Twilight of the Dead Read online

  "That was our first mistake. By neglecting this new field, we allowed the British and Americans to catch up and overtake us. I've heard tell of a project in the United States that employs thousands of men and women, all racing to create a stable bomb using this new technology." He gestured at the handful of dead colleagues nearby. "As you can see, we've never had such resources."

  "The weapon," Gorgo growled. "Tell me about the weapon!"

  "Of course," Rainer replied, easing his glasses back on. His trembling hands smoothed up a coiled blueprint and then unrolled the indigo paper to display a complex schematic imprinted on it. "When the Ostfront ground to a halt in 1942, several separate groups of physicists pressed for the funding to pursue nuclear weaponry. At least three different research efforts were officially sanctioned: one led by Werner Heisenberg at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, a military team headed by Professor Kurt Diebner, and another cluster of scientists led by Dr Paul Harteck, operating under the auspices of the Kriegsmarine."

  "Why would the German navy be interested in this weaponry?" I asked, intrigued.

  Gorgo snarled at me and I fell silent, not wanting to antagonise our Rumanian commander further.

  "Harteck's group was developing the gaseous uranium centrifuge invented by Dr Erich Bagge," Rainer explained. "It was hoped this could be utilised for a new U-boat propulsion system. My role was to move between the competing projects, using the progress of one team against the others in order to apply pressure. In fact, I had a secondary and far more significant job. I was responsible for collating the results of all three teams and bringing them here where an independent group of physicists and rocket scientists could identify the best elements from each group.

  "By the end of 1944, it became obvious that the Wehrmacht was losing the war and everything that happened afterwards would merely delay the inevitable. I was summoned to Berlin and brought before the Führer. He gave me a new mission: to create a single weapon that could reverse the course of the war and guarantee that Germany's borders remained sacrosanct. It was Hitler who coined the name Wunderwaffe: the Wonder Weapon."

  The physicist pointed at the diagrams beneath his hands. Gorgo moved closer for a better view, allowing me a glimpse of the designs. The Wonder Weapon looked no different from any other bomb to my eyes, and certainly less advanced than the V1 we had passed earlier. But Rainer's words made it obvious that the impact of this weapon could be catastrophic.

  "As I understand it, the Americans have spent millions creating an atomic bomb, a primitive nuclear fission device. We abandoned such a course since we lacked the time and resources. Instead I had my colleagues concentrate on constructing a bomb made of conventional high explosives, but packed around a nuclear core. It would be a tactical battlefield weapon we could deploy against the Bolsheviks. If it worked, the bomb would detonate in midair, spraying deadly radioactive particles over a wide area. Everything caught in the blast radius would die in an instant. Everything within a hundred kilometres' radius of the explosion would perish from radioactive poisoning within a few days: crops, animals, humans, everything. The explosion would also create a massive cloud of particles in the air, blocking out the sun, almost turning day into night."

  "How long would this cloud block out the sun?" Gorgo asked eagerly.

  "Days, even weeks," the scientist said, frowning a little at the specific nature of the question. "It would depend upon local weather conditions. Rather than immediately disperse as a normal cloud would, this one would slowly shift sideways, transported by the natural movement of the planet. I suppose you could call it a kind of shroud, turning a summer's day into a wintry night. Crops would fail, temperatures would fall, and people would not see the sun for long spells."

  "And how far did you get with this bomb of yours?"

  "We have been detonating small test devices for months. The first explosion was at a small island off the coast of northern Germany last October. We had no idea whether it would work or not, nor the effects of the explosion. I had a massive concrete bunker built as a safety precaution, with glass windows half a metre thick through which to watch the detonation.

  "When it came, the ground shook beneath our feet and there was a sudden, blinding flash of light. I was wearing tinted goggles, but for several hours afterwards I kept seeing the blast whenever I closed my eyes. Bear in mind, this device was a fraction of the size of the bomb we planned to build, yet its effects were utterly devastating. Once the initial flash of light had passed, I saw a thick cloud of smoke rising upwards in a column before it blossomed out into the shape of a flower."

