Nazi Zombie Army: Gtterdmmerung

GTTERDMMERUNG
JONATHAN GREEN
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Green weaves a rollicking, well-paced tale. SFX Magazine

Sniper Elite

Nazi Zombie Army: Gtterdmmerung

NAZI ZOMBIE ARMY: GTTERDMMERUNG

WWW.ABADDONBOOKS.COM
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Sniper Elite

An Abaddon Books Publication www.abaddonbooks.com abaddon@rebellion.co.uk First published in 2013 by Abaddon Books, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Editor-in Chief: Jonathan Oliver Desk Editor: David Moore Cover Art: Rebellion Design: Simon Parr Marketing and PR: Michael Molcher Publishing Manager: Ben Smith Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley Copyright 2013 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

Nazi Zombie Army, Sniper Elite, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved. ISBN (mobi): 978-1-84997-521-6 ISBN (epub): 978-1-84997-522-3

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. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Nazi Zombie Army: Gtterdmmerung

GTTERDMMERUNG
JONATHAN GREEN

Sniper Elite

Nazi Zombie Army: Gtterdmmerung

The dull crump of detonation is so loud that Randall feels the blast rather than hears it. The boom of the tanks firing robs him of hearing, leaving him trapped in a cocoon of painful silence. Broken bricks and shattered tile rain down around him in a cascade of baked clay; drifting smoke and airborne debris hide the rest of his squad from view. The tank fires again. Another building collapses, loadbearing walls giving way, as if it were nothing more than a house of cards. Black earth and grey dust fill the air in cloying, chalky clouds. Reacting on instinct born of hundreds of hours of training and combat experience, the sniper throws himself against a wall the only part of the house still standing and blinks the obscuring dust from his eyes. His mouth still open in shock is thick with the same stuff, the powder mixing with the saliva on his tongue to create a thick paste. Back to the wall, he grips his rifle tight to his chest. Its the
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one thing hes still sure of in a world thats abruptly been turned upside down. Swaddled in silence, the pounding throb of his heartbeat is loud in his ears. Robbed of hearing he shoots anxious glances to either side, hoping that he might see something at the periphery of his vision that might alert him to what manner of danger it is he faces other than being shot at by a tank, that is. In the absence of anything else, he focuses on his pulse, breathing slowly through his nose, concentrating on trying to slow his heart, trying to calm himself after the shock of the tanks assault on their position. He can smell the tank, the bitter gunpowder smell of its firing, the burnt grease stink of its drive systems, the damp loam of the earth being chewed up by the teeth of its articulated caterpillar treads. Gradually, the ringing in his ears gives way to a high-pitched whine. He swallows hard, in the hope of restoring his hearing, and tastes clay again. The ringing remains but he can feel the rumble of the tanks grinding progress through the soles of his feet, rattling his whole body. And he can see it in the jiggering dance of the grit scattered amidst the rubble of the demolished building. He searches left and right, trying to pick out the faces of his comrades through the bars of light and shadow intersecting the settling dust clouds. Four of them had set out on the mission, a covert operation behind enemy lines, into the heart of the Fatherland itself. Their destination: the town of Totenstadt, a godforsaken place already badly ravaged by the war and now a shadow of its former self after the Allied bombing campaign. Their target: one von Teufel, rumoured to be a senior officer of the Nazis alleged occult division. The plan had been formulated after British Military Intelligence intercepted an Enigma-coded message. The Bletchley Park code-breakers had managed to decrypt the partial message as best they could, giving the towns location, the name von Teufel, and only one other word: Gtterdmmerung. The twilight of the gods. But whose gods?
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Their mission: to assassinate von Teufel and find out what Gtterdmmerung really was, assess the threat it might pose to the Allied advance and act to neutralize it if necessary. Randall had expected to meet with some resistance. What he hadnt expected was a welcoming committee, complete with a Panther tank and two dozen German foot soldiers in support. The dust and smoke clear, driven away by a chill gust of wind. The Panther is prowling through the ruins of what remains of the buildings on the south side of the town square, its engine growling as it chugs over the mounds of brick rubble and broken roof tiles. The Panther is hunting them. Randall looks again for the other members of his elite kill team. He finds Ginger first. He is pressed up against a pillar of brick all that remains of the corner of a building away to Randalls right. The way hes holding himself, his body tensed, Ginger looks like hes hardly daring to breathe, lest the German soldiers following the tank, across the devastated courtyard, spot even so slight a movement. Beyond him, Atkins is nothing but a crouched shape, only the bars of light falling from a smashed window beyond him providing him with any kind of profile whatsoever. It takes Randall a few moments more to find Carson, half buried as he is under the rubble of a fallen roof and covered by the same fall of dust that has settled over everything since the tank shell brought the house down about them and in Carsons case directly on top of him. Randall doesnt need to risk breaking cover to check for a pulse. The frozen, glass-eyed expression and the undisturbed dust on his slack mouth and nostrils are enough. The only colour that breaks up the dusty grey is the congealed mess of blood covering the side of Carsons head where his skull has been stove in by a toppled chimney stack. Randall takes a shuddering breath and casts a prayer to heaven for Carsons sake, that whatever power saw fit not to see him safe through to missions end takes better care of him in whatever afterlife may await him. The Panthers main gun coughs again and another building is destroyed amidst an expanding cloud of glass shrapnel and
