But the British major who was now striding from the base of the watchtower towards them was clearly on this side of the grave, hale and hearty, with a thick bushy mustache, full cheeks, and a bright, lively, sky-blue eyes. He looked as though he’d just woken up from a long nap, which to every indication was precisely what had happened.
“Good to see you, old boy,” the major said, shaking hands with Josiah. “We expected you back day before last, and when you didn’t turn up we’d begun to expect the worst.”
“Good to be back, sir,” the sergeant replied, wearing a weary smile. “It’s been awhile.”
Major Wilkins had been the ranking officer at the base camp when Jun’s squad had first been posted here, overseeing a busting crew of subordinates who provided rear echelon support for squads of deadhunters clearing out this whole region of Northern Italy. But aside from the pair of subalterns who were wearily cranking the reinforced gate in the fence shut, and a lone medical officer who was heading out of the nearest of the Quonset huts with a first aid kit under his arm, walking briskly in the direction of the refugees, there didn’t seem to be any other Resistance personnel in evidence in the camp. It was too early for everyone to be sleeping, with the sun still pinking the western sky. So where was everybody?
It had been some time since the squad had last been in the camp, after all. They’d been working their way through the countryside checking off reference numbers on that old survey map for the better part of a month. And they’d only been in the camp a day or two then, stopping in briefly to refuel and refresh for a short while after finishing their previous tour and the last set of coordinates that they’d been sent out to check and reference numbers to cross off of a list.
But in the just more than three weeks that the squad had been out in the field, the basecamp appeared to have been emptied out almost completely.
The sergeant was giving the major a more detailed summary of how the squad had encountered the group of refugees fleeing down out of the southern foothills of the Alps almost two days before, and had just reached the point in the account where he was about to relate what the refugees had told them about the Nazis’ Alpine Fortress when the Major held up his hand and signaled for silence.
“You are due for a proper debriefing and I am overdue for my evening meal,” the major said, a smile tugging up the corners of his mouth and with a twinkle in his eye. “Let’s kill two birds with one stone, shall we?”
He gestured towards a large canvas tent that was used as the camp’s mess.
“Join me for dinner, will you? We’re a bit short staffed at the canteen, but I’m sure we can find something that will suit our needs.”
The sergeant glanced around at Jun and the others, none of whom could muster the energy to do much more than nod.
“After you, sir,” the sergeant replied. “But if you don’t mind me asking, where the heck is everybody?”
The major was already leading the way to the mess tent, and when he glanced over his shoulder to look in the squad’s direction Jun could see the good humor leeching from his face.
“Thereby hangs a tale, son,” he said.
From the other side of the stockade fence could be heard the sound of the Dead horde approaching, finally catching up with the squad after pursuing them more than an hour.
“Man the tower,” the major called over to the subalterns who had just finished securing the gate. “Electrify the defensive perimeter, and take out any of the blighters who make it through to the inner fence.” He paused, and then added with emphasis, “But don’t waste any shots, you hear me? Ammunition is running low enough as it is.”
A switch was thrown, and with a crackle and pop the outer wire fence that encircled the camp was suddenly humming with a high voltage electrical charge. It would be enough to deter any of the Dead who ventured too close, or so Jun hoped. Because if the Resistance was worrying about running low on ammunition to the extent that they were picking and choosing which of the encroaching zombies to shoot? Then things might have gotten more dire than she had realized.
A second medical officer had come out of the Quonset hut that served as the camp’s makeshift hospital, and together with the one who had carried out the first aid kit was in the process of escorting the refugees inside to be examined, cleaned up as well as practicable, and then presumably someone would find temporary accommodations for them.
The major had reached the entrance to the mess tent, and was holding the flap open for Josiah and the rest of the squad to enter, like a maître d’ at a posh restaurant showing a party of diners to their table.
From the other side of the stockade fence Jun could hear a sudden peal of inhuman screeching, like the howling shrieks of the damned and tormented, accompanied by a crackling sizzle as the first of the pursuing shamblers in the horde of Dead reached the electrified fence.
“Come along now,” the major urged, gesturing to the tent’s entrance with his free hand, the other still holding the flap open. “Soup’s on.”
The smell of burning hair and scorched meat reached Jun’s nostrils, with undertones of putrefaction and decay, and the agonized howls from beyond the stockade still echoed through the twilight as she stepped past the major and into the tent. And as soon as she stepped inside, she caught the scent of the hearty stew that she had last enjoyed when they had billeted in the base camp before going out on their most recent deployment, and Jun’s mouth watered as her stomach growled in response. That the scent of the electrified Dead still lingering in her nostrils did nothing to hinder her appetites suggested things about the ways in which her experiences were affecting her that Jun was not interested in dwelling on for the time being. She was hungrier than she had realized, and whether she satiated that hunger or not had no bearing on the undead beyond the walls of the camp…
Chapter 10
AS UNUSUAL AS it had been to see Major Wilkins acting like a maître d’ at a restaurant as he ushered the squad into the mess tent, it was even stranger to see him acting as a server as he helped the camp cook ladle portions of the stew out into metal bowls for Jun and the rest of the squad, before serving himself and then joining them at the table. At least the major opted to sit at the head of the table, so some degree of hierarchy and decorum was preserved.