  The scientist fell silent, staring into the distance, his thoughts elsewhere. Gorgo closed a hand on Rainer's shoulder, bringing him back to the present.

  "We stayed in the bunker for several hours to avoid any problems from exposure to the bomb's aftermath. I made everyone put on clothes and masks lined with asbestos as added protection before we visited the site of the explosion on the other side of the island. The effects were startling, to say the least. Trees had been reduced to carbon in a matter of moments: no leaves, no life, nothing. We had penned a dozen sheep in the blast area to test how the weapon affected animal tissue. They were all burnt to cinders. I had never seen anything like it before in my life.

  "The scientists among us were sickened by the spectacle but it seemed to excite our military masters. They wanted more bombs, larger examples and more testing. I did as I was told, followed my orders, helped my colleagues here construct a device twice the size and scale of the first one. We were not permitted to know where that would be tested. I only found out about the results by chance after the base commander here left me waiting in his office with the report open on his desk. He thought me a meek, terrified creature, too scared of my own shadow to cause trouble, and he was right. But my own curiosity got the better of me, so I glanced through the contents of that report. If seeing the first blast for myself had been disturbing, the notes and photographs contained in that folder were far worse."

  Rainer shuffled his papers and produced a pair of monochrome images; stark portrayals of what had happened near the town of Ohrdruf seven weeks earlier, in March 1945. The pictures showed malnourished prisoners loading shapes on to massive wooden platforms. I caught a glimpse of the photographs and flinched.

  We'd heard of Nazi resettlement camps where Jews and others considered undesirable by the German hierarchy were sent to work and to suffer, gassed to death in clinically efficient chambers, their corpses burned in gigantic incinerators. The men in the pictures were mere skin and bones, gaunt-faced ghosts, no doubt survivors of the camps. But it was the shapes they were moving that shocked me: bodies covered in horrific burns, skin and flesh scorched away, bones protruding whitely from seared and blackened surroundings. Human bodies, burnt alive by some apocalyptic blast or fire. Rainer stared dully at the images, his own eyes now inured to the atrocities depicted by them.

  "I managed to sneak those out of the commander's office to show the others what was being done with our work. The generals in Berlin had taken our second device and detonated it over a concentration camp to test how effective the weapon was against live human subjects. Afterwards they had prisoners from the nearby camp at Buchenwald pile the scorched remains on to cremation platforms and the evidence was destroyed. Even the report sent to my commander had been marked for burning once he'd read its contents. It wouldn't surprise me if those in power have done everything possible to conceal this project from history. They know a reckoning is coming and they fear what those who shall sit in judgement upon them will say."

  "You showed these pictures to your colleagues?" Gorgo asked, gesturing towards the bodies of those who'd committed suicide rather than be taken prisoner alive.

  "I felt they deserved to know the truth. After that, we agreed to do everything in our power to sabotage the project. If the Führer or some other madman had gotten hold of the full-sized Wunderwaffe we'd been constructing, the fallout from its devastation might have plung
ed all of Europe into a wintry midnight that could have lasted for months, even years. We were determined to make sure that that didn't happen.

  "Little by little, piece by piece, we've been destroying the plans and paperwork for the doomsday device Hitler wanted us to construct. I had hoped to complete that task sooner but the military contingent at this facility became suspicious of our actions. I was upstairs trying to explain to the gefreiter and enlist his aid, when you arrived." Rainer fell silent, his story at an end, his hands resting listlessly atop the blueprints and photographs.

  Gorgo studied the collection of documents and schematics, one hand thoughtfully stroking his chin. "My Lord Constanta was right to send me here," the Rumanian finally said to Rainer. "You will accompany me back to Transylvania where you will be given every resource, every asset, every assistance you need to make one of these Wunderwaffen - a full-sized device. When the time is right, we shall detonate it over the centre of Europe, creating this everlasting winter you speak of. Our kind will be able to feed whenever they wish, and will not have to skulk in the shadows or hide from the sunlight anymore. We shall be free to carry out our every whim, every desire. The people of Europe shall be our prey, our cattle, our carrion. We shall gorge ourselves on the blood of nations, savouring every last drop. This continent shall be our dominion!"