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brick shards. The tanks commander clearly isnt taking any chances; either that or hes revelling in the opportunity to cause some significant collateral damage without having to justify his actions later. Crouched in the shadows, Atkins is watching whats unfolding in the town square beyond the ruined buildings. Ginger too, through the angled, dirt-smeared mirror of a ladys compact held in his left hand, beyond the edge of the pillar providing his cover. Randall does the same, one eye to the gap between two bricks, where the seismic shock of the initial tank blast has shaken the mortar free. So it is that they all witness another building come apart in an eruption of wooden staves and fractured stone. Randalls guess is that the Germans know the sniper squad is there, but dont know exactly where. Two dozen infantrymen, dressed in the black and grey Swastika-adorned uniform of the German army, are advancing across the town square of Totenstadt, following in the wake of the tank. Spread out across the devastated plaza, they advance in ordered silence. Two dozen against three. Randall is sure that his squad could take half their number before the enemy could fire back, but as soon as the first shot was fired, the snipers would give themselves away. From that moment on, it would only be a matter of time before they paid the price for their rash action with their lives. And that was without taking the tank into consideration, either. The mission is everything, and with one man down already, they can ill afford to take any unnecessary risks at this stage. That said, what they could really do with is a distraction of some kind. Keeping low, his movements fluid so as to make as little sound as possible as he adjusts his balance on the bricks beneath him, Randall shoulders his rifle and takes rough aim through the glassless panes of a destroyed window, scanning the square through his snipers scope. The advancing Nazis make easy targets, but the truth is the squares too exposed. The Allied bombing campaign has seen
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to that. The statue smashed from its plinth at the centre of the square, the blackened twisted metal carcasses; the only cover the square affords are the very piles of brick rubble the Panther is even now crushing beneath its treads at its inexorable advance. And then he sees it. A way out of there, before the troops and the tank flush them out of cover. Its not much, but it just might be the difference between them completing their mission, or dying hundreds of miles from home. A manhole cover, at the edge of the square, before the broken buildings. As it is, its too exposed. But if he could engineer some sort of distraction Having caught their eye, Randall signals to Ginger and Atkins, a few uncomplicated hand signals outlining the plan. The tank grumbles ever closer. Its grey hull barges between the half-demolished buildings, the scorched metal mouth of its main gun probing the way forward like a curious elephants trunk. Theres no more time left to think, only to act. Slinging his rifle over his right shoulder on its leather strap, Randall plucks the machine gun from Carsons dead fingers and sprints from cover, running directly at the tank. As he reaches it, he leaps from a shifting mound of bricks and lands on the Panthers hull with a reverberating crash. He scrambles onto the top of the tank, legs astride the turret. Hey, Fritz! he shouts. Over here! Just in case they havent heard him, Randall opens fire, spraying bullets across the square from the rattling machine gun, and sending plumes of earth spitting into the air. That gets their attention. As the advancing soldiers turn their own guns on the tank, Randall drops into cover in front of the turret. Shouts and bullets chase him across the square, impacts puffing from the crumbling walls and several hard-cased rounds panging loudly from the Panthers armoured hull. Out of sight of the Nazis again, and out of reach of their guns for the time being, he glances at Ginger and Atkins and sees them scampering for the manhole.
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With his comrades safe, the only conundrum yet to be resolved is how to save his own hide. The rattle of bullets against the tanks thick armour plating stirs those shielded within into action. With a greased clang, someone pops the hatch to see whats going on. But Randall is ready for him. A sharp blow to the face with the butt of the machine gun sends the bastard falling back into the belly of the tank. But if Randalls going to get out of this alive, he needs another distraction. The grenade is already in his hand its ovoid shape familiar and reassuring the pin already pulled. Before the hatch slams shut again he tosses the metal egg after the stricken tank commander. The hatch slams shut. Randall throws himself from the hull of the tank and back into the shelter of the devastated buildings. The dull boom of the grenade detonating doesnt even cause the sniper to break stride as he legs it back into cover. The tanks magazine cooking off, however, picks him up and hurls him into a section of wall, that drops on him in a torrent of chipped bricks and flaking mortar. The Germans advance falters in the face of the blast. The foot soldiers dive for cover in a vain attempt to protect themselves, their arms and hands thrown up to shield their faces from the roiling ball of greasy smoke and scorching flame. Frantically needing to make the most of the opportunity, ignoring the jarring pain in his joints and gasping for breath, Randall picks himself up and resumes his sprint for safety. The first of the German grunts begin to recover themselves as Randall emerges from cover and hares across the debrislittered square, following his comrades. The soldiers may not be in any state to put up any resistance, but Randall still has to dodge and weave in hope of avoiding the chunks of twisted metal falling around him, trailing flame. The open manhole yawns before him. Randall skids across the ground and slides through the hole, dropping into darkness. He throws out an arm and grabs hold of a corroded iron rung
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bolted to the wall of the brick-lined shaft he finds himself in, arresting his descent. Shrapnel from the tanks destruction pings off the manhole cover like machine gun fire as he pulls it back into place overhead. In that instant, all is plunged into darkness. At the flick of a switch, light returns to the tunnel, thanks to the torch held in Gingers hand. Their faces resolve out of the darkness, the dirty yellow light and exaggerated shadows bestowing upon them all a truly hellish appearance. That was close, Ginger says, his idiot grin transformed into a gleeful demonic leer. Too close, Randall replies as he joins the other two ankledeep in the stinking effluent channel. He waits for a moment, his heart still pounding from the adrenalin rush of his escape, his eyes still fixed on the manhole cover above. It looks like his plan worked. The destruction of the tank has proved to be just the distraction they needed. The Nazis think them either dead or fled. What they clearly dont suspect is that the kill team have dared to continue their mission, right under their noses. Or under their feet, at least. Alright, says Atkins, nose wrinkling in the reek of rot permeating the tunnel. Which way? Randall consults the wobbling needle of his pocket compass before replying, trying to keep his shaking hand steady. This way, he says, pointing into the enveloping void-black darkness. The three snipers set off through the gurgling gloom, Gingers torch illuminating the effluent stream they are forced to wade through, fighting the current as it runs past them, back along the crumbling, brick-lined tunnel. The sudden appearance of a figure, crouched against the right hand wall of the tunnel, takes them all by surprise. The sewer reverberates with the rattle of rifles being readied, Gingers torch beam whirling violently as he goes for his gun. The man is wearing a once white coat that is now streaked with filth. He has his back to them and is muttering to himself. In German.
