For a small town boy like Steiner, the west side of Berlin and its notorious decadence before the puritanical Nazis seized power represented some fabled age of fun, debauchery, and easy women.
Now it was a dead place.
Violence had devastated the district, both from Allied bombing and the draugr plague. The buildings stood blackened, scarred, and derelict. Many were in ruins, only partially standing and filled with bricks and dust. Charred motorcars and military vehicles stood silently, surrounded by abandoned luggage and garbage.
The apokalypse had come to Berlin.
Muller grimaced at the sights. “If we don’t stop the plague, all of Germany will look like this soon.”
“God,” Steiner mused, “you spend a few hours with the leutnant, and you’ve got a wasp up your ass, just like him.”
“I grew up here. This is my city.”
His chiding smile disappeared. “Ah. Right. Sorry, Yohann. Whereabouts did you grow up?”
“Schöneberg. It’s in the south side of Berlin.”
“It looks like there was an exodus. I’m sure your folks got out.”
Muller glowered and said nothing. He looked like a soldier. Overnight, it seemed, the kid had grown up.
The paratroopers ahead relayed the signal to halt.
“What’s happening now?” Steiner said. “Can anybody see?”
Nobody answered. They’d find out when the officers saw fit to tell them. Then they’d march again. March, halt. March, halt. It was the soldier’s life.
What Steiner couldn’t see, he heard. The growl of engines.
Somebody was coming.
An officer blew a whistle. Noncommissioned officers relayed hand signals down the ranks. Wolff wheeled and chopped his hand to the right.
Off the street.
The squad rushed to cover with a clatter of gear. The distant growling grew louder, joined by the shriek of armored vehicle treads.
Steiner found himself with the rest of the squad in the charred ruins of a cafe. Churned up by their boots, ash floated in drifts. The air tasted like charcoal. The other squads in the platoon pounded upstairs to occupy apartments overlooking the autobahn.
Just a minute ago, he’d felt completely safe in the middle of a column of heavily armed, elite light infantry. Not anymore. This didn’t feel right.
The squad looked to Wolff, who said, “Sichern und laden.” Lock and load.
Steiner exchanged a wondering glance with Animal. “They’re not going to ask us to shoot Reserve Army, are they?”
Because of its strategic importance as the center of the Third Reich, Berlin was a heavily militarized district. Steiner thought it as likely they’d run into a battalion of the Reserve Army as a battalion of draugr.
Schneider shrugged. “They might be SS. In which case, we might have to shoot if they shoot at us first.”
“I don’t want to hurt any German who’s alive.”
The big soldier patted his flamethrower. “Anybody shoots at me gets torched.”
Schulte adjusted the scope attached to his K98. “I’d rather not be ordered to shoot you next, Steiner. So do what you’re told.”
“Get that ’42 set up!” Wolff snarled.
Steiner mounted the gun on the cafe countertop and raised the belt feed cover. Weber fed it the end of a fifty-round belt and slammed the cover shut. Steiner pulled the cocking handle and braced the stock against his shoulder. While firing, he’d hold the stock with his left hand as well for even more stability.
Times like this, he felt popular. The Wehrmacht placed enormous tactical importance on the machine-gun as the central player in an infantry unit. In a sense, the other men in his squad were there mainly to provide him security and carry extra ammo for him.
That popularity extended to the Americans he’d fought, however. Whenever they heard the distinctive ripping sound of an MG42 in action, they threw everything they had at it. If he paused to reload or change out an overheated barrel, they often chose that time to rush and try to kill him.
Every soldier at some point took the impersonal act of combat personally. Why are they shooting at me? They’re trying to kill me! Why me?
In Steiner’s case, however, it was real. They really were trying to kill just him.
He didn’t want any of it. He didn’t want a war. He didn’t want to save the world. He wanted a girlfriend. A decent job. A normal life in a normal world.
“Feuer auf mein kommando,” Leutnant Reiser said. Fire on my command.