  "No." Eisenstein stepped forward, aiming his submachine gun at Gorgo. "I can't allow that to happen. You and your kind are an abomination that deserves to be wiped from the face of the earth. I won't allow you to make science the tool for your triumph."

  "And how do you intend to stop me?" Gorgo asked, chuckling at him.

  "Any way I can."

  "But you forget yourself, Jew," the Rumanian sneered, his good humour fading away. "You are one of us; you carry the vampyr urge inside your body."

  "I bear your taint, your infection," Eisenstein whispered, "but you do not control me! I may share your thirst for blood but I can resist that thirst and I can resist you."

  "Perhaps, but not forever. One day it will get the better of you, and when that day comes, you shall live in the night ever afterwards."

  Gorgo took a step closer to Eisenstein, his hand reaching out towards the PPSh, his eyes boring into those of my comrade.

  "Give me the weapon. It cannot harm me. You cannot harm me. I am all but immortal, sired by my Lord Constanta, who was made immortal by the Sire himself. I am but two steps from godhood, Jew. You should bow down and pray before me."

  "You're right," Eisenstein said, his face a tumult of emotion. "I can't hurt you, can't stop you... Not with this weapon. But I can stop your sick, evil plans for humanity."

  Gorgo shook his head, lips curling with disdain. "It is over for you."

  Eisenstein turned to look at Rainer, his eyes full of compassion. "I'm sorry."

  Before Gorgo had time to react, Eisenstein opened fire at the German scientist, putting an entire magazine into Rainer's body. The physicist collapsed to the floor, his torso punctured more than a dozen times, a spray of blood and bone spattering the area behind him as he fell. Gorgo screamed in anger, his fangs revealed as his lips drew back, his face flushed crimson with rage.

  "What have you done?" he demanded.

  "Saved the people of Europe from what you'd have done to them," Eisenstein replied. He smiled wistfully at me, mouthing the word "goodbye" as he let the PPSh fall from his grasp.

  Gorgo ripped my mentor to shreds, flailing at his body with razor-sharp talons long after all life must have departed from the tattered, torn corpse. The Rumanian raged and roared, pounding his fists upon Eisenstein's chest, each blow accompanied by a hollow popping sound as another rib was snapped into pieces. Still not satisfied, Gorgo snatched up the discarded submachine gun and used it as a club to beat the body until it was a bloody pulp, all but unrecognisable.

  Finally, his anger spent, Gorgo turned on me. I backed away, expecting at any moment to suffer the same grisly fate as my friend.

  "As for you..." he snarled, his breath hitting my face as hot puffs of air stinking of rotten blood and decay. "You can gather all these papers together and bring them with you. The Jew may have denied me possession of Rainer himself, but we still have all the notes and blueprints for the Wunderwaffe. The vampyr may not be able to deploy the weapon this year, but with these it could still become a reality in the future."

  He watched as I did his bidding, carefully folding and rolling the papers before sealing them into a knapsack. Once I'd finished, Gorgo ripped the pack from my grasp and pointed at the nearby steps.

  "Get out."

  I did as he commanded but paused long enough to see him activate the stick grenades he'd taken upstairs. The vampyr tossed the three devices into the centre of the chamber before striding briskly towards the stairs.

  "I told you to move," he snarled at me. I rushed up into the building above the concealed laboratory, Gorgo hard at my heels. Once at ground level, he activated the lever that returned the bench to its usual position over the staircase concealing the secret laboratory underneath. Within moments three dull thuds sounded beneath our feet and the floor trembled. I could smell burning and smoke began to seep out from under the bench. The Rumanian gave a grim smile of satisfaction.

  "That place will become your comrade's tomb."

  He shoved me back the way we'd come, and we hurried past the cooling corpses of slaughtered German soldiers and the dusty remains of the vampyr bodyguard. We marched outside, ignoring the nearby building with its cargo of V1 rockets. They were not important to Gorgo.

