I parked with dispatch. Lucy and I ran to join the other partisans. The train was stopped with only the engine and coal car past the Devil’s Tooth; the rest of the cars reposed alongside the great rock.
I watched as Dracula leapt back up onto the coal car and strode into the cloud of steam roiling over the top of the train.
The next car was the first of the luxury carriages, brilliantly lit from inside by cut-glass chandeliers, full of unsuspecting Nazi officers singing along with a piano being pummelled by a drunken Captain, all boisterously drinking. A few peered out the windows to see why the train had stopped. Most ignored the scenery. All they could see was a wall of rock on one side or the river on the other, and continued their revelry. What had they to worry about? They were destined to rule the world.
The partisans charged precipitously forward along the narrow gap between train cars and rock face. I gave chase, trying to stop them. A guard in the vestibule of the first luxury car saw them and turned, his Schmeisser sub-machine gun swiveling with him.
I saw Pavel aim his rifle at the guard and was about to shout Dracula’s order not to shoot, when the vampire appeared out of the cloud of steam, hopped down to the vestibule, and, with one swipe of his hand, ripped out the man’s throat.
Then Dracula entered the car.
Pavel and Farkas moved to follow.
“No!” I grabbed Pavel and whispered harshly into his ear. “Leave them to the Prince.”
“He might need help,” Lucy said, and she, too, moved toward the car, but her father held her back.
“We should all witness this,” Van Helsing said. “Watch the monster take precedence over his mortal soul.”
After one step into the luxury car Dracula paused to take in the scene. The car was panelled in dark wood and red velvet curtains with gold brocade trim all about. The bright lights sparkled off the chandeliers, and a haze of blue cigar smoke hung in a dense overcast. Brass ashtrays and dark brown leather chairs were arranged along the walls. Most of the men, wearing their dress uniforms, had a glass in one hand with a cigar or cigarette in the other. A small, polished wood bar crouched in one corner; a collection of liquor bottles replicated themselves in the mirror behind.
One of the Germans, a red-faced man wearing pince-nez, was brandishing a small black box with a short barrel protruding from the front. He would aim this box at one of his comrades and that man would become animated, most attempting some caper. Dracula first thought it might be some kind of new weapon, but then, when the Nazi aimed it at him, he saw the glass eye and realised it was some sort of camera.
One of the officers, wearing a very nicely tailored uniform, beautifully designed, walked up to him. Dracula did not recognise the rank, not that it mattered.
“Why have we stopped?” the officer demanded in the tone of one who was used to command. “Who are you?”
“Wrong questions,” Dracula told him. The officer frowned, focusing on the bullet holes in the vampire’s shirtfront, the splatter of blood from feasting on the stoker and guard.
“What would be the right question?” the officer asked, swaying a bit against the tide of inebriation.
“Why are you still alive?” Dracula said as he reached out one hand and snapped the officer’s neck. Dracula dropped the dead carcass and the resounding thump of the falling body attracted the attention of the nearest Nazis. Guns were drawn from polished holsters.
From outside the luxury car, all we saw were the flashes of gunshots. We heard screams, guttural howls of terror, and the lachrymose wails of dying men. I saw a frightened face thud against a window, the eyes begging for mercy, mercy that was not forthcoming, and then the horrid visage disappeared, pulled from the glass as if it never had been there at all. Then blood splatters of bright sanguine crimson splashed across the windows like paint thrown about by a mad artist.
We were all transfixed, staring at this Grand Guiginol being performed before us.
“Come,” Van Helsing ordered. “Remember our mission!”
Our trance interrupted, we followed the Professor past the two luxury cars, carefully crouching beneath the windows. The second car was oblivious to the carnage occurring next door, the general revelry drowning out the noise of Dracula’s rapacious plunder. Pavel attacked the locks on the livestock cars with a pair of long-handled bolt cutters.
We heard a crash behind us. A German officer had been hurled through a window of the first luxury car. Shattered glass and a dead body fell onto the coarse gravel of the siding.
I noticed that Renfield had lingered and was still watching the mayhem with undisguised glee.
Inside, Dracula walked the length of the first car, slaughtering as he went. A few of his victims he feasted upon, ripping into their necks.
