bed to call the scientists, and his body tensed up. He fell to the floor, crumpled in a ball.

Every muscle had seized up in the hour since he'd undergone conversion. The pain was indescribable. His entire body cramped, and he felt cold. Colder than he'd ever thought possible.

He was suffering rigor mortis.

Hauser did not know it, but parts of his brain were shutting down. The frontal lobe remained, as did motor control. Much of the thalamus was shutting down as well, but not fast enough to cease the agonizing pain he was enduring inside.

About the only portion of his brain not affected was the amygdala—the animal instinct portion that drove base emotions like hatred. The anterior cingulate cortex, which moderates feelings generated by the amygdala, was almost entirely shut down. The cerebral and basal ganglia, which allow fluidity of motion, only suffered slight necrosis. The ventromedial hypothalamus, which tells the body when to stop eating, started to fail but then was restored thanks to an additional chemical injected prior to the process.

As Hauser lay writhing in pain and freezing, the component of his brain that made up his life's memories and his personality slowly ceased to function. His childhood, his mother singing him to sleep when he was a boy, his father beating him with a belt throughout his younger years until he bled, his wedding, his service aboard a ship in the Great War, his wedding day, the taste of wheat beer, the smell of a steam engine he was working on, the cries of his children when he disciplined them as his father had—it all started to fall away. He tried to remember his ex-wife—how she looked on the day they married—nothing came. Only the basics remained. His neural system continued to function, but many of his other systems simply shut down.

Hauser's pain would pass—soon he would feel no pain at all. But the body would not rot. Not for a very long time, anyway. He could operate independently and he still had basic initiative. He was stronger now, and resistant to all pain. If he ever had any empathy, it was gone.