by David Bishop
Twilight of the Dead
April 1945. Retreating German troops mount a valiant rearguard action against the mighty Red Army, and it's only a matter of time before Berlin falls, especially as the undead Rumanian vampyrs have become allied with the Russian forces. Unless Lord Constanta and his undead army are stopped, their plan to enslave all humans will succeed. Soldiers from each side must put aside their mutual hatred to target the true enemy. As the war for Europe reaches its brutal climax, a bloody fight for the future of mankind is about to begin!
FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT
BY DAVID BISHOP
#1: OPERATION VAMPYR
#2: THE BLOOD RED ARMY
#3: TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD
#4: FIENDS OF THE RISING SUN
FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT created by Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Ezquerra
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#2: BAD MOON RISING
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#3: BLACK ATLANTIC
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#6: THE FINAL CUT
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#7: SWINE FEVER
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#8: WHITEOUT
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#9: PSYKOGEDDON
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JUDGE ANDERSON
#1: FEAR THE DARKNESS - Mitchel Scanlon
#2: RED SHADOWS - Mitchel Scanlon
#3: SINS OF THE FATHER - Mitchel Scanlon
THE ABC WARRIORS
#1: THE MEDUSA WAR - Pat Mills & Alan Mitchell
#2: RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINES - Mike Wild
SLÁINE
#1: SLÁINE THE EXILE - Steven Savile
#2: SLÁINE THE DEFILER - Steven Savile
DURHAM RED
#1: THE UNQUIET GRAVE - Peter J Evans
ROGUE TROOPER
#1: CRUCIBLE - Gordon Rennie
STRONTIUM DOG
#1: BAD TIMING - Rebecca Levene
To Gerry and Carlos, who started it all.
Historical note:
This novel is a work of fiction set during the Second World War conflict between Germany and Russia. As far as possible the historical details are accurate, but the story takes liberties with reality for narrative effect.
A 2000 AD Publication
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Copyright © 2006 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved.
All 2000 AD characters and logos © and TM Rebellion A/S. "Fiends of the Eastern Front" is a trademark in the United States and other jurisdictions. "2000 AD" is a registered trademark in certain jurisdictions. All rights reserved. Used under licence.
ISBN(.epub): 978-1-84997-046-4
ISBN(.mobi): 978-1-84997-087-7
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Excepting notable historical names, all the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT
TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD
DAVID BISHOP
PROLOGUE
"In these hours, the whole German people look to you, my fighters in the East... thanks to your resolution and fanaticism, thanks to your weapons, and under your leadership, the Bolshevik assault will be choked in a bath of blood.
At this moment... the turning-point of this war will be decided."
- Adolf Hitler
Sometimes there is little difference between fiction and reality, a narrow margin between the truth and a lie. One person's fervent belief is another's falsehood, one man's recollection merely propaganda in the eyes of a different witness. When it comes to telling the story of the Great Patriotic War between Russia and Germany, such differences become even more blurred, such distinctions even more meaningless.
Much of what happened in that fateful conflict is a matter of public record, as proven by military documents and eyewitness accounts. But the whole truth about what happened remains secret, hidden from the light. I believe it is long past time the truth was told. I was there, so I will tell it - whether or not you believe my version of events is up to you. But everything I am about to tell you is true, no matter how fantastical it may sound.
My name is Victor Danilov Zunetov and I was a soldier in the Red Army during the Second World War. At first I was a kommisar, a political officer charged with ensuring the rank and file showed due deference to our masters in Moscow. My father was an important man in the Communist Party and did his best to ensure I remained safe. But I was determined to fight the fascists who invaded Mother Russia in the summer of 1941. Eventually I secured a posting to Leningrad (now known as St Petersburg), arriving at the besieged city in January 1942. It was there I first met Grigori Eisenstein, a disgraced former officer who served with a shtrafroty, a penal company. These small squads were given the deadliest, most dangerous jobs within the blockade, undertaking suicide missions no sane soldier would attempt.
Fate and my own stupidity conspired to have me join Eisenstein's company of the cursed. There I discovered the war's greatest secret, the truth that remains buried to this day. It is a well-established, documented, historical fact that German armies posted along the Eastern Front were supplemented by soldiers from other countries, such as Rumania and Italy. But one of the war's dirtiest little secrets is that among the Rumanian warriors was a squad of sinister soldiers from the region of Transylvania. These men were inhuman; a troop of undead parasites who sustained themselves by drinking blood from living humans. German soldiers found themselves caught in an unholy alliance with a cadre of supernatural creatures, monsters they called vampyr. Not all the Germans were happy to fight alongside these fiends. During my time in Leningrad I met a squad of enemy troopers hellbent on deserting to our side, rather than become thralls of the vampyr. Twice I heard tell of an attempted mutiny against the Rumanians in 1941, led by three brothers named Vollmer. Such tales gave me hope when I came face to face with the bloodsucking fiends.
