by J. R. Rain
I hoped that I was wrong about the iron rod, but, in the depths of my being, I knew that I was not. The rod felt right. Except, I suddenly didn’t give a damn if I was right. I cared only for getting Hannah the help she needed. What psychotic animal stabs an innocent woman with a goddamn ancient spear? Hitler, that’s who.
I turned away from watching the madman and focused on Hannah. “Hang in there, baby. Help is coming. Hang in there.” I hoped that my words weren’t empty promises and I hoped that when our friends came, it wouldn’t be too late. She lifted her head and the expression on her pale cheeks gave me both hope, and none at all. Was I losing her? Was the life force draining away from her in a rivulet of blood and water?
The advent of dawn was causing a soft glow in the clouds to the east when, with a thundering voice, the ritual came to an end. Now, Hitler raised the spear above his head and turned his face toward the sky. Lightning ripped from the clouds above and struck the point of the spear. A blinding flash was followed by the Führer driving the spear deep into what now proved to be mud. With the new wooden shaft quivering, the bastard stepped back in triumph, his eyes and face aglow. I very much wanted to remove that very same shaft from the mud and drive it into his dark heart.
Except my need for revenge was usurped by the appearance of a glowing blue orb that had appeared around the still-quivering shaft.
And while all eyes were fixed upon the glowing orb, an eruption of gunfire from outside the circle of light added to the lightning splitting the sky and barrage of thunder that followed it. Eli, David and company had arrived. The problem was, Hannah, the professor, and I were sitting ducks as the bullets began to fly.
What happened next happened damn fast, as was always the case with gunfights. Or, in this case, small battles.
A handful of soldiers, in spite of the intensity of flying bullets, rushed forward and surrounded their leader, drawing him away from the glowing spear and out of the circle of light. My eyes followed him, hoping that I would be able to track him down, when and if I was cut free.
Severely outnumbered, the soldiers stole Hitler into an excavation trench that had been dug among some ancient Hittite stone megalith that formed a sort of leaning wall. It provided the bastards some cover. Shortly, more troops poured in, and soon, they were dug in for the long haul. To my left, advancing down the valley, were a surprising number of troops, if you could call them that. Most were dressed in civilian clothing, but all handled their weapons with obvious experience. There, leading the charge, was Isaac Goldstein, leader of the Nazi hunters. They advanced into the circle of light.
I had only to wait a moment longer before Isaac rushed to me and started cutting me free from the post. Others attended to Hannah and her father. They immediately saw her wounds and were careful to ease her to the ground. Once free, I was at her side in a blink. She was fully unconscious, but alive.
I looked at Dr. Julius Byrd, who stood in stunned silence, and for once without words, as he took in the sight of his gravely wounded daughter. “I’ve caused this. I’ve caused all of this.”
“You did, but that doesn’t matter now,” I responded. “She needs help.”
He moaned loudly and rocked on his heels and seemed, if anything, incapable of movement. And because I wanted to, I slapped the man hard across the face, the sting of it jolting him to his senses. I wanted to hit someone, and he would do, for now. “C’mon,” I said, pointing to the cliff face, where a narrow trail wound its way to the top. I was certain there would be a cavalcade of trucks up there. If not, we would be riding out on the damn horse.
Dr. Byrd nodded, understanding, his hair wet and flattened on his forehead. He promptly removed a handkerchief from inside his coat pocket, balled it, and shoved it against his daughter’s bloody wound. She gasped and opened her eyes, and I felt for her. Byrd kept the balled cloth there as I hoisted her up into my arms. Between his handkerchief and her own clothing, we should be able to stifle the wound long enough to keep her from bleeding out.
Now, moving as quickly as possible—and ducking as shots rang out overhead—I was as careful as I could be with the woman I had come to care for. And as the entrenched Germans laid down a blistering hail of bullets in the direction of the attacking Nazi hunters, we set off up the steep incline.
