The Shadow War

by Lindsay Smith

  Rebeka led them down the hallway, in what she hoped was the direction of the garage bay. To their left—back in the direction of the archives—some sort of massive gearwork system churned and scraped.

  Liam limped onward determinedly, teeth gritted, one hand clamped around his wounded shoulder, but her brother was lagging behind. A tiny, hateful part of Rebeka wanted to leave him. She’d done nothing but save him for the past several months, and he’d repaid her by dragging her into this. Instead, she slipped her hand into his and tried not to mind the sticky, drying Nazi blood on his fingers.

  “Come on,” she said softly. “Let’s live to fight another day.”

  Daniel nodded, but his jaw was tight. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  As they passed beneath the corridor lights—specifically, as Liam passed beneath them—each bulb flickered and went dead. She glanced questioningly at Liam, but he kept hurrying them along. Darkness pursued them down the corridor, and Rebeka envisioned grasping claws, coiling vines. Then the first bulb shattered—then the next, and the next after that. She jumped, her nerves scraped raw.

  “What the hell?” Daniel muttered. But there was no time to stop and consider it. If they turned left at the next corridor, they should nearly be to the garage—

  A fierce wind tore down the corridor then, rushing down the path they’d taken and whipping past them with an inhuman screech. “In here!” Liam shouted, and threw himself into the deep recess of a doorway. Rebeka and Daniel dove in beside him.

  The wind shivered, lowed, then howled once more. In the center of the corridor, a lightbulb shattered, and the burst socket crackled with a surge of electricity. Ice flooded her veins as her vision split in two: the image of the corridor before her, and then the sight of herself, running, fleeing.

  That was certainly a new development—but not one she had time to consider. She’d never been able to watch herself this way, or watch as if from two eyes—but whatever it meant, it couldn’t matter right now.

  “We have to go this way!” she shrieked over the clatter, and yanked them down a side hall. The second vision dissipated as if it had lost its quarry—she didn’t dare look behind her. This building hunched all around them, unknowable, a labyrinth of horrors yet to unfold.

  The wind flickered, a sad little whimper like a wounded animal, then stopped.

  Silence.

  “Well?” Rebeka asked, after a heavy moment. No hum of electricity, no distant shouts or footfalls. The nothingness was overwhelming. Suffocating. It constricted her with fear, wringing her nerves dry.

  “Well, what?” Liam asked through gritted teeth. He still clutched at his wounded shoulder, and sweat glistened on his flushed face.

  “Is it safe now?” She leaned out and risked a glance down the hallway. The twilight glow of the courtyard just barely penetrated the thick shadows that had engulfed the hall. Her eyes were starting to adjust, but only dull forms gave any hint of the corridor ahead.

  “You tell me,” Liam said, eyebrows drawn down. “You’re the one who seemed so sure we’d be safe down here.”

  “I . . .” Rebeka couldn’t answer that—not now, not without explaining so much more than she could put into words. “Let’s just go.”

  Together, they stepped out, slowly continuing in the direction they’d been headed, but walking backward, facing the way they’d come. They didn’t want to encounter any more awful surpri—

  “Halt! Stop right there—”

  A guard skidded around the corridor, sliding on some unknown slickness on the stone floors. His trembling hands betrayed him as he lifted his rifle, clutching a wobbly flashlight in his supporting hand. Rebeka raised her arm, gun in hand, while Daniel froze, glowering, and Liam took a threatening step forward.

  An electric crackle echoed down the hallway the guard had come from. The guard gasped; the beam of his flashlight sliced back toward the hall as he turned to look behind him.

  “Who’s there?” the guard shouted. Rebeka took a step back; whatever he’d heard had snagged his attention. If it would hold him a moment longer—

  Two black tendrils of smoke darted across the beam of light and coiled around the guard’s legs.

  The guard’s screams were like silk ripping apart, shrill and anguished, as the darkness dragged him off. He fell face-first onto the tiles and scrabbled for purchase, but found none. All they saw was one last horrified expression gleaming in the dropped flashlight’s beam before the guard disappeared the way he’d come.

