Blood Red Army
FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT
BY DAVID BISHOP
#1: OPERATION VAMPYR
#2: THE BLOOD RED ARMY
#3: TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD
#4: FIENDS OF THE RISING SUN
FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT created by Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Ezquerra
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Blood Red Army
January 1942: Winter has halted the Nazi invasion of Russia, but the northern city of Leningrad is besieged by German troops. More than a million people, soldiers and civilians alike, are destined to die inside the blockaded city - most from starvation. But a worse fate awaits those still alive. Rumours spread among the men and women of the Red Army about a new enemy that only attacks in darkness. Packs of wolves roam the frozen lake, attacking vital supply convoys headed for Leningrad. Russian patrols and outposts disappear, never to be seen again. Most frightening is a deadly mist, said to creep into Red Army tents and barracks. Could the Nazis have sent a cadre of vampyr warriors to Leningrad to accelerate this bitter war of attrition? Stalin and the Russian leadership dismisses such notions as enemy propaganda, but the evidence keeps mounting...
To Alan Grant, who helped nurture Fiends in 2000 AD.
Historical note:
This novel is a work of fiction set during the Second World. As far as possible the historical details are accurate, but the story takes liberties with reality for narrative effect.
A 2000 AD PUBLICATION
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Copyright © 2006 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved.
All 2000 AD characters and logos © and TM Rebellion A/S. "Fiends of the Eastern Front" is a trademark in the United States and other jurisdictions. "2000 AD" is a registered trademark in certain jurisdictions. All rights reserved. Used under licence.
ISBN(.epub): 978-1-84997-045-7
ISBN(.mobi): 978-1-84997-086-0
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Excepting notable historical names, all the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT:
BLOOD RED ARMY
DAVID BISHOP
BLACK FLAME
PROLOGUE
"Seal off Leningrad, then weaken it by terror and starvation."
- Adolf Hitler
"You already know how this will end."
Those words have been haunting me lately. I must have heard them somewhere - a phrase muttered by someone walking past me in the street, or murmured on the radio in the dead of night, or sung as the refrain of a song in the back of some neglected cafÈ. It does not matter where I heard the words last, nor who said them. What matters is where I heard them first, bringing with them the cold, numbing certainty of my own death. It was Grigori who said the words then, staring into my eyes, his voice a whisper of pain and torment, his face a sallow husk of what it had once been. So many of us had already died when he said those words to me. If I had known then what I know now, perhaps things could have been different. Or perhaps I would simply have killed myself, and saved myself from what was to follow. But I did not know, could not know, what would happen to us at Leningrad. Perhaps that was just as well. To continue in the face of such knowledge would have been madness. That much I did escape.
"You already know how this will end."
Those words could easily be applied to the time about which I write now, about the battles and the death and the horror that became known as the Siege of Leningrad. For nine hundred days enemy forces kept the city cut off. At least a million civilians perished between September 1941 and January 1944, with as many soldiers being killed by the German and Finnish armies. More Russians died within the blockade than the total number of Americans - military or civilian - that perished in all wars from 1776 to the present day. But Leningrad survived the siege and the Germans lost the Great Patriotic War. These are the facts as accepted by historians, as retold by those who survived, as interpreted by statisticians. But a dry recitation of such facts and statistics tells you nothing of life inside the besieged city and its surroundings. Unless you lived through those days yourself, you'll never truly know the fear and the pain and the terror. I saw a little of that firsthand, but that is not the tale I have decided to write. Besides, there are hundreds of volumes you can read about the siege and its horrific toll upon the defenders and citizens of Leningrad. There are others far better qualified than me to tell such stories, to make sure nobody ever forgets what happened there.
My name is Victor Danilov Zunetov, and I have a different story, one I am uniquely qualified to tell. To the best of my knowledge I am the last survivor of the shtrafroty commanded by Captain Alexandr Brodsky, the last member of that penal company still able to recall what happened to us during the blockade, the last living remnant of that company of the damned. Who else will tell our story? Who else will bear witness to what we saw and felt and did? Who else will say what has been so carefully excised from the official histories? What you read in this slim volume, you will not find recorded anywhere else. My narrative may be dismissed as fanciful: the benighted ramblings of a broken mind, a work of fiction from a time of madness. But every word you are about to read is true, every recollection as accurate as I can make it. Believe it if you dare.
