Peter couldn’t imagine what might be in Hell, as von Falkenstein had called it, but she had seen it for herself, and he saw the remembered horror reflected in her eyes.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “He mustn’t, Peter. He can’t!”
“He can and he will if we don’t stop him! Von Falkenstein is on the command platform to try and slow them down, but I don’t trust him any more than Baumann. I’ve got to get you out of there.” He stood up and began to spin the wheel again.
“Peter, no! You can’t let me out,” she cried. “Don’t make me hurt you, too!”
Screams broke out somewhere deeper in the cell block, followed by a fusillade of gunfire. It was close.
He stopped spinning the wheel. “I have an idea,” he told her. “I’ll be right back.”
Taking off in the direction of the sound, he came upon a trio of soldiers who had just killed something that looked like a spider the size of a banquet table, but with human skin and hands on its feet. It was hard to tell what the rest might have looked like after a pair of grenades and several dozen bullets had done their work. A pall of smoke and dust shrouded the corridor, and the acrid smell of gun powder combined with the stench of offal assaulted Peter’s nose.
“You men, with me!” He shouted. “I know a way out!”
“Show us, then, damn you!”
Peter recognized the man and his two companions. They had been the ones who had tried to rape Mina. Peter saw the fourth would-be rapist on the floor, the serrated mandibles of the spider-thing clamped around his crushed neck.
“Follow me,” he said before turning away, hoping they hadn’t recognized him.
They had almost made it to Mina’s cell when the Oberscharführer, the leader of the trio behind him, finally realized whom he was following.
“Halt!” The sergeant shouted, skidding to a stop and raising his weapon.
Peter stopped and turned, using the movement to mask a backward step closer to Mina’s cell. Raising his hands, he took another step back. “Whatever Brigadeführer Baumann told you, whatever orders he gave regarding me go directly against orders from Reichsführer Himmler himself.” Another step back. “He has gone rogue!”
“We will see what the Brigadeführer has to say about that. Now, turn around, and…”
Peter decided it was time to use the oldest trick in the book. Putting a terrified look on his face, which was not at all hard to do under the circumstances, he pointed and screamed, “Behind you!”
The three men whirled around in unison, firing down the corridor without waiting to see their target. The distraction gave Peter just enough time to reach Mina’s cell. Spinning the wheel the last half revolution until the bolts drew back from the door frame, he dove for the floor as the men turned back around, the smoking muzzles of their rifles already tracking him.
The three inch thick metal door slammed open, smashing the lock wheel into the concrete wall. Mina stepped out into the corridor, her glowing eyes fixed on Peter, sprawled at her feet.
“Open fire!” The three soldiers blasted away at her, and Peter watched in rapt fascination as the bullets tore the chest of her coveralls to ribbons. Blood seeped from the wounds and sprayed out her back as the bullets passed through her flesh and bone.
One of the men made the mistake of making direct eye contact with her. In an instant, his face went slack and he released the trigger of his rifle, then stood still as a mannequin. The other two men turned to run, but Peter shot them in the legs. They fell to the floor, writhing in pain.
With a feral snarl, Mina moved with blinding speed to the man who stood frozen. Putting her glowing hands to the sides of his head, she quickly drained him of life. Casting the shriveled corpse aside, she pounced on the next man, batting away his rifle as if it were a child’s toy. He beat at her with his fists, trying to knock her hands away from his head, then drew his knife and tried to stab her. Before the blade could prick her skin, she grabbed his wrist and gave it a brief squeeze. Bones snapped and the man shrieked as the knife clattered to the floor. He hammered on her a few more times with his good hand until he was too weak to raise his arm from the floor. A few seconds later he was still. Not long after that, his body was nothing more than a vacant husk.
With a deep sigh, Mina sat up and licked her lips. The glow had faded from her eyes.
Beside her, in a widening pool of his own blood from the bullet wounds in his leg, the Oberscharführer was begging for mercy, blubbering like a child.
Mina knelt beside him and smiled. She grabbed his crotch, taking hold of his genitals, and squeezed.
