A Gift from the Gods
Page 27
“I don’t recognise this place,” gasped Hitler, “where are we?”
“Hell,” replied Bormann impassively, looking around at the devastation, “we’re in Hell.”
Picking his way forwards through the wasteland, Bormann struggled to breathe; the heat was burning his lungs every time he inhaled, making any form of excursion difficult.
“Is this it?” he mocked, “the destiny of the Fourth Reich? Is this what the struggle was for?”
Bormann began laughing manically until he began to cough and choke. Hitler said nothing but stared back as if in a daze; he too was struggling to breathe.
The heat was getting stifling so Bormann started to look around in a desperate search for some shade. Instead he found a cliff edge which gave him a panoramic view of the land for miles around. Everywhere was the same; scorched and desolate. From one horizon to the next, all he could see were meteors dropping through the atmosphere and hitting the earth in fire and fury.
Looking over the precipice, Bormann observed a two-hundred-foot drop into a fiery pit. He turned to see that Hitler hadn’t moved; it occurred to him how small and pathetic he looked.
The situation was too much for him to bear, so standing to attention, Bormann gave the Nazi salute.
“Sieg Heil! Mein Führer!” he shouted with his last breath, then calmly allowed himself to fall backwards over the edge, into oblivion.
Stumbling up close to where Bormann had fallen, the Führer also looked around him. Now the sky was giving a display of small meteors, entering the atmosphere like shooting stars and burning up before they made impact. At last he could say he was Master of the Earth – Emperor of all he surveyed. The last man standing at the end of time.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for their support and encouragement. In alphabetical order:
Ahmed Muhammad Aziz, Philip Beal, Michael Bratby, Jan Bridger, Patrick Budden, Ian Crease, Darren Garner-Richards, Julie Garner-Richards, Barry Gunn, Roger Gunn, Joe Eyers, Leslie Hanson, Nick Hill, Rab Hopkins, Gill Huswick, Kevin McIntyre, Lois Kelly, Arthur McLernon, Shiela McLernon, Robert ‘Scotty’ McQuillan, Trevor Loxton, Gary Noseda, Paul O’Connell, Mark Russell, Rob Salt, Ted Swan, Michael Sweet, Lyndsey Tennant, Steve Tennant, Martin Tricker, and Joyce Purslow,
A special thank you goes to the following:
Baron Bratby, Carole Bratby, Nils Bratby, Margaret Graham, Aimee Gunn, Rob Smith, Jim Stringer, Thapa Top, and last but not least Jeremy Wilson.