Anno Frankenstein

by Jonathan Green

  The creature carefully locked its knuckles together on top of its knees and looked down at the calloused skin of its hands.

  Ulysses felt cold to the pit of his stomach. Incredibly, he could empathise with the creature. He too had lost his father when he was only fifteen years old. Although more than twenty years had passed since then, it still felt like there was a hole in his heart.

  “Swallowed up in my own grief and self-pity, I did seek to end my own life, planning to travel to, as Shelley put it so quaintly, ‘the Northernmost extremity of the globe,’ and throw myself upon my father’s funeral pyre.

  “And there, on a raft of polar ice, I built my father’s pyre from the wreckage of the jolly boat I had taken from Walton’s ship. Using the oil from the broken storm lantern and the flint from a tinderbox I set it ablaze. But, coward that I was, as the fire rose to claim my father’s body, I could not bring myself to leap into those purgatorial flames. The instinct to survive was simply too strong within me. It was as if the very flesh that formed me rebelled against my intentions, determined that it would not die a second time.

  “Slowly the fire burned down until there was nothing left of my father but bones and ash, and me, still standing there, drifting amidst the frozen fog. I stayed like that day after day – for I know not how long – going over and over again the events in my life that had led me to that time and place.

  “But time had no meaning there. The quality of the light and the colour of the sky never changed. It was a world of never-ending, impenetrable white.

  “Eventually the Arctic currents carried the ice floe, and me with it, to the Norwegian coast. From there, having been prevented, it seemed, from bringing an end to myself, I set out instead to roam the wilderness, far from the lands of men, keeping clear of the borders of civilisation, knowing not where I was going, nor what I would do when I got there.”

  Ulysses continued to stare at the creature in stunned amazement. “How did you survive?”

  “On roots and berries. Rats and voles. Anything I could catch. I ate whatever I caught raw.”

  “But that was years ago, wasn’t it?” Ulysses went on. “Surely time itself would have begun to have an effect on you eventually.”

  “It seemed not,” the spawn of Frankenstein said. “I did not appear to age. I never got ill. I could survive extremes of cold. Any injuries I did sustain – such as when I fell into the crevasse atop a glacier – simply healed themselves over time. I would seem that I am, for all intents and purposes, immortal.

  “And so I continued like this for the best part of a century, steadily venturing ever closer to civilisation. But war came to Europe for a second time, more terrible than any that had come before, and I began to hear my father’s name mentioned for the first time in a hundred years, around campfires at night, while I listened from the shadows. Intrigued, I made my way home for the first time in decades. And the further I travelled, the more I learned of the Frankenstein Corps and what had become of my ancestral home.”

  “The corpse-factory,” Ulysses muttered.

  “It was then that I had my epiphany. I had fully intended to kill myself so that no-one would ever create another abomination like me, and yet here was an entire military division dedicated to doing just that, over and over again, with the sole purpose of working evil.

  “Those bodies brought back from the dead by the Frankenstein Corps – how dare they corrupt my father’s name so?” he spat. “They are no better than slaves. They do not have a voice. They do not have anyone to speak for them. And so it falls to me, to become the saviour of those made in my image, and free them from their bondage.”

  Ulysses was unable to tear his eyes from the creature now, the cold fires of hatred burning within the black pits of its eyes.

  “So,” it said, “I will help you.”

  Ulysses inhaled, slowly and deeply, as he processed everything the creature had told him and all that he had seen for himself. Just judging by the size of him, it seemed to Ulysses that having the brute on their side would make it a good deal easier to break back into Castle Frankenstein. And if he really was Frankenstein’s original creation as he claimed, and he had truly lived for more than a century without injury or even aging, then it was even more the case.

  “What do we call you?” Ulysses asked. “It wouldn’t feel right calling you ‘creature’ or ‘monster.’”

  “Call me Adam, for that is my name,” the giant rumbled.

  “But I did not believe your father ever gave you a name.”

