Anno Frankenstein

by Jonathan Green

  “Oh my god,” Hercules gasped staring up at the huge machine.

  It was standing upright, as if on its perch, wings outstretched on either side, extending the width of the hangar in which it stood.

  It looked just like the angular stylised raptor that appeared in so much Nazi symbolism, only with a wingspan somewhere in the region of one hundred feet.

  “What is it?” Cookie whispered at his shoulder.

  Hercules took in the cockpit bubble of the eagle’s eyes above him, the articulated wingtips, the cantilevered doors in the eagle’s breast, the access hatch at the top of its tail ramp.

  “It’s a flying machine.”

  “What?” Cookie exclaimed. “Like a dirigible, you mean? But how can tonnes of metal like this ever get airborne? There’s not a gas balloon in sight.”

  “It’s the future.”

  At that, they all turned.

  Shelley was staring up at the monstrous metallic creation, an expression of horror on his face and in his single bulging eye. It was the first thing he had said since they had fled the dungeons under Castle Frankenstein.

  “What do you mean?” Hercules demanded, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

  “I mean this… it shouldn’t be here.”

  Shelley sniffed the air, Hercules copying him, curious as to what he might find. There was something about the atmosphere of the hangar, a metallic tang in the air, like molten lead.

  “How long has it been?” Shelley said to himself. “If they’ve already started cavorite production on a significant scale here, what else have they achieved? How much longer has Dashwood been here than me?” he added, half under his breath.

  “What are you saying?” Hercules challenged the man who had been designated Prisoner Zero. “What do you mean? Speak plainly now.”

  Shelley looked at him, a stony expression on his face and a flinty look in his uncovered eye.

  “It would take too long to explain. I know we’ve only just met, but you have to trust me on this one – we must raze Castle Frankenstein to the ground and destroy everything hidden within.”

  Hercules regarded the wretch suspiciously. “Agreed,” he said at last, “but I would know who you really are, Mr Shelley.”

  “Later,” Shelley said, flashing Hercules a strangely familiar grin.

  “Very well, so be it.”

  Adam’s hulking form suddenly loomed over them, casting them in shadow.

  “If we’re done here, might we be about our business?” the brute rumbled. “After all, time and tide wait for no man.”

  Hercules was still confused. He turned his suspicious gaze from Shelley to the giant he and the Monstrous Regiment had first run into battling the Landsknechts on the Darmstadt Dam; the monster who had been so instrumental in rescuing them from the castle dungeons after Jekyll had turned traitor and yet who had taken Hyde on in an epic fist fight back at the dam.

  “Absolutely,” he said, checking the load of his MP40.

  “Then we go this way,” the giant said, turning and striding across the hangar towards an arched doorway.

  Giving the giant iron eagle one last awed glance, Hercules followed, leading the rest of the party after the lumbering creature and out of the hangar.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-TWO

  Pandemonium

  COLONEL WOLF KAHLER looked up, hearing the crash from the other side of the steel door at the far end of the long vaulted chamber. So did every scientist, engineer and Enigma machine technician working on the production line.

  It was as if an eerie silence had fallen over the room, even though the rattling mechanisms were still running, straining the coal-fuelled back-up generators to the point of failure. No one spoke, but all shared the same unease.

  A second later, with another resounding crash, the steel door at the end of the chamber buckled and exploded inwards, iron hinges tearing free of the stones.

  As the buckled steel clattered down the iron staircase, coming to rest noisily on the stone flagged floor, Kahler stared out of the observation booth at what could now be seen framed within the doorway, one foot still raised from where it had – impossibly – kicked in the door.

  “What the hell?” his adjutant, Corporal Reinhard, gasped beside him.

  But Kahler knew what it was immediately, only he had never seen one that size or with such time-paled scars. And neither had he ever seen such cold fury and determination blazing within a Promethean’s eyes.

  The look in the creature’s eyes turned his spine to ice water and he shivered, knowing that whatever happened here, they had already lost. He doubted even the Frankenstein Corps could stand against such chilling resolve.