  Rebeka and Daniel both stared at Liam. “Did—did you—”

  “I wish.” He shuffled forward, taking a wide path around the corridor’s mouth. “C’mon.”

  Before she could shout at him to wait, Liam went staggering, swaying, toward the junction ahead. Rebeka laced her fingers through Daniel’s and chased after him, shielding her face with her free hand as another lightbulb exploded above them.

  They reached the end of the corridor and turned left. Total darkness welcomed them, and still that soupy silence. She strained her ears for anything—a slithering noise, a hiss and rattle like something ready to strike. Her heart felt lodged somewhere inside her jaw. For a moment, she felt the rush and beat of powerful wings, like when she used to race across the banks of the Tiergarten pond, sending flocks of geese scattering. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had come, as smoky and intangible as all her other foretellings.

  “Take my hand.” It was Liam, somewhere on the other side of the corridor.

  She started to protest that she was nowhere near him until she felt Daniel shift beside her to close his hand around the American’s.

  Three across, they hurried down the hallway, silence so humid it stifled their own footsteps, their own ragged breaths. Rebeka kept waiting for the grasping tendrils at her ankles and wrists, but it was no vision, only fear, raw and seeping. Narrowed eyes watching from the darkness. A hunger so sharp it shredded her apart. And those horrible arms, those living beasts of shadow and seething spilling out of a tear in the world—

  Another screech of metal flooded the hall from the direction of the archives, and then, one by one, the overhead lights popped on, ticking toward them like a military march.

  Liammmmmm, the wind whispered.

  “Fucking hell,” Daniel muttered.

  “Hurry.” Liam tugged them forward. “We’re almost there.” But in his free hand, Rebeka saw the darkness gathering inside his palm.

  They all but ran down the rest of the hall until, at long last, they reached the garage bay. Smoke filled their nostrils as they ducked into its confines. The sky beyond the bay doors was red-tinged like a sunset aflame. Strange—it had almost been night a moment ago. Their truck was so close—Daniel’s hand slipped from Rebeka’s as she rushed toward it, ready to fling herself into the cab—

  But then a guard rounded the corner, looming over her, his chin squashed down and his eyes bloodshot and cold.

  Rebeka opened her mouth to scream. The guard opened his mouth, too—the mouth with the diagonal scar across it.

  The mouth of the man Daniel had killed in the back of the truck.

  Black smoke poured from the guard’s lips, his nostrils, from the gaping wound of his throat, and a scream built up in that smoke. Rebeka wasn’t waiting to find out what would happen next. She did the only thing she could think to do, and punched him square in the jaw.

  A tuft of darkness gushed out of his face, like flour from a holey sack.

  “What the hell—” Daniel started behind her, but then a surge of electricity raced up the dead guard-thing’s limbs and crackled as his body was enveloped in static darkness that collapsed in on itself.

  Liam stood behind her with an outstretched hand. “They’re eating them from the inside.”

  “Excuse me?” Rebeka screeched.

  “I told you—they like the taste of human fear.” Liam twisted his ha
nds, exertion flushing his face deep scarlet. “Quick, we’ve gotta bolt before it lets the others know where we are—”

  Footsteps scraped and dragged behind him from the far side of the garage: more of them coming.

  Liam, they called out, the name edged with laughter. You’re far too late. The book can’t help you now—

  Rebeka shuffled back as the shapes came into view. Closer now.

  “Go!” Liam screamed.

  “But what about the truck—”

  “JUST GO!” Liam shouted. “NOW!”

  It was Daniel’s turn to take Rebeka by the hand and pull her toward the bay doors. She was too stunned to protest.

  They fled the garage for the main road out of the compound. No telltale winks of sniper scopes in the towers that dotted the fence line. In the distance, a scream was cut short and replaced with an electrical crack. Rebeka and Daniel kept running.

  Eventually, Rebeka’s feet slowed as they approached the guard post at the entrance. Daniel slowed with her, then tossed an anxious glance over his shoulder. Liam was running toward them with his face wrenched wide.