  “No, none, other than ‘fiend’ and ‘devil’ and ‘wretch.’ So I named myself Adam, for I was the first of my kind.”

  Ulysses considered this for a moment, and something about it irked him.

  If Shelley’s account of Frankenstein’s story was correct, as the creature now calling itself Adam claimed it was, then Ulysses already knew that the monster was dangerously unpredictable, capable of sudden outbursts of extreme violence.

  Adam had already made it clear that he had his own agenda, which just happened to coincide with what Ulysses and Katarina wanted to achieve in the short-term. He certainly had the will and – judging by the way he had dealt with the werewolf – the means to achieve it. But Ulysses also suspected that he would have no regard to the cost to others or who would be sacrificed along the way.

  And, if Adam succeeded in his plan, and unleashed the re-made Prometheans of the Frankenstein Corps on the world, what might he do with an army of such beasts at his command?

  If they were going to do this, they had to bear in mind that such an alliance could only ever be temporary. He would worry about how he would muzzle the beast again later.

  “Very well,” he said, carefully offering the giant his hand, making a deal with the devil. For a moment the brute looked at his hand curiously and then, the harsh expression on his deformed face relaxing slightly, took it in one huge meaty paw and shook it firmly, clearly taking care not to crush every bone in Ulysses’ hand. “It would be an honour to have you at our side.”

  Ulysses looked to Katarina, meeting her dark stare.

  “Now we are three.”

  “Perhaps not,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Ulysses bristled.

  “I mean, we may already have allies on the inside too.”

  “Excellent!” Ulysses declared, beaming. “Then the game is most definitely afoot!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Enemy at the Gates

  THE GROAN OF twisting metal made the guard atop the remaining gatehouse sentry post turn in suspicion. He snapped his gun around and trained it on the direction of the sound.

  Against the velvet blue of the night sky, he saw the skeletal silhouette of a pylon start to fall.

  There had been no detonation, no crash of a collision, and no rumble of subsidence, so there could only be one explanation for the buckling pylon’s imminent collapse.

  “Spotlight!” the sentry shouted to the arc-light operators on the tower at the corner of the castle and pointed towards the pylon’s footings. The men manning the spotlight heard his cry and turned its beam on the hillside.

  And then they all saw it: a looming gorilla-like shape, taller than a man. A colossus built of muscle and rage, it had its shoulders pressed against the structure, its huge hands crushing the metal supports between them.

  The sentry put his rifle to his shoulder and took aim.

  Strong hands grabbed his head from behind and gave a sharp twist. There was a crack and the man slipped silently to the floor.

  Shouts of alarm were now coming from the spotlight emplacement, accompanied by the sounds of a gunman somewhere letting off a few rattling shots in the direction of the target. But it was too little, too late. With a groan of buckling metal, the pylon came crashing down, trailing sparks. Actinic bursts of electrical discharge erupted from the power lines as they were pulled taut and broke free, whipping around the castle battlements as the structure hit the spotlight.

  Men sc
reamed and died, their flesh cooked by the raw energy the power lines had carried into the castle. Lights winked out throughout the fortress complex as the little power still trickling through to the facility from the devastated dam bled away into the night in a coruscating fireworks display.

  Muffled shouts of surprise rose from within the fortress-factory’s flesh-smithies, laboratories and production line. Moments later, soldiers began to pour from the castle’s interior, swarming over the battlements, barely able to believe that they were facing a second attempt to the storm the castle in one night.

  Roaring like a lion, Adam leapt onto the toppled pylon now leaning against the side of the castle and scaled the twisted steel framework to the wall. He swung himself down onto the battlements in front of a gaggle of startled troops, rifles in hand, not one of them ready to face the raging beast. Below them, the mustering soldiers were hampered by the whipping, crackling cables still flailing across the courtyard.