Before I begin, I must make a few last comments - call them qualifications or apologia, if you will; I no longer care. Like all memories, mine has cheated me often enough during my life. I have tried to be as truthful as I can, but my limited skills as a wordsmith and the passage of so many years will have clouded some truths. Like all narrators, I am ultimately unreliable. So, if my recollection of history is at variance from official volumes, I make no apologies. This is the story I remember: the story of Grigori and his best friend Yuri, of the beautiful Sophia and the callow Borodin, of cold-blooded Uralsky and the vicious Strelnikov, of Yatsko and our commander, the despised Brodsky. But most of all, this is my story: the tale of my terror, my te
ars, my torments. Forgive me my self-indulgence and my wanderings. That you are reading these words means you must know I survived the Siege of Leningrad. The fate of the others, the cost of our victory against all the odds, the terrible price we paid in blood and sweat and death and suffering - that is a tale worth telling.
Enough of these justifications and caveats and delaying tactics. Eventually, even the most hesitant of storytellers must begin their tale. Mine begins on a bitterly cold night in January 1942, the occasion of my first meeting with Grigori Eisenstein and his company of the damned. You already know how this will end.
Chapter One
In January 1942 I was a young kommisar: a political officer in the Red Army. At that time, each unit of battalion size or greater was required to have a kommisar in addition to the usual unit commander. This system of joint command had been introduced during the Civil War to keep watch over professional officers, most of whom had served in the Tsar's army before the revolution. Kommisars were supposed to give their approval for any major order by the unit commander, despite the fact we often did not have any military skills and were selected mainly for our loyalty to the Communist Party. I heard tales of how my fellow kommisars used their position to interfere in military matters, but I had no such inclinations. Back then I was twenty-three and utterly terrified. It never entered my head to tell the unit commander how to do his job. Marko Reusenko was a grizzled veteran of the Winter War with Finland, one of the few military leaders to emerge from that disastrous conflict with any credit. For me to suggest how best he lead his men was unthinkable, an act of madness, especially as I had only joined the unit a few days before we set off for Leningrad.
Reusenko had welcomed me to the battalion with a curt speech, his voice a rasping snarl of derision, his good right eye staring at me as if it was a searchlight beaming mercilessly towards my soul. Reusenko had lost the sight in his left eye during the Winter War. He jabbed a finger towards his damaged eye, the pupil discoloured by a milky white mist.
"See this? It happened the last time a kommisar countermanded one of my orders. I don't intend to lose the sight in my other eye. I'll leave you to die in the snow before that happens. You concentrate on indoctrination and morale building, or whatever the hell it is you kommisars are meant to do. Leave giving orders to those who know what they're doing. Do we have an understanding?" He loomed over me, a great bear of a man, his breath reeking of boiled cabbage and decay.
I nodded meekly, quietly terrified by his belligerent display. We had been at war with the Germans for a little over six months, and in that time I had not fired a shot in anger nor seen an enemy soldier except in photographs sent back from the front. My father was a high-ranking member of the Communist Party and I've no doubt he pulled strings to keep me from being sent to the front line. But in January I had tired of the looks people gave me as I hurried between offices in Moscow, grown weary of their sneers. As far as they could see, I was a young, able-bodied man hiding behind a desk and a uniform to avoid combat. Shamed by their looks, I volunteered for the front, determined to see some action. The folly of youth is a wondrous thing. We think ourselves immortal, failing to realise what a delicate thread all our lives hang by. I had never seen a dead human body when I was assigned to Reusenko's battalion. That changed soon enough.
We made a slow, tortuous journey north to Kabona, first by train and then by foot for the final section, to the shores of Lake Ladoga. The temperature was minus forty degrees Celsius when we reached the frozen water, making me eternally grateful for my winter field dress: the quilted khaki jacket called the telogreika and matching trousers, a fur-lined ushanka hat and my valenki, quarter-inch thick boots made of pressed felt. This precious footwear was comfortable and warming, even when so close to the Arctic Circle in the dead of winter. I've little doubt it saved my toes from the frostbite that claimed so many others within Leningrad during the months that followed. Being the son of a significant figure within the Party was not without its advantages, even this far north.
At Kabona we stopped for three days, and the men huddled together for warmth, waiting to be told it was safe to venture out onto the ice. Lake Ladoga had frozen solid weeks before, providing a vital lifeline for those trapped within the blockade. The Germans had cut off all ground access to the city and its people, but supplies could still be taken across the lake. In summer and autumn boats towing barges were used for this perilous voyage. Once winter came, supply convoys were halted until the ice that soon covered the lake's surface was thick enough to bear their weight. Then a temporary path was marked across the ice, called the Doroga Zhizni: the "Road of Life".