Jun wasn’t the only one taken aback by the major’s willingness to pitch in and assist with tasks that might otherwise be considered to be beneath his station. Both Werner and Josiah’s faces registered surprise, and even Curtis, who was normally the last to stand on ceremony and who had very little time for custom and hierarchies in general, seemed a little flustered as he accepted the bowl of stew ladled out for him by the ranking officer. Of all of the squad only Sibyl seemed to take the major’s participation in menial labor in her stride without any outward sign of surprise or confusion.
Sibyl apparently did take note of the surprise evident in Jun’s own expression, however. As Jun sat with a metal spoon full of stew held halfway to her mouth, her gaze fixed on the major seated at the far end of the table, the Englishwoman leaned in close to her and spoke in a low voice.
“Eat up, dear,” Sibyl said with a sly smile, and then glanced around at their squad mates who were eagerly tucking into their own bowls. “Wait too much longer and one of these big strapping men is likely to eat the bowl for you.”
Sheepishly, Jun took the bite, chewing on a gristly bit for a moment, averting her eyes and staring down as she idly stirred her bowl of stew with the spoon.
“It’s like my Chester always used to say, dear,” Sibyl added quietly in a conspiratorial tone. “The true mark of a leader is the willingness to muck in and do whatever job needs doing, rather than lording over things from on high and afraid to get one’s hands dirty.”
As if in response, the major cleared his throat, and dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief before addressing the squad in general, and Sergeant Josiah in particular.
“Now, as I said, I’m very pleased to have you lot
back in the fold, dear boy,” he began, stroking his bushy mustache. “There have been significant developments since your squad was sent out into the field last month, and the landscape is moving beneath our feet, as it were. And I’m sorry to say that it means that your squad will be back out in the field sooner rather than later.” He paused, meaningfully, and added, “Much sooner.”
Sergeant Josiah glanced around the table at Jun and the others, gauging their reactions. Curtis was rolling his eyes while Sibyl sighed dramatically, while Werner carried on eating his stew with a studied lack of interest in anything other than his evening meal. Jun just hoped that they’d get a chance to catch a full night’s rest before going back out on patrol, and only her ingrained need to follow the chain of command restrained her from saying as much out loud.
“Sir, you don’t mind me asking…?” the sergeant began, and gestured back towards the tent’s entrance, indicating the rest of the base camp beyond. “This place is damn near empty. There’s usually at least a couple of deadhunter squads taking a little downtime between operations, support staff, you name it. Where the heck did everybody go?”
The major nodded slowly as he sighed heavily.
“As I say, the landscape has shifted, and we are shifted along with it,” Major Wilkins replied, wearily. “We thought that we were in the final stages of reclaiming this portion of the continent, with only a cleanup effort remaining, such as the operation you lot have been on these past weeks. But then we began to see a sudden sharp increase in the pace of Dead sightings, starting in the northeast corner of our zone and continuing south and west as the days progressed. Isolated cases at first—lone roamers and small packs of shamblers, mostly—but increasingly squads were returning with reports of encountering full hordes of the wretched things.”
“We run across three different groupings of the bastards in as many days.” Josiah’s tone was flat and controlled, but Jun could hear the simmering anger beneath his words. For all of his easygoing good humor, she knew that the sergeant harbored a deep animosity against the Dead that went far beyond the demands of his present duties. “Put down as many of them as we could, but there’s more of ’em still wandering around out there.”
“My point exactly, old boy,” the major answered, like a teacher pleased that one of his students had given the correct response to a difficult question. “And we have received an ever growing number of requests for urgent aid from the few remaining inhabited settlements in the region—most of the residents of the towns and villages in the surrounding countryside fled south at the outbreak of the Dead War and are still sheltering across the water in Sicily, but those stubborn holdouts who remained look to us to protect them against the onslaught of the Dead menace. And so any deadhunter squads on hand were dispatched without delay, and any of the squads who returned from cleanup missions have been sent right back out into the field as quickly as possible. Then there came that unpleasant business last week…”
The major trailed off into silence for a moment, a pained expression flashing across his face as he turned and stared off into the middle distance. Then he seemed to regain his composure by sheer force of will, bit by bit, finally turning his attention back to the squad before him.
“The generator conked out and a whole horde of the Dead made it to the fence while the electrical defenses were down,” he said matter-of-factly, as though he were discussing the weather and describing a time that it had rained particularly hard. “We managed to pick off most of them from the watch towers, but a few of them made it over the wall and…”
The major’s voice choked in his throat for a moment, his jaw tightening and his eyes narrowed into slits.
“Casualties were kept to a minimum, but even so…” He paused, taking a deep breath in through his nostrils, and then holding it for a long moment before exhaling slowly. “In any event, the threat was neutralized and the camp’s defenses were strengthened in response, but as a result we are considerably short-handed. As you can clearly see, eh?”