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Randall raises a hand, bringing the others to a halt. His rifle is still trained on the crouching figure, but he resists the urge to shoot. Hello? The hunched figure continues his unintelligible gibbering. Randall tries again. Hallo! At that the stranger suddenly tenses. Randalls finger tightens on the trigger of his rifle, guided by instinct alone. The German turns, his head snapping round. His face is gaunt, the eyes behind the lenses of his sweatsmeared spectacles dark sunken hollows. His pallor is an unhealthy, waxy grey, darkened by several days beard growth. He stares at the British soldiers, his mouth agape. Dangling strings of spittle join his jaws together, while his tongue is a pink slug of writhing meat. The man looks like he could be a scientist, although he also looks like he should already be among the dead, rather than still among the living. He blinks myopically at Randall, Ginger and Atkins, as if finding their presence in the stinking sewer incomprehensible. For a moment he is silent and in that moment Randall feels his sense of unease increase. Then lips and tongue move again and the man says something. Randalls German isnt what it might be. Hes spent much of the war bumping off Germans from afar, as opposed to talking to them. Entschuldigung? is about all he can manage before reverting to English. What did you say? Gtterdmmerung, the man says. And again, his tone more urgent now, his sunken, staring eyes suddenly aglow with the dirty yellow light of Gingers torch. Gtterdmmerung! Ginger and Atkins exchange glances with Randall. He raises an eyebrow by way of acknowledgement. It looks like they are on their way to getting to the bottom of whatever it is thats going on in the town of Totenstadt. All they need now is to find the bastard von Teufel and theyll have ticked all the necessary boxes. The man looks like some manner of scientist or engineer,
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judging by the way hes dressed and the the glasses, not to mention the unhealthy complexion of his skin. A stay-indoors bookish type. Randall opens his mouth as if to speak again, but then thinks better of it. His Germans not good enough, and the man he would interrogate appears less than sane. It would be a waste of time. The mention of that one word is enough. Gtterdmmerung. They set off again, keeping a weather eye on the wretch, but otherwise unconcerned. His presence in the sewer was a surprise, his deathly appearance unsettling, but what shocks Randall most of all is when he calls after them. In English. Dont do it! his speech is heavily-accented, but its better than Randalls German. Save yourselves! Get away from here! Randall stops and fixes the man with an incredulous stare. His rifle is tight, raised and threatening in his hands. What did you say? Whatever it is you have planned, turn around now and go back the way you came. Leave Totenstadt while you still can, alive, or stay and have everything taken from you. Your lives will only be the first things to be stolen. The miasmic atmosphere within the tunnel thickens. Randall could cut slices of it with boot knife. You wont dissuade us. You cant put us off, he tells the doomsayer. It is our sworn duty. We have been entrusted with a vital mission and we will pursue it to its ultimate conclusion, no matter what. And that includes anything you might try to say to put us off. Then you are mad! the man screams at them, rocking back and forth on his heels. Do you have the phrase pot and kettle in your language? Only madness lies that way! the wretch persists. Madness and damnation! Randall feels his flesh pucker with goose pimples, but is it the madmans words, or is it from walking ankle deep in cold sewage? It would be such a simple thing to pull the trigger and silence his rabid ravings. To put him out of his misery. And yet Randall hesitates still.
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He is aware of the eyes of the others, darting from him to the gibbering wretch and back again, but he keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the only potential threat present, aware that the man could do something unpredictable at any moment. A subtle change of luminosity in the mans eyes, and the black fog of psychosis is replaced by the light of lucidness. He stops rocking and stands stiffly. His breathing is steadier too. He is clearly calmer, more relaxed. You are determined, then? Randall pulls himself up to his full height. We are. And you will not quit, no matter what you might await you? Randall feels the first treacherous flutterings of doubt assail his stern resolve at that. What could be worse than what he has already encountered, during more than a dozen infiltration missions into enemy-held territory? What could be worse than all the Third Reich has thrown at the rest of Europe already? Very well, the scientist says, his posture strengthening, as if in reaction to Randalls apparent, steely confidence. Then I will help you. For the second time in as many minutes Randall finds his expectations challenged. You will? Hes not even sure he wants the mans help. Their mission is, after all, a covert one. But only if you promise to thwart the evil that grows at the heart of Totenstadt. Randall frowns. What evil? Surely the malevolence festering at that heart of this town of the damned is the Nazi menace, the same monster that has sunk its black claws into central Europe. Von Teufel is dabbling with things best left alone, the scientist replies, a fearful rictus smile forming upon his face. That name again. The devil Randall and his men have been sent to kill. What evil? Randall says again, his rifle tight in his hands. He wants to hear the wretch say it. If youre determined to complete your mission, the wretch says, setting off along the sewer without waiting for Gingers torch to light his way, youll see soon enough.
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Something like a sick cackle of cruel laughter carries to them from out of the dank, foetid darkness. Whats your name? Randall suddenly calls after the retreating figure. What? the German replies. If were going to put our lives in your hands, and risk trusting you not to lead us into a trap, we might as well know your name as well. Fritz, the man replies. Randall laughs. You couldnt make it up, you really couldnt. And might I ask yours? Joseph Randall. Joe, Randall replies. And this is George Ginger Gibbs and Harry Atkins, he says, indicating his companions with nods of the head. And now that the introductions are over, lets go to work.

