He took his aim off them.
The armed SS soldiers, along with Filotoma and Deitel, formed a defensive line. Deitel was pleased to see Bonhoeffer—Robin—still alive and among the armed men on the line. They exchanged a quick, knowing look but not a word.
Hoffstetter screamed when Skorzeny appropriated his armed bodyguards and put them on the line. Hoffstetter now only had his aide with him now, his skinny staff captain.
“Lieutenant,” Terah said to Skorzeny, “if we’re going to do something, we better do it now.”
The creatures that had remained around Übel’s machine feasting on the remains of their initial victims were now joining the mass of their undead brothers, lurching toward the inner courtyard. They trudged through the abattoir of blood and human remains, looking for fresh meat. Their eyesight was poor. They followed the scent of living flesh and were instinctively drawn toward a distant, golden glow that emanated from living creatures.
“They’re coming our way,” Terah said.
Skorzeny squinted in the darkness, trying to size up the horde. Hundreds. Maybe more. The generator came back on, and the explosion of light in the courtyard nearly blinded them all, including the undead.
Everyone froze.
There weren’t just a hundred or two hundred of the things.
It looked more like five or six hundred.
“Oh my God,” Terah said.
The undead cringed from the light.
A dozen panicked engineers and men in lab coats ran from the corner, trying to circumvent the mass of undead and make it to the outer castle gate. They should have learned from what they’d seen but were no longer capable of rational thought. Three made it to the gate before they were taken. They all became food for the dead. Their skin was torn open, their entrails spilled on the cobblestones, only to be scooped up by clawed hands caked in drying blood and shoveled into mouths of boundless hunger. Bones were cracked and the marrow sucked out. Skulls being smashed on the cobblestone courtyard were a peculiarly familiar sound.
“Why aren’t they coming after us here?” Terah asked.
“Their eyes,” Deitel said. “Look at them. All milky and clouded. I suspect they have poor eyesight. How good can a dead man’s eyes be?”
Skorzeny nodded.
“They set upon our men in the dark,” he said. “Most predators use all of their senses,”
When Hoffstetter saw the surging mass of undead, he panicked.
“Open fire! Shoot them! Kill them!”
None of the soldiers fired.
Skorzeny knocked the major cold with one punch.
The skinny captain at the major’s side looked like he was about to say something, but he remembered Skorzeny’s warning from yesterday.
“Lieutenant, as ranking tactical officer and probably the only one qualified, I am putting you in charge of this garrison,” Colonel Uhrwerk said. “What is our status and what do you propose?”
Skorzeny saluted.
“Thank you, Colonel. Sir, we have about twenty-three soldiers, twenty technicians and engineers, and a dozen civilians. We have about twenty machine pistols, half as many pistols, maybe 3,200 rounds of ammunition, and a handful of grenades.” He nodded toward the undead mass. “It looks like more than half of your Death’s Head Legion that died are now up and walking around. They aren’t the thinking, reasoning monsters like these three,” he said, indicating Hauser and the other two draugrkommandos.
“What the hell are we dealing with, Übel?” Skorzeny demanded.
Übel twitched, lost in thought. His eyes were glazed. Skorzeny shook the man hard. Finally, he spoke.
“The energy output of my machine—it was . . . corrupted. At first there was an overload of power, and then the wavelengths of the energy changed when the Gypsy witch cast her spell,” he said. “These creatures . . . they display similar properties to those who are exposed directly to the spear, or who are bitten by those exposed to the spear. Indeed, their eyesight is poorer. They lack agility and reasoning. They are driven by an insatiable hunger. They will simply pursue the living. Their bite is infectious, and deadly.”
“We saw that these things had no reaction to being shot,” Skorzeny said, “until I shot that one in the head.”
“Yes,” Dr. Übel said. “Destroy the brain and the creature dies.”
Skorzeny barked to his troops. “Achtung—don’t waste your shots. Aim for the head. Wait until they are close.”
