Twilight of the Dead

by David Bishop

  "Less than an hour," Ralf muttered between mouthfuls of tinned ham. "The vampyr were complaining about how short the nights are getting."

  Hans took a step back. "Since when have you spoken Rumanian?"

  "I can't," his brother said, still chewing.

  Mariya moved to stand beside Hans. "Then how could you understand them? The undead only speak in other languages when they're talking to their thralls or their captives..."

  Ralf stopped chewing, his mouth still open as he turned to face them.

  "Now!" he shouted.

  Suddenly the exterior door behind me burst inwards, wood splintering apart beneath a massive blow, the metal bolts turning somersaults in the air as they flew past me. I spun round to find our only escape route bulked by the fearsome shape of Sergeant Gorgo. He roared at us, the savage cry of a predator when its prey is cornered and the kill is moments away. Mariya swivelled her weapon round to fire but Ralf lashed out with a foot, kicking it from her grasp.

  Acting on pure instinct, I showered Gorgo with the rest of the holy water in my flask. The liquid spattered his features, burning into his skin and flesh like acid, eating its way down to the bones. He staggered backwards into the street, screaming in agony. As he gave way, other vampyr poured inside. The first few burst in so quickly they knocked me backwards down the staircase. I tumbled over and over, finally sprawling out on the wooden floor below, Mariya's MP38 lying directly in front on me. I grabbed hold of it and fired off a few silver-tipped rounds over my shoulder, knowing that the invading vampyr must be almost on top of me. Inhuman screams rent the air as five of the creatures exploded into dust and ashes.

  As I rolled over on to my back to face the stairs, I caught a glimpse of Ralf and Mariya grappling while Hans lashed at his brother with the butt of a machine pistol. It took several blows before Ralf crumpled, knocked senseless by the brutal assault. In the meantime another half dozen vampyr had streamed into the cafe, some bounding down the stairs while others jumped over the banister to the floor below.

  I loosed off several short bursts, exterminating those racing down the steps and two of those already among the tables and chairs. Hans must have turned his weapon on the undead then as another volley of shots peppered them, puncturing the Transylvanians' torsos before they turned to ashen dust. Mariya retrieved my MP38 and added its firepower to ours, decimating more vampyr as they stormed into the cafe, a relentless wave of undead that kept coming and coming and coming.

  "God in heaven, there must be dozens of them," Hans cried out. "Hundreds!"

  "Gorgo must have captured Ralf; used mesmerism to turn your brother. He knew we'd suspect Ralf was one of the undead, so Gorgo turned him into a thrall instead!" I shouted back.

  "Poor bastard led them right to us," Mariya snarled, shaking her head.

  Still we kept firing, tearing through our meagre supply of silver-tipped ammunition, but still the vampyr kept coming. Finally, as the invading throng began to slow down, I ran out of bullets. Moments later Mariya's weapon also clicked empty. The two of us scrambled to safety behind Hans, who reloaded his MP38 with one last clip. In front of him Ralf stirred on the floor, slowly drifting back to consciousness. Mariya lashed out with a foot, booting him in the head.

  When Hans glared at her, she didn't bother to apologise. "The last thing we need is him helping them any more than he already has."

  I looked round the cafe for anything else we could use as weapons to help Hans. There was nothing obvious amid the chairs and tables, broken legs and struts littering the...

  "Mariya, grab one of those chair legs!" I shouted. "We can use them to impale the vampyr!"

  She nodded, smiling. We both grabbed improvised stakes from the floor, brandishing them as the vampyr grew closer. Hans was firing single shots now, not wanting to waste any of the precious silver-tipped bullets he had left. But choosing his targets meant he couldn't cope with the numbers coming down the stairs. There were not so many as before, but still they were too many. Several slipped past Hans's line of fire, circling round either wall of the cafÈ towards us.

  I waited until the one nearest me got close before lunging the chair leg I was clutching with all my might. The broken wood punctured the creature's chest, stabbing it through the heart. The vampyr exploded as its kind always did, and I felt myself breathing in the vile ashes since I was so close. I spat them back out, not wanting the acrid, sickening taste in my mouth.