The leader of the vampyr was an austere, aristocratic figure called Constanta. He wore the uniform of a Hauptmann, yet seemed to have a power and command over German troops far in excess of his rank. Constanta's fate became inextricably linked to that of Eisenstein's when the two fought behind enemy lines. The vampyr attacked my commander, tainting Grigori with the vampyr lust for human blood. But Eisenstein used the power of his Jewish faith to delay the infection's spread, forcing a Star of David emblem into the wounds left by Constanta's fangs, and cauterising the flesh. I helped him stave off the infection, becoming his unofficial second-in-command. Together we discovered a terrible truth: Eisenstein would never be free of the inhuman taint while Constanta lived. But the Rumanian was one of the most powerful vampyr to walk the earth, created by the father of all the vampyr, a creature known only as the Sire. The discovery of this fact cost the lives of everyone else in our squad, including the woman Eisenstein loved, Sofia Gomorova.
By the end of January 1943, the blockade of Leningrad had been broken. Many hundreds of miles further south, the brutal German attack upon the city of Stalingrad was finally defeated. The tide was turning in the Great Patriotic War; the German Blitzkrieg had been blunted. For the first time, the Russian pe
ople truly began to believe we would prevail against the Nazis. But Eisenstein and I knew there was a menace far greater than Hitler and his cronies abroad in this conflict. All of mankind faced a foe that bullets and bombs would not defeat. Until we all recognised the vampyr as our common enemy, the war between nations would continue.
I told the story of my time at Leningrad in a previous volume, a book my publishers entitled The Blood Red Army. Now I will finish the story of my involvement with the vampyr, of how it took me to the streets of Berlin and the terrifying interior of Transylvania. The fact I'm writing these words proves I survived - would that I could say the same of my friends and comrades from those final, fateful months of the war. I have pieced together the story of what happened on both sides of the conflict, thanks to what I saw and what others have told me. I cannot claim to be the most reliable of narrators, but what follows is as accurate a record of events as my limited skills can create. Most of all, this is the story of my friend Grigori Eisenstein and the sacrifices he made for us all.
Now, I must choose where best to begin my narrative. There is much I could tell you about the events of 1943 and the early months of the following year, but I suppose the beginning of the end came in August 1944, when we invaded Rumania. It was there we first encountered Karl, Gunther and Ralf, and where I first set eyes on my beloved Mariya. Yes, that is as good a place as any to begin. You may choose to believe that what follows is fiction, but I know the truth. Read on and judge for yourself...
PART ONE: BETRAYAL
ONE
I knew our mission was in trouble when Ryazanov's head exploded. He was on my left as our unit crawled up the hill towards a ramshackle farmhouse. I had caught sight of a muzzle flash in the distance and a moment later half of Ryazanov's face was gone, turning the air between us to a fine pink mist. I pressed myself into the mud-strewn hillside, one hand reaching across to my comrade's shoulder. I knew no living soul could survive such a wound but I still had to check. Ryazanov's corpse rolled over and a lifeless eye stared past me at the darkening sky. The right half of his head was gone, glistening white bone protruding from the remnants of his shattered skull. I spat out a curse and pushed the body away. Ryazanov had been a brave soldier and fearless vampyr-hunter, a valuable addition to the ranks of our unit. Replacing him would not be easy, but that was a problem for another day - we still had a mission to complete. Our target was meant to be waiting in the farmhouse atop the hillside, unaware of our approach. But an enemy sniper inside the derelict building was now targeting us and Ryazanov was the first casualty. In less than the time it took to draw breath, the hunters had become the hunted.
Five of us were hugging the hillside, our position halfway between the settlements of Tirgu Frumos and Jassy in north-western Rumania. To my right was Gorky, a dark-haired youth from Moscow who'd joined our unit less than a week earlier, the sole survivor of a vampyr attack on a Red Army outpost three days before. Gorky remained unproven in battle and it was my duty to watch him, and see how he reacted under the pressure of a life and death mission behind enemy lines. Eisenstein had been against offering Gorky a place in our ranks, but I had volunteered to be responsible for the pale-faced private. As we lay on that muddy slope, pinned down by the sniper, I could see Gorky gasping for air, timorous breaths betraying his terror. Eisenstein had been right, as usual - the newcomer would not last long in a real fight.
Beyond Gorky was Komarov, a hardened veteran from Stalingrad who'd joined our unit six months earlier. Bald, belligerent and battle-scarred, he had saved my life on several occasions but accepted no thanks for that. His only interest was vengeance against the fiends who had murdered his men, turning them into undead monsters. Komarov was not one for exchanging anecdotes over a flask of vodka, no matter how black or humorous the subject matter. He lived to kill and killed to live - end of story.