  With an enraged bellow, the brute grabbed the two nearest soldiers and smashed their heads together, fracturing both their skulls. While they were still falling, twitching, onto the stones, Adam picked up another man and casually tossed him into the nest of sparking cables below, the wretch managing one last scream before he became little more than a blackened, smoking skeleton.

  A fourth soldier went over the wall the other way, landing in a tangle of broken bones and wheezing, punctured lungs.

  Rifles were brought to bear at last, but too late. Adam charged the soldiers crowding the narrow walkway, slamming into them and pushing them backwards without slowing.

  More men went tumbling from the battlements, screaming in terror, falling to their deaths below.

  The soldiers scrambling up the stairs to bolster the defence of the battlements, as yet unaware of the mayhem they were about to join, suddenly found bodies falling on top of them and sending them tumbling backwards down the stairs to land in a heap at the bottom.

  STEPPING OVER THE sentry’s cooling corpse, Katarina Kharkova siezed the rope attached to a grappling hook embedded in the turret wall and heaved at it, speeding her companion’s ascent to the top.

  “This way,” she said, as Ulysses swung his legs over the ledge of the parapet at last, gratefully dropping down into the look-out’s position. She opened a trapdoor in the floor of the sentry post and slipped through it, disappearing into the darkness below.

  COOKIE STARTED. “WHAT was that?” she said, stopping abruptly as she paced the straw-covered floor, anxiously looking at the ceiling of the dungeon cell.

  Hercules Quicksilver followed her gaze from where he sat slumped against one damp wall, his manacled hands resting on his knees. “I don’t know.”

  Another reverberation rumbled through the foundations of the keep.

  “Gunfire,” Cat declared confidently.

  “The castle must be under attack,” said Cookie.

  “What? Again?” Jinx challenged. “Who else, other than us, would even attempt such a thing?”

  A thought suddenly struck Hercules. He stroked his moustache thoughtfully as he met Cookie’s eyes.

  “The monster?” she whispered.

  “The one from the dam, you mean?” Cat queried.

  “Yes, the savage,” Hercules pondered. “I mean it’s certainly possible. The brute’s certainly mad enough.”

  “But why?” Cat asked, bemused.

  “Well there was certainly no love lost between the beast and the German Landsknechts last time we met,” Hercules pointed out.

  “But the explosion,” Jinx said, “back at the dam. Surely… I mean it would have… I mean…” She faltered.

  “How could anything survive that?” Hercules finished.

  “Yes.”

  “Doctor Jekyll did, or Hyde at least.”

  “Traitorous bastard!” Cookie hissed.

  “We don’t even know the other monster was on the dam when the tank’s magazine went up,” Hercules reasoned. “The last I saw of it was when Hyde sent it flying into the lake.”

  The survivors of the Monstrous Regiment looked at each other.

  “This attack, so soon after ours... you don’t think...?” Cookie began.

  “No, it couldn’t be,” Hercules interjected. “It couldn’t be looking for us. I mean, why would it?”

  There came another resounding crash that shook dust from the cracks between the stones of the vaulted roof. That one had sounded much closer, too.

  “Could it?”

  There was a sudden rattling at the door to their cell and they scrambled to their feet.

  The rattling abruptly ceased, replaced by the crack of fracturing mortar. With a sudden tremor, the cell door was pulled clean away, dust and stone chips flying into the room in its wake, forcing those inside to cover their faces.

  As the dust began to clear, Hercules lowered his arm from in front of his face and peered at the monstrous silhouette filling the passageway beyond. It was still holding the dungeon door in its huge hands.

  Hercules reflexively went for his gun, but of course he was unarmed.

  “Gentleman,” the monster said in English, albeit with a Germanic accent, bowing slightly to Hercules. He shifted his gaze and bowed again, acknowledging the women this time. “Ladies. We’re here to rescue you.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  Like Father, Like Son

  ULYSSES STEPPED OVER the body of the guard – whose head Adam had smashed into the wall hard enough to knock his eyeballs out of his head – and squeezed past the hulking giant to the threshold of the cell, and there froze.