The shriek of the treads grew in volume. The big engines let out a throaty growl. The building trembled. One of the surviving windows shivered in its pane. Ash danced on the floor. The vibrations crawled up Steiner’s legs and settled in his chest. He licked his lips and waited for a target.
A gaunt soldier in a belted brown coat shambled glumly past, followed by a motley crowd of the same. Some carried rifles. Dust puffed from their coats with each step.
Then the first tank appeared, a massive T34.
They were Soviets, a long way from the Eastern Front in Poland.
Still following their last orders by advancing westward, ever westward.
Seven meters long and two and a half tall, the medium tank advanced sluggishly on the blacktop, breathing a cloud of exhaust that wafted over the crowd of bloodied Russian and German soldiers marching around it. A massive red flag bearing the hammer and sickle of the USSR flowed from a slanted pole protruding from its turret.
Then Steiner heard the hum.
At first, he thought it was the tank engines. The deep baritone hum resonated in the air, a dirge expressing an ancient sorrow.
The Russians were singing.
The tank disappeared from view, followed by another. The army of the damned thickened and now included civilians, even women and a few kids in Hitler Youth uniforms. The women sang as well, adding a single eerie soprano note to the ghostly chorus.
One tank after another rolled past. Steiner shivered as the singing grew louder than the rumble and clank of the advancing machinery.
God, it was an entire mechanized battalion.
Another surprise dawned on him. The draugr retained enough of their minds to operate weapons. That changed things considerably for him.
Please let them go, he prayed. Don’t make me fire at them. Just let them keep going.
But that wasn’t the Fallschirmjäger style. They couldn’t abide a force like this in their operational rear, where the wounded were still being brought forward by the three-tons they’d captured in the Grunewald. They had the Soviet column in an ideal ambush condition. Their operational motto was, “Die beste verteidigung ist der angriff.” Attack is the best defense.
Yes, they were going to attack.
A panzerschreck team set up among a tangle of dining chairs. The loader slammed an 88 anti-tank rocket into the stove pipe and tapped the back of the gunner’s helmet. The gunner raised the launcher and waited.
A whistle blew at the last unit in line, followed by others in a chain all the way up to the vanguard.
“Glück ab!” somebody cried the Fallschirmjäger war cry. Good luck!
“Feuer frei!” Reiser screamed. Fire at will!
The ghouls’ heads swiveled toward the sound as the Fallschirmjäger opened up with a rain of hot metal. The T34 ground to a halt, bullets pinging off its thick hull. The squads in the upper floors fired panzerfaust anti-tank grenades down at the tank. The shots exploded or ricocheted off the tank’s sloped armor in showers of sparks. Around the metal beast, ghouls jerked and danced as rounds struck them. One fired back with his drum-fed submachine-gun, the rounds buzzing past Steiner’s ear like wasps. The surviving window panes exploded in a cloud of glass. Draugr poured from the other side of the tank and lurched into the guns.
Steiner squeezed the trigger in seven-round bursts that cut a Russian soldier in half. Dust filled the room as the building shook from the impact of a tank shell.
“Aimed fire, goddamn it!” Wolff roared.
“Jawohl,” the men called out. Steiner used iron sights to decapitate another soldier, screaming every obscenity he knew while inventing a few he didn’t.
The T34’s turret swiveled to aim its high-velocity gun directly at him.
The most popular guy in the room, Steiner thought and closed his eyes.
Then the panzerschreck team fired their launcher with a cloud of smoke.
The shot struck the T34 under the turret and exploded inside. The tank shrugged at the blast then sagged. Smoke poured out of the hole. On fire, the tank commander heaved himself out of the hatch and tumbled to the ground.
“Cease fire, cease fire!” Wolff said.
The gunfire trickled off to single shots. Oily black smoke poured energetically out of the dead T34. A gray haze filled the air. Steiner patted the machine-gun that had gotten him through another brush with death.
The squad went outside to regroup. Third Platoon had gotten hammered by two T34s before destroying both tanks, but otherwise the regiment’s casualties appeared to be minimal. Everywhere Steiner looked, there were burning armored vehicles and piles of Russian dead under their red flags. The paratroopers roamed among them, finishing the writhing wounded with single shots to the head.