Chapter Eighteen
The way up was torturous, and even Hannah’s slight frame became too much for me to bear. But with her father’s help, we ascended the ramp and somehow managed to not get shot.
Once at the cadre of trucks, Dr. Byrd threw open the door of the closest one, and we eased Hannah’s body along the passenger side of the bench. Once safe, I confirmed she was still breathing while her father continued to suppress the bleeding from the wound in her side.
“She’s still alive,” I said to him, taking the cloth from his hands and pushing him around the truck. “She needs medical help. Get her back to Nicomedia, now!”
Stumbling, Dr. Byrd soon made his way into the driver’s seat. He slammed the door shut and gunned the vehicle to life.
When he’d made what might have been the world’s slowest three-point turn, and had roared off, I turned back to the battle below... and headed down as fast as I could.
***
I was about halfway down when I heard it. The sound of marching.
It echoed through the valley and seemed to shake the stone walls around me. Indeed, pebbles and rocks and dirt danced around my feet. I stood my ground, even if my ground was a steep ramp into the valley below. A low rumble sounded from seemingly everywhere. Now, a boulder broke loose and slammed over the side of the cliff, to fall a hundred feet or so. The sound of marching increased to almost a deafening level.
“What the devil...”
The lightning seemed to increase as well, flashing nearly horizontally across the heavens, although sometimes, it seemed to strike within the valley as well—they were prolonged, supernatural strikes that were unlike anything I had ever seen. The sky was a veritable spider web of electromagnetic energy.
More lightning. And more thunder... my God, the thunder. It pealed and rumbled and exploded, some of it seemingly directly overhead. I felt like I was back in Normandy. If I had to guess, I was witnessing the end of the world. And I had a bird’s eye view of it.
Lucky me, I thought and wondered how the professor was doing while navigating his way out of the desert and toward the main road. I prayed like hell they made it. That was, until I realized I had better pray for my own sorry ass. Something bad was happening, and it was happening now.
And as the sky was seemingly rent in half by multiple lightning strikes, there appeared at the mouth of the valley something not of this world. No, not at all. I was seeing something from dreams, from legends, from nightmares. Something that should not exist, but did. At least, until I awoke from what was obviously a fevered, perhaps even drug-induced, hallucination.
“Impossible,” I whispered as rain swept over me and storm winds pulled at my clothing. “Just impossible.”
Impossible or not, I was fairly certain that I was looking down upon the greatest army the world had ever known. Because there, marching in perfect rank and file, illuminated in an unearthly bluish light—the same light that presently emanated from the staff—were Roman legionaries as far as the eye could see. Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands of them. Perhaps millions, stretching across my entire field of vision—and surely even further.
Truly, Hitler could take over the world with an army of this size.
All were armored, and bore swords and spears. And all were undead; that much was certain. I doubted our guns or bombs or anything corporeal could faze this army of the dead. For the first time in a long time, I felt real fear. So much of it that I wasn’t entirely sure what to do. Who would know what to do?
“I’m dreaming,” I whispered. “I’m dreaming.”
And yet, the sound of the marching continued and the ground shook even more violently. The rocks and boulders shaken loose around me
seemed real enough, and, as I dodged them, I realized there was really only one thing left to do.
“The spear,” I said, setting my jaw. “Get the damn spear.”
Chapter Nineteen
Where the Nazi hunters had once outnumbered the enemy, they suddenly found themselves being flanked by the advancing army, too. To a man, they turned their fire in the direction of the ghoulish force bearing down upon them from the mouth of the valley. That the ghost army was unaffected by the bullets only confirmed that I had truly gone mad.
To the Nazi hunters’ credit, they kept on firing and kept on fighting. Myself, I might have been long gone by now except for two reasons: one, I never run from a fight; and two, there was no way in hell I was going to let Hitler win. No way, not ever. Even if I had to die fighting an invincible ghost army from hell itself.
