Excerpt From Twilight of the Living Dead




TWILIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD


CHAPTER ONE




Oberst Dieter Bock woke to a muffled sound. He lay on the cot for a moment, listening for any indication of danger, such as alarms or screams. There were none. At first, he thought he had imagined it. Then the 128mm flak gun on the roof fired again. Dieter felt the concussion of the recoil through the two-and-a-half-meter thick cement walls. At least he did not have to deal with a crisis. Nonetheless, he still needed to check out the commotion.
Swinging his legs off the cot, his bare feet stepped onto the blue-and-white-striped Helferin nurse’s dress tossed onto the floor. Crossing to the wooden chair opposite the bed, Dieter removed his Wehrmacht uniform from off the back and got dressed.
“Where are you going?”
He glanced over his shoulder. Margarethe lay on her side of the cot, a feldgrau wool blanket draped over her. A long strand of blonde hair draped across her face.
“I’m going topside to see what’s up.”
“Why bother?” Margarethe brushed the hair behind her ear. “They’re probably blowing off steam.”
Dieter ignored her. He finished buttoning his shirt and donned his pants.
“I’ll make it worth your while.” She pulled aside the blanket, revealing her naked body.
“I’d love to, but I have to make my morning rounds.” Dieter carried his boots over to the cot, sat on the edge, and removed the socks from inside. He slid them on. “Don’t you have to get to the hospital?”
“There’s plenty of us. They’ll never miss me.”
“I don’t have that luxury.” Dieter slipped his feet into the boots and laced them. He leaned over to kiss Margarethe.
Margarethe’s expression darkened. “I think the only thing you’re interested in is the sex.”
“That’s not true,” Dieter lied. What else would he be interested in? It’s not like they had a long life ahead of them. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Margarethe frowned and said nothing as Dieter left the room. Once in the corridor, he made his way to the spiral staircase in the southwest corner and ascended to the lower roof level. The moment he opened the door leading outside, the overpowering stench of decay and shit assaulted his senses. For the first few days of the siege, he had wretched every time he experienced it; now it had become one of the many background horrors, like the incessant moaning and omnipresent drone from massive swarms of flies and wasps feeding off the dead. Dieter stepped over to the nearest swallow nest and looked out. From this position on top of the Tiergarten Flak Turm, he had a good view of the thousands of lebenden toten, the living dead, that milled around the base of the tower and wandered through the Tiergarten.
Many wore the tattered, gore-soiled uniforms of the Wehrmacht, Hitler Jugend, and Volkssturm. Some were Red Army soldiers who had been caught up in the initial outbreak. Most were civilians, Berliners trapped inside the city during the Soviet advance and then left to the mercy of the lebenden toten. Except the lebenden toten possessed no concept of mercy. They ravaged their victims. Each of the newly-risen suffered wounds more severe than anything he had seen in combat—faces chewed off, bodies torn open, limbs ripped from their torsos. Dieter had seen the process so often he had become inured to it. The dead would attack the living. If there were many, they would strip the body of flesh and organs. If only a few or one, the victim would be partially devoured and succumb to their wounds, and then, moments later, would rise again as one of the lebenden toten. Dieter had spent two years on the Eastern front and had seen death in its most horrible forms—men frozen to death, burned alive in tank fires, blown apart by artillery, shredded by gunfire. None of it compared to this.
No one could say how or when the outbreak began. All Dieter knew for certain was that it occurred shortly after the Red Army began the artillery bombardment of Berlin on 20 April. The first reports of humans attacking and eating other humans filtered into the tower on the 22nd. By the 25th, the same day the Red Army had completed its investment of the city, the reports were rampant. The epidemic originated among the civilian population seeking refuge in the U-bahn tunnels and spread to the smaller air raid shelters. By the 26th, Red Army units reported the virus had infiltrated the ranks of their troops that had entered Berlin. The next morning, the Soviets withdrew their military twenty kilometers. According to intelligence reports and the foreign press, the quarantine zone successfully confined the lebenden toten to Berlin. Though good news for the rest of the Reich, the virus burned its way through the capital like a wildfire. As far as Dieter could tell, the only survivors were in the three heavily-fortified flak towers, the other two in Friedrichshain and Humbolthain; the few underground military bunkers spread across Berlin; and a few sections of the U-bahn that had not yet been overrun by the dead.