  I had lost my best friend, someone who meant more to me than my own father. Grigori had been more of a father than my real one ever had. But the sad, horrible truth of Eisenstein's death didn't hit me until we were reunited with Mariya, the Borjigin brothers and Gorgo's surviving bodyguard. The four of them saw us coming and looked puzzled, expecting to see two more in our group. Mariya waited until I'd reached her before asking what had happened to Eisenstein.

  "He's dead," I said. "Gorgo murdered him."

  "I executed him for insubordination," the Rumanian interjected. "He disobeyed my direct orders and killed a scientist with information valuable to the vampyr war effort."

  "You enjoyed every second of it," I spat at him.

  "Yes," he replied, grinning broadly. "It's too long since I killed a worthy adversary. The Jew was many things - a thorn in my Lord Constanta's side, an irritant to our crusade - but he was also a brave man. That's why I made sure his funeral pyre would be a suitable memorial."

  Behind us, the building where Eisenstein's body lay exploded. A massive fireball curled up into the sky, followed by a mushroom cloud of black smoke. I didn't want to think about what had caused the blast or what was being thrown into the atmosphere. If Rainer and his team had been experimenting with such hazardous materials, the chemicals spilling from that laboratory could be a toxic time bomb for this region of Germany.

  Mariya took one of my hands in her own, giving it a squeeze. "Maybe it's for the best."

  "I know. He's at peace now; his suffering is at an end. Grigori doesn't have to carry his burden any longer... I'm almost happy for him."

  Deep down inside, I wanted to weep for my dead friend, but I'd lost the ability to cry during the Siege of Leningrad. Somehow the torments of those long months had stolen away all the tears from my eyes. Most of the time I was grateful for this, but that night I wanted to weep and couldn't. I hoped Grigori could understand, wherever he was. I wasn't sure I understood anything about this bloody war anymore. I had long suspected the war would be the death of us all, but I had never expected Eisenstein to perish before me.

  EIGHT

  It took Karl four days to talk his way back into the Führer's personal bodyguard, with Hans, Ralf and Gunther joining him at the new posting. The rumours Hans had heard about Wehrmacht files being purged was proven correct. Nobody questioned the four Panzergrenadiers about their backgrounds since there were far more pressing matters to worry about.


  The Russians had advanced through the outskirts of Berlin, and then into the suburbs. By April 25th the city was encircled, with little hope of relief from the remaining German forces still fighting nearby. The capital's civilian population of women, children and the elderly were trapped, hiding in basements and tunnels, praying for a miracle they knew would not come.

  The presence of Red Army troops on the streets meant dive-bombers could no longer target the city. Instead the capital was being pounded into submission by near-constant artillery barrages, with Stalin's Organs singing day and night as they bombarded the broken buildings and boulevards of Berlin.

  The four Panzergrenadiers received official notification of their new postings as they were evacuating the final few wounded from the Humboldthain Flaktürme. The quartet were directed to make their way into central Berlin and wait outside the Reich Chancellery on the Wilhelmstrasse at dusk. None of them had been near the centre of the city since the Red Army entered Germany. For Hans, Ralf and Gunther, it was their first visit into the capital. All of them had seen its stunning architecture in newsreels shown to civilians before the war. But what they found on the Wilhelmstrasse was almost unrecognisable as the place designed to stand as a National Socialist monument for a millennium and beyond. The buildings were bombed out wrecks, the windows long since destroyed. Once proud banners were mere scraps of cloth, hanging limply from broken flagpoles.

  The streets were piled high with rubble and abandoned vehicles. No surface had been left untouched by the Allies' merciless onslaught. Every wall was damaged, every surface pitted and scarred, every corner revealed another crumbling ruin where grandeur had once stood.

  Amazingly, in the midst of all this chaos, a few civilians tried to continue with their lives by standing in line for rations of meat and bread and butter, or collecting water from one of the few out-pipes still flowing freely in the benighted city. Berlin was close to collapse, its only sign of resistance coming from gangs of teenage boys with black and red armbands running between the ruins, clutching a Panzerfaust in each hand. This was what the defence of the Reich had fallen to: young boys who saw the war as an adventure, not a slaughterhouse. In a few days even they would be made to recognise the harsh reality, if they lived that long.