  He opened his mouth to speak but found he couldn’t.

  The young man standing in the middle of the room gave him an appraising look and then, smiling, took a step forward, offering Ulysses his hand. Ulysses just stood staring at him, utterly dumbfounded.

  He had seen the young man’s photograph a thousand times – with his instantly recognisable bushy moustache and strong jawline – and the painting that had once hung on the wall behind his desk, back in his study at his home in Mayfair. And most importantly, his own memories of the man. He had never looked this young, of course, but the man was still, unmistakeably, his father.

  “Quicksilver,” the young man said, Ulysses dumbly taking the proffered hand and shaking it. “Hercules Quicksilver.”

  Ulysses mouthed the words as his father spoke them, continuing to stare at the haggard-looking man in stunned amazement.

  “And you are?”

  “What?” Ulysses mumbled, shaking himself out of his stupor.

  “Your name; what is it?”

  Ulysses’ mind raced as he tried to think of what to say. He couldn’t tell the young man his true name, could he?

  No, he determined, he most definitely could not. That was a whole can of worms he didn’t want to get into right now – there wasn’t the time to explain.

  “Shelley,” Ulysses suddenly blurted out.

  “I can honestly say that I am very pleased to meet you,” Hercules said, shaking the older man firmly by the hand – the son he did not know he would have.

  Ulysses continued to stare at him, open mouthed and tongue-tied once again.

  “Now, if you’ll pardon me for saying so,” Hercules said, taking charge, “if this is a rescue, shouldn’t we be about escaping?”

  “This way,” said Katarina Kharkova, appearing within the devastated doorway herself.

  “You’re… you’re alive?” Hercules gasped. “But I saw –”

  “Yes, clearly I am alive,” Katarina said curtly. “Now, if we could be on our way?”

  Hercules stumbled towards the open doorway in a state of shock. “Excuse me,” he mumbled, giving the looming giant a wary glance as he squeezed past.

  The other occupants of the cell – young women, dressed in dark-coloured clothes – hurried after him, following Katarina along the passageway, through the castle dungeons and, hopefully, ultimately to safety.

  Still in a state of sho
ck, Ulysses – unrecognisable now, thanks to his emaciated appearance, the prison fatigues he was wearing, his filthy mop of hair, a thick growth of stubble and a bandage across his eye – turned to follow.

  Adam put out a hand. Ulysses stopped and looked up into the monster’s grotesque visage.

  “I have helped you,” he rumbled, “now you must help me – as we agreed.”

  Still completely overwhelmed at discovering that their allies on the inside included his own father, Ulysses did not respond immediately, staring deep into the creature’s watery eyes.

  “Of course,” he said at last, with a forced laugh. “What, did you think I’d forgotten?”

  “The guards will be expecting us to retrace our path through the keep,” Adam said.

  “And the barricade you erected will only hold them back for so long,” Ulysses added.

  Turning, the monster strode off along the corridor in the opposite direction, indicating that the others should follow him. “So we go this way.”

  THE FIRST RESISTANCE they ran into was in an adjoining corridor, but the preternatural speed of a vampire, the brute strength of the creature and the determination of a desperate group of survivors offered a second chance at freedom was too much for two already unnerved soldiers.

  And so the party continued, Hercules still wearing the dishevelled uniform of a Nazi officer, but now carrying an MP40 sub-machine gun, as were Cookie and Shelley.

  At the top of a flight of stairs from the dungeon into the lower levels of the keep, they were confronted by their next challenge; four troopers covering behind a statue of a lion.

  This time it was a liberal dose of bullets and abject panic that did the job. The Germans didn’t stand a chance.

  And so it was that they pushed through another set of doors and entered the colonnade-cum-hangar beyond with their team now fully armed and ready for anything.

  Ready for anything, perhaps, apart from a gigantic brass and steel effigy of an eagle.