  Mariya had a chair leg in each hand. She lashed one of her weapons sideways through the air, sending the nearest vampyr sprawling. Another closed in on her but she thrust the other stake into its chest. As that monster was still dissipating, Mariya stamped a foot on the first vampyr, pinning it facedown on the floor. She rammed a stake down into the creature's back. It detonated, dust and ash spraying out sideways across the floor. Mariya looked over her shoulder at me and grinned before her expression changed to one of horror.

  "Victor! Behind you!"

  I didn't even look round, simply stabbing my stake blindly through the air. It plunged through the chest of another vampyr, exploding the blood-drinker into atoms. Beside me Hans fired his last three shots, the MP38 stuttering to a halt in his hands. He swore copiously, tossing the useless weapon at the advancing vampyr before crouching to grab a pair of improvised wooden stakes for himself.

  Another of the undead charged at Hans while he was still down on one knee. He ducked beneath the attack, stabbing a chair leg up into the air as the creature passed over him, ending its evil existence. We were keeping the monsters at bay for the moment, but how much longer could we hope to hold out?

  "You'll never last until sunrise," a sinister, sibilant voice said from the cafÈ's doorway. Gorgo had returned, his face a mass of smoking scar tissue, his expression alive with hatred. "You may have slaughtered dozens of my brethren, but your time is over, humans!"

  "Our kind will always triumph over yours, parasite!" Hans spat back at Gorgo.

  "Even if your bloodsucking scum kill us, there are millions more who will stand against you," Mariya added. "The vampyr belong to history, myths and legends. Your kind are the stuff of nightmares; you have no place in the modern world."

  Gorgo laughed at us, roaring his hilarity to the heavens. "I will take the greatest of pleasure in delivering you to my Lord Constanta. He will tear your souls apart."

  "You want us?" I asked, trying to keep my fear hidden. "Come and get us!"

  A dozen or more vampyr had gathered in a semicircle on the cafÈ floor, slowly driving the three of us back towards the counter. Mariya jumped atop the broad wooden surface while Hans and I stood shoulder to shoulder in front of her, our wooden stakes flailing the air, keeping the fiends back.

  "Very well," Gorgo agreed. He took one stride towards the staircase, about to come down to our level for the final confrontation, but stopped abruptly. Something was distracting him, taking his attention away from us. The other vampyr also paused, twisting round to discover what was wrong with their master. I squinted, trying to see what was happening. Gorgo brought both hands up to his chest, where the sharpened tips of three wooden bolts protruded from his uniform.

  "No..." the Rumanian whispered hoarsely. "Impossible!"

  Another trio of bolts appeared through Gorgo's chest, impaling him from behind. He clawed at them with his black, ragged talons. Something flashed through the air, silver and almost too quick for the human eye to see.

  I watched, mesmerised, as Gorgo's head bounced down the stairs before coming to rest on the cafÈ floor. His lips screamed soundlessly, but he had been decapitated above the voice box and could not cry out. When the elite vampyr perished, it was in two balls of blue and white fire, a smaller one round his head, and a raging inferno where the rest of him was still standing. The cafÈ was bathed in blinding light from the twin fires, forcing humans and vampyr alike to cover their eyes before the blaze evaporated.

  Gorgo was gone, destroyed.

  The other vampyr screamed in anguish, bereft without
their leader to guide them.

  "Now's our chance!" Hans shouted. "Get them!"

  He had killed two of the creatures before Mariya or I had a chance to react. But we quickly followed his lead, swiftly changing the balance of power within the cafÈ, turning our predators into our prey. The three of us devastated the ranks of vampyr in a few minutes, running them down and then running them through. The last one was pinned in a corner, below the cafÈ door. Hans pulled back his right hand, ready to administer the killing blow. But a low, gravelly voice stopped him.

  "No, let me do it." Ralf took the stake from his brother's hand and thrust it clean through the final vampyr's chest. It blew apart, leaving glinting particles of ash floating in the air.

  Mariya pushed Ralf into the corner where the vampyr had been, a wooden stake ready to impale him. "You betrayed us!" she snarled. "How can we ever trust you again? Give me one good reason why we shouldn't put you out of your misery, here and now!"

  "Because the vampyr that enslaved him is dead," a familiar voice interjected from above us. We looked up at the doorway to see who had spoken.