  “Don’t stop!” he shouted. “There’s more of them coming—”

  A horrific cacophony shredded his words as, behind him, twisted, blackened versions of the Nazis they’d passed in the compound corridors began to stream from the garage.

  Liam . . .

  “But the guards—” Rebeka started.

  “They’re all dead, or good as. RUN!”

  That was all she needed. She charged on, Daniel close behind.

  They passed the guard post and found it deserted. A slimy hunk of meat was collapsed on the side of the dirt road, raw, skinned fingers still clutching a rifle. Rebeka slowed just long enough to rip the rifle from what was left of the flayed guard’s hands. Don’t think, don’t think, just run. She hugged the blood-slick rifle to her chest as she raced toward the other side of the fence and the trees beyond it, Daniel and Liam behind her—and behind them—behind them—

  Rifle fire pierced the air with a fierce whistle and then a thud. Rebeka screamed for her brother reflexively, terror like acid eating through her chest. “DANIEL!” She spun around, but he was still behind her.

  Another bullet sang out, and another of the horrible Nazi-creature hybrids fell—

  “Keep running!” Daniel called.

  Rebeka did. But too late, she turned to see just what she was running toward. She had just enough time to register the boy’s face—wide-eyed, white teeth, and a mouth rounded in a shout—as she plowed into him head-on.

  CHAPTER NINE

  PHILLIP

  The town of Siegen was wedged into the forested valley like a tick. Steep slate rooftops crowded around battered copper spires, but the military administration building, that whitewashed hulking monstrosity, was the easiest to spot: it was the one currently on fire. Thick, woolly black smoke blotted out the twilight as Phillip and Simone edged along the ridge. Just down the slope from them, the compound’s perimeter was fenced in with razor wire. But the shadows prowling the fence’s edge were not guards.

  “Not again,” Simone said.

  Phillip unclipped his sidearm and crouched against a nearby tree. “The army really should’ve mentioned these things in training.”

  “Up ahead!” Simone called.

  Phillip twisted in the direction Simone was aiming, toward their ten o’ clock. He’d have to teach her to use clock-face directions later. A shadow figure had dropped down from a tree branch and was crawling toward them on all fours. No—all sixes.

  M u U c h too late . . .

  That goddamned voice again, the one that was both inside his skull and all around them, blaring like a pipe organ. Simone fired, striking it along its lengthy neck. The monster twisted toward them with a sharp hiss, but didn’t slow its crawl.

  “You sure that’s how to kill them?” Phillip asked.

  Simone ejected the spent bullet casing from her rifle and cocked the next. “It worked before!”

  Phillip dropped his rucksack and quickly fished out gauze and the vial of camphor from the first aid kit. After snatching up a stick from nearby, he wound a strip of gauze around one end, then smeared camphor on it. Simone fired two more shots, but the creature was still advancing. Phillip struck a match and held it to the camphor-soaked end of the stick.

  The hissing cycled up into a shriek.

  “Not a fan of fire?” He waved the makeshift torch forward, warding the beastie off. It leaned back from him, reflected flame glistening in its dead eyes, but kept all its limbs firmly planted in the underbrush.

  W I L L not stop—

  “We’ll see about that.”

  The monster watched him for a moment more, then turned and leapt at Simone.

  She screamed, rifle firing, but it was too close for her to get a good shot. Phillip pitched the torch at the monster’s feet as its front claws slashed at Simone’s chest.

  “GET BACK!” he screamed at her, not that she needed the encouragement. She twisted in the monster’s grasp and dove down, sliding easily out of her oversize hunting parka. The sea of dead, crackling leaves at the monster’s feet sparked and hissed as Simone scrambled backward.

  THEY MUST PAY—

  The monster bared its needle teeth at him—then howled as the flames crackled along its body.

  It didn’t burn like he thought it would, like meat charring through. Instead its muscles turned stringy, dangling as it tried to scramble out of the rush of fire. A molten, limp arm flopped forward, claws swiping for Phillip, but then dropped to the ground and disintegrated into a tuft of acrid smoke.

