by James Somers
Adolf waited. The good doctor was testing his patience, and it was wearing thin. Results should have been forthcoming by now. It had been too long since Adolf had used one of Mengele’s experiments to destroy the site in the Amazon Jungle where his late aunt, Luxana, had established a kingdom for the sprites. He wanted a solution to his mounting concerns with the war. Matters had taken a turn for the worse of late.
However, the problem of Mengele’s serum causing catastrophic physiologic problems to his patients had thus far never been resolved. As powerful as the subjects briefly became, they remained useless for real war. Blind soldiers would simply not last in the midst of mortar explosions and machine gun fire, neither those whose bones became so brittle that they shattered, or the many who bled out from every orifice until they ceased to function.
And those were only the best case scenarios. Many others had suffered sudden heart attacks, liver failure, he couldn’t count how many strokes, and then their was the one that had killed several SS officers before blowing his own brains out. It seemed like a disaster awaited the project at every turn.
Nearly two years had passed without sufficient progress from Mengele. He pondered strangling the man, but thought better of it. The doctor was, after all, a genius in his own right, despite his morbid curiosity.
It was now 1945, and the Allied forces were closing the noose about Adolf’s neck. His intelligence department indicated that the Americans were very close to completion of a terrible super weapon. Adolf had his scientists working toward an Atomic weapon, but setbacks abounded here as well.
Still, there was the serum. His berserker rage, unleashed during his battle within the coliseum at Trinity years ago, had given him the idea in the first place. If this power could be isolated and then carried to host subjects through a viral strain then a super human army could be developed to win Adolf the war.
After all, atomic weapons were not ideal. Scorched earth made for a poor empire. But men could be set loose anywhere. There was nothing like an army of men who fought with such terrible rage and violence that no one could stand before them. These would fight to the death without fear, and if the massacre of the sprites was any indicator, they would kill many before they fell in battle.
Mengele appeared at the vaulted door to his laboratory. “If you are ready, my Fuhrer?”
Adolf stood, now wearing a similar white lab coat along with a surgical mask and a pair of protective goggles. The doctor handed him a pair of rubber gloves when they stepped inside the door. There was probably no danger to a Descendant from the strain. The necessary components had come from a Descendant in Adolf, but caution never hurt.
The vault sealed itself with a hydraulic hiss. On the far end of Josef’s laboratory sat an electron microscope with which the doctor could manipulate his viruses. A collection of test tubes and other scientific brick-a-brack sat on a workstation nearby. Closer to the middle of the chamber Mengele had ordered a surgery to be built.
This was not quarantined from the rest of his lab, but had rather become the center of it. A patient lay awake strapped to the operating table. Adolf observed the Jew impassively. He felt no pity for the creature. As far as he was concerned, this was better than that race deserved.
He still held the Jews responsible for the death of his mother. They had been the ones watching him. They had been the ones who called him demon in their native Hebrew. If he accomplished nothing else by this war, he meant to see them all eradicated.
The side wall was lined with clear acrylic cylinders, each large enough to allow three grown men to stand side by side within them. The cylinders were presently occupied with what Adolf could only deem recent failures of the doctor’s experiments.
At the top of each cylinder was a system of tubes that could pump oxygen in, or remove it altogether. Other substances could also be introduced—the Berserker Strain for example. It delivered as a colorless, odorless vapor. Several days of incubating then produced these wretched creatures. Adolf recoiled from closer inspection. He had just eaten a healthy lunch and wished to retain it..
Only one of the subjects appeared to still be alive. The other dozen had expired in one way or another, leaving unsightly messes within their cages. The last was busy thumping his cranium against his cylinder’s transparent inner wall. Already his white skull was exposed. Torn flesh, little more than bloody pulp by now, was splattered against the acrylic. This beastly man had gone quite mad and was intent on beating his own brains out.
Adolf glared at the specimens. “Is this the progress you promised me?”
“That all depends upon the results you hope to achieve, my Fuhrer,” he replied, paying close attention to his patient strapped down upon the stainless steel operating table.
Adolf rounded on the doctor. “What I want from you is an army that will fight to the death, furiously destroying my enemies.” He stepped toward Mengele at his operating table. “In case you haven’t realized it yet, this is all about to come crashing down around our heads. The Allies are closing in.”
“Exactly, my Fuhrer,” Mengele said. He swallowed hard, noticing Hitler’s clenching fists. The Fuhrer had been known to kill men with his bare hands. Josef did not wish to be his next victim. He would tread carefully as usual. “If your army has proven incapable of defeating the Allies then perhaps it is time to let the Allies destroy themselves.”
“Explain,” Adolf demanded.
