Habeas Corpses - The Halflife Trilogy Book III

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  “And what about noncorporeal troops?”

  He looked at me. “What? An army of ghosts? I don’t know any. I’m unborn, not deceased, remember? Besides, a bunch of ghosts are practically worthless when it comes to influencing the realm of the living.” He kicked a stone so that it skittered across the stony ground and disappeared over the edge of a drop-off some thirty yards away.

  “First of all, the vast majority of them don’t care,” he elaborated. “They’ve moved on. They don’t want to risk screwing up their karma by sticking their nonexistent noses in where they don’t have a personal stake.

  “The ones who are scary and violent enough to do you any good are so dangerous that you don’t want to have anything to do with even one of them, much less a whole army.

  “As for the rest? What good is a bunch of spooks whose bag of tricks is pretty much confined to slamming doors, moving ashtrays, and leaving cryptic stains and marks on the floors, walls, and ceilings?”

  “That is why I have gathered an army,” answered a harsh, guttural voice above us.

  We looked up. Towering over us was a giant crone, an ancient hag of rotted flesh and scabrous skin. I was suddenly aware of the gathering silhouettes just beyond the reach of the helipad lights. Wendigo leaned down, her death-mask face close to ours, and spoke again. “I have called together The People of The Land and told them of the Evil that poisons the earth and the waters.”

  As I turned aside from the charnel downdraft of her slaughterhouse breath, Will leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Problem solved, Dad. Wendy’s siccing the Indian EPA on our nest of Nazis.”

  “Long have the white-eyes despoiled the sacred places,” Wendigo continued in a voice like a funeral wind, “and each tribe has resisted in their own time and place. But The Mangler threatens all of The Land and in ways that the European invaders could never imagine. I have told the Ancestors that we must unite to destroy him before his numbers grow beyond containment.”

  “So what have we got?” I asked her. “Better be more than a few dozen bows and arrows because the arsenal inside could hold off the Colorado National Guard for weeks.”

  Then I noticed that the few “Indians” that I could actually make out at the edge of the light had small horns and antlers sprouting from their foreheads.

  “The Manitou do not fight with weapons, traditional or otherwise,” the Wendigo said, gesturing in their direction. “Their powers are greater than flint points and wooden shafts.”

  A platoon of tiny, ugly people crowded to the front of the pack, some of them sprouting hair from their faces like were-midgets turning into unkempt Pomeranians. “The Nagumwasuck and Mekumwasuck are normally peaceful,” she continued, “but can be fierce in defense of their territory. It was no simple matter, however, convincing them that their territory extended as far west as the Rockies. Likewise the Squonk, the Kewahqu, the May-may-gway-shi, and the Albatwitches but not so the Chenoo . . .” Giant, stony forms reared up behind them. “ . . . they like to fight!”

  Fireflies darted in and out of the shadowy forms. “The Elves of Light come from the Algonquin territories for they know what great losses may ensue if the land is not defended from the Defilers. They have come in their twilight time to make a stand with us.

  “From the North are come Watchmen, the Hodag, the Pu’gwis, the Inua Yuas, the undead Angiaks, and Kushtaka!” I caught a glimpse of the latter which appeared to be very like human-sized otters.

  “From the Northwest and the West I have gathered the Sasquatch, the Bokwus, and the Numuzo’ho. From the South and Southwest: the Kachina, the Cucui, the Chindi, the Surems, the Huacas, the Jimaniños, and Dzoonokwa. The Yunwi Amai’yine’hi, the Nanehi, and the Yunwi Tsundsi from the Southeast.

  “From the East: Mothmen and the ancient entity known in latter days as the Jersey Devil.”

  Enormous forms arrived, dwarfing even the rocklike Chenoo. “For the first time in the living memory of the Ancients, the Giants have come together on the field of battle. Heng of the Huron. Manabozho. Achiyalatopa of the Zuni with his feathers of flint knives. The Pawnee wind-spawn, Hoturu. Tcolawitze, Hopi fire-giant. Ga-oh, wind-giant of the Iroquois. The twins, Enumclaw and Kapoonis. Aktunowihio of the Cheyenne. Hastsezini of the Navajo. Wakinyan of the Dakota. Even the ogress Utlunta Spearfinger of the Cherokee.