Another guard stepped through the rear vestibule. He raised his Schmeisser and fired a burst at the blood-drenched specter before him. Dracula took the rain of bullets in his chest and solar plexus. The impact forced him to lean back, but nothing more. Then he was upon the poor guard faster than the man could react, a blur in the fellow’s vision. By the time he knew that the vampire was only a foot in front of him Dracula had ripped off his arm and used it to swat another German. Both officers hit the floor, where Dracula crushed their throats under his heel as if they were vermin.
Dracula held the dead man’s arm, the hand still clutching the Schmeisser. The vampire disengaged the hand from the weapon, tossed aside the arm, and, in the midst of all his self-created chaos, examined the Schmeisser MP38 as if he were thinking of purchasing one.
“Genius,” he mused. “Remarkable progress.” He laid it upon the bar, peered behind the curved counter to see if anyone was hiding there, surveyed the car to confirm that there were none left alive, and exited.
The sharp, distinct report of the vestibule guard’s Schmeisser on full automatic was enough to alert the officers in the second car that something untoward was occurring. At least some of them. As Farkas slid open the cattle car door I glanced into the second luxury car and saw a half-dozen Germans draw their side arms and cautiously approach the vestibule.
Lucy was at my side and also took notice. “Too many guns against him,” she muttered. “Are we going to let him fight them all by himself?”
She raised her Luger and charged toward the car.
I, of course, followed.
Entering the other side of the car, we were witness to a grim spectacle of drunken louts passing a young girl from man to man, each one stripping off a bit of her garments. So preoccupied were they with this perversion, coupled with the drunken sing-along, that at first they saw nothing of what was happening at Dracula’s end of the car.
When Dracula entered, covered with blood and gore, a few of the officers discarded their amusements and paid attention. They had further reason to pay heed as he waded into the midst of the officers and began killing. Again, a few he feasted upon, ripping into their necks with his fangs. He became a beast, governed only by his lust for blood and death, unleashing an uncontrollable rage and desire. As I watched this tableau of horror I could think only of Van Helsing’s warning. The monster’s mortal soul was not much in evidence.
But this was no time for rumination, as the Nazis on our side of the car armed themselves. One fool shot himself in the thigh as he drunkenly drew his Walther from his holster. Besides this wounded tosspot, Dracula was now facing over a dozen armed men. The bullets might do no harm in twos and threes, but enough firepower could possibly shred his flesh in ways I did not think he had even imagined.
So I shot one of the Germans. In the back, yes. I am not proud, but we were outnumbered, and to give our enemies a timely warning would have been folly.
My gunshot was accompanied by Lucy’s Luger. We both cut down five or six of the Nazis before they turned on us. Some of the men were only wounded and fired back even as they fell. I had yet to learn my lesson—a wounded man is as dangerous as a live man. Shoot to kill.
Dracula, too, was a victim of this dictum
. One of the Germans in the first car survived his attack and surreptitiously came up behind him.
He felt a sharp pain, snapped a hand behind him in reaction, fumbled, and found the hilt of the knife imbedded in his shoulder. Yanking the blade out, he turned to face the young, blond Lieutenant, whose blue eyes were wide, standing there holding an empty scabbard in a trembling hand.
“You think that does not pain me?” Dracula asked the young soldier and plunged the dagger through the top of Nazi’s skull.
Another rushed the vampire, bringing up his weapon. Dracula did not wait for this one to fire his gun. He merely grabbed the soldier by his coat front and, with one hand, slammed the man against the top of the mahogany bar, upside down, pounding the soldier’s head into the hardwood as if he were driving a nail, over and over, until the man’s cranium merged with his shoulders, just a bloody smudge.
While Dracula laid waste to German after German, Lucy and I committed our own version of slaughter. Later, when I had the time to think about it, I decided I was caught up in the derangement of what occurred in that car. Was the bloodthirsty butchery of Dracula’s melee any different from what Lucy and I brought upon our enemy? One attack was a bit more ferocious and perhaps somewhat untidy compared to our more efficient methods, but the results were the same—a carload of dead men.
