Дэвид Муди - Red Devils

Escobedo led the charge. With most of the creatures heading away, it was comparatively easy to get around them. Johnson took out a couple of stragglers with a knife to the nape of the neck (a tip he’d picked up by chance that had unquestionably helped him stay alive). Escobedo followed suit, and the two of them were at the Panzer wreck in no time and with relative ease.

Mercel, however, panicked at the sight of military boots. It was only when Escobedo crouched down and offered his hand that he realised these men were here to help him, not kill him. He gratefully took the soldier’s hand and squeezed back out from under the wreck. He stood up and brushed himself down, still breathing, but heartbroken at the state of his jacket and trousers. ‘ Bonjour… ’ he stammered, fishing in his pocket for a white handkerchief to wave in case there was any doubt as to his intention to surrender. ‘ Je suis tres desole. Je suis— ’

‘Nice to meet you, sir. Please shut up.’

‘We got company,’ Johnson warned. He had his rifle raised ready. The shadows were beginning to swarm back towards them. Hundreds of them.

The close proximity of the dead soldiers elevated Mercel’s panic to new heights. He tried to squirm free from Escobedo’s grip and get back under the tank. Escobedo again implored him to shut up and calm down, but he was too delirious to listen. He became even more frantic when Kenny Gunderson started picking off more of their would-be attackers from the top floor window.

Mercel flapped and moaned and fought, and only became silent when Escobedo laid him out with a well-aimed right-hand slug. It took all the soldier’s strength to heft the deadweight up and carry him back towards their top-floor hideout.

The advancing ungodly army became more riled and aggressive with every single gunshot. Some of them were trying to run. Others fought with each other to be the first to get at the retreating Americans. Johnson struggled to contain his mounting terror. ‘These damn things don’t know when to quit…’ he said, and he watched in disbelief as Gunderson took out another with a perfect shot to the side of the head from above, while another one standing alongside continued oblivious as if nothing had happened. It didn’t even flinch when its face was covered with a bloody spray of bone and brain matter from its fallen comrade.

Shot after shot after shot. But for every one of them that Gunderson felled, ten more took their place.

‘Keep moving, Johnson,’ Escobedo said. ‘We gotta keep moving.’

The Belgian was beginning to come around. Escobedo lowered him and put a hand over his mouth, pre-empting another stream of frightened gibberish. Immediately alert again, Mercel began to struggle. Escobedo threatened him with his fist, then pointed up to where his colleagues were watching and waiting. Mercel didn’t know where he was going or who he was going there with, but he knew it had to be better than this and he stopped arguing.

The advancing undead army was closing in fast. From Lieutenant Coley’s high vantage point he’d noticed a very definite quickening of pace. He’d also noticed other things. He’d noticed how some of the huge crowd, mainly those in uniform – Nazi and allied – moved with more speed and purpose than most of the others. Some of them, he also saw, still carried weapons. Was this a vestigial holdover from before they’d been like this, or something more sinister? Were these damn things still capable of fighting soldier to soldier?

The guys on the ground were struggling. They were in danger of being cut off by the dead, isolated like an island. Coley looked over at von Boeselager and caught his eye. They both knew what had to be done and then pounded down the rickety stairs to ground level.

‘I asked you fellas to stay up outa harms way,’ Lieutenant Parker said as the men appeared on either side of him.

‘Thought you could do with a hand,’ Coley said, and he immediately started firing his M1 into the advancing hordes.

The combined firepower coming from in and around the ruined building was just about enough to keep the dead at bay, but all involved knew it was nothing more than a temporary reprieve and that when the shooting stopped, the dead would surge at them again. Escobedo reached the wall first and fairly hoisted Henri Mercel over onto the other side. The overweight Belgian’s feet kicked furiously as he tried to get himself over. Coley and Parker hauled Escobedo up. Although von Boeselager offered Johnson a hand, he wouldn’t take it. ‘Don’t need help from no kraut,’ he said with the venom in his voice of a man who’d spent too long fighting.

‘Quick!’ von Boeselager shouted. ‘They are close!’

It was clear Johnson wasn’t going to let him help, so instead he returned to firing into the crowd. The dead were almost up to the wall themselves now with only Johnson’s firepower holding them back.

‘Get over here, you dumb bastard,’ Lieutenant Parker yelled at him, but Johnson was too busy fighting to listen. From here their numbers appeared endless: thousands where he thought there’d been hundreds. He shot more and more of them, as many as he could, but it was never going to be enough. Parker, Coley and von Boeslager screamed at him to back away, but their voices continued to go unheard.

A white-suited Nazi, pock-marked by bullet holes, came at him at speed, bursting out from the masses. Before anyone could react, the crazed creature had dropped Johnson and squatted on his chest. The dead man attacked with predatory speed, tearing the soldier’s throat and chest open.

The last thing Johnson saw was Parker reaching out for him over the wall, and Coley and von Boeselager pulling the lieutenant back the other way. ‘Get outta here, Lieutenant,’ Johnson wanted to say but couldn’t. ‘I’m done for.’

He’d heard the cries and the gunfire and fighting all right, but he hadn’t bargained on the full extent of the effect the noise was going to have on the swarms of deadly creatures still trapped in the ruins of Bastogne.

Wilkins was in trouble and he knew it. I’ll take a hundred krauts over just a handful of these things, he thought as he skulked through the shadows. The dead were unnatural and unstoppable. He’d been warned to expect as much, but seeing it with his own eyes was a different matter altogether. He’d witnessed horrifically damaged and disfigured bodies continuing to fight with the venom and animosity of an entire Nazi Einsatzgruppen.

His pistol was useless – more trouble than it was worth. He’d already established that the creatures reacted to noise, and he knew that to fire his weapon out in the open like this would be tantamount to suicide; a kamikaze act (to coin a painfully relevant phrase he’d picked up from recent briefings back home), but one which would result only in his death and not in any perceived tactical gain.

He had to get up off ground level. Being down here was killing him. The vast numbers of the dead limited his visibility to an extraordinary extent and he knew that putting a little distance between him and them would help immeasurably. More than that, his speed had now reduced to little more than a painfully slow crawl, matching the slothful movements of the majority of the creatures surrounding him. He’d found that moving this way had, for the time being at least, been enough to convince his unnatural enemy that he was just like the rest of them.

The sounds of nearby fighting (he was sure he could hear Americans shouting) gave him a focus to head towards, but in the chaos of this battle-damaged town, roads had become blocked and routes abruptly truncated by collapsed buildings. He came across one such obstruction unexpectedly, and inadvertently made a sudden about face. He regretted it the moment it had happened, for his deliberate change of direction immediately attracted the attention of a dead woman who tripped along the fringes of another group of bodies. Her cold, emotionless eyes locked on to Wilkins and he felt an icy chill run the length of his spine. She threw herself at him with a sudden burst of speed.