“The thunder’s getting worse,” Collette shouted.

  “That ain’t thunder,” Rudi said.

  Columns of earth exploded skyward in front of them. The artillery rounds began falling ever closer in a continuous bombardment from the city center.

  Dr. Benoit awoke with a start, his eyes wide and arms thrashing where he sat buckled in. He screamed, trying to form words but remaining unintelligible through his terror.

  The tank commander in the turret ahead of them suddenly turned in their direction, his sightless eyes fixed on the car.

  The ranks of soldiers around them all turned their heads as one in their direction.

  “Go, Collette, go!” Ethan yelled. “It’s a war zone!”

  Collette turned on her blinker, pressing through the line of panzers without making eye contact with the SS tank commander who was now watching her intensely. The commander keyed his throat microphone, and the enormous panzer in front of them came to a sudden, rocking halt.

  Collette swerved through the Nazi soldiers, pointed the car down the two-lane divided motorway, and jammed the accelerator to the floor. The Citroën responded at once, leaping forward in a rush down the rain-drenched open road before them. The artillery rounds were falling around them now on either side of the road, dirt and rocks pelting the vehicle as it surged forward.

  Ethan turned around, peering out the rear window.

  The turret on the lead panzer was shifting, its 7.5 cm KwK 40 long gun dropping downward as it swung toward them. Three of the following tanks were following suit. It had barely stopped its traverse when there was a flash from the muzzle.

  “Hurry, Collette!” Ethan shouted. If they could make it through the railway overpass ahead of them, they might get away with their escape. “I think they’re—”

  The shot from the panzer was not accurate, but it did not need to be. The round exploded into the railway overpass just ahead and to the left of them with an impact that pushed the light Citroën sideways.

  Collette instinctively hit the brakes, skidding over the rain-slick road and then overcorrecting. The Citroën flipped sideways, rolling several times before coming to a stop upside down.

  The next thing Ethan was aware of was hanging upside down from his seatbelt in the crumpled car. Rainwater splashed against his face through the broken window, and ashen-faced, dead-footed soldiers on both sides of the overturned car looked in at them, several raising their MP40 submachine guns in his direction.

  Chapter 18

  Iron Cross

  “What do we do?” Collette asked, her voice quiet and intense, and her words entirely too fast. “What do we do?”

  Ethan looked out the side of the antique car, still in disbelief at the Nazi markings on the vehicle as well as the animated corpses in the seats in front of him. One of them drove the Kübelwagen, the German equivalent of a WWII-era jeep, while the other held his machine gun on the four of them packed into the back seat—including Dr. Benoit, who was obviously confused and was shivering uncontrollably. Ethan could see to the right side of the off-ramp the remains of a late-model Nissan Titan truck, the driver’s side door riddled with bullet holes. The cargo bed was mangled almost beyond recognition by what Ethan could easily imagine as a round from one of the panzerfaust anti-tank weapons he could see carried by several of the marching dead around them.

  “Just…we just wait,” Ethan said, gritting his teeth. “If they had wanted us dead we wouldn’t still be here talking about it now.”

  “Now, why doesn’t that make me feel any better?” Rudi asked in a nervous sulk from where he was uncomfortably smashed against the far wall of the vehicle.

  The zombie driver followed the column of panzers around the off-ramp, the dead soldiers of a dead Reich surrounding their car, all of whom were matching the pace of the tanks ahead of them. The bombardment had shifted to the west for the time being, and the Nazis were using the lull to move. The column followed the roundabout at the top of the off-ramp, exiting into the vast parking lot of the mall. The end of the huge building was still burning furiously from the crash of the Lancaster bomber.

  “We are in big trouble,” Ethan said.

  The enormous parking lot was being used as a staging area by the Nazi zombies. An SdKfz 10/4 half-track, self-propelled flack gun stood to the side of the roundabout with a full crew of grey-skinned dead congratulating themselves on the downing of the bomber. Several more of the Volkswagen Kübelwagen jeeps were pulled into the gas station and refueling from the modern pumps there. Seven panzers were parked in the lot of an auto shop where maintenance crews were repairing the tanks.