As for its origins, most Berliners attributed the outbreak to the Soviets, convinced that the Red Army spread the virus during their artillery bombardment to weaken the city’s defenses. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels spread that story every day during his radio broadcasts. Dieter believed these reports until two days ago when he overheard two SS officers who had taken refuge in the flak tower. He did not catch the entire conversation but, from what he picked up, the Reich had developed the virus. SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler, responsible for the country’s advanced weapons projects, had his scientists engineer this virus once he realized Germany would lose the war, hoping to launch it against the allies and disrupt the steamrolling advance. Either he had miscalculated how long it would take to develop it or the pace of the enemy’s advance; in any case, the virus was not ready until the Red Army reached Berlin. Kammler, an über-fanatical SS officer, still released it, knowing full well it would cause as many deaths among the German volk as it did the Soviets. Dieter had to give the devil his due. Kammler’s plan had worked; the Red Army halted their attack on Berlin. However, the raping and murdering conducted by the Soviet hordes seemed preferable to the fate Germans now faced.
The 128mm flak gun above him fired. The round slammed into the churned-up ground of the Tiergarten three hundred meters from the tower. It exploded among a group of lebenden toten, generating a cloud of dirt and gore and flinging body parts as far a dozen meters. As the dust settled, nearby lebenden toten wandered over.
Dieter ascended the cement stairs to the combat platform and crossed over to the southwest turret. A young gefreiter not even old enough to shave removed a round from the storage racks and took it back to the gun. Dieter stepped over to him.
“Put that away.”
“The leutnant told me—”
“Who is in charge here? Me or Leutnant Mueller?”
“You are, Herr Oberst.”
“Exactly.”
As the gefreiter re-racked the shell, Dieter walked over to the flak gun. “Mueller.”
The leutnant snapped to attention.
Dieter suppressed a sigh. “Stop with the formalities. We’re beyond that now.”
“Sorry. What do you need?”
“Stop firing on those things.”
“It gives the men a sense of purpose. Besides, we don’t need the ammunition. The Americans and British haven’t bombed Berlin in weeks, and we haven’t seen any Russians in days.”
“We need to conserve ammo in case we attempt a break out.”
Mueller perked up. “Has one been authorized?”
Dieter shook his head. “We haven’t heard from the leadership in days. I’ve talked to the other tower commanders, though. If we can’t contact anyone in authority by the end of the week, we’re going to make our way out of Berlin.”
“And into the hands of the Soviets.”
“It’s better than this. I’d rather….”
A disturbance among the lebenden toten interrupted their conversation. Dieter grabbed a pair of binoculars and, along with Mueller, stepped over to the wall. The horde around the U-bahn station for the Zoological Gardens had become agitated. A moment later, gunfire erupted from the stairs leading down to the platform. Two Hitler Jugend emerged onto the street, each carrying an MP40 machine pistol. They fired on the approaching lebenden toten, attempting to clear a path. Ten seconds later, a crowd of civilians raced up, mostly women and children too young to fight. They followed the two boy soldiers, desperately seeking a path to safety. There was none. The horde closed in. Some of the civilians tried to push through, only to be overwhelmed. Dieter could hear their screams of terror and agony, and it made him nauseous. One mother with two children retreated, only to be cut off. With no where left to run, she pulled a Luger from under her jacket, placed the barrel against her daughter’s head, and fired. The older son cried. When his mother shifted the barrel toward him, he fought back, struggling to break free. The mother finally killed her son seconds before the lebenden toten ripped her apart.
With their charges slaughtered, the two Hitler Jugend were free to escape anyway they could. One yelled toward the U-bahn entrance. A teenager from the Bund Deutscher Madel rushed up the stairs. Her blonde ponytails extended from under her helmet. Her white blouse was soaked with the blood of others. She stopped, raised a Mauser, and blew open the skulls of the closest lebenden toten before running off to join her friends. The older Hitler Jugend soldier blasted a path to the only haven he could find, the burnt-out wreck of a Tiger. He jumped up on the front fender, spun around, and picked off the lebenden toten nearest the others. The second Hitler Jugend reached the tank and paused, waiting for the teenage girl. He helped her onto the Tiger. As he climbed up himself, one of them grabbed him around the waist and pulled him to the ground where five others tore him apart. The teenage girl reached out for her friend. The first Hitler Jugend pulled her back and led her to the top of the turret. Within seconds, several hundred lebenden toten swarmed the Tiger, reaching for their prey and moaning incessantly. The young girl cried; the Hitler Jugend held her close and comforted her.
Dieter handed the binoculars to Mueller. “If you’re men want to fire on something, have them put those two out of their misery.”
Not sure how to respond, Mueller chuckled uncomfortably.
“That was not a suggestion, leutnant.”
“You’re serious.”
“I’d hurry before they’re eaten alive.”
Mueller snapped to attention as Dieter walked off. The oberst made his way to the lower roof. As he entered the tower, the flak gun fired, followed a moment later by the distinct sound of the Tiger exploding. 
 

Twilight of the Living Dead is available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

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