by Greig Beck
When the German leader was writing, his mind seemed like a pinball bouncing around all over the place. But the one thread that held it all together was an unshakable belief in myth and magic, and especially the dark occult.
He spent a fortune in stolen gold searching for a supernatural edge, and no artifact was off-limits – the spear of destiny, or the arc of the covenant, and then there were the mysterious aussterben steins: extinction stones.
Matt came across the image he had seen from long ago: a photograph, black and white and very grainy, of a stone similar to the one in New Zealand. It was obviously its other half or twin.
Klara sat close to him and motioned to the diary. “Everything you hoped for?”
“No, I can’t read it,” he grumbled.
Matt looked back at the woman who smiled, causing tiny lines to form on each side of her mouth. He looked into her eyes. They were luminous pale blue but with hints of frozen ice. He bet they almost glowed in the dark.
“The diary?” She frowned. “I can read German.”
He grinned. “So can I, and all of the dialects. It’s the stone’s carvings I can’t read. I mean, I could if they were clearer, but the image is too grainy.”
“We have software programs that can clean it up,” Klara said.
“No, you don’t. Not this language,” Matt replied. “No application is ever going to be able to clean up a language it doesn’t recognize to begin with. If I had a few months I might be able to generate a program to recognize the symbols and make a best guess as to what they are. But time is not something we have a lot of.”
She nodded. “So has it helped at all?”
Matt turned to her. He wondered whether it was just her turn to act friendly to him or if she was really interested. It didn’t matter, he thought.
“Somewhat.” Matt exhaled through his nose and went back to examining Hitler’s words that surrounded the image of the stone.
“The original stone he had in his possession was definitely moved. And he hoped to retrieve the second half to …” He frowned. “Initiate a targeted event, maybe.” Matt turned to Klara. “How could he do that?”
“Create a targeted event? Like a targeted strike on his enemies?” she asked.
He nodded. “It confirms what we thought: Hitler imagined these stones could be wielded like some sort of weapon.”
“A mad plan.” She half smiled. “From a mad man.”
“We won’t know that for sure until we understand the stones a little more,” he replied. “One thing that’s coming through from his notes is that he was convinced he had something that would win him the war.”
“We’d better find it then.” She continued to watch him. “You’re very intriguing, Professor Kearns.”
He turned and her unblinking eyes bore into his. “Er, thanks.”
She continued to stare, and Matt wondered whether she was expecting a return compliment. But then, was she really complimenting him?
He pointed at the diary, and she finally released his gaze. “Look here, this reference: die Berge der Nachtvögel. The only notation written in red ink.”
“The mountains of the night birds.” She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means the Owl Mountains.”
Matt jumped at the HAWC team leader’s voice. Roy Maddock had come up behind them so quietly it was like he had just appeared out of thin air.
“Jesus, man, a little warning next time,” Matt said. “The Owl Mountains … I’ve never heard of them.”
“I’m not surprised,” Maddock said. “But as World War II was ending, they were a hive of activity, albeit an extremely clandestine one. Let me see that.”
He came in closer to crouch beside them and look down on the diary. Matt held up the small book.
“Not much to go on. But it is something.” Maddock rested his forearms on his thighs.
“They were significant?” Matt asked. “How?”
“At the time, very significant,” Maddock replied. “In 1944, Hitler authorized work on several huge bunkers, basically hidden underground lairs, that were to be his emergency bolt-holes. The best known was the Wolf’s Lair, in Pullach, Eastern Poland. But by far the most secretive was the Riese bunker deep inside the die Berge der Nachtvögel – the Owl Mountains. He diverted twenty-eight thousand laborers to the job.”
“Holy crap.” Matt’s mouth hung open. “How did he keep it secret with that many laborers working on it?”
Maddock smiled ruefully. “They were slave laborers, prisoners of war, and no one came home. The rumor is when their work was done they were all buried inside the cavern system in the mountain.”
“Those bastards! That’s one way to keep a secret,” Matt seethed.
“Unfortunately, very true. But these were massive projects and the construction required three quarters of a million cubic feet of steel-reinforced concrete, over hundreds of thousands cubic feet of tunnels, and hundreds of miles of pipelines. These fortified hideaways were so important to Hitler that he diverted more concrete to them than was used for the entire German population for the construction of air-raid shelters.”
“Holy shit.” Matt was awestruck.
“They might have worked, kept him safe and hidden except for one problem.” Maddock half smiled. “In January 1945, the Russian Red Army overran Eastern Europe, heading straight for Berlin. In panic, an SS Unit in the Owl Mountains ordered the tunnel system bricked up and sealed over, and all entrances hidden.” He shrugged. “And that’s when up to twenty-eight thousand POWs vanished.”
“Have any of them been found?” Klara asked.
“No.” Maddock scoffed. “But it’s not surprising. At last estimation, there were still over a quarter of a million feet of tunnels, rooms, antechambers, and whatever else is down there, still unaccounted for.”
Matt turned to Klara. “Then that’s where it is, that’s where the lost extinction stone has been hidden. I just know it.”