  “The mountains are the ancestral home of the Gans so they will fight fiercely in their defense. Likewise the Ohdow who dwell underground and have suffered the poisons of the Mangler these past decades. The Tunghat and the Canotili have climbed up from the plains to join them lest The Mangler some day come down from these mountains and unleash his own, dark Anisgina across the plains.”

  I was suddenly aware of great wing beats above our heads. Dark silhouettes blotted out portions of the stars and fantastic shapes and visages were briefly revealed by flashes of heatlike lightning. “What are those?”

  “Oshadagea, giant dew-eagle of the Iroquois. And the Wakinyan, also called Hohoq and Kw-Uhnx-Wa. Your people know them in legend as Thunderbirds.”

  “All right, then!” I said, rubbing my hands together. “What are we waiting for?” Somewhere down deep in the dwindling recesses of my conscience a tiny voice was asking about the fates of the women and children inside Brut Adler. What wasn’t immediately shouted down by the growing cold-blooded nature of the vampiric transformation was outlogicked by the greater potential evil of any part of Mengele’s project surviving to reproduce itself in another generation or two. “When do we attack?” I asked.

  The Wendigo’s mouth opened inhumanly, impossibly wide and she began to howl. A thousand other voices, inhuman as well, joined in sounding like a funeral wind from the heart of the glacial North.

  I was nearly deafened by the time the noise ceased so I barely heard her say: “We cannot! It is, as I said before, geased and warded by sigils of power!”

  I looked back at the bas-relief over the entrance to the citadel. “What? The swastika? Isn’t there a back door?”

  “We have traversed the stronghold round and round,” she said, shrinking back down to human size. Unfortunately, she retained her ancient corpselike visage instead of reverting to the attractive Indian maid getup. “All points of entry are warded with the backwards Ttsilolni. So, I fear, would many of the passages within. All we can do is wait without . . .”

  The faint sound of an aircraft engine intruded upon the night wind. I looked up and spotted the distant lights of an approaching helicopter. Theresa and Co., no doubt, delivering their precious cargo to Mengele’s operating theaters.

  “And,” Wendigo cried, starting another growth spurt, “destroy any and all who seek to come here as The Mangler’s allies!” The giants and the Chenoo roared, the creatures closer to our own height howled and stomped their feet. Heat lightning flared along the wings of the Wakinyan.

  It terms of body counts, it looked like Deirdre and I would be among the first casualties of the siege of Brut Adler.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Now hold on there, She-go!” Will went stomping up to stand toe-to-toe with the ghastly Wendigo. Unfortunately she had attained a size that only permitted him to intimidate her knees. “You’re talking about destroying the helicopter carrying my father’s body—a body that he’s going to want to return to when this is all over!”

  As he spoke those words I suddenly found myself wondering if that was actually true. I hadn’t had much of a chance to consider my new repository but the flesh and bone seemed reasonably fit, not too old, and—most importantly—free of the necrotic virus that was transforming my old digs into something monstrous and inhuman. Did I want to return to that once this was all over? Of course there was always the question as to whether it would ever be over.

  And the question of the original occupant, Hans—or Franz—or who or whatever he was . . . what about his rights to his own flesh and bone? Had he abrogated those rights when he chose to join a different demesne of monsters? And even if I could take unto mysel
f the right and role of judge and jury, how could I cast him out of his own body? It was not something easily undertaken by the willing. Was the alternative, keeping him locked down in the cellar of his own mind, even a viable one?

  Maybe the damage was already done, the erosion of the soul sufficiently progressed, that I could even consider taking another man’s flesh from him.

  “And not just his life,” my unborn son was saying, “but the life of the woman he loves!”

  Huh?

  “Um, wait a minute . . .” I said.

  “Do you have a better plan?” the twenty-foot-tall Ghast of the Wild challenged back.

  “I think you may be confusing love and lust,” I said.

  “Well,” said Will, “you’re really wanting inside the fortress, right?”