  "Your comrade is no longer in thrall to the undead," the newcomer continued. "He's completely free of their taint." The first glimmerings of dawn made it impossible to see a face, the rising sun casting the new arrival in silhouette. But I did not need my eyes to recognise the voice, to know its identity even if it seemed impossible.

  "Bojemoi! Is that you?" I gasped.

  Grigori Eisenstein smiled down at us. "Hello, Victor. It seems I got here just in time."

  PART THREE - BLOODSHED

  ELEVEN

  Eisenstein came down the stairs into the cafÈ, a wooden crossbow slung over his shoulder and a silver-edged sword clutched in his grasp. He ran a black-gloved hand along the wall as he descended, three fingers making parallel lines in the dust left by the vampyr we'd destroyed.

  "You've done well, even without my intervention. How many did you kill, dozens?"

  "Probably. You lose count after a while," I said, striding over to embrace him. But when he turned to face me, I was taken aback by his ghoulish appearance.

  Much of the skin and flesh had been burnt from his face, replaced by scar tissue. His hair had been burnt away and so had his eyebrows, the scalp and forehead a mess of seared skin stretched taut across the bones in Eisenstein's skull. He was missing the thumb and forefinger from his left hand, while another finger was absent from his right. I didn't like to think what the rest of his body must look like beneath his dusty, dirt-stained Russian uniform.

  "What happened to you?" I asked. "How'd you survive that inferno at Gottow?"

  "I didn't," Eisenstein replied quietly. "The man you knew is dead, Victor. I'm what's left of him: a walking husk, kept alive by my hunger for vengeance. It's all that matters to me now."

  "But you found us; you saved us," I said, gesturing towards Mariya and the others.

  "I've been stalking Sergeant Gorgo, hoping he would lead me to Constanta. But I discovered the vampyr lord has already left Berlin for his home in Transylvania. Gorgo was the last of ten elite vampyr who first entered the war as Constanta's personal cadre, so I decided he had to die. I watched Gorgo overpowering the mind of a German soldier, ordering him to find a trio of troublesome vampyr-killers nearby. It never occurred to me you and Mariya might be part of that trio." Eisenstein glanced at Hans and Ralf. "Nor that you'd be fighting alongside the enemy."

  Ralf joined us by the staircase. "We have a common enemy: the undead. We joined forces to fight these fiends. We've all lost friends and allies to the vampyr. And we all know what's at stake now Berlin has fallen."

  Eisenstein studied Ralf and Hans. "You two... You were at Castle Constanta, weren't you? I recognise your faces..."

  "Yes," Hans said. "Zunetov helped us escape. There was a hidden tunnel that got us away from the castle."

  "Could you find this tunnel again if you had to?"

  "I suppose so, if it was still there," Ralf replied. "Why?"

  Eisenstein studied the four of us, his eyes narrowing. "How far is each of you prepared to go in your fight against the vampyr? How far will you carry your personal crusades?"

  "To the ends of the earth, if we have to," Ralf said. "Gorgo stole my will, made me his plaything. I want to make these monsters pay for what they've done to my people, my country, my comrades... And my family."

  "Gorgo is dust now, he cannot mesmerise you again."

  "So you said. But I'd still walk into hell itself if I could rid the world of these fiends."

  Eisenstein nodded, apparently satisfied by this response. He looked inquiringly at Hans. The younger Vollmer did not flinch before Eisenstein's gaze.

  "Where Ralf goes, I go too. I lost one brother to Constanta and his kind. I'm not losing another."

  Mariya moved closer. "Whatever you're planning, I want to be part of it," she said. "Unless we strike first, the vampyr will launch a blood war to enslave everyone, everywhere: German or Russian, man or woman, Christian or Jew, fascist or communist. Nobody will be safe."

  Finally, the horrifically scarred face turned to me. "And you, Victor? How far will you go to protect the ones you love? How much are you willing to sacrifice for the future of mankind?"

  I glanced at Mariya, taking in her beauty, her courage, her resolution. I knew I had to be with her, no matter what. There was no other choice.

  "Whatever it takes, Grigori."

  I noticed a shadow pass over his face. Was it doubt? Pride? Resignation? To this day, I do not know the answers to those questions, because I never thought to ask him. There were so many other questions to which I wanted answers, but that moment has stayed with me ever since. Strange, how the slightest of looks and glances linger in the mind.