None of the things was close yet.
Terah was staring over the iron sight of the machine pistol and wasn’t taking her eye off the creatures.
“I don’t know,” she said. “They seem to be getting less ungainly. Like they’re not struggling as much as they were.”
“Impossible,” Übel said. “These creatures only deteriorate as they decay.” .
“You better tell them,” Terah said. “Let’s just hope they can’t start thinking, and that their eyes don’t get better, too.”
Skorzeny watched. Indeed, it appeared they were moving with a little more speed and control than when they first burst out of the darkness.
“What do we do, Lieutenant?” Uhrwerk asked.
“The armory was set up near the outer gate for obvious reasons—to arm those going out on patrol. The garrison didn’t set up as if they expected a siege. So it’s of no use. Between us and the armory are all those undead monsters. We must fall back to the inner courtyard. There is no gate to the inner courtyard, but we can use the field cars and the crates to build a barricade. We can barricade ourselves in and radio for an airship extraction.”
“The outer gate,” Terah said. “If those things get loose, it won’t matter what we do. Nowhere will be safe. They’ll spread across the land.”
Skorzeny nodded.
“Where is the animal handler?” he barked.
One of the men on the line turned and raised his hand.
“How many nachtmenn and wehr-wolves do we have in the garrison?” Skorzeny asked.
The animal handler considered. “Most are on perimeter patrol, Lieutenant. There are six nachtmenn and eight wehr-wolves in the stables,” he reported.
“Get to the stables. Release the wehr-wolves and sic them on those things. Instruct the nachtmenn to close the outer gate and then to attack. Instruct them to tear the heads off those things,” Skorzeny said. He was sure he was sending them to their demise, but they had the best chance of fighting through the mass of undead and closing the gate. At the least, they would buy him time. Both nachtmenn and wehr-wolves had thick, armored hides and were incredibly fast. Perhaps they could take the things down even though they were severely outnumbered.
The absolute silence of which the dead are capable allowed three of them, who’d broken off from the hoard, to sneak into the ranks of the living before anyone knew it. The terror everyone felt broke free. When the first soldier screamed, Skorzeny knew he had to get control or he would lose everything to chaos. The undead were in their midst, attacking with teeth and claw. Blood ran. Soldiers accidentally fired on other soldiers. It was madness.
The first of the nachtmenn the handler released charged into the melee. It grabbed two of the things by their heads and wrenched them off. Their headless, undead bodies fell to the ground. A storm trooper who kept his head used his bayonet to stab the third under the jaw, driving the blade up into its cranium.
The baying of the charging wehr-wolves was, for once, a welcome sound. Their long claws clattered on cobblestone as they charged across the courtyard at the undead. The nachtmenn followed, in a formation of three ranks—three in front, two in the middle, and one at the rear.
“Now, everyone, fall back to the inner courtyard!” Skorzeny commanded. “Fall back! Men on the line, bounding overwatch!”
As the civilians, prisoners, technicians, officers, and scientists ran for the inner
courtyard, the storm troopers on the line held fast. Then every other trooper fell back ten yards, taking up firing position again. The remaining front rank repeated the process, falling ten yards behind the second rank and then turning to cover their mates.
By chance, Terah and Deitel found themselves back-to-back with Skorzeny and two of the storm troopers. Skorzeny planned to be the last one into the inner courtyard. Already the technicians were at work on the barricade.
The wehr-wolves tore into the mass of undead. But their natural means of attack—to tear into the throat—had little effect. By sheer weight of numbers, the creatures fell on the transgenic wolves. The cry of the last one sounded like the howl of a dog.