  “And while I do love her,” I said, “it’s more of a platonic love—a friendship thing. Not that there aren’t overtones of attraction . . .”

  “Of course! But, as I have said, every door, every window, every point of egress is marked, at some point, by the sigil of the Whirling Logs, turning in reverse, turning us back. The Ttsilolni is a mark of darkest sorceries in the hands of the Ochkih-Haddä!”

  “ . . . but it’s really your mother that I love. Oh, I know that we haven’t been getting along, lately . . .”

  “So, if we can find a way to get you and the rest of the AIM Irregulars into the Hitler Hilton, here, you would agree to leave the helicopter alone?” Will pressed.

  “ . . . but relationships are like that. They’re like the tides, they ebb and flow. Sometimes they go out and leave you stranded on the beach . . .”

  “And how do you propose to do that?” Wendigo asked.

  “ . . . but if you’re patient . . . and don’t panic . . . the tide always comes back in.”

  “I’m working on a plan.”

  “At least it almost always comes back in . . .”

  “Will this plan take long?” Wendigo asked, shrinking back down to tête-à-tête size. “I am no general and The People are no coherent army. If they are not given purpose or opportunity soon, they will either depart or wreak havoc on whatever targets are most convenient!”

  “Dad!” Will called over his shoulder. “We need to talk!”

  “No kidding,” I said as we walked toward each other to meet in the middle of a semicircle of Native American Guardian Spirits. “About your mother and me—”

  “I know there’s a lot that you don’t understand, Dad,” he said, steering me away from the helipad and over toward the edge of the plateau. “And after this is all over we can sit down and I can try to help you understand some things. But for right now we gotta focus on the task at hand. How do we pull a This Old House and do a Bob Vila on all the swastikas inside Nazis-R-Us?”

  Right.

  I wasn’t going to save Deirdre—or Lupé, for that matter—standing around and dithering over where my emotional loyalties lay. I turned my mind over and gave it a little shake and, like a mental Etch A Sketch, it was cleared and ready for action. Even in a new body, freed from the progress of the virus, my emotions were becoming easier to discard.

  “We need a way to remove the swastikas from some of the entry points to the fortress,” I repeated.

  Will nodded. “But not just some entry points. Once inside, there are so many places our, um . . .” he looked back at the profusion of grotesque shapes and forms, “ . . . troops would not be able to go without a complete scouring of the fortress’ interior.”

  I nodded. “There could be hundreds.”

  “Thousands . . .”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Mengele was—is—a narcissist. I don’t think he’s all about bringing Hitler back or rebuilding the former glory of the Third Reich. I think it’s all about Mengele Without End, Amen. Any trappings of the Nazi Party are about structure and control for the loyalties of his minions.” I rolled my eyes. “Jesus! First I’m talking about Nazis and now I’m using the word ‘minions.’ I’ve really got to get myself a secret decoder ring sometime soon!”

  “Still, hundreds of Nazi stop signs are still a lot of scutwork before General Wendy can give the order to attack.”

  I stuck my hands in my pockets and stomped my feet. I had forgotten the frailties of untransformed flesh and the numbing cold was taking its toll. “If we start now, we could run a sweeping action ahead of the troops, clearing the obstacles as the fighting moves from room to room.”

  “Except these bodies are likely to be the first casualties in any confrontations,” Will countered.

  “What about noncorporeal mine-sweeping?”

  “Ala a little poltergeist activity?” He considered. “Unless you’re a young, adolescent spirit, in the throes of an emotional rage, you’re not going to be able to sustain the ectoplasmic cohesion to deface or ruin enough swastikas to clear a couple of rooms, much less three or more levels.”

  “So, we’d need an army.”

  Will nodded. “Preferably an army of adolescent spirits who could muster the psychic rage to tear through this abomination and break the power of every single symbol of Nazi hatred and darkness they could find.”

  I tried to smile: there was still hope for us here in the cold, howling darkness where one man’s evil had outlived generations of mankind’s justice. But there was a catch in my throat and my eyes rimmed with frost as I turned to my unborn son and said: “Time to take out the Eurotrash. I know where you can find such an army . . .”