  "Good," Eisenstein said, nodding to all of us. "Dawn's breaking. The vampyr are returning to their hiding places and refuges, waiting for the thralls to transport them back to Transylvania. That's where we are going: Castle Constanta, the home of the vampyr.

  "I want to kill the monster that damned me before I surrender this godforsaken life. I want to see his kind driven from the earth, sent back to whatever hell they came from. I want to make sure nobody else has to suffer as our friends and countrymen have suffered. But be warned, all of you, I doubt any of us will get out of Transylvania alive. Our mission is a suicide mission, plain and simple. Make peace with whatever god you believe in, and prepare yourselves mentally for the end. I'll be back in a few minutes with our transportation."

  The journey to Transylvania was long and not without incident, but we saw little sign of the vampyr en route. Eisenstein had a Red Army truck take us to Rumania, driven by a surly soldier called Smirnov. He had been part of a smert krofpeet unit before they were disbanded. Rather than join a deep knife squad commanded by a vampyr, Smirnov had volunteered to rejoin his old penal company. Eisenstein had found Smirnov and five other convicts on the outskirts of Berlin, clearing a minefield. The six men gladly volunteered to help him fight the undead, since the job had a higher life expectancy than their current task. Eisenstein sent the others ahead on a different route to Transylvania.

  "They're collecting some supplies on the way," he said cryptically.

  The path from the German capital to Sighisoara was strewn with devastation and despair, stark evidence of the horrors war had inflicted upon the peoples of Europe. Constanta and his kind might be the worst monsters to stalk the battlefields, but there was no shortage of other horrors, other monsters in that war. In the long years since the events of which I write, more horrors have been perpetrated: genocide, ethnic cleansing, torments and tortures that would have done the vampyr proud. I'm still not sure what is worse: the obvious, palpable menace of the undead, or what humans have done to each other since in the name of religion, national pride or political beliefs. Such debates are best left to philosophers, not soldiers.

  Our trek to Transylvania took days, giving me plenty of time to question Eisenstein about his escape from Gottow. At
first he refused to talk about it, but eventually I wore him down. Bit by bit, I dragged the truth from him. Once I knew it all, I understood why he'd preferred to stay silent. The tale of his survival was grotesque and horrific, like so much else about our dealings with the vampyr. Truly, his soul had been damned by the undead.

  Gorgo had sliced Eisenstein's skin and flesh to ribbons, broken most of the bones in his body, and given him a beating that would have killed any normal human twice over. But Eisenstein had ceased to be a normal human when he was bitten by Constanta three years earlier. The vampyr taint gave him a thirst for human blood, but it also made him stronger, more resilient, and vastly accelerated his natural healing abilities. When Gorgo set fire to the underground laboratory and sealed Eisenstein inside, the Rumanian had boasted how the facility would be my friend's tomb. Eisenstein had come to the same conclusion and quickly realised there was only one way for him to get out alive. He had to embrace the curse he'd been fighting since Leningrad. He had to give in to his blood lust.

  "I crawled over to Dr Rainer's body. He was dead but his corpse was still warm, his blood still fresh," Eisenstein told me one night after we stopped to eat and rest. "I tore open his neck and drank the blood from his veins. It disgusted me, but I rejoiced in the taste too. It felt like I was giving in to a desire that had burned too long in my body. Constantly fighting the vampyr taint is corrosive; it eats away at your soul, Victor."

  Once he'd sated himself on Rainer's blood, Eisenstein could feel changes seeping through his system. By then the fires Gorgo had started were raging beyond any control, threatening to destroy everything in the underground chamber. One corner of the space was filled with tanks of highly flammable gas. The blaze engulfed these, superheating the metal cylinders until Eisenstein could hear them creaking and expanding. When the first one exploded, the shrapnel from its disintegration would create a devastating chain reaction.

  "I could see only one way I'd survive," he said. "Some vampyr are able to change their shape, transform into different creatures: wolves, bats, who knows what else? But I'd also seen Constanta and a few others become insubstantial, turn into a mist, a kind of transitional state. I'd no idea whether I could achieve that but it was worth a try.