Time has little meaning down here in the stinking darkness, with one stretch of crumbling tunnel much like another. Rats, their bodies wriggling, drop from holes in the walls to splash into the surging channel, scrambling across the curving brickwork at the effluents edge, their urgent, squeaking voices heralding their approach. Randall knows they cant do him any harm, but the sensation of them squeezing past his legs in such great numbers an undulating carpet of glistening, lithe, bristle-furred bodies is still an unpleasant one. Worse is the niggling question that forms at the back of his mind. What is it that the rats are running from? And then a change, not exactly a light in the darkness but a change to the quality of the stygian murk; the utter, impenetrable blackness replaced by a deep grey gloom. The gloom thickens, the honest darkness retreating, and although it is lighter now within the tunnel, there is something about the subtle change in light levels, or a lack thereof, that makes Randall long for the pitch darkness again. It seems to ooze from a rift in the brickwork, where the sewer wall has collapsed inwards. Facing it, Fritz hesitates.
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Clearly steeling himself, he steps over the lip of crumbled masonry and into whatever lies beyond. The snipers take a few cautious steps forward, up to the edge of the rift. The air thickens around them, acquiring an unpleasant cloying quality. Fritz looks back at them, his face a decomposing apparition, viewed through the misty murk. You feel it too? Randall takes a deep breath of spoiled sewer air, resisting the urge to gag on the foetid fumes. Lets just get this done. Randall leads the others through the gap, into the void beyond. To do anything else, no matter what might await them, would be anathema to him. Besides, the sooner they can leave this place of festering darkness behind, the better. It seems that Gingers torch is less effective at penetrating the gloom than it was the darkness of the tunnel. Randall tries to convince himself that its batteries must be starting to fail. They pass through another sundered wall, and then Gingers torch beam is picking out dressed stone walls, carved pillars, the curving vault of the ceiling. Blocky rectangular shapes, some stone and some metallic, are scattered around the room. The metal cases hum and whirr to themselves, indeterminate mechanisms whirling and whining, peppered with vacuum tubes glowing an infernal orange, made hazy by the gloom, looking like myriad impish eyes. The air is redolent with damp. The cloying sensation in the moist atmosphere is worse here. It is as if the air itself is sick. There is a musty mingling of smells within the crypt; cold stone, rotting earth, and petroleum fumes, accompanied by the battery tang taste of ozone on the tongue. I think Im going to puke, Ginger gasps from behind Randall, his voice muffled and strained. Me too, Atkins mutters queasily. Silence! Randall hisses. But he feels sick too. Sick with doubt, with fear. What if Fritz really is leading them into a trap? He feels the hairs on back of his neck stiffen, and sweeps his rifle around him in an all-encompassing arc. Atkins and Ginger
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do the same, falling back on what they know; the familiarity of the manoeuvre reassuring to all three of them. The snipers continue to sweep the crypt as they proceed across it, keeping the time-worn tombs and esoteric pieces of machinery within their sweeping arcs of fire. It is as if they half expect the occupants of the sarcophagi to awaken and arise, ready to take their revenge upon the living for their deathless state. So focused is he on the tombs, seeing sepulchral shades in the claustrophobic shadows crowding all around him, it is a moment before Randall realises the scientist is halfway up a flight of steps and heading out of the burial vault. The three remaining members of the kill team quicken their pace, the waking nightmares taking root within their collective subconscious and chasing them from the undercroft. Randall barely notices the snaking lengths of cable, bound in vulcanised rubber trunking, leading from the humming machines, following the way up and out of the crypt as well. They trail beneath the corroded iron gates at its entrance and along the path through a graveyard, to the looming edifice or what remains of it that stands in preternatural darkness at its heart. It is a world he knows, or at least one he recognises, and yet subtly altered by the mist and dusky twilight that has descended whilst he and his fellows were skulking about in the rat-infested sewers of Totenstadt. Night has dragged its pall over the world, but Randall can see a lot more clearly now than he could in either the sewers or the crypt. The stars are twinkling pinpricks of light in the shroud of night, while a gibbous moon bathes tumbled tombstones and bone-littered bomb craters in its stark, monochrome illumination. In front of them, the still-standing tower of a blast-ruined church is a black silhouette against the cloudless firmament, delineated by the thin orange sliver of dusk that lingers at the horizon. The main body of the church appears to have been desecrated by Allied bombs long ago. Barely visible about the crown of the edifices crenulations, stone black grotesques scream warnings to the advancing
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squad, to stay away from this forsaken place, their fanged mouths frozen in silent shrieks. The scientist, Fritz, waves the snipers on as he picks his way between the tumbled headstones towards the church. There is no doubt in Randalls mind that they have reached their destination, that they have found the pulsing, festering evil that marks time for its own macabre dance of death at the very heart of this town of the dead. This necropolis. Icy light pulses from behind the fractured stained glass windows of the church, casting a broken, glacial rainbow across the silent stones. Randall jogs along the path, towards the church, gravel crunching under his boots with every footfall. Ginger and Atkins are only a few yards behind him. They join Fritz pressed up against the lichen-flecked wall of the south transept. In the dusky twilight, the church appears to have been constructed from blocks of night itself. The hum and whir of machinery reaches their ears again, vibrating through the stones of the church. The still-intact diamond panes of the windows rattle within their leaded frames in tortured sympathy, and Randall feels as if the fillings in his teeth are ready to shake loose. The four of them crouch in the shadows beneath a broken window, fulgurous light sparking fitfully through the arch above. His heart pounding, focusing on keeping his breathing calm and quiet, Randall peers above the sill and through the crazed panes into the church beyond. The scene that greets his eyes has him having to work ever harder to keep himself calm. Within the apse of the church, a gaggle of scientists surround some vast and mysterious machine, like hagfish feeding of a whales sunken corpse. Clipboards in hand, they are preoccupied with monitoring all manner of dials and gauges, making occasional jotted notes with the stubs of pencils, their intent stares reflecting the flickering lights winking on and off across the device. The machine itself is spherical in form, mounted within a steel frame. The flickering bulbs covering its curved surface