  * * *

  The helicopter was coming in low so there wasn’t enough time to diagram a detailed plan. We trotted back to the helipad with more of a sketchy theory and tried to present it to Wendigo as if we totally knew what we were doing.

  She glared at us with black-rimmed, fire pit eyes. “You are mad, of course! But then the Human tribes of The People have always recognized that the mad are often god-touched and sacred.” She turned to Will. “Where is this place you must go to?”

  “Brzezinka.”

  “Is it far?”

  “Halfway around the world,” I answered. “So he’d better get going.”

  “Oh, I thought I’d stick around for a few more minutes and see if I can cut the odds a little. After all, I’ve got the easy job: single-handedly raising an army.” He pulled back the slide on his H&K. “You have to single-handedly hold one off until I get back.”

  “More like keep ‘em confused.”

  Wendigo snorted. “At last a use for your natural talents.”

  Despite the downward wash of the descending copter’s rotor blades, a wind sprang up, swirling around us and rising upwards. Wendigo shredded into a thousand dark ribbons and disappeared into the night air.

  “I think she likes you,” he said, punching my shoulder.

  “What? No!”

  “Aw, c’mon, Dad. The old Cséjthe charm—maybe I’ll inherit it someday. Get me some girlie monsters to make goo-goo eyes at me . . .”

  “Just remember that after you’re born you’ll be completely helpless and at my mercy for a number of years to come.”

  He grinned. “Jeez, you’re contemplating child abuse and I’m not even born, yet.”

  “Think I can be abusive? Maybe I’ll get you a baby sister to really make your formative years a living hell!”

  His eyes turned sad and deep. “Maybe a baby step-sister . . .”

  And the helicopter was drowning out any further conversation as it settled down just forty feet away. The cargo door slid open even before the engines were cut.

  It was absolutely the wrong move to make under the circumstances but I instinctively reached for my son to give him a farewell hug. Fortunately he was already moving, ducking his head, and headed toward the chopper to assist with the unloading. I followed, a cold pit of dread starting to open in my borrowed stomach as I anticipated what would come next.

  There were two stretchers. Deirdre and I were both securely strapped and buckled down. Although they had discarded their hospital garb it wasn’t diffi
cult to pick out the pair of docs since they were sticking close to their patient/cargoes and flanked by Theresa “Scraps” Kellerman and Ilse “The Red Bitch of Buchenwald” Koch wearing Gretchen’s cloned flesh.

  Some of the other commandos and flight crew might have been clones, as well, but it was hard to tell in this light. I wasn’t sure if Mengele would use replicants for grunt work but, if he was willing to make Ilse Koch into multiple Brides of Frankenstein, there might well be other matched sets of Godonlyknewwhat. The best I could do for now was count heads and note positions. My main attention was drawn to their hostages and what Will was about to do next.

  He had planned to wait until everyone was off the copter. If it turned out to be part of a getaway plan, we didn’t want to do anything that would damage the equipment. The pilot and copilot, however, remained on board to go over their post-flight checklists as the rest of the away-team disembarked and began heading for the main entrance.

  I led the way, walking as slowly as I dared to delay the procession, while Will positioned himself to the rear. These guys were probably good but they were tired after a long flight and not expecting an ambush on their home doorstep. Three bursts of automatic weapons fire took down four of them before I could turn around and the rest could react.

  Two more fell as the stretchers were dropped and offensive measures were taken by the survivors.

  Will was at a devastating disadvantage, now. He couldn’t move to the helicopter for cover—we might need it later. He had to choose his targets carefully lest he hit Deirdre or myself—or Hans/me, for that matter. And there was no place to run to with a thousand-foot drop-off just thirty yards behind him.

  He fired another burst and caught one of the two Mengele brothers, spinning him around to fall on top of me. The strapped-down-on-the-stretcher me, that is.

  “What are you doing, fool?” Ilse screeched at me. “Choot him! Choot him!”

  I brought my Heckler & Koch up and fired a burst over Will’s head while stepping to the side to give him a clear return shot. He took it and the Red Bitch turned the color of her nickname as she flew backwards and went down.