  In an open patch of parking lot, Ethan saw a company of zombie soldiers marching in the grey rain, their hoarse voices raised in singing the Panzerlied.

  Ob’s stürmt oder schneit, ob die Sonne uns lacht,

  Der Tag glühend heiß, oder eiskalt die Nacht,

  Bestaubt sind die Gesichter, doch froh ist unser Sinn,

  Ja, unser Sinn,

  Es braust unser Panzer im Sturmwind dahin.

  An entire dead army was working furiously in the rain—while the flash and thunder of explosions came from the center of the city to the west and just slightly north.

  An oberstleutnant on the road in front of them motioned them to follow a single panzer that had pulled off the road. The tank swiveled into a parking lot, digging great gouges out of the asphalt, and stopped. From the top of its turret, a single corpse—the hauptmann in charge of the panzer tank column—pushed himself up out of the hatch, straightened his field tunic, and adjusted his officer’s cap so that it would sit perfectly square on his head. He spoke briefly in the rain to the oberstleutnant, motioning toward Ethan, before turning on his heels and striding toward the building behind which they were now parked.

  “Rudi,” Ethan said quickly. “How’s the professor doing?”

  “Oh, who cares?” Rudi shot back.

  “I do,” Ethan snapped. “Don’t piss me off, Rudi. You don’t have a lot of friends here.”

  “Chill, man,” Rudi said, holding up his arms as best he could in the cramped space. “Look at him! It’s like he’s on speed and tranks all at the same time. I’ve never had someone react that way after I touched them. Usually they’re just out. Whatever’s here is trying to wake him up, I guess. That makes for a confused dude who looks mostly like he needs rehab.”

  The hollow-eyed Nazi soldier waved the barrel of his MP40 at them. “Raus! Raus! Schnell!”

  “I’ve watched enough war movies to know what that means,” Rudi said. He gripped Dr. Benoit’s left arm and pulled the jerking, confused curator toward the open door of the command car. “Let’s go, Alice.”

  Ethan got his shoulder under the arm of Benoit and then realized where they were going.

  The Nazi tank commander stood in the doorway next to the drive-thru, waiting for them to follow him in out of the rain. The zombies had set up their headquarters in a McDonald’s.

  “Are we supposed to give our name, rank, and number of our order?” Rudi asked.

  *****

  The argument was deafening.

  Ethan struggled through the door assisting the dazed Dr. Benoit and nearly dropping him just inside the entrance.

  A group of Nazi commanders were gathered around one of the central tables in the McDonald’s, a tourist map of Caen spread out on the plastic surface before them. Their flesh was appalling—a putrid grey color with deep coagulation blotches in the hollows of their cheeks and around their sunken, dried-out eyes. Their pointing fingers were barely sheathed in any flesh at all. A number of salt and pepper packets were scattered across the surface of the brochure, as well as a smaller number of small fast-food boxes. The argument was heated between them, and Ethan didn’t understand a single word of it. He had always been fascinated with World War II, especially after the stories his father had told him of the Tuskegee Airmen and the black combat soldiers who volunteered for duty the moment Eisenhower—desperate for manpower—had desegregated the front lines during the Battle of the Bulge. But, somehow, that had not translated into an interest in learning the German language, which to his ear sounded now both entirely too fast and too harsh.

  The tank commander stepped up to the table, clicking his heels and offering his Nazi salute in a sharp manner. Most of the men around the table acknowledged the salute with a half-hearted return, while some of the older-appearing Wehrmacht generals did not bother at all.

  The hauptmann tank commander then smartly deposited Jonas’s iPad computer bag, Collette’s purse, and Ethan’s camera, wallet and, passport on the table. The dead officers all leaned in closer with heightened curiosity as one of them with oberst insignia shoulder boards began gingerly pawing through the items. The man rifled through Ethan’s wallet and passport and then picked up the Sony camera.

  Ethan did not speak German, but perhaps he knew just enough to get himself in trouble.

  “Kamera, Herr Oberst,” Ethan called out.

  The Nazi commander’s dead eyes shifted at once to Ethan. “Was haben Sie gesagt?”