The nachtmenn were having more luck. With their lightning speed, they maneuvered around the hoard of undead and found the control for the gate. While the other five stood shoulder-to-shoulder, the sixth pulled the lever that lowered the outer gate. The rattle and squeal of the chains and the thunder of it slamming down attracted the attention of the horde. It was too far and too dark for those in the inner courtyard to see. The nachtmenn stood against the swarm of the undead. Their massive, clawed hands struck the first of the undead to approach them, sending their heads flying across the courtyard. But the horde wouldn’t stop. They smelled living flesh. Like the wehr-wolves, the nachtmenn fell under the inexorable mass of undead that attacked.
Standing on the inner courtyard wall, still weak and dizzy, Amria looked upon the chaos and carnage among the living, the dead, and the undead that she had unleashed in corrupting the reanimation process with her curse.
She smiled.
Let them all die.
Amidst the screams and pandemonium, the draugrkommandos led by Hauser found Dr. Übel. The doctor stood paralyzed with fear. They towered over Übel, blank faces staring at him with dead eyes.
Then one spoke.
“Come with us, Father. We can protect you.”
“Thank you, my child,” Dr. Übel said.
Somewhere behind his iron mask Colonel Uhrwerk was running through calculations and probabilities. He’d done his duty by placing Skorzeny in command. Now it was time for him to leave. This was not a decision made in haste or driven by fear. Speaking entirely objectively, he was of far more value to the Reich than the remaining storm troopers or Übel’s experiments. The spear could be recovered. The lives of those here were not material assets in the way that he was.
Uhrwerk would get clear, find a wireless, and call in a bomb strike on the castle. They could sort out the rubble and recover the spear after that. He had to be sure this infection was cleansed away. It was simply a matter of walking out of one of the smaller outer gates, locking it behind him, and marching the fifty miles to Piteşti.
With neither haste nor hesitation, Uhrwerk started toward the front gate. All around him the undead staggered about. Some were feeding on the last remains of the storm troopers who had attacked. Others were feeding on the fallen wehr-wolves and nachtmenn. One last nachtmann fought valiantly against a wave of the creatures, but to no avail. It went down. The undead didn’t seem to take note of Uhrwerk at all, as he expected. At the front gate, he unlatched the outer door and threw it open, then felt a hand clamp on his shoulder.
Uhrwerk turned and found himself face-to-face with one of the three infected draugrkommandos. It seemed that whatever afflicted it earlier had passed. But its complexions was gray and its eyes, nose, and mouth rimmed with blood, just as the Death’s Head Legion had been.
It drew a raspy breath. Uhrwerk found it fascinating. The creature appeared to have more trouble breathing than the three uninfected draugrs.
“What are you?” the draugr asked him.
“I might ask the same,” the colonel said.
Another raspy breath.
“What are you?” the creature demanded angrily, reaching out and shaking Uhrwerk.
With blinding speed Uhrwerk drove his right hand into the center of the creature’s chest. It looked down at Uhrwerk’s arm, buried up to the elbow, and took another raspy breath.
“That won’t hurt us,” it said. A smile spread on its face.
“It wasn’t intended to hurt you. It was intended to hold you still,” Uhrwerk said.
His metal fingers flat, he drove his left hand under the creature’s jaw and deep into its brain. He made a fist, squishing the cranial matter. When he pulled his hands free of the thing, the draugr slid to the cobblestones.
From behind, a second draugr wrapped an arm around Uhrwerk’s neck. It grabbed his metal mask and ripped it free, spinning him around.
Even before the draugr had been converted, as a live man, it wouldn’t have understood what it now saw beneath the mask it had removed. Instead of a face, it saw an almost infinitely complex series of clockwork machinery, intricately interlaced gears of all sizes, all turning in uniform precision and altogether performing millions of difference calculations per second. The sum total of these constituted the brain functions of Colonel Uhrwerk. While a small amount of his human body remained encased in the metal form her wore, all that he once was been had long ago been replaced by one of Übel’s more ingenious inventions. He was a clockwork man through and through, with so little human material remaining that the undead did not sense his presence.
In a confused rage, and before Uhrwerk could react, the draugr grabbed Uhrwerk’s right arm and ripped it from its socket. A green mechanical fluid and puff of steam erupted from the stump. The arm clattered on the cobblestones, clicking and whirring.