Getting to his feet, Peter looked away as the man’s scream rose higher and higher in pitch before the soft organs in Mina’s hand exploded like overripe fruit under the pressure of her grip. Then she took the other soldier’s knife and rammed it through the gagging Oberscharführer’s heart, burying the tip of the blade in the concrete floor beneath.
With a final heaving sigh, she stood up and came to Peter. “I hope God can forgive me,” she whispered.
“God had nothing to do with this.” He told her, terrified of looking into her eyes, but unable to help himself. But the fire was gone. For now. “Come. We have to get to the gate!”
He led her back toward the laboratory, following the sounds of the screams and gunfire.
“Oh, my God.” He stopped as he came around a corner. A creature resembling a cross between a snake and a squid was coiled in the center of the corridor, its tentacles lashing at a group of soldiers who were caught between it and some other horror on the far side whose appearance was masked by smoke. Bullets sparked off the snake-squid’s thick hide. A long tentacle, as big around at the base as Peter’s thigh, flailed forward into the crush of men and came back with a victim. The suckers at the end of the tentacle were the size of Peter’s palm and had vicious looking hooks in the center. Wrapped around the victim’s chest, there was no hope of escape.
Peter had to give the man credit for his courage. His screams were curses of rage, and he emptied an entire magazine into what might pass as the face of the creature before it thrust him into a clacking beak and bit him in half.
Mina pulled Peter back. “We must find another way,” she whispered. “Men, I can fight. Things like that…” She shook her head, a look of terror in her eyes.
“The service tunnel,” Peter said. “We’ll have to go back through the tunnel. We can reach Level Two that way.”
Retracing the steps Peter had taken earlier after releasing Ivan, they made their way toward the service tunnel. They passed what remained of Ivan, who was now little more than a dismembered hulk, fallen among a mass of smashed and torn bodies in blood-soaked SS uniforms. Peter said a silent prayer for the man Ivan had once been.
They caught glimpses of other bestial impossibilities wandering the corridors, but all of them were heading away, drawn toward the laboratory where the bulk of the fighting was taking place.
Peter opened the service tunnel door and stepped through. He didn’t bother closing it behind him.
Ahead, he could hear the crackling of the energy discharge from the gate. He hurried faster, cursing his leg with every step. He sensed a sudden surge of energy, then the sickening tug of artificial gravity as the gate snapped open to that distant, horrible place. “They’ve opened the gate!”
As they approached the gate chamber, they heard cries of terror mingled with pleas for help.
Coming around the corner where the tunnel opened into the vast subterranean cavern, he saw several hundred people packed into a crude electrified corral directly below the huge ring.
“Oh, no,” Mina whispered. “Those poor people! They’re food for Baumann and his men after they pass through the gate. They’ll be massacred!”
Peter’s eye was caught by movement above them. “Look!” He pointed to the upper catwalk, which was just visible over the edge of the glimmering ring and its opaque black disk. Baumann and von Falkenstein were up there, just short of the departure ca
ge, grappling with one another. A group of men were clustered along the rear half of the catwalk, watching the contest between their superiors. All of them could have been brothers, and some could have been twins. Tall, broad-shouldered with narrow waists, boasting blond hair and, Peter was sure, blue eyes, they were each the picture perfect genetic model of Aryan superiority portrayed by Nazi propaganda. One of them was sprawled on the grating, unmoving, a smear of red on his chest. Von Falkenstein still clutched his pistol, and as he and Baumann turned in their dance of death, Peter saw a fresh gunshot wound in Baumann’s shoulder. He and the other soldiers were stark naked, prepared for their journey through the gate, while von Falkenstein still wore his suit.
“They’re all mad,” Mina whispered.
Baumann slammed a knee into von Falkenstein’s crotch, but the older man used the reflexive doubling over to his advantage to drive Baumann back hard against the railing. The younger man lost his grip on von Falkenstein’s gun hand for just a moment, but that was all von Falkenstein needed. Jamming the pistol under Baumann’s ribs, he pulled the trigger three times. Three holes appeared in Baumann’s lower back and sprays of blood arced out to fall into the abyss.