Vin had joined them. “Maybe, like the legend goes, it’s part of the Nazi treasure still buried in the Owl Mountains, including missing riches from all over Europe.”
Maddock shrugged. “Nazi gold hunters started looking for the missing tunnels as soon as the war ended.” He smiled flatly.
“Nearly eighty years.” Matt groaned.
“We don’t have decades, Professor.” Maddock rose from his crouch.
Matt nodded. “There must be a clue in here somewhere.” He sighed and looked back at the small red leather diary. “All we need to do is find it.”
CHAPTER 16
Gorban sugar beet farm, Lviv district, Western Ukraine
Vasily Gorban and his sons worked the field. The ground was hard, the work backbreaking, and the sun beat down mercilessly, but Vasily couldn’t help smiling as he watched his two boys rake, shovel, and gather in the dark red beets.
Andrei moved quickly, like a machine that never seemed to tire. But his younger brother, Bohdan, looked like he forgot why he was even there half the time.
But he loved them both, and they never complained of the hardships they faced since the seeming never-ending conflict with their huge neighbor that had dragged on for years now.
Vasily straightened and looked over his fields; they were scarred with old bomb craters that he knew he’d need to fill in one day. At least nothing had fallen for over twelve months, and the new Ukrainian president had opened dialogue.
He wasn’t hopeful of an equitable outcome as he knew that Russia held all the cards. Ukraine had much national pride, but sometimes it was better to be satisfied with fifty percent of something, rather than end up with one hundred percent of nothing.
Vasily’s trained ear picked up the sound of the airplane high above them. He craned his head back to hold a hand over his eyes. The dot in the sky seemed to be dropping something and, as he continued to watch, he saw the speck’s rear bloom open with the canopy of small parachutes.
He frowned, not knowing what it could be. But it was pa
ssing directly over them, had dispatched some of its cargo right over their farm, and it was going to plummet to the Earth in his fields.
“Hey, what is this?” he asked.
Andrei and Bohdan lifted their heads and turned to him. They then followed his gaze.
Bohdan placed his hands on his hips as the thing descended. “Supplies? The new president said he was going to look after the farmers, remember?”
“I was not informed,” Vasily replied, but felt his spirits buoyed at the thought of receiving something for free.
“Well, it’s coming down right here, so maybe we should take a look?” Andrei dropped his rake and set off.
“Stop!” Vasily yelled, but the boys were already jogging to the package’s arrival place.
In a few minutes he caught up and the trio stood on the edge of a shallow depression where the package had thumped to earth. They stared down into the crater at a large canister, with red blinking lights on its side. There were no markings, no letters, numbers, or anything to identify it.
Vasily frowned down at it, but Bohdan grinned. “I think it is something valuable.” He turned back. “We will need the truck and a rope.”
“Wait, look.” Vasily pointed.
The red blinking lights on the canister turned green, and there was an audible click and hiss as an area along the side popped open. A cloud of vapor escaped.
Bohdan eased down the loose soil and crouched to lay a hand on the canister. He jerked it back. “It’s cold. Maybe it’s refrigerated food.” He carefully put his fingers inside the lid section and prized it open further.
More gas escaped. At first the three men could see nothing as the clouds of gas were so thick. But in a few seconds the gas dissipated and they saw that the canister was filled with a glutinous liquid with small things packed in tight.
Bohdan squinted. “I think it might be olives or large nuts, or something.”
In the warmth of the sun, the fluid began to agitate and then exploded into a thousand separate entities.
“Ah, god, cockroaches.” Bohdan scrambled backwards.
Warmed and dried by the sun, the swarm poured out of the canister. Many took to the air, and it became thick with the deep zumm of glistening wings, and the clack of hard bodies as they jostled against each other.
Bohdan screamed as he was enveloped, and Vasily turned to his other son.
“Run.”
The boy hesitated.
“Run!”
This time the boy turned and sprinted back toward their house. Vasily slid down the dirt slope toward his other son, who was screaming as though in the flames of hell.
It was then that the first of the bugs alighted on him. In seconds he too was covered, and the pain was like fire and needles all at once. Even though his brain gave commands for his arms to lift to try and ward the creatures off, his limbs refused to obey and just hung like long hairy sacks at his side.
The old man screamed from the agony. Thankfully it didn’t last for long.
CHAPTER 17
Central Scientific Research Institute, Russian Ministry of Defense, Shchyolkovo, Moscow
Lead scientist Mikhail Verinko waited as Colonel Borishenko sat with his fingers steepled and watched the satellite footage of the results of their “seeding” program in the Ukraine. The town of Bibrka in the western corner of the Lviv district had been totally decimated.
Borishenko spoke without turning. “You have exceeded my expectations.”
Verinko exhaled with relief and nodded so deeply he almost bowed. “Thank you, sir. The creatures are extremely voracious and efficient.”
Borishenko grunted and turned back to the screen. “And where are they now?”
Verinko hesitated and Borishenko turned, casting pale eyes over him. The military man made him nervous and seemed to be able to smell falsehood, weakness, or indecision. After a moment, Verinko bobbed his head.