Dracula ceased his rampage, looked around the car. There was blood everywhere. Nary a body stirred. The stillness and the mephitic reek of death filled the railroad car. He looked at us with red eyes, bloodshot to the point of opacity. The glare was so fierce and inhuman that I took Lucy’s arm and led her out of the abattoir. She did not resist, being as awestruck as I at the demonic presence. So bestial was his apparent state that I was certain Dracula had lost control and would attack us without a thought. This was her first glimpse at his brute butchery.
Left alone, Dracula espied a stirring behind the bar. He bared his fangs in a feline snarl, hissed, his primal wrath still driving his actions. He reached down, filled his hand with a fistful of hair, and hauled the human out of hiding.
It was the gypsy girl, covering her naked breasts with crossed arms, staring at the bloody creature in abject terror. I am ashamed to say that, in my haste to leave, I had forgotten about the captive girl.
Dracula felt bloodlust blur his vision, overtake his reason, his mental acuity. Everything was meat, was blood, all was prey. He felt the heat of the girl’s body, heard the pump of her heart, saw her pulse throb, all with a keen perception beyond ordinary senses.
He could taste the sweet blood that was in the offing. Then he perceived an itch at the back of his mind, like a lost memory, teasing at his brain, a whisper of conscience, the tiny voice of what was left of his humanity. The atavistic beast that now inhabited his body roared, drowning out that small plea.
He bent the girl’s neck, exposing the vein that pulsed with such a siren call. She, frightened to her core, offered no resistance.
Lucy and I had gone to assist the other partisans as we evacuated the prisoners from the livestock car and into the lorries. Many had to be carried. I helped an old woman—I swear she didn’t weigh more than a large cat—and she gaped at me as if she were in the arms of the Christ himself.
The screams and sounds of battle emitting from the luxury cars had ceased. Nothing but the hiss of the river’s rapids. We all seemed to turn at the same time to witness Dracula stepping down from the car, the girl in his arms. She was wrapped in his cloak.
Dracula’s face was not a sight for those with a weak constitution. It is only when a man finds himself face-to-face with such horrors that he can understand their true import. His visage was still contorted with bloodlust, his eyes ablaze with a demonic fury, his mouth, hands, and shirtfront covered in crimson gore and blood from his hideous repast. His entire appearance was terrifying to behold.
As a youth, preoccupied as I was with the lurid tales of my grandfather, I became a devourer of strange fiction, especially the imaginative stories in the pulps. My treasure was a near-complete collection of Weird Tales, a Yank publication of varying quality. But some of the stories had the power to make peaceful sleep impossible and caused me, in one influenza-induced fever dream, to murmur, much to my parents’ consternation, “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li! Ia! Ia! Cthulu! Yog-Sothoth!” None of those hellish, nightmarish yarns could have prepared me for the sight of the vampire stepping out of that hemic carnage.
The gypsies about us went to their knees as one. He gazed down upon them with an imperious stare; his eyes were positively blazing, and the red light within them was lurid, as if the flames of hellfire blazed behind them.
“Drakul,” a chorus of gypsies murmured in hushed awe. Lucy’s face showed her shock at the sight. I saw fear and dread fall across Van Helsing’s face.
The gypsy girl’s father rushed forward to gently take his daughter, for this must be the aforementioned Maleva, from the vampire’s arms. His joy was discernable behind the mask of his bruised and swollen face.
“Thank you, my Prince,” he whispered in his mother tongue, Romani. “I, Ouspenkaya, am eternally in your debt.” The reverence in his voice was profound.
Dracula nodded. The rage in his countenance dissipated before our eyes. Lucy approached him, observing this segue from savagery to refinement.
The vampire glanced at her, then down at the ruins of his blood-soaked clothing, the bullet-shredded shirt. From his own wounds, a dark ichor leaked.
“I’ll need a new shirt. Could another trip to the tailor’s be in the offing?” He strode over to the river, tearing off the ragged remains of his shirt. He rinsed the tattered cloth in the swirling waters at the bank and wiped his face, his chest, cleaned his hands as if it were an ordinary morning toilet. As I watched I was amazed to see his wounds heal before my eyes; they closed, scabbed, then became shiny pockmarks, then disappeared. The process gave me a deep sense of wonderment, and I suddenly understood how truly alien he was.