  As the monster cleared the stairs in a single bound, Colonel Kahler turned to his adjutant. “Ready the bird,” he hissed from the corner of his mouth. “I have a feeling we may need it.”

  His adjutant shot him a startled look.

  “Do it!” Kahler snapped.

  “Yes, Herr Colonel! At once, Herr Colonel!”

  There was a resounding crash from below and the crack of gunfire, and suddenly the factory was filled with screaming. Kahler turned back to the window to see the grotesque giant topple another heavy piece of machinery, before picking up the bulky steel cabinet of an Enigma machine and hurling it through the glass screen of an X-ray scanner.

  The thing was like an engine of destruction, implacable and unstoppable. And it wasn’t alone. The brute was followed into the chamber by a rag-tag band.

  “Herr Quicksilver!” he hissed, laying eyes on the moustachioed man striding through the factory in the monster’s wake, bold as brass, ruthlessly gunning down medical staff and maintenance crews alike without any sign of remorse. In fact, Kahler thought, the villain appeared to be enjoying himself.

  Kahler turned to the other two men occupying the observation booth with him. Lieutenant-Colonel Teufel of the SS was regarding the growing pandemonium on the factory floor below with a look of bored complacency on his face, as if he didn’t believe that he could possibly be in danger himself.

  The betrayer Doctor Jekyll looked on, wringing his hands and rooted to the spot in abject fear. “We have to get out of here!” he shrieked, meeting Kahler’s gaze.

  “So you are a mind-reader as well as a traitor, doctor,” Kahler said, switching to English.

  He turned to Teufel, who was still staring blankly out of the window. There was an explosion and a piece of shrapnel – a cog from a derailed piece of machinery – spun through the air and struck one of the booth’s windows, crazing it. The Devil didn’t even blink.

  “Lieutenant-Colonel?” Kahler said. “Care to join us?”

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” the gaunt old man said, staring at another of the criminals, a blonde-haired creature cutting down men with her bare hands and lethal bite, her mouth and chin red with fresh blood.

  “Who?”

  “Major von Haupstein. My dear Isla,” Teufel replied, his face an emotionless mask.

  “Teufel, we have to hurry,” Kahler pressed.

  The Lieutenant-Colonel turned from the window at last, as a fire took hold somewhere within the chamber below and the booth was bathed in a ruddy orange glow.

  “They will pay for her death with their lives,” he said, the black hate in his eyes chilling Kahler to the core.

  “It shall be so,” Kahler said, motioning Jekyll towards the door and making to follow after him. “We will come up with another strategy, but not here. Better that we leave now and live to fight another day.”

  Teufel nodded and followed them out of the observation booth, the flames rising in the chamber behind them.

  “THIS WAY!” ADAM shouted, as another explosion rocked the corpse-factory.

  Ulysses was close on the creature’s heels as he led the charge into the next chamber. He stumbled to a halt as he took in the details of the laboratory in which he suddenly found himself.

  “I know this place,” he muttered, half to himself. “I’ve be
en here before.”

  His eyes fell on the now dark electrode spires and the empty frame suspended just above the floor. Jars that had once been filled with preserving fluid and gangrenous limbs lay smashed on the floor, the soupy formaldehyde trickling away between the stone slabs, the bottled body parts scattered across the chamber floor like a shower of dead fish.

  There was a flurry of motion behind him and they were joined by his youthful father and what was left of the Monstrous Regiment. Agent K brought up the rear, awash with crimson now. The sight of it made him feel uncomfortable.

  “What is this place?” the woman known as Cookie asked, staring in appalled wonder at the macabre torture-chamber-cum-mad-scientist’s-lair.

  “This is where Doctor Folter indulged his predilections,” Ulysses said darkly.

  “Doctor who?” Cat asked, shooting wary glances around the room.

  Ulysses pointed at the cooked corpse lying between the electrodes. “Him.”