“Well, sir, so far I’ve had no luck finding a way to make mortal men like you,” Mengele said. “You are quite unique.”
In his younger days, Adolf might have received such flattery with a grin. However, this situation with the war had seared his ego. He was close to losing what opportunity for world dominion he had left.
Already, he had lost his close contact with his angelic benefactor. Lucifer had not been nearly so attentive since the war effort began to go badly for him. It was just one more sign of things to come. Adolf was near to desperation.
“My uniqueness has little to do with this,” Adolf said. “I’d call it simple incompetence, Doctor. I’ve obviously put my faith in the wrong man for this job.”
“With all due respect, my Fuhrer, I am the only man for this job,” Josef said. “As I was saying, what could not be done one way, might still be accomplished another way. What we’ve thus far considered to be detrimental side effects may have been exactly what we should have been looking for all along.”
Adolf grew angry. He gestured stiffly toward the acrylic cylinder where the test subject was still madly crashing his skull against the inner wall. “You’re telling me that will win the war for me? A man beating his brains out?”
“What if that man was your enemy beating his brains out?” Josef asked. “Doing so instead of fighting against you?”
Adolf paused, considering the doctor’s words.
“Infect them with this?” Adolf asked.
Mengele smiled. “Precisely,” he said. “What better way to win the war?”
“But I wish to rule mankind,” Adolf said, “not destroy them!”
“Destroy some so that others may be ruled,” Mengele bargained. “It is not the world that resists, my Fuhrer. Only the Allies threaten us.”
Adolf considered this further. He did need some sort of solution. If nothing more was forthcoming, he would lose to the Allies and either be imprisoned or executed. And, if Lucifer persisted in his unwillingness to help him turn the tide, what choice did he really have?
“I wanted to show you something interesting today,” Mengele said, turning to the patient waiting upon the operating table.
Adolf gave closer attention to the setup Mengele had assembled around the bed. The man, a Jew taken from the camp prisoners, was gaunt of frame and pale of skin. His eyes remained fixed upon some set point, stoically disregarding him and the doctor. Whether he was sedated or not Adolf could not say.
From a pole with a rolling base, hung a bottle of blood which was attached by a tube and needle running to the
man’s arm into his vein. As yet, none of the blood was flowing. Beside the bed a box shaped device appeared to be monitoring the patient’s heart rate and possibly his blood pressure, though Adolf was not familiar with medical equipment and could not be sure.
“What is all of this anyway?” he asked Mengele.
The doctor was going over the arrangement, looking entirely pleased with what he had put together for his demonstration.
“I have come up with a new serum based upon your blood,” Josef said proudly. “Animal trials on rats were very interesting, but I wanted you to be here for the first human trial.”
“And this is related to your proposal?” Adolf asked.
“Yes,” Josef said proudly. “However, this is only an experiment with the serum. Any effects will subside by tomorrow.”
“It’s not permanent?”
“Not yet,” Josef explained. “For permanent changes to be made, I would have to introduce the serum through a viral carrier. My plan would utilize a rhinovirus in order to promote speedy transmission from host to host.”
“A rhinovirus?” Adolf asked dubiously.
“The same virus that carries what we refer to as the common cold,” he clarified. “No one has yet come up with a cure for it. The Allies will be helpless.”
“And then whatever happens will be permanent?”
Mengele grinned knowingly. “The serum which I will introduce here,” he said, indicating the bottle of blood, “will cause his tissues—muscles, organs, even his brain—to be transformed temporarily. Think of it like a boy eating sugar. That rush of energy does not last. Neither will this because it is not introduced into the cells in a way that effects fundamental change. The virus carrier can do this when the time comes to unleash it upon the Allies.”
Adolf nodded thoughtfully. “But where would this virus be released? Certainly, not on the battlefield. If they infected our soldiers as well as their own—”
Mengele was nodding. “Correct,” he interjected. “A battlefield would not accomplish our aims. It would be introduced into their cities. Transmission would occur person to person through body fluid transfers. I’ve already conducted an experiment using caged rats. The entire dozen were infected or dead within seconds.”
“They killed one another?”
Mengele turned to look at the label he had placed upon the blood bottle. Adolf followed his gaze curiously. A four letter word written in capital letters.
“I’ve labeled this new variant strain a little differently,” Josef said. “The Berserker Strain was focused upon control. The ability of a soldier to unleash his fury in tightly controlled bursts. The man remained. But this variant extinguishes the man completely. He is left ravening and mad like a beast, killing indiscriminately. Well, at least the uninfected. They seem to recognize one another as like minded and then work in concert, though they will kill one another if food becomes scarce, or if there is too much competition.”
Adolf read the word aloud, wondering what in the world Mengele had spawned from his blood. “Rage.”