The partisans and the freed prisoners still gawked, but Pavel and Farkas, not unfamiliar with the vampire, herded them to the lorries. Van Helsing walked with Ouspenkaya to their transport, at the same time tending to the girl huddled in her father’s arms.
“She seems unharmed” was Van Helsing’s diagnosis. “Take your people into the mountains. Hide as best you can.”
“My people have been hunted before,” the gypsy leader said. “In our mountains, not even God can find us.”
“Can you take the others with you?” Van Helsing asked, pointing to the Jews and other prisoners.
“Of course. All who are under the iron fist of the Boche are now kin.”
I went back to survey the results of Dracula’s predations inside the luxury cars. I was not eager for the duty, but I thought the officers might have been carrying some kind of documents of value to our intelligence section. Stepping into the first car, I was struck by the odour of the slaughterhouse, blood and offal. There was absolute carnage, parts of men lying about, some I could recognise, some I could not. The dead lay slack with stricken faces, open-mouthed and with wide-eyed stares of pure horror.
It was all I could do not to gag at the sight and stench. For some reason, my attention was captured by the shined boots of one of the victims, a man dressed in an immaculate uniform from glistening black heel to the Iron Cross on his chest—First Class, a hero—all perfect as if for inspection; the only deficit was the mess he was from the neck up, no head. I know I stood there and stared at this abomination for a few seconds.
Turning away, I could see Dracula and Lucille through a crimson-smeared window. She had taken the rag of his shirt and was cleaning his face with a tenderness that made my heart stop. I could hear them through the shattered window next to me.
“I did tell you not to interfere, did I not?” Dracula said to her. “Why did you attack?”
Lucy took umbrage at the question.
“They were shooting at you,” she said, her anger rising.
“They could not kill me,�
�� he stated with not a hint of braggadocio.
“But it hurt, didn’t it?”
“It did.”
Hearing a buzzing sound, I spied an object on the floor, a small sixteen-millimetre camera, its crank still rotating. I picked it up and tossed it out the shattered window toward the river. Who knew what it had recorded? But I was not really as focused on my recce as I was on Lucy and the vampire. I hurriedly left the car, intent on interrupting this tender tête-à-tête.
“Maybe I welcome the pain.” Dracula gazed into Lucy’s eyes.
“Possibly as a recompense for your sins?” I asked, joining the conversation. Dracula turned his eyes on me, and I found myself suddenly very afraid. There was a chilling threat in his stare.
“You cannot dare to understand what I may feel or think, sir.”
My jaw wobbled as I struggled to find a reply. But then Renfield saved me as he brushed me aside and accosted the vampire.
“Master! Master!” Renfield bounced around the pair like a puppy begging for a biscuit. “Ye said Ah wid have a go! Aye, ye said Ah wid have a go! Master?”
“Yes, my friend.” Dracula turned, put his hands on the shoulders of his eager acolyte. “Here is what I would like you to do. Can you improvise a device to make the oil in these container cars blow up?”
“Aye.” Renfield grinned. “Easy-peasy.”
“But can you make it happen when I deign it to occur?”
“Ach, when ye want it, she’ll blow,” Renfield replied.
“Excellent.” Dracula nodded. “Then this is what I desire. Festina lente. Make haste slowly.”
We gathered close as Dracula laid out his plan. And as he did so I noticed something remarkable. It was a cold night; we hugged our clothes close, and every exhaled breath formed a white cloud in front of everyone’s faces. Everyone except Dracula. He alone made no such mist.
What follows is conjecture on my part, pieced together from eyewitness accounts, secondary sources, and a clandestine visit to the site:
Due to the persistent sabotage by the local partisans, the Brasov railway station was under Rumanian Army control, the security detail billeted in an old warehouse adjacent to the tracks. A transportation unit with a large motor pool resided directly across those tracks. It was usually devoid of vehicles, as the Rumanian General Suciu had a very profitable lend-lease program with area merchants who might need a lorry for business purposes.
Dracula vs. Hitler Page 27