The lightning storm had stopped, although the rain still slanted at an angle, a great sheet of the stuff. I heard what sounded like grenades and mortar rounds, and I might as well have been back on those terrible beaches of Normandy. Except we had never faced the likes of this. The Nazi hunters had come prepared for a war. The problem was, they had come prepared for a human war.
I rushed forward, not necessarily blindly, as the blue ghost light seemed to touch everything in the valley. Before me, maybe another thirty feet down, was the bright circle of light... and the spear protruding like an Olympian’s javelin deep into the valley floor. At this point, the spear had been forgotten, but not by me. I needed to reach it... and do something. What, exactly, I didn’t know.
The blue army, I saw, had reached the encampment, and things were getting ugly fast. Ghost or not, their spears and swords seemed real enough, and amid the gunfire, I heard the cries of men. Dying men.
Instinctively, I reached for the Enfield, but found nothing to wrap my hand around. I looked at the ground around and in front of me, searching for a weapon. Surely, one had been dropped in the confused mess that had been raging since the first glow of dawn.
My eyes came to rest on a discarded machine gun next to a lifeless body. I ran to it, scooped it up and started to chamber a round when one of the undead soldiers bore down upon me. Taking the weapon by the barrel, I swung the butt of the rifle at the ghoulish skull and was surprised to feel some resistance. In fact, its skull nearly burst like a watermelon. I watched its eyes concave inward, and watched with equal alarm as its skull ballooned out again. As if it hadn’t just been crushed moments ago.
I didn’t have time to gawk. I ducked under a glowing blue blade of another legionary. I certainly felt the whoosh of air over my head. Spook or not, their weapons had some heft to them, and I was certain my head would have been lopped right off. And there was no coming back for me. What these accursed things were, I didn’t know. A cross between spirit and ghoul, demon and angel? I hadn’t a clue, and I really didn’t want to find out. I just wanted them to return to wherever the hell they had come from.
I rattled off a burst of gunfire into the chest of my attacker, and watched it stagger back, then regain its legs and lumber forward. The only saving grace, if there was any, was that these walking dead were slow moving. As if they were perpetually stuck in mud. Either way, they were persistent and they couldn’t be killed, and that was beginning to not only look bad for me and the Nazi hunters, but for the world at large, too.
Yes, bullets were temporarily slowing the advancing army, but the bullets would only last so long. The horde of dead legionaries now surrounded the spear, its own brilliant glow nearly lost among the hundreds of similarly glowing undead. I knew what I had to do, and I would do it, or die trying.
Run, my brain screamed, run and never look back.
But I didn’t run. Instead, perhaps foolishly—definitely foolishly—I advanced forward. I fought like I had never fought before. I surged forward, fighting with every ounce of energy I had left in me. My lungs burned, the pain in my ribs threatened to choke the air out of me and I was certain that I’d torn open my stitches, but I continued moving forward, swinging, jabbing and firing the weapon in my hands.
Inch by precious inch, I moved through the massive throng toward the glowing blue orb. As I was looking toward my goal, I took a heavy blow from the flat of a blade or a shield which forced me into the mud. I rolled over in the slippery mire just in time to see an undead arm raise its spear for a thrust that would end my life. I fingered the trigger into the creature’s chest, discharging the final round in the weapon and watched the soldier stumble back, only to regain its balance and press forward. Ever forward.
I scrambled to my feet, which wasn’t easy with the slippery footing. I took hold of the barrel of the rifle again and pushed forward, refusing to give up on my mission to reach the spear.
With a fury that defied the dwindling strength that I had left in me, I continued to advance, ripping the butt of the rifle through the masses before me and moving around the Nazi hunters who were also engaged in ferocious fighting. I was closing in on the spear and was sure that I would have it my grasp within a few more slippery steps when I felt something hot rip through my left arm and spin me around. At the same instant, I recognized the report of my own Enfield. I turned toward the sound, but the battle closed in before me and I could not see who had fired at me.