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mark out a tracery of imagined continents. It is connected to banks of more machines generators and computation engines, like those the snipers discovered in the crypt via thick knots of trunked cabling. As Randall watches, a moustachioed man wearing darklensed goggles throws a switch, and the sphere begins to spin. The air is thick with ozone. There is the bitter taste of battery acid in Randalls mouth again, and a pulsing headache has taken up residence behind his eyes. He pulls back sharply, his heart racing again, feeling a sick knot of fear twist in his gut. The thickness of the air, the cloying sensation in the atmosphere he first felt as they passed from the sewer into the broken crypt, is worse here. But hes not convinced the thickness he can feel in the air again is solely being caused by the machine. Randall can sense something beyond the headache behind his eyes. Shadows crowd at the limits of his conscious mind. One look at his comrades tells him they can feel it too. But despite the creeping unease, he is drawn back to the window, like a moth to a flame. Beyond the machine and the mob of fussing engineers stands a ring of robed figures. Randall missed them at first before, only his subconscious registering their presence to begin with, half hidden in shadow. His pulse quickens as fear tightens its hold on him. But he doesnt look away this time. He couldnt even if he wanted to. The figures are chanting. They raise their hands towards the sinister sphere and their robes part to reveal their pallid, fish-white nakedness beneath. He does not understand the words the tongue they are speaking clearly isnt German and it certainly isnt English but their meaning, their insidious intention, worms its way inside his head nonetheless. And its intention is nothing good. Randall notices other things about the church now that he had missed before. Symbols daubed upon the stones of the war-desecrated building some brown and flaking, like rust, others still fresh and dripping, appearing almost black in the sinister light. Occult sigils and blasphemous icons that make
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no sense to his beleaguered mind, but which make his stomach turn just to look at them. And with every repeated refrain of the unholy chant, with every passing second, that unbearable building pressure in the air and behind his eyes like a coming thunderstorm worsens, reaching migraine intensity. Magic and machinery working in tandem. Technology and witchcraft combined. Randall has seen enough. More than enough. Its time to act before the pain leaves him in no state to act at all. Randall is on his feet in a moment, resting his rifle on top of the window sill, poking through a hole in one of the shattered panes, and locates a target within his sights. He finds a scientist first, but then moves on to lock one of the robed cultists within the crosshairs, before finally settling upon one of the dozen soldiers that stand nervously watching the scene unfolding before them. He wonders, in that moment, whether they are the same troopers that hunted them through the ruins of Totenstadts town square. His stomach knotted with nausea, Randall pares his thoughts down to only the essentials, falling back on that which is innate and which requires no conscious thought, only instinctive action and reaction. The humming of the machine intensifies as it spins ever faster, and in the next moment, arcing bolts of energy burst from the charged surface of the sphere and strike the ground. Lightning fingers of actinic energy claw at the cracked memorial slabs that tile the floor of the sanctuary. The soldiers start, some giving voice to their surprise, as do a number of the more junior scientists. Only the chanting cultists appear wholly unphased by the crackling of the sphere. In fact, if anything, they swell in confidence, their chanting voices rising in both pitch and force. Gtterdmmerung, mutters Fritz hunkered at Randalls side. The sphere spins on, faster and faster, the arcing bolts of ice-white energy peeling from it ever more frequently and with an ever greater reach. The crackling fingers leave the graves
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alone and leap instead to the dark tussocks and serried rows of stone-marked mounds that fill the churchyard to over-flowing as many corpses crammed into Gods acre as was humanly possible. Holy shit! Atkins profane outburst is drowned by the thunderclap eruptions of the machine. I hope you have how does the saying go? something up your sleeve? the scientist hisses under his breath. He looks like hes ready to renege on their agreement. Randall wouldnt be surprised if he tried to leg it from the graveyard at any moment. Nope, Randall replies, his eyes flashing in the darkness. No tricks. Just good old-fashioned British grit and a true marksmans aim. The time for stealth has passed. What needs to happen now is that they make the most of the element of surprise, while it is still with them. Randall turns to his companions, those men he would entrust his life to without a second thought, just as they would so readily entrusts theirs to him. Ginger, go left. Atkins, go right. Ill take the middle. They nod. Choose your targets carefully and make every shot count, he breathes, the same German soldier trapped in his sights once more. At my signal. He breathes out, feeling the pressure of his finger on the trigger. His lungs emptied of air, he resists the urge to take another breath, keeping his body entirely still, not even blinking, the only movement the infinitesimal tightening of his finger. The sphere is glowing now, white as the heart of a star. The soldier becomes a fading blur before its radiance. Its overwhelming brightness forces Randall to choose another target. He can feel an unnatural chill emanating from the object, even at this distance, when he expected unbearable heat. Frost crackles on the remaining panes of glass still trapped in the criss-crossing lead mesh within the window.
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Breath clouds in the thickening air within the desecrated church. A fresh target located, Randall commences his own ritual again, from the top. Another streaking bolt of energy rips from the eldritch machine, lashing out of the chapel, earthing itself in the graveyard, exploding clods of turf from the uneven ground. Fritz starts, as do the rest of them. But while the squad manage to keep their cool under pressure, the scientist is on the verge of becoming the gibbering wreck they first encountered in the sewers under Totenstadt again. Randalls concerns about the man resurface in an instant. He might not have betrayed them to his fellow countrymen so far, but he might yet, however unwillingly or unwittingly. Keep calm, Randall hisses. Stay focused. Fritz shoots him a horrified look. He gabbles something in German. What? Randall snarls. In English! I should never have come back here. We should never have come back to this place. You stay here, Randall tells him firmly. Ginger. Atkins. On three. He is interrupted by a succession of concussive bangs, as artificially-energised lightning bolts scatter the dirt of half a dozen neglected graves. Randall is momentarily blinded by the electric-white afterimages of the explosions, his head throbbing with renewed intensity in response. He blinks repeatedly, hoping to clear his vision. Whoever heard of a blind sniper? Half-deaf, yes. Hes met plenty like that. But not blind. Wisps of smoke smelling of burnt straw rise from the scorched grass, as the last writhing worms of escaping energy burrow into the crumbled black earth of the burial plots. The echo of the artificially-created thunderclaps is lost as it ripples out towards the star-pricked firmament, and the four of them turn their attention back to the church and all that is occurring within, at the culmination of the Gtterdmmerung plan.