“We think the swarm might have died out.”
“You know this for sure?” Borishenko asked, still pinning the scientist with his gaze.
“We believe so, but as you would expect we can’t exactly send a team in there right now.” Verinko waited, holding his breath.
Borishenko smacked his lips and stood. “So, all you know is they’ve vanished, yes?”
Verinko nodded.
Borishenko seemed to think about it for a moment, and then shrugged. “I don’t care. If they do what is expected of them, and then all commit suicide, maybe it is for the best.”
“Yes, sir.” Verinko stepped back.
Borishenko headed for the door and paused with a hand on the handle. “Continue with your testing.”
“Of course, sir.” Verinko gave him a stiff salute, and turned back to the screen. He bit one of his nails as he stared at the Ukrainian landscape littered with bodies that were grotesquely flattened.
It was a horrible way to die, and even though as a scientist he was usually able to distance himself from the human cost of a weapon’s field test, he couldn’t help feeling a sense of unease.
He’d told Borishenko that the creatures had probably died, but he didn’t really think that at all. They were still there … somewhere.
CHAPTER 18
USA – USSTRATCOM Headquarters
Colonel Jack “the Hammer” Hammerson read quickly through the reports coming in that matched the characteristics of the massacre in the small town of Blessing.
Across the world, the profile and the aftermath were always the same: small, localized earthquake, followed by people, and every other damn animal, being killed. Obliterated, more like, he thought, furiously.
Except for in the Ukraine. For some reason, the small town of Bibrka was an outlier in that the swarm appeared without any previous quake. A new pattern emerging? Still far too many unknowns, he thought.
Hammerson looked again at the pictures of the corpses; for someone who had seen it all, and all manner of degradation that could be inflicted on the human body and soul, even Hammerson’s strong stomach rebelled at the images of the bodies that had been deboned.
“Fuck it,” he whispered. Those poor souls had been just left as bags of meat. He wished to god they died quickly. But he had already been told from the autopsies that many died from heart failure or suffocation, meaning they lived through the attack. Afterwards, their bodies couldn’t function without bones. They couldn’t breathe, and their hearts labored under the weight of their sagging flesh.
So far their investigations had located what they thought was the primary event in the Pothohar Plateau, Rawalpindi district, north-eastern Pakistan. The small town of Dhalla had been attacked, and over 600 people had been exterminated.
That was two weeks ago. But then a week later, just fifty miles to the north of Dhalla, the town of Munjindi had been attacked. This time some 5200 people were wiped out. The plague, invasion, or infection was spreading, and getting stronger. And from the body count, it seemed these things were getting hungrier.
CHAPTER 19
Halloday homestead, Brewster, Nebraska
Big Jim Halloday stepped out onto his porch and sipped from a huge mug of coffee. Sun was just coming up, and he knew the slight chill in the air would vanish real quick, leaving them with another dirt-dry, stinker of a day.
Been a while since rain, but last season was okay and the tanks still have plenty of water, so we’ll be okay, he thought.
Jim was going to be sixty in a few weeks and was born and bred here. The town had grown around him and, unlike a lot of the nearby Texas towns, was holding its own on population growth – 2425 people last count, and even growing a little.
As the sun came over the top of the orange trees in his front yard the shadows started to retreat. He sipped and then clicked his tongue against his cheek.
“Damn gophers.”
There were mounds everywhere. He frowned. Damn everywhere. And the more he looked the more he could see them pocking his front yard, all the way down the scrubby path to the road.
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“What inna rat’s ass?” He stepped down on the grass and walked toward one of the baseball-sized mounds. The dirt looked soft, as if something had been burrowing in just recently. He found a stick that was around three feet long.
He approached the mound again and began to stab into it. The stick sunk into the soft soil. He pulled it back out, looking at the tip, and then stuck it back in, a little deeper this time. He hit something hard, and he wiggled it around. The stick jerked, and then was tugged, almost from his hand.
“Don’t like that, huh?” He grinned and pushed down hard on the twig and then jerked it back and forth, using the old toilet plunger technique. He drew it out and checked the end looking for some evidence of the thing, but there was nothing. He went to stick it back in again, even deeper. He paused. The soil was starting to lift out and the critter was coming on up.
Jim gripped the stick as the soil fell away, and then a black head emerged that was the size of a child’s clenched fist. Jim’s eyes widened when he saw it was no gopher. In fact, it was no creature he had ever seen before in his life.
The sun was up high enough now to spill over all the mounds in his yard and, as if receiving the same command at once, they erupted like tiny volcanoes.
The creatures fully emerged and shook themselves down. Jim could only stare at the thing in front of him. Its eyes looked eerily human and stared back.
The creature had to be eight inches long, solid, and resembling a massive hairy wasp with extra legs.
“Aw, Jezus, man.” He backed up onto his front porch holding the stick out in front of himself. “You fellas just stay there now.”
He had a twelve gauge on the rack just inside the doorway and thought he might just need it. As he watched, the first thing to emerge twitched and its wings unfolded.