“Fucking communists,” Animal said and spat. “Ivan just met his match.”
“Sieg heil!” somebody called out.
The paratroopers grinned at their handiwork and clapped each other on the back. They were alive, and the Russians were dead. Victory.
Steiner sagged, exhausted.
He wondered if the entire world had gone insane, or it was just him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE OBJECTIVE
Eagle took over as lead company in line, with Second Platoon as the tip of the spear. Oberfeldwebel Wolff marched with a fresh sense of purpose.
This war, this objective, felt right to him. No longer was he training eager young men to die like flies for a patch of rocky ground. The Fallschirmjäger were here to save Germany from itself. In such a conflict, dying meant something.
And his boys were again living up to their reputation as the best of the best. They respected the draugr but no longer feared them.
As they neared Tiergarten, signs of war were everywhere. A splintered tree scattered across the autobahn among a cluster of motorcars chewed up by machine-gun fire. Ladders abandoned around a bombed tenement. Carts with half-eaten horses lying next to them. Volkssturm, mostly old men and boys who should have been in school, lay dead around sandbag positions. Snow blanketed everything.
In the distance, a jarring rumble as a large building collapsed. A cloud of dust rose over the red rooftops. Muffled booms and splashes of gunfire rolled from the southwest, the Tommies defending the airport they’d taken by force. The squads leapfrogged down the autobahn, two providing over watch while the rest bounded forward.
“Help us!”
Civilians filled the windows of a tenement, waving white sheets at them.
“We have nothing!”
“Are the traitors gone?”
“Are you here to say?”
The platoon slowed, waiting for the order to stop and provide aid.
“Keep moving,” Leutnant Reiser snarled.
“My children need milk!”
“Arm yourself and join us,” the lieutenant shouted back. “Otherwise, shut up.”
The men’s faces darkened. Misery seemed to settle across the entire platoon. Chivalry was ingrained into the Fallschirmjäger psyche.
The huge boost in morale they’d gained by destroying the Soviet battalion, they’d lost by ignoring German women and children in need.
Wolff veered to march alongside Reiser. “Herr Leutnant—”
“Wer zwei hasen auf einmal jagt bekommt keinen,” the lieutenant snapped. He who chases two rabbits at once will catch none. “I would have thought a soldier of your experience would remember that.”
Wolff swallowed shame and anger. “Verstanden, Herr Leutnant.”
“The best way to help our countrymen is to stop the plague.”
The platoon reached the edge of Tiergarten, a welcome relief for eyes made sore by the ravaged urban landscape. Dense with trees, the park appeared peaceful, offering sanctuary to the paratroopers.
The squads continued their leapfrogging progress into the park. Wolff spotted the white dome of the Army Research Center and called it out to Reiser. The lieutenant placed a squad to wait for the next platoon and led the remainder into the woods. They crossed the frozen lake, cut the wire, and approached the building.
The heavy steel entry door stood wide open. Bloody boot prints led away to the north. The paratroopers eyed the cavernous doorway with trepidation. A warm, hellish stench steamed out into the cold air.
Wolff looked at Reiser, who said, “Das glück hilft dem kühnen, Herr Wolff.” Fortune favors the bold.
The sergeant turned to his squad. “We’re going in. I’ll lead the way. I want good trigger discipline in there. You shoot me in the back, I’ll kill you.”
“Jawohl, Herr Oberfeldwebel.”
“Schneider, I want you up here with me. We see a ghoul or even a few, leave them to me. We see a big crowd coming at us in close quarters, I want you ready to torch them. Verstehen sie?”
Animal grinned. “Verstanden, Herr Oberfeldwebel.”
Wolff shouldered his FG42 and stepped into the administrative area. Their boots stomped against the dead quiet. A thick layer of trampled paper covered the floor, some of it burned in a pile of ash and charred sheets.
The area was clear. He ignored the lift and proceeded to the stairs.