By the time we reached Kabona, Leningrad was close to capitulation after one of the most severe winters in living memory. Three months before, German incendiaries had destroyed vital warehouses at Badaev, where much of the city's food supplies had been stored. By the beginning of 1942 there was only a two-day supply of flour left in reserve. Soldiers defending the city were dying on their feet, just as the citizens held captive by the siege were starving to death. Fresh supplies of food, fuel and reinforcements were vital. If Leningrad fell, the Germans blockading it could be shifted south to attack Moscow. That was unthinkable. We had to get through to Leningrad.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of waiting, the battalion was given permission to venture onto the ice. We were to act as escort for a convoy of trucks carrying sacks of flour, frozen cattle carcasses and other supplies. I found Reusenko in a wooden hut overlooking the frozen lake, the air inside thick with greasy black smoke from an oil lamp. He was consulting a hand-drawn map of the Doroga Zhizni, while warming himself by a burzhuiki stove. Reusenko cursed loudly when I paused in the doorway, urging me to come in or stay out, but to make my choice quickly. I came in, stamping my feet on the packed earth floor, trying to jolt the circulation back into life.
Reusenko fixed me with a glare from his good eye. "I suppose you'd better look at this, too," he grumbled. "If anything should happen to me, you may have to take charge of the men, heaven help them." The gruff commander spread the map out atop a sturdy wooden table, his hands smoothing out the creases. I noticed a heavy crimson stain round a circular hole in the paper.
"The blood of the last man to carry this map," Reusenko snarled, noticing my unease. "Let's hope it brings us better luck than it did him."
Our path across the lake was a simple one, taking a straight line from Kabona on the eastern shore to Osinovets on the western edge. The journey was thirty kilometres and would take several hours, Reusenko explained, depending on the conditions we encountered. From Osinovets a railway would transport the supplies forty kilometres to Leningrad, assuming the tracks were still intact by the time we arrived - if we arrived. Our troops would be given fresh orders, telling them where along the front line they would be deployed.
"This accursed cold has its uses," the commander scowled. "Both sides have been entrenched in the same positions since last September, for the most part. The Germans are strung out along a loop below Leningrad, running west from Lake Ladoga to the Gulf of Finland." His finger traced an arc south of the city on the blood-stained map, passing above the settlements of Pulkovo, Pushkin, Slutsk and Ivanovskoe. "The same applies north of the city, only there the enemy is a mixture of Germans and Finns." His fingers traced another arc across the map, north of Leningrad. Reusenko spat black phlegm on the floor after mentioning the Finns by name. His bitterness at the humiliations suffered by the Red Army during its Winter War with Finland was never far from the surface.
"When do we leave?"
"After dark," Reusenko replied, folding the map away into a brown leather dispatch case. "The fools think that this will make it harder for the German bombers to find us, as if they haven't had enough practice already." The commander's eyes narrowed as he noticed the Nagant pistol holstered over my right hip. "You ever seen Leningrad, Kommisar Zunetov?"
I shook my head.
"Well, you'll need more than that if yo
u plan on staying alive long enough to see it now."
"I thought we were simply escorting a convoy across the ice. I doubt anything less than an anti-aircraft weapon will bring down a German plane."
Reusenko laughed bitterly. "If the rumours I've heard are true, there are far worse enemies awaiting us on the ice than a few bombers."
We were more than two-thirds of the way across the ice when the first attack came. I was sitting in the cab of a dilapidated truck bearing a cargo of cattle carcasses, blowing hot air into my fists, trying to keep them warm. The vehicle jolted from side to side across the uneven surface of the ice road, struggling to maintain its position within a convoy of more than a dozen such trucks. Beside me, the driver maintained a constant stream of obscenities as he battled with the vehicle and the conditions. He swore at the faulty steering, he swore at the ice beneath our tyres that was more like a skating rink than a road, he swore at the driver in front for not going faster, and he swore at the madness of this war in general. I was tempted to remind him of my status as a kommisar, for questioning the wisdom of our leaders was never wise in front of a Party official, but I soon realised the driver's curses were merely a way of relieving his stress and fear. Besides, questioning his behaviour in such perilous conditions was not liable to make the journey any more pleasant. I forgot about his apparent infraction of Party edicts when the truck in front of us exploded.