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The skitter of tumbling pebbles turns their attention back to the graves in an instant. Randall has witnessed all manner of horrors in this war to end all wars, but he has never seen anything like this. He has never known visceral, nerve-shredding, sanity-threatening terror like this. But Fritz has. The tormented scientist leaps to his feet as macabre memories tear his tortured psyche apart and he flees, a pitiful mewling wail, not even a scream, escaping from his constricted vocal chords. Randall knows, with a bone-deep certainty, that its already too late to do anything to save the situation and prevent the inevitable from occurring. Fritz runs, his legs a chaotic whirl, kicking up sprays of gravel from the footpath, half falling in his desperation to escape the horror manifesting, even now, within the cemetery. He runs past more disturbed graves as whatever once lay buried within now fights to free itself of the earths cold embrace. With a banshee scream, the air is torn asunder by a second volley of lethal, coruscating lightning bolts. Another half dozen bury themselves in the ground of the graveyard. Wherever they strike, mere moments later bony fingers, belonging to hands bereft of flesh, burst from the dark soil. The clawing limbs then proceed to drag skeletal revenant remains from the ground, the hair-clung scalps of worm-picked skulls breaking the fragmenting surface first. The roar of the lightning is replaced by the rattle of machine gun fire, and Fritz is poleaxed onto the ground, face first, and lies still, his besmirched lab coat torn by oozing bullet-holes. Fritzs panicked flight has forced their hand. The dead clawing clear of their graves, an impossible horror dragging itself from the unplumbed depths of a recurring nightmare, is something Randall can barely comprehend. German soldiers shooting at him, however, is another matter entirely. It cant be, Atkins is muttering to himself, unblinking eyes fixed on the worm-eaten corpses even now shuffling from their graves to confront them. Its not possible.
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Randall throws a backward glance at the advancing revenants and finds himself unable to argue with Atkins. But he cant deal with that now; he has to focus on what he knows to be real. And what he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, is that they have to complete their mission. Atkins! Randall barks over the sounds of crackling discharge emanating from the apse of the church, snapping the sniper out of his trance-like state. Watch our backs. Yes, sir! Atkins responds with something like relief in his voice. Throwing himself out of cover, Randall takes aim and fires, in one fluid motion. The soldier who killed Fritz jerks backwards, the trail of blood spilling from his head as his falls to the ground hanging in the air for a moment, before splashing onto the flagstones at his feet. The machine gun still in his hands continues to fire as he goes over backwards. The bullets throw stone chips from broken pillars and ruined arches of the nave, harming no one, until the grunt hits the ground and the machine gun falls silent at last. Ginger fires from the hip as he charges into the church, peppering the assembled cultists, scientists and soldiers with bullets, leaving a red ruin in his wake. Atkins alternates between picking off individual targets and hurling primed grenades into the now panicking throng. From the reaction of those present you would think a whole platoon of British commandos had descended on the blasphemous techno-temple, rather than just three men albeit three highly trained killers, the best the British army had to offer. A fleeing cultist diaphanous robes flapping open to expose flapping breasts and wobbling, stretch-marked flesh rushes at him shrieking, fingernails outstretched like claws before her. A head shot sends the woman tumbling brutally to the ground. Suddenly a soldier comes at him from the right, pistol raised and firing, its snub nose alive with muzzle flash. And then the soldiers run comes to an abrupt halt too, a splatter of blood, bone and grey matter spurting from the expanding hole in the far side of his head as a neatly executed
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shot takes him down, although Randall hasnt even pulled the trigger of his own gun yet. Another crack and another panicking zealous Nazi falls. Over the screams of the cultists and the shouts of the soldiers and scientists, Atkins wordless bellow reaches Randalls ears as his comrade charges in from the right. The three of them have the Germans confined within tight arcs of fire and the element of surprise is still working in their favour, but only just. Machine gun fire chatters between the brooding columns. Atkins battle-cry is cut off abruptly, replaced by a gasp of shock and pain. Randall puts his rifle to the hollow of his shoulder. He takes aim. Breathes out. Fires. The soldier drops to the ground, his domed helmet knocked flying from his head as Randalls shot exits through the back of his skull. The sound of weapons-fire is diminishing. Ginger guns down a cluster of panicking scientists, one lab-coated victim after another, each kill shot accompanied by a strangled scream. And then it is only the echo of their own shots that come back to them from the shattered vault of the church. Theyve done it. The Nazis are dead. The soldiers, the scientists, the insane cultists. All of them. And yet the oppressive thunderstorm pressure remains. Randall looks to the whirling, humming machine, the thrumming pulse of its every rotation mirrored in the pain he can feel behind his eyes. He stares at the device, as if hypnotised by the spinning light-sphere, trying to fathom how to stop it, as bulging tori of barely-contained electrical energy give birth to yet more thrashing arcs of coruscating energy. As long as the machine remains in operation, so will the oppressive atmosphere remain. Hot yellow sparks spill from bullet-holed metal cabinets connected to the device, while a number of the bulbs on the whirling sphere have been snuffed out, destroyed by machine gun fire.