As von Falkenstein backed away, running the back of one hand across his mouth, Baumann slumped to the catwalk beside the open door to the cage.
The other men on the catwalk began to charge toward von Falkenstein, leaping over their fallen comrade, but stopped when von Falkenstein shot the lead man, who stumbled and fell to the grating, his hands over the bullet wound in his throat, blood spraying from his carotid artery.
Quickly, von Falkenstein stripped out of his clothes, leaving them on the grate.
“He’s going to send himself through, the fool,” Peter hissed.
“Not before Baumann,” Mina replied, pointing.
While the enraged SS soldiers held von Falkenstein’s attention as he stripped, Baumann, still alive, had pulled himself to the edge of the open trap door of the cage.
“No!” Von Falkenstein roared as he caught sight of Baumann tumbling from the catwalk toward the gate. He fired a shot at him and missed. The soldiers on the catwalk charged again. Von Falkenstein turned and fired, dropping yet another man, but this time they didn’t stop. He pulled the trigger once more, but the pistol was empty. Throwing it to the floor, he turned and leaped through the trap door in a perfect high dive toward the darkness.
Peter watched Baumann fall, losing sight of him just before he hit the threshold of the gate. He looked at his watch, marking the time. One hundred twenty-three point seven eight seconds.
The soldiers, twenty-seven of them, were running along the catwalk. Like Fallschirmjäger jumping from a plane, they leaped through the trap door feet first, their arms crossed over their chests. Every one of them shouted “Heil Hitler!” as he leaped.
Peter began running to the stairs that led up to the command platform. “We’ve got to shut down the gate! Before they come through!”
“I can’t fight nearly that many,” Mina agreed as she trotted beside him, her eyes straying to the people trapped in the corral, who recoiled from the sight of her blood-splashed body.
“It’s not Baumann’s men that we have to worry about,” Peter told her, cursing as he stumbled. He would have fallen had Mina not taken his arm and held him up, gently, but with the force of a giant lifting a moth on its fingertip. “It’s the other things on the far side that I’m worried about.”
“Help us!”
They turned to the plaintive cry from a woman who had stepped away from her terrified comrades and reached for Mina through the gaps in the fence that held her and the others captive. Peter recognized her as one of the kitchen staff. Baumann hadn’t stopped at the Organisation Todt laborers to fuel his planned feeding frenzy. “Fräulein Hass, have mercy! Please help us!”
Mina slowed, and Peter grabbed her arm. “We don’t have time! Baumann will drop through the gate in less than two minutes!”
She paused, uncertain.
“If we can shut down the gate before Baumann emerges,” Peter said, “he and the others will be trapped on the other side and these people will be safe.”
Mina opened her mouth to reply, but her words were stolen by the thunder of gunfire and an unearthly bellow from the tunnel that led down to Level Three. Both of them turned to stare as a group of soldiers emerged, blasting away at some unseen pursuer.
“Oh, God,” Peter said, changing his mind and letting go of Mina. “Get them out of there.”
Stepping up to the fence, she grabbed the top wire and snapped it like thread, grimacing as arcs of what to the captives would have been lethal current danced over her arms. She did the same for the other three wires, casting them aside. Her coveralls were charred and smoking in patches, but she was otherwise unharmed.
“Run!” Mina shouted to the stunned crowd. “Get to the surface if you can!”
Peter wasn’t sure where they could run to, but at least they might have a chance. Taking Mina’s arm, he turned and ran to the stairs leading to the command platform and began to climb. His right leg gave out halfway up, and Mina wrapped her arm around his waist to keep him from falling.
“We only have thirty seconds left!” He told her after looking at his watch. “We’ve got to hurry!”
Mina lifted him clear of the steps, her arm an iron band around his midsection that barely allowed him to breathe, before racing upward.
They had just reached the command platform when the air raid siren began to wail.
INTO HELL
“We’ve reached the initial point.” The bombardier of the lead Lancaster bomber made a slight adjustment to his bombsight as the crosshairs scrolled over the small town of Glösingen nearly six miles below. He felt the pilot, following the remote course indicator in the cockpit, give the plane just a touch of left rudder. “On course to target.”
