Gavin Smith: Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon

Back in North Scale they’d agreed to move fast. Frightened people informed, especially when their loved ones were at risk, and they would be; the fewer people knew and the faster they moved, the less chance there was of someone tipping off the fake SS. Bill and his people would arm themselves as well as they could and contact people they trusted in other parts of the island. Then they would descend on the houses in Vickerstown that the re-enactors had taken over. They would leave the compound to Vadim’s squad. It was a lot of ground to cover, a lot of personnel to deal with for just five people. Assuming Gulag came along with the others.

Vadim heard the compound before he saw it: loud music and raucous cheering. It sounded like some sort of sporting event.

The compound was a squat, ugly, high-walled square of red bricks. A heavy wooden gate opened onto the main road through Vickerstown. Vadim could make out scaffolding towers at three of the compound’s corners, topped with sandbags. They were manned, and in the poor light Vadim could just about make out a machine gun in each tower. A larger building rose above the walls in the fourth corner, also made of red brick. No-thrills military architecture at its most utilitarian.

Vadim came down the middle of the deserted street under a dark sky. The moon and stars were still hidden from view by all the dust in the atmosphere. He managed to get quite close before the light of a powerful handheld torch stabbed through the night and blinded him. He raised his hands slowly and told them who he’d come to see.

THE FAKE SS men came rushing out of the gate to cover him. Before the war they may have been businessmen, or worked in shops, or driven lorries; but now they looked like Vadim’s forty-year-old nightmares.

Their search was perfunctory; they didn’t want to get too close to the dead, and they certainly didn’t want to touch him. They took what weapons they could find before escorting him into the compound, into madness.

He had a look around as they marched him across the slush-covered yard. To his left the two Tiger tanks were parked between the gate and one of the towers. To his right was the half-track and another Saracen APC, with space for the one they had taken. Four prefabricated