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Joe? comes Gingers quavering voice from behind him. Its the intrusive kick Randall needs to shake off his waking reverie and at last tear his eyes from the spinning lightning generator. He and Ginger are no longer alone within the desecrated church. By rights such things should not exist. It should be impossible for little more than mouldering bones and sinew to walk, let along prove a threat to beings of flesh and blood, to trained killers like them. And yet insidious fear, born of the unknowable and the inexplicable, will yet have its part to play; a part that should not be underestimated either. And oh, God! the stench! Gangrenous sacks of swollen muscle pulse and throb within ribcages thick with clayish mud and blind, blood-rich, writhing annelids. Fleshless faces bearing hideous rictus grins, that call to mind the inevitability of Randalls own mortality, come at them with jerking, bird-like movements. Ginger fires. The shot is clean. Randall watches as a skeletons empty brain-pan cracks and shatters, like an egg thrown against a wall. The revenant reels with the force of the shot but then, having steadied itself again, comes on again with stilted, bird-like steps. Gingers horrified utterance is not formed of any intelligible words, but there can be no misunderstanding the despairing expression of shock and revulsion. He fires again, and this time the pulsing sack of spoiled meat twitching inside its filthy ribcage bursts in a welter of congealed black blood. The skeleton falls to the ground and is still. With another thunderous roar, the ozone-rich air is rent apart by yet another wave of lashing electrical discharges. Where they strike the ground moments later, coffin lids are heaved aside, shattered burial plaques are pulled down into forgotten crypts, earth is heaved aside, and yet more of the restless dead of Totenstadt rise to repel the intruders, now in even greater numbers.
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It is clear, as far as Randall is concerned, what needs to be done. Their objective has not changed. We have to turn off that machine! But how? Ginger cries, his tone one of utter despair, as he nonetheless continues to pick his targets and bring them down with practised precision. But for all his accuracy and economy of ammunition a darkly beating distended heart bursting with every shot fired the dead far outnumber the living, as was ever the case, for they are legion. Randall takes a step towards the machine. As if in response, the whirling sphere throws out another crackling whip of energy. It strikes him full in the chest and hurls him twenty feet back across the church. He lands hard, the wind knocked out of him, the smell of scorched wool hot in his nostrils. His rifle remains clutched in his hands. Six more lightning bolts find loci within the church itself. Joe! Gingers shout rouses him from his stunned stupor and tells him everything he needs to know, in that moment, to ensure his continued survival. Without releasing his grip on the gun for a second, Randall scrambles to his feet and staggers back towards the machine to re-join his friend, only half-seeing the tendrils of energy entering the bodies of the fallen scientists and their grunt infantry guardians. He does not understand what hold the machine has over the dead, or how what he can only describe as magic and unholy ritual have married with science to produce this effect he doesnt want to know but he does know that its up to him to stop it. That is their mission now, or else as Fritz said when they first met it will be the twilight not only of the gods, but of mankind as well. All about them, the dead are stirring. His own heart thumping inside his chest, Randall focuses all his attention on retrieving the stick grenades tucked into the belt of a dead soldier lying nearby. He tries to ignore the mans twitching fingers and spasming legs, when the ragged
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hole blown in his chest says he shouldnt be moving at all. Sweat beads on his brow with the effort of concentration. What are you doing? Ginger gasps, his tortured sanity in danger of going the same way as that of the turncoat scientist. The only way Randall can cope, the only way he can ensure he stays sane, is by focusing on what he knows to be real. His rifle. The machine. His every ragged breath. The stick bombs now clutched tight in his hand. A swaying corpse raises a rifle in its twisted hands. The Nazis might be dead, but some semblance of instinctive memory still serves. His companion has one of the Germans machine guns in his hands now, his rifle ammunition spent keeping first the living and then the dead at bay. Ginger! Randall snaps, between bursts of rattling machine gun fire. Fix bayonets, and be ready to run. With that, he primes the stick bombs and hurls them, one after the other, into the heart of the whirling sphere. And then he is turning and taking off like a sprinter going for the record, without even being aware of where the bombs have landed. Ginger takes off after him. By the time he hears the clatter of the grenades landing amidst the workings of the eldritch machine, he and Ginger are already beyond the pillared aisles of the church. The recently dead still struggling to their feet behind them, they hack their way through the shambling revenants crowding the graveyard, with rifle butts and bayonets. Randall catches his breath as a corpse wearing a bloodstained lab-coat turns to challenge him. It hisses between teeth red with its own blood, from where it has being gnawing at the fingers of its own right hand. He brings his rifle up across his body, ramming the stock into the scientists face, sending the undying Fritz tumbling down onto the blood-splattered gravel. And thats when the grenades go off. A heartbeat later, the esoteric machine itself explodes in a swelling coruscation of liquid light. Seen from the position of an Allied pilot making a bombing
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run over the heartlands of Germany, the explosion would be like the time-lapsed unfurling of a bloom of light, vivid against the night-dark ground and visible for miles around. Its light swells to fill the church at the epicentre of the blast, an incandescent star that turns day to night before bursting from its shattered confines and spreading out across the graveyard, chasing the ever lengthening shadows of tombstones before it. Reaching the boundary of Gods acre, the waves of rippling energy still do not stop. Instead, they spread out across the town, along the empty streets, across the town square and the still smouldering ruin of the Panther tank, bathing the shells of the broken buildings and the abandoned bodies of the fallen in their monochrome glow, until the whole of Totenstadt is trapped, like a fly in amber, by the icy illumination. Randall feels the surprisingly chill wind dance across the back of his neck, tousling his hair with its frozen fingers. As the spectral gale born of the machines passing dies too, Randall heaves himself up from where the shockwave deposited him, face down on the gravel chip path. As he waits for his senses to return, he half expects some disparaging comment from his comrade. But Ginger says nothing, skewered as he is to a headstone by a piece of twisted shrapnel from the destroyed device. Randalls face goes slack at the horror of it all. He turns, taking in the devastated graveyard swept clean of bodies by the cataclysmic explosion or so it first appears feeling as if hes not really there himself. His body is a map, charting every injury, every bump, bruise and graze, he has suffered since embarking on this mission. There is a shrill, unrelenting ringing in his ears. His head is spinning. The migraine-inducing atmosphere has lifted. Randall feels hollow. Tears of despair course freely over his cheeks. He would rather the headache that this total emptiness; this utter hopelessness. Something moves then, in the darkness that returned the moment the chill, spectral light passed away again, into the night. Something moves in the shadows at the edge of vision.