  He looked anxiously around the room, twisting his head from side to side as if trying to take in every part of the laboratory at once.

  “There was a monster here. He had just finished another of his creations,” he went on.

  “The four-armed – how do you say? – abomination,” Katarina said, joining him as she wiped the blood of another unfortunate soldier from her face. The gash in her chest was almost entirely healed now. She had fed well.

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” Ulysses warned the rest of the party.

  “Easy for you to say,” Jinx quipped.

  Ulysses scowled at her and her expression of grim humour paled. “Just be careful,” he growled.

  “We must keep going,” Adam’s voice echoed from the walls of the chamber like the slamming of crypt doors. “This way.”

  The giant set off once again, ducking through an archway into the adjoining ante-chamber. He kicked open another door and entered the passageway beyond that.

  And where Adam led, Ulysses Quicksilver followed.

  But following the monster through the splintered remains of another door, Ulysses suddenly stumbled to a halt once more.

  The first thing that hit him was the noise. It reminded him uncomfortably of the macabre menagerie beneath Umbridge House on Ghestdale; like the moaning and mewling of babes in arms but given voice through the distorted vocal chords of imbecilic adults.

  The second thing was the smell.

  “Oh my god!” Cat exclaimed as she joined them on the other side of the shattered door. She coughed suddenly, gagging, the acrid melange of faeces and unwashed bodies catching at the back of her throat. The others who came after her could not help but do the same.

  “Come on,” Adam rumbled. “We can’t stop now.”

  “But can’t you smell that?” Cookie challenged.

  The monster turned and fixed her with its watery gaze. “My sense of smell is much more sensitive than yours,” the creature said. “Stay here, if you prefer, but my brothers need me.”

  His one remaining eye watering, Ulysses took a deep breath – making a point of not inhaling through his nose – and set off after the giant.

  The passageway led them down a steep flight of steps and into another vaulted chamber. It looked like some sort of prison; the chamber had been divided into cells by the addition of several interlocking cages.

  The stench was even worse here, and Ulysses was forced to cover his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his filthy overalls.

  Many of the cells were occupied, each one home to some malformed monstrosity or other. That they had all once been men – or several men in some cases – was plain, but they were anything but now. Their bodies had been hacked apart and rearranged, giving them hunched shoulders and oversized arms, held together by crude stitching, metal staples and even rivets.

  But these former corpses, remade as super-soldiers for the Nazi war effort, were not solely formed from flesh of the dead. Ulysses could see joints replaced or strengthened by ratcheting cogs, riveted steel skull plates and even heavy butcher’s hooks in place of hands.

  Standing at the centre of the chamber, running their charged cattle-prods across the bars, and clothed from head to foot in leather overalls, their faces hidden by gas-mask helmets, were the monsters’ warders.

  The whole place reminded Ulysses of London’s sanatoriums for the mentally subnormal: the warders rattling the bars of the cells with sadistic enthusiasm, their charges clearly tormented. The huge hulking things rocked back and forth amidst their nests of filthy matted straw, sucking their thumbs or hitting themselves over the head, or pulling at their malformed mouths, howling in infantile terror.

  For one tense moment, nobody moved. Then, as Adam and his allies charged down the steps into the holding chamber, the creature roaring in primal rage, the warden-keepers ran to meet their assault. The battle, such as it was, was over in seconds.

  “SO MUCH FOR the Prometheus Programme,” Hercules muttered, regarding the imprisoned monsters with a mixture of pity and detestation as he picked his way between the sadistic gaolers’ broken and bullet-riddled bodies. “This lot are no better than mindless idiots, not even capable of controlling their most basic bodily functions.” He caught the look in Adam’s eye. “No offence intended,” he added hastily.

  “These individuals have yet to be imprinted,” the giant said calmly, frowning.

  “Imprinted?” Cookie said. “What do you mean?”