The next level was clear as well.
The paratroopers found bodies and a harsh chemical stink on the third level. From a side room came a strange drumming. The sound of fists pounding a door in a tireless frenzy.
As the squad filled the space, the pounding stopped.
Something growled deep in its throat.
The paratroopers spread out, weapons raised.
“Come and get it,” Wolff called.
Two figures sprinted howling into the room. The squad dropped them with a salvo.
One was an SS fighter, the other a British paratrooper, his shredded sleeves revealing arms gnawed to the bone.
“They’re Tommies,” Steiner said, surveying the dead carpeting the floor. “Tommies and SS and scientists.”
“What are the Red Devils doing here?” Muller said.
“They don’t trust us,” Reiser said behind them. He turned to address the squad coming down the stairs. “Keep going. Secure the serum.”
“Jawohl, Herr Leutnant.”
“Now we shall see who these two unlikely comrades were trying to get at,” the lieutenant told Wolff.
They entered the side room, another lab space. Test tubes and other glassware had toppled from the metal shelving and had been ground into glass dust.
Wolff knocked on the door. “Fallschirmjäger!” He added in his poor English, “You let us inside.”
The door opened to reveal a wide-eyed British paratrooper in a cramped storage closet.
“Herr Wilkins,” Wolff said in surprise.
“Thank you, Herr Wolff,” the man said with British aplomb. “You saved me quite a lot of bother.”
Another Red Devil lay shivering in a ball with a bandaged leg, his face flushed and glistening with sweat.
Wilkins glanced back at his comrade. “This is Lieutenant Chapman. He’s wounded.”
“This is it, Wilkie,” the British officer said. “Thank you for everything. Carry on.”
“Ask the English if his man is bitten,” Reiser said.
“He is,” Wilkins said in German, “but—”
Reiser stepped into the storage room and shot the British lieutenant twice in the head.
“Christ!” Wilkins shouted.
The lieutenant swung the Luger to aim it at the man’s face. “Were you bitten?”
“I’m clean,” the sergeant said.
“Honest! Now put the bloody gun down. Nicht schiessen!” Don’t shoot!
“As you wish.” Reiser holstered his pistol. “Herr Wilkins, a pleasure to see you again. Now explain your presence here.”
Wilkins said the brigade had dispatched a commando team to the facility as insurance in case the Fallschirmjäger failed.
“Just ten of you,” Wolff grunted. “That was your first mistake.”
Wilkins shrugged. It obviously hadn’t been his call. He’d followed orders.
“We made contact with some SS who’d barricaded themselves in the bottom level,” he said. “Hoping to entice them out, the lieutenant told them Hitler had been infected, and if we had the germ, we could cure him.”
“That was your second mistake.”
If the Führer died, the SS might have gone out in a blaze of glory or simply shot themselves where they stood.
But the Führer hadn’t died, not quite. They believed he’d become infected with the Overman germ.
They’d injected themselves so they’d be draugr too.
The British paratrooper shrugged again. He hadn’t made that call either. “We waited an hour. Strong ambush position, clear lanes of fire. The SS charged in like wild animals. There was no stopping them.” He looked down at his dead lieutenant. “At the end, Chappie and I lost our weapons and made it into this cupboard. I was hoping to give him some comfort before ending it for him with my knife. He was a good man. He’d earned that much.”
“A touching sentiment,” Reiser sneered, “which easily could have resulted in your death. You have two choices now, English. Run along and join your comrades at the airport, or come with us.”
“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’ll tag along with you and your men. The devil I know, so to speak.”
“You will submit to my authority as your superior.” Reiser glanced at Wolff. “Oberfeldwebel Wolff will see to it.”
Wolff crossed his arms and nodded. “We’ll put this English to good use.”
“Since he does not trust us to do our duty, give him the most dangerous tasks so he can show us how they’re accomplished. Ja?”
A paratrooper rushed into the room and saluted. “We have secured what we believe is the original serum, Herr Leutnant.”
The Front (Book 3): Berlin or Bust Page 9