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Figures some cloaked in torn or smouldering robes, others cloaked only in shadow skulk between the tombstones towards him. It would seem that the dead do not rest easy in Totenstadt, and Randall wonders if they ever will again. He feels another stab of icy stab of shock as he goes for his rifle but finds it missing. He searches for it, straining to pick out its form from the tussocks and broken stones covering the ground nearby, by the inconstant orange light of the flickering flames that linger about the twisted wreckage of the Gtterdmmerung machine. It is then that Joseph Randall sets eyes on the Devil for the first time. It can only be the Devil, his beleaguered mind reasons. Such porcelain-fine features, such classical, androgynous beauty in so hard a face, as if it had been hewn from marble and then polished to perfection. And in a place such as this, surrounded by flames and blasphemous symbols born of necromancy, it could certainly never be an angel. It might be wearing the form of a man long, black leather trench coat, gleaming jackboots and sinister peaked cap emblazoned with the insignia of the Nazis mysterious occult division but Randall knows the Devil when he lays his eyes upon him. Was he there all along? And if not, then where did he spring from, if not from the sulphurous pit of Hell itself? The Devil moves towards him with slow, unhurried steps. Forgetting the gun, Randall goes for the knife sheathed at his belt in its oiled leather case. In that instant suddenly moving with lightning speed the Devil is upon him. He stamps down hard on Randalls hand with a crushing boot, pinning his fingers to the ground and forcing him to let go of the knife. I dont think so, the Devil says, speaking English with harsh guttural German consonants. Randall tries to pull free, to kick out with his legs, but the Devil beats him to it again. A savage kick to the side of the head sends Randalls wits reeling all over again.
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Through the fug of pain and addled wits he nonetheless hears everything the Devil has to tell him. The officer fixes him with an arching eyebrow and a look of cruel, amusement. And through the persistent fog of pain an image resolves itself in Randalls minds eye, a blurry photo from a file stamped with the words Top Secret. Von Teufel, he says through a mouthful of blood and broken teeth. The Devils smile hardens upon his alabaster features. Thats right. The man you were sent here to kill. The Devil, surely, Randall thinks. But then another thought starts to worry at his barely conscious mind. You are wondering how I knew the purpose of your mission. The Devil squats down beside the stricken sniper. Totenstadt was an experiment, and one that has been an unprecedented success. He sounds almost surprised. Greater even than I could have predicted. Randall can hear moaning voices reaching out from the shadows at the edges of the graveyard. And then, from close by, comes a grunting voice he thinks he recognises, and the drumming of heels against the ground. He turns to see Gingers twitching corpse. Why are you telling me this? Randall manages at last. Von Teufel laughs at that. I would have thought that was obvious. Because there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop us now. You will never report back to your masters and reveal our trump card, as you might say. The means to winning this world war. Without another word, the man rises to his feet once more and then simply walks away, back towards the flickering flames. Soon the Devil is gone from Randalls sight altogether, hidden from view by the circle of deathless creatures even now closing about him. They stare at him with something like curiosity in their pupil-less eyes, and every one of them is deaf to the choking screams of terror that overwhelm him at the last. * *
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The only sounds that disturb the Fhrers underground office are the dusty ticking of the clock on the wall and the rustle of the papers as the Fhrer flicks through the contents of the report that has just been handed to him. Printed on the dull grey cardboard are two words: Operation Gtterdmmerung. The figure sitting opposite him remains motionless, stiffbacked, perched on the edge of his seat, the rumour of a self-satisfied smile playing about the corners of his striking, marble-chiselled features. So, the Fhrer says, not looking up from his perusal of the sheaf of filed papers, the field test was a success. His guest detects the incredulity in the Fhrers tone, and studies his expression. Where von Teufel appears young younger than his years, certainly the struggle to resist the Allied advance has aged the Fhrer. It has changed him like it has changed no other man. In the lines around his eyes and the crumpled bags beneath them, in the knotted muscles of his jaw and the uncooperative flopping fringe of lank, black hair, von Teufel sees written every success and every failure of the war effort to date. The roll call of every battle won, and every victory overturned. Success or failure, such things matter not to von Teufel. It is only the war itself that matters, and its continuance and its indefinite perpetuation. For war is hell. And as Operation Gtterdmmerung has so successfully demonstrated, if a soldier of the Fatherland has died once in battle already, such a trifling detail does not prevent him fighting for the Fatherland again, and having a further part to play in this war of domination. With this now a war of attrition, consuming every resource the Fatherland can offer it like some gluttonous, insatiable beast with its numbers of tanks and planes and ships and soldiers diminishing daily, there is one thing of which Germany has an almost limitless supply, now more than ever before. And if the dead outnumbered the living, why shouldnt they play their part in keeping the enemy from the gates of Berlin? The Fhrer closes the file at last, and tosses it onto his desk.
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Von Teufel resists the urge to push the Fhrer for a reply. It is not wise to anger the architect of the Third Reich. You say the experiment was a complete success? the Fhrer asks, even though von Teufels report has already given him the answer. Yes, my Fhrer. An unprecedented success. The Fhrer puts rests his weary head in the cradle of his right hand, fingertips rubbing at his care-worn temples. Very well, he says, his words leaden, as if fully understanding that what he is about to say will be tantamount to making a pact with the Devil and not for the first time, no doubt. Then I approve the use of Z weapons and here he suddenly fixes von Teufel with a gimlet-eyed stare but only as a last resort, when every other weapon or stratagem at our disposal has been exhausted. Then and only then. But of course, my Fhrer, von Teufel, still smiling, and heaven forbid that such an eventuality should ever arise. With that, von Teufel picks up the file and departs. Heaven forbid, he thinks as he leaves the office, distractedly patting the bundle of papers with almost avuncular affection. Heaven forbid.

ThE END

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You are Karl Fairburne the sniper who shaped world history. You are one of the last living souls in Germany. You must quickly team-up or face annihilation by Hitlers legion of undead super-soldiers. American, German, Russian previous military allegiances no longer matter. Now its just the living versus the dead.

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