“You did this to us,” the draugr rasped. “And you’re not even human?”
In a primitive rage, it roared. Behind it, more of the creatures were approaching. Uhrwerk knew he wouldn’t last against so many of these monstrosities. He backhanded the draugr before him, sent it sprawling into the cluster of undead. Then he ran for the archer’s door—a small, hidden doorway that opened to a stairwell within the castle wall, once allowing bowmen to take up position on top of the wall in a siege. Barring it behind him, Uhrwerk climbed the narrow stairway.
The hatchway opened to the walkway and battlements atop the wall. Below in the outer courtyard, he saw the mass of undead. They were making their way toward the inner courtyard. Outside the wall it was a forty-foot drop to the solid stone ground beyond the castle. Without hesitation, Uhrwerk climbed the battlement and stepped off. As he fell he extended his left arm and dug his metal hand into the stone wall. Sparks showered around as it slowed his descent, enough that the servos and pumps in his legs were able to absorb the impact of landing.
After hitting the ground he set out for Piteşti, with only a slight limp and not a single look back.
Skorzeny and Terah stood with their backs to the inner courtyard gate, watching the carnage in the outer courtyard. The melee between the undead and the nachtmenn was over. Many of the undead wandered about listlessly. Those closer, who sensed the gathering of the living in the inner courtyard, were coming their way. The flesh on the creatures was more drawn than it had been, exposing their teeth. Their gums had receded, making their maws all the more animalistic. Their fingernails were longer and more clawlike. Their complexion was more of a green-hued gray, where it had been ashen before. Most alarming, they were moving with more agility. They were getting faster.
They swarmed over Übel’s machine. Clusters were hunting in different directions, mainly toward the inner courtyard. When one of the creatures was within twenty feet, Skorzeny shot it in the face.
“They’re changing,” Terah said. “Mutating.”
Skorzeny agreed. “And they’re moving with a more predatory gait. Übel said that shouldn’t be happening. If anything, they should be slowing.”
“This isn’t what Übel planned, that’s for sure,” she said.
“That’s everyone,” Skorzeny noted as the last trooper passed through the gateway. “And the outer gate is secure. Get inside.”
Now, the engineers among the survivors set to work shoring up the hasty defense, putting their skills to a job they could not have imagined. The inner courtyard was their last redoubt. They could retreat into the castle, but in the narrow corridors and great rooms there would be no way to erect another barricade. They would be overrun in no time.
When the first wave of the undead staggered into the barricade, it held. The next wave smashed in behind the first, crushing the first against the barricade. It groaned—or was that the creatures being crushed?—but it held.
Skorzeny issued orders to round up every weapon and round of ammunition that could be found. He also ordered the men to find alternative weapons—clubs, knives, sticks—anything that could be fashioned to pierce, smash, or remove a human skull. Even with the best fire discipline, the ammunition would run out long before they ran out of creatures to kill.
Skorzeny ordered Deitel and two of his troopers to search the main keep and the bailey for any other weapons they might have overlooked. In the main chambers of the keep, the rusted old pikes on the walls were mainly decorative. They were there because, over the years, no vandal or looter had dared set foot in the castle keep. Seeing that they were useless, Deitel looked elsewhere.
Unlike the Poenari castle’s bailey, where the lord’s chamberlain and household staff had residences on the higher levels, the master’s residence in the keep was on the ground floor. The great hall, in turn, was on the second story. Deitel had not studied medieval architecture, but this seemed peculiar.
There were three separate doorways to pass through to reach the master room. It had taken the engineers hours to breach the intricate defenses of the master room, and there was little in the way of reward for their efforts. In the master’s bedchamber, which Hoffstetter had claimed for his own, there were likewise no useful items. A field bunk had been set up for Hoffstetter, and two chests of his personal effects sat beside it.
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