Eisenstein was furthest from me, his grizzled face turning to inquire about Ryazanov's fate. I shook my head, drawing a finger across my neck. Eisenstein grimaced, his bloodstained fingers tightening their grip on his PPSh submachine gun, one hand clasping the circular magazine of ammunition. He was not yet thirty then, but his grim features had the careworn aspect of a man twice his years. The war was aging all of us at an accelerated pace, but that was doubly true of Eisenstein. His ongoing battle with the taint of vampyrism was wearing him down, as if he was fading away from the inside out, becoming a shadow of the man he had once been. Unlike the undead monsters he hunted, Eisenstein could still walk in daylight. But everything else about him was slowly, relentlessly being consumed by the creeping black cancer of his infection.
Huddled beside Eisenstein was a terrified Rumanian soldier, a prisoner of war we had captured earlier in the day. He was the one who'd led us to this location, promising that the farmhouse contained one of our most sought-after targets in this war of terror and attrition. Judging by the terror in the Rumanian's eyes, he was as surprised as anyone by the presence of a sniper overlooking our position, and so had not deliberately led us into the line of fire. But that didn't change the fact that we were pinned down on open ground and time was running out.
I shifted my attention back to the farmhouse. If our quarry was inside, why had they only fired once? Were they running out of ammunition or simply waiting for a clear target before shooting again? Whatever the answer, we did not have time to play games. The sun would set in less than an hour. Once that happened, our advantage over the target would be lost. I gave a low whistle to the others then crawled forward over the churned-up soil towards the farmhouse. A bullet whistled past my left ear and thudded into the mud behind me. Another shot followed, then another and another, each round missing us by the slightest of margins. It took a brilliant marksman to keep five men pinned down with only a handful of bullets.
"He's toying with us," a familiar voice whispered in my ear. Eisenstein had crawled across to lie beside me in the mud. "He's marking time, waiting for reinforcements."
"If we try to storm the farmhouse, we'll be cut down before we can get close."
"Agreed." Eisenstein glanced across to our Rumanian POW. "Horezu soiled his uniform when the first shot was fired. He's even more scared than Gorky, if that's possible."
"Do you think Gorgo's the shooter?"
Eisenstein shook his head. "He'll be safely in his coffin, waiting for sunset so he can join the retreat. Until then he's trapped inside the farmhouse. No, I'm guessing it's one of his thralls. You know how the vampyr like to keep their cannon fodder close by."
I nodded bitterly. In the nineteen months since Eisenstein and I escaped the blockade around Leningrad, we had learned many lessons about the behaviour of Transylvanian bloodsuckers and their servants. Rarely did a senior vampyr like Constanta venture anywhere without a cadre of thralls as bodyguards. This had been increasingly true since the Red Army decided to reform many of its penal companies into vampyr-hunting units known as smert krofpeet - death to the blood-drinkers. Constanta and his kind were all but invulnerable, yet they guarded their undead bodies jealously. Having sacrificed their souls to achieve a kind of twisted immortality, they had no intention of letting that status be snatched away from them.
"So what do we do?" I asked Eisenstein.
"We'll have to-" he began, but fell silent in the middle of his reply. An unearthly cry split the air, stabbing at our minds like daggers. It was a sound I'd heard before, a sound that chilled the blood in my veins. Eisenstein's eyes shifted from me to the farmhouse, the colour draining from his features. I twisted round to follow his gaze and gasped in dismay. A dozen dead German soldiers were lumbering from the building towards us, their arms outstretched, fingers clawing the air. All were walking corpses, resurrected by their undead master's cry. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a similar horde emerging from the ground behind us. That explained why the hillside was so churned up. The corpses had dug their own graves and then lain beneath the surface, waiting for the signal to rise up.
"It's a trap!"
&n
bsp; Eisenstein spat out a disgusted curse. "Not if I can help it!"
Four hours earlier most of the Axis forces had been fleeing from this same area, racing to stay ahead of the Red Army's rapidly advancing Second Ukrainian Front. The retreat had been a chaotic affair, without proper transportation or support. Anyone unable to make their way south was left with a handful of ammunition and orders to delay the oncoming Soviets as long as possible. Most of the abandoned had fought to the death, no doubt terrified by propaganda tales of the fate awaiting anyone taken prisoner by the Russians, but some surrendered or were overwhelmed.
Horezu was among those we captured. He had crawled unarmed from an empty trench, waving a white flag and calling for sanctuary. I recognised a familiar terror haunting his eyes and took him aside for interrogation. Horezu spoke only broken German, his sentences littered with untranslatable Rumanian phrases, but I understood enough of his words and gestures to interpret what he was saying. I sent Ryazanov to find Eisenstein and bring him back. Once my commander appeared, I made Horezu repeat what he had told me while I translated.