With my left arm weakening, I swung the rifle using my right arm with double the fury and double the determination.
The spear, the spear, the spear, my mind repeated over and over.
It was closer. Another step and I’d have it. I took the step and reached out. My fingers brushed against the shaft as a blow sent me to the ground. The blow was followed by a laugh. I rolled over and stretched my fingers toward the shaft again, but came up short as a heavy boot—a human one—struck my sore ribs and sent me sprawling in the mud.
Chapter Twenty
I knew the laugh immediately.
It hadn’t changed since I had attended school for a summer in Vienna and had met up with a bully who had hounded me mercifully. A bully who I had finally stood up to. A bully I had finally shut up with a single punch to the mouth. It might have been my best punch ever. It had certainly been my favorite punch.
Another kick struck my ribs. Clutching them, I grunted, and then heard the familiar mocking voice from my youth change into an older voice as Adolph Hitler stepped up to tower over me.
“Come on, Major Quatermain, we’re both the same size now.”
I rolled away from another kick and scrambled to my feet in spite of the mud, the weakness of my arm, the throbbing pain in my ribs and the fact that I couldn’t seem to draw any fresh air into my lungs. Still, I lunged at the older man, who would never have been a challenge when I was at my full strength, and planted a shoulder in his gut. The force of it all took him—and me—to the ground.
The pain of the effort nearly rendered me ineffective and as I fought a wave of dizziness and blinked away stars, the ex-Führer was already on his feet. He launched another kick in my direction and I dodged it just in time, coming up underneath it, and, while the rather smallish boot was raised for another stomp, I caught it with both hands and pushed as hard as I could. And was promptly rewarded with the Führer sailing up and onto his back. I forced myself to my feet with an energy that I did not have.
We faced off. I couldn’t help but note that the army of undead swirled around us like a glowing blue vortex, their blank stares on us. Perhaps they were waiting for one or the other of us to claim ownership of the staff—and for the other to fall into their heaving masses, perhaps never to return.
I heaved a heavy right that connected enough to stagger the one-time German dictator. I was fueled by a desperate fury that defied all reason. No, the scene around me defied all reason and explanation. It didn’t matter which, as surely madness had overtaken me. I swung again and again at the square-jawed face in front of me. His beady, demonic eyes continued to mock me, even as my heavy blow broke his nose. His running blood looked strangely like his infamous toothbrush mustache.
Now, Hitler staggered and fell in the slippery mire. I closed in on him to finish him off, but as he rolled over, his hand was clutching my muddy Enfield, which had been trampled during the fray. The dictator was one lucky son of a bitch.
“Why, look at this. An inferior English rifle, I do believe.”
I braced myself for the bullet I knew was coming, and, as I watched him squeeze the trigger, nothing happened. Or maybe it had and I had died, but I didn’t think so. No, the rifle had jammed, which was no surprise, considering the sheer amount of sludge generated by the storm. We both froze for a split second as we looked at the weapon. Now, growling, he hurled it at me as I advanced toward him. I might have been grinning. The evil man scrambled backward, crab-like, trying to get away from me.
Though the pain in my left arm was excruciating, I grasped his legs and drew him toward me as I straddled him and sank to my knees to pin his shoulders to the ground. Hammering blow after blow at his face, I felt the pent-up rage of decades before finding relief from the torment. Of course, the fact that he was about to take control of an army of undead Roman soldiers might have had something to do with it, too.
I wasn’t sure when the ex-Führer lost consciousness, but he had. I had continued delivering the beating by the force of my rage and only stopped when the heaving and burning of my lungs wouldn’t allow me to go on. I thrust my head back and screamed and that was when I caught a glimpse of the glowing blue spear... and reason returned to me again.
With the last bit of energy I had—perhaps even my last ever—I forced myself toward it, and finally wrapped my fingers around the wooden shaft. I expected it to be hot, but it wasn’t. What I felt was something that I wasn’t entirely prepared for.