  Ethan swallowed hard. An army of the dead would have little reservation about shooting anyone, he figured, so their only hope lay in not waiting for their own inevitable firing squad. He pointed at the Sony still in the commander’s hand. “Kamera. Bitte, Herr Oberst, that’s my…damn…das ist meine Kamera.”

  The oberst stared at Ethan for a few moments—along with the rest of the staff around the table and almost twenty adjutants crowding the room. Then the oberst suddenly smiled, his cheeks drawing his thin skin back away from his yellow teeth. His mouth opened, and he laughed heartily, the sound of it like a ludicrous death rattle. The other officers around the table chuckled as well. The oberst picked up Ethan’s passport again, flicked it open under his dead gaze for a moment, and then stepped around the table, the camera still in hand.

  “So you are an American cameraman, Ethan Gallows,” the oberst said, his voice dry and grating. His accent was heavy but his English very clear. “Your papers tell us that you are working for the CNN. No doubt a division of your OSS and their puppets at MI6, although why your leaders would have thought a neger to be able to infiltrate our lines unnoticed is laughable.”

  Ethan kept a firm grip on his anger. He knew the Nazi was baiting him, but he reminded himself that the man was already dead and no doubt had only memories of a different time. He spoke carefully, “As you say…it is laughable.”

  “Your name is most appropriate, Gallows,” the oberst said, jutting out his prominent chin in defiance. He swung his head back casually toward the officers still standing around the map. “Herr Galgen!”

  The officers all laughed at the joke.

  “Well, Herr Galgen, I am Oberst von Essen, and we know all about you and your little plans.” The zombie pushed the rotting flesh of his face a hand’s breadth away from Ethan’s nose. The stench coming from the creature’s putrefied lungs was nauseating. He doubted the monster needed to breathe for anything more than to hear the sound of his own voice. “We were informed of your coming, and now you are in our hands.”

  “You knew we were coming?” Collette asked in surprise. “That’s not possible!”

  “Anything is possible for the Third Reich!” von Essen shouted in indignation. “I have been to your Cambridge Universities and your London Theaters! I have studied your weak-willed society and its moral decadence! You Americans sat on your fat asses and did nothing, while we built a Europe that was unified and strong—beating its soft, useless iron into strong steel with our blood and the treads of our panzers. Of all people, you Americans should have been on our side—were on our side—against the English monarchists who you yourselves threw out of your own country! Now you think that you can enter this war in which you have no business, to meddle in the affairs of greater nations than you, undermine their resolve, and conspire with your own enemies to deny the destiny of the German Reich?”

  Ethan stood very still. The oberst was building to a blind rage.

  “You inferior swine!” The oberst was screaming. “You are everything that I crave to destroy! A neger, a dirty Oriental, and this,” the Nazi raged as he pointed at Collette, “an obvious Jewess! Three inferior races meddling in affairs far beyond their comprehension! I would shoot you myself in that kitchen, cook your hearts on that grill, and eat them myself if I had my will.”

  The oberst took a step back. Ethan did not move.

  “But we must obey orders,” Oberst von Essen said, shaking, as he tried to control himself with such violence that a patch of skin dislodged from the back of his hand. “It is your lucky day, Herr Galgen, you and your conspirators. You are to be questioned by a ranking officer of the Abwehr who will be here this very afternoon. It was he, in fact, who ferreted out your plot and alerted us to your coming.”

  “The man who discovered us?” Ethan asked, coloring his voice with a hint of fear. It was easy enough to fake, considering his surroundings. He hoped that taking on a ridiculously submissive role would make it easier to get close to this oberst and tear his throat out when the opportunity presented itself. Zombies, he decided, he could put up with. Nazis were far worse.

  “That’s right,” von Essen continued. “Generalleutnant Demisch will be arriving from Calais. Once he has you in custody, he tells us that our victory is assured.”

  “Generalleutnant Demisch?” Ethan asked.

  “Ja,” von Essen said, his putrid eyelids narrowing over his dead eyes. “I see that you are familiar with the generalleutnant.”