Jun glanced around the table, and saw that like her, the others were clearly unsure how to respond, or if in fact they should.
After a brief awkward silence in which it was unclear whether the major was waiting for some sort of response from the squad in general or the sergeant in particular, or was instead simply collecting his thoughts before continuing, he suddenly cleared his throat loudly, sat up straighter, and slammed a fist on the surface of the table.
“The level of incursion that we are experiencing is the highest it has been in the region at any point since the beginning of the Dead War,” the major said, his voice raised, his manner urgent. “And at a point where we had allowed ourselves to believe that we were beginning to beat back the undead menace in this region. So the question that lies before us is, What can possibly explain this sudden surge in enemy activity? Is there some new source of Dead troops about which we are as yet unaware? We should be approaching the point of absolute victory in the region and yet instead we find ourselves fighting a holding action, and running the risk of losing ground in the process.”
Major Wilkins slammed his fist down onto the table again, even harder this time, and the metal bowl in front of Jun rocked and wobbled in response, sending stew flying out onto the table’s surface.
“If we only knew where the blighters were coming from!” the major shouted, spittle flying from his mouth, catching in the corners of his mustache.
Sergeant Josiah glanced over at Jun and the others, and she could see that he was thinking the same thing that she and no doubt the rest of their squad mates was thinking at that exact moment.
“Sir,” the sergeant began gingerly, as if dealing with unexploded ordnance and worried that it might go off in his face, “like I was saying, about the refugees come down out of the mountains?”
The major turned and gave Josiah a hard stare.
“Poor devils,” the major finally replied. “Seemed scared half out of their wits. It was a lucky thing, them running into you lot like they did. And you say they had fled from somewhere up in the Alps?”
“From all over the place, actually, but it was a party of them from one village in particular that… Well, Mr. Sauer here was the one who was the one who was able to talk with all of ’em,” he turned and gestured in Werner’s direction, “so maybe he could do a better job of telling you just what it was they’d said.”
The major turned his attention in Werner’s direction. The German soldier was in the process of polishing off his bowl of stew, carefully scrapping his spoon around the inner curve of the bowl to get every last bit of sustenance out that he could manage.
“Well?” the major said, beginning to sound a little impatient.
Werner glanced up from his now empty bowl, cocking one eyebrow in a quizzical expression. Jun noted that the sergeant hadn’t actually directly ordered Werner to give the major his account yet, and couldn’t help wondering whether he wasn’t simply being a stickler for rules. Werner was a loyal soldier, and would speak if ordered to, but as Josiah had framed his statement more along the lines of a hypothetical, Werner was not disobeying orders to concentrate on finishing his dinner first.
“Tell the man what you told us already, Werner,” the sergeant finally clarified, more than a touch exasperated.
Werner carefully set his spoon down beside his bowl, then pushed his chair back from the table and climbed to his feet. Standing at attention, with his gaze directed somewhere just above the top of the major’s beret, he began to recount what the fleeing villagers had told him.
As Werner talked about the Nazis moving men and materials through the mountains that last winter of the war, Jun glanced around the mess tent. In the time that she and her squad had been sitting there and eating, a handful of other residents of the camp had drifted in and taken up positions at other tables scattered around the interior of the tent. Jun recognized one of the medical officers who had escorted the refugees away, and who was now sitting with a beleaguered expre
ssion on her face and shoulders slumped as she stared into a steaming hot cup of tea with a faraway look in her eye. At the next table over was a man with a neatly-trimmed mustache wearing a flight suit, chuckling to himself as he read a sheaf of typewritten letters and made his leisurely way through a bowl of stew. Finally, at a table on the far side of the tent sat a pair of workers in coveralls, a man and a woman, who from the amount of dirt on their clothing and in their hair had spent the day digging a hole, filling a hole in, or both.
None of the newcomers had paid much mind to Jun and the rest of the squad as they entered the mess tent, and for a time each of them had seemed content to eat their evening meals in peace without taking any particular notice of what was being said at the central table with Jun’s squad and the major. But as Werner continued his account of the reports of the Alpine Fortress, and the villagers’ fears about an army of the Dead under the direct command of the SS officer Standartenführer Ziegler, he gradually captured the attention of the other diners in the tent. The medical officer was the first to be obviously engaged in what the German soldier was relating, quickly giving him her full and undivided attention, and Jun couldn’t help wondering whether the medical officer had heard fragments of those same accounts from the refugees that she had seen to a short time before in the medical Quonset hut. Then the two ditch diggers gradually stopped exchanging verbal jabs and fell silent as they listened to what Werner was saying. The man with the well-trimmed mustache and the flight suit was the last to resist the lure of Werner’s description of a secret Nazi fortress high in the mountains and the army of the Dead supposedly controlled from there, but even the pilot eventually turned his attention away from the letters he had been reading and sat in attentive silence as he eavesdropped on Werner’s report.
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