  “Having been brought back to life, the newborns have to be imprinted with everything they need to know, via an Enigma Machine, before they can be sent to fight at the front. Upon resurrection, a newborn’s mind is effectively tabula rasa.”

  “Table of what?” Jinx asked.

  “Tabula rasa,” the creature repeated patiently. “It is Latin. It means ‘a blank slate.’”

  “What do you intend to do with these ‘newborns,’ as you call them?” Hercules asked. “Do you have an imprinting Enigma machine to hand?”

  “Do not worry,” the monster replied, a sinister smile on its face that made Hercules feel deeply uneasy. “I shall give them a new purpose. The instinct for survival is present in all living things, no matter how they might have been brought into the world.”

  “Then we are done here?” Shelley asked, looking as uncomfortable as Hercules felt.

  The giant ripped a bundle of keys from the belt of one of the dead warders.

  “We are done. Our compact is fulfilled,” he confirmed. “And I hereby release you of any further commitments.”

  Hercules observed the exchange, curious as to what had passed between the wretch and the creature, but deciding that now was not the time to ask for an explanation.

  “Then we must be about our own business,” Shelley said, a haunted look on his face.

  He turned to address the rescue party gathered on the steps behind him. “Our work is not yet done here. We must make sure this place is razed to the ground.”

  “And how do you suggest we do that, exactly?” Hercules asked.

  “Back to the hangar,” Shelley declared. “That is where we shall make our final stand.”

  Hercules cast him a suspicious look. “You’ve got a plan, haven’t you?” he said.

  “Oh no,” Shelley said, throwing the British agent a sly smile. “I’m just making this up as I go along.”

  As the creature set to work on one of the locked cages, the bedraggled Shelley led the way back up the steps and out of the Prometheans’ prison, the rest of the infiltration party hard on his heels.

  “May your God go with you,” Adam called to Hercules as he made to follow them.

  “My God?” he said, hesitating halfway up the stone staircase. “Is He not your God too?”

  “My God?” Adam guffawed, great peals of belly laughter reverberating from the vaulted ceiling of the stinking, mired chamber. “I killed my Creator long ago.”

  Hercules hurried up the steps after his fellow escapees, profoundly disturbed.

  CHAPTER

 
THIRTY-THREE

  Iron Eagle

  THE CREATURES BURST from the keep in a torrent of malformed bodies and distorted limbs. A tide of unfocused rage and primal ferocity, stirred into frenzy by the goading of the First of their kind. Adam emerged from the fortress into the inner courtyard, to find the few remaining military personnel preparing to make a last desperate stand against the monsters that had escaped from the corpse-factory.

  Many of the soldiers were in such a state of horrified shock that they were on a knife edge, ready to flee at any moment. It was only the respect they held for Colonel Kahler, and their abject fear of the Devil given human form, that stopped them turning tail and running for it right there and then.

  And yet the creations of the Frankenstein Corps were supposed to be on their side! That knowledge alone unsettled many of the men more than anything else. Here they had become vengeful monsters, behaving like savage beasts. Beasts with pile-driver punches and piston-powered legs, able to tear through tank armour with their enhanced hands and cover great distances in a single bound.

  The monsters had already ransacked the lower levels of the keep and there was barely a flesh-crafter or bone-smith left alive. What was left of the resistance the mob had met so far, they were now swinging above their heads, showing off their grisly trophies. One savage was whirling about a human head, spinal column still attached, like a flail.

  “Halt!”

  The command rang out loud and clear across the courtyard, amplified by a crackling loudhailer.

  Adam stopped in the doorway of the keep and slowly craned his neck back, staring upwards. The booming echo had originated from somewhere above.

  Standing in an open window was a Nazi officer, his personal insignia marking him out as a Colonel and a member of the Frankenstein Corps.

  At the sound of his booming voice, the German soldiers froze. Even the malformed monsters stumbled to a halt.

  Their self-appointed leader waited and listened. Intrigued as to how the Colonel would quell this uprising, Adam allowed himself a small smile.