  Disgust flashed across Ethan’s face. “Yes, Herr Oberst, but not by that name.”

  “Then we will get you reacquainted,” von Essen said, turning his attention back to the Sony camera in his hands. The oberst turned away, stepping back toward the officers still gathered around the tourist map spread on the table.

  “Who’s he talking about?” Rudi whispered behind Ethan. “Who’s Demisch?”

  “Not Demisch. Demissie,” Ethan said quietly, shaking his head. “That bastard just doesn’t give up, does he?”

  “A most unusual camera,” von Essen said, turning back toward Ethan. “Where do you put the film?”

  Ethan was about to answer when a loud voice called out behind him, “Achtung!”

  A shorter man—barely five feet seven inches tall, Ethan guessed—strode purposefully into the room. He wore a peaked officer’s cap—a Schirmmütze—with a set of wrap-around goggles resting above the visor. His double-breasted trench coat was wet from the rain, the distinctive epaulets faded in color, but their markings as a general officer were still visible and, to Ethan, shockingly distinctive. That the man was another of the animated dead was unquestionable, though he was more whole than most Ethan had seen thus far. He held the baton of a general feldmarschall in his gloved hand.

  Every zombie in the room snapped to attention, the heels of their boots cracking together and their backs straightening. Right arms flew upward in the Nazi salute.

  The feldmarschall raised his baton in return, then glanced over Collette, Rudi, and Benoit before turning his attention to Ethan.

  Ethan stared back into the familiar face. He had only seen this visage in black-and-white photographs, but he was certain that it would not have been this grey-green color when the man had been alive.

  The feldmarschall stepped up to the table and examined the objects, then turned to von Essen.

  “Who are these people?” the feldmarschall asked, pointing toward Ethan.

  “Bitte, General Feldmarschall—”

  “Sprechen auf Englisch, Herr Oberst!”

  “Spies, Herr Feldmarschall!” von Essen replied at once. “We have been ordered to detain them!”

  “Nonsense,” the feldmarschall casually replied. He stepped closer to Ethan, both his hands holding his marshal’s baton behind his back. “They are non-combatants in this action.”

  “But, Herr Feldmarschall—”

  “I am telling you that they have nothing to do with our purposes here,” the feldmarschall said, his tone more definite and forceful as he turned again to face the oberst. “Did they have any weapons?”

  “Their objects are highly suspect, Herr Feldmarschall!”

  The brow of the feldmarschall lowered. He spoke slowly, as though to help the oberst understand. “Are any of those objects weapons, Herr Oberst?”

  “Nein, mein herr!”

  “Then you will return them at once,” the feldmarschall said directly, “and release them.”

  “No!” came a sudden shout.

  Ethan turned at once toward the sound in dismay.

  Dr. Benoit, shaken from his stupor, was hastily setting his glasses back on his nose to see where he was, his eyes wide. He rushed forward toward the oberst. Several of the soldiers in the room raised their weapons in alarm.

  “Do not listen to him!” pleaded Dr. Benoit. “He is a traitor to the Reich!”

  Chapter 19

  General Madness

  Oberst von Essen and the feldmarschall both reacted strongly, but there were few others in the McDonald’s dining area who understood English.

  “Dies ist ein Verräter an das Reich!” Dr. Benoit corrected himself as he pointed toward the feldmarschall.

  The remaining Nazi officers at last understood. They glanced at one another for a moment and then broke into a hideous rendition of laughter.

  “Du Idiot!” The oberst laughed until a piece of his ear fell from his head. “Dies ist Feldmarschall Rommel!”

  “Du irrst, mein herr. Ich bin nicht Rommel,” said the feldmarschall.

  The smile fell at once from the face of the oberst, and the laughter from the dead officers in the room quickly faded. The enlisted soldiers along the walls shifted listlessly.

  The oberst shrugged, his rotting face contorting in disbelief as though some trick were being played on him. “Aber, mein herr…”

  “Nein. Rommel ist tot.”

  The oberst looked back at the panzer command staff, his hands open in front of him as if asking a question. The commanders cast uneasy glances at each other.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21