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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