  “Congratulations,” Simone muttered. “You’re going to burn the whole forest down.”

  “A thank-you might be nice.” Demons and mangled bodies and whispers and blood. Maybe, just maybe, he was in over his head after all. With a shiver, he slung his pack onto his back and skirted around the growing blaze, eager to get the hell on with their mission. He’d come here to help, but so far, it felt like all he’d done was fight to survive; the feeling settled, splinter-like, under his skin. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. “Which way to the rendezvous point?”

  They skidded forward, along the slope that edged dangerously close to the Nazi compound; it was either burning forests full of demons or burning buildings full of Nazis.

  Then they heard the shouting from down the slope. “Keep running!” someone shouted. In English.

  Simone’s teeth were rattling, but she managed to slot fresh bullets into her rifle with shaking hands.

  “Wait.” Phillip yanked her by the sleeve. “That was an American.”

  “He must be who set the compound on fire.” She glowered at Phillip. “I can see the resemblance.”

  Phillip bit his tongue and crept closer toward the trees, then ducked behind a thick trunk. Three figures sprinted across the narrow yard and the road that ran the length of the ridge down below. Behind them, more creatures lurched on unsteady legs, skin sliding and sloshing around.

  “Oh, God. It’s more of those mangled ones.”

  “At least I can shoot those.”

  The humans drew closer—two boys and a girl, all of them splattered with blood. Phillip ducked back behind the tree trunk as Simone took her first shots. “Try not to shoot the actual humans!” Phillip shouted.

  “Why not? They look like Nazis to me—”

  As Phillip peeked back out from around the tree trunk, the girl plowed into him, sending them both flying and crashing into dead leaves. “What in the hell—”

  “Sorry!” She tried to extricate herself from him as she spoke in German—thankfully one of the handful of words the army made him learn. “Sorry—”

  Her dark hair was wispy with loose waves, cut short around her ears. She wore a grimy dress that might have been blue once. He settled he
r off of him carefully; she weighed less than their mountain dog back home. Deep pouches under her eyes and a tightness in her face spoke of exhaustion, starvation. She wasn’t one of the monsters. Same as them, she was prey.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “Uh—Sprechen Sie Englisch?”

  She blinked at him with wide, dark eyes—not anger, not fear. But Simone’s rifle fired again before she could answer, and they both whipped around. Phillip crouched, defensive, but the girl looked ready to bolt like a startled deer.

  “Don’t shoot!” The American-sounding boy had reached the forest edge. He was dressed like a Nazi, but if he was one, his American accent was shockingly good. Phillip looked between the girl and him, then reached for his sidearm, but it had gotten lost somewhere in the leaves when the girl plowed into him. “Please don’t shoot! We aren’t with them—”

  Simone kept her rifle trained on the guy as he came closer, pausing just long enough to fire over his shoulder at one more demon-human corpsey thing. There was another boy with him, dressed in a guard’s uniform—at least, as far as Phillip could tell. It was covered in quite a lot of blood.

  “Aren’t with who?” Phillip asked, answering in English. “The Nazis? Or those . . . things?”

  “Neither!” The blond white boy, the American-sounding one, stepped closer, though he kept his good hand raised. His right shoulder was crusted with drying blood. “Look, we can explain . . .”

  But his explanation was swallowed up in a vicious growl as another monster dropped out of the trees. Its limbs seemed to sprout out of the mouth of a man’s severed head; human arms and legs dotted some of the many appendages as they scraped through the dead leaves. The head swiveled toward Phillip and fixed its bloody eyes on him.

  “Jesus Christ.” Phillip took a step backward, but he was afraid to move too quickly. Was that how they hunted? Movement? Maybe he was thinking of lions. Dinosaurs. Carefully, he took another step back as the creature let out a rattling hiss.

  Bang. Bang. Simone let loose a barrage into the creature’s torso, shredding the head it had grown from. But all that did was prompt the creature to unfold, new dimensional horrors of body parts, blood vessels, throbbing organs crawling out of the skin it was shedding as it angled itself at Simone.