“Roger,” the pilot said, his voice tense.
“We’re not going to miss this time,” the bombardier muttered to himself. Mosquito reconnaissance aircraft had confirmed good weather over the target that morning, which was the first break in the heavy cloud cover that had enshrouded Arnsberg since the failed raid four days before. The air was clear as glass, with nothing more than a few wispy clouds to the north. RAF Bomber Command and 617 Squadron had put those four days to good use, converting more bombers to carry the huge Grand Slam bomb. The squadron had put nineteen Lancasters into the air that morning, six with Grand Slams and thirteen with Tallboys.
The bombardier narrowed his eyes in concentration as the curving Ruhr River came into view. “A bloody pasting you’re going to get today, Jerry.”
***
“Hoth, shut down the gate!” Peter shouted over the keening wail of the air raid siren and the sounds of battle and slaughter coming from the lower part of the chamber.
The scientist turned from his console to look at him and slowly shook his head. But his refusal wasn’t out of spite. Peter could see the terror in his eyes, and sweat beaded his face and neck.
Peter and Mina skidded to a stop beside him. Hoth cringed away from her. “Damn you, man,” Peter cried, “shut it down before it’s too late! You know what’s going to happen with that many men going through!”
Only fifteen seconds remained on the mission counter, the numbers rapidly spinning down.
“I’m sorry,” a familiar voice said from behind them, “but the gate will remain open.”
They whirled around to find Kleist holding a gun in one hand and a liquid sprayer in the other. His white lab coat was smudged with soot and streaks of blood, and the fabric along the bottom was ripped, shredded. A gash ran across his left temple, and he blinked behind his thick spectacles as blood dripped into his eye.
“I was wondering when you would show up,” he told them as he took a step closer. “I did not expect the Herr Professor, and he took me from behind when he emerged from the elevator. But you two…”
He broke off as Hoth reached for the contr
ol panel. Kleist shot him in the head, and the portly scientist’s body slumped over the panel.
The other men of the operations team got up from their positions and fled for the elevator.
“You fool!” Peter shouted, taking a step toward Kleist.
“No!” Mina stepped in front of him as Kleist fired again.
Peter felt as if someone had punched him hard in the gut. He put a hand to his uniform just above his navel and felt something warm, wet.
Mina turned as Peter’s legs buckled and he went to his knees. “Peter?”
He looked up at her and held out his fingers, covered in blood. “He shot me,” he said quietly before the world lost all its color.
With a bestial snarl, Mina whirled back toward Kleist, baring her teeth as her eyes glowed like hot coals.
But her snarl turned into a shriek of agony as she was enveloped in the mist blasted from the sprayer Kleist was holding. The smell of ozone, which was nearly overpowering when the gate was in operation, was overwhelmed by that of ammonia, the same chemical concoction Kleist had used on her when she’d come through the gate. Her skin began to bubble and melt away.
Kleist laughed, but not for long. Instead of curling into a ball of pain, Mina leaped forward, driving a hand, fingers extended like a sword blade, through the center of his chest, smashing through flesh and bone to take hold of his heart.
Eyes and mouth wide open in shocked surprise, Kleist crumpled to the floor as she yanked the organ, still frantically beating, from his body. Dropping it to the floor with a wet splat, she staggered out of the cloud of mist. Grabbing Peter by his uniform collar, she dragged him clear.
“Oh, God,” Peter moaned, looking at the countdown timer as he desperately clung to consciousness. He managed to get to his feet, leaning on one of the consoles. Mina stood beside him, gasping in pain as her body began to heal itself.
The lower half of the chamber was writhing, bloody pandemonium. The things from the cell block had followed the fleeing soldiers up the service tunnel Peter and Mina had taken. Now a pitched battle raged below the gate, with the mob of freed laborers darting to and fro among the combatants like a school of terrified fish. None of them knew the freight elevator in the tunnel could have taken them to the surface. Instead, those who could break free of the monstrosities made for the personnel elevator, which only a few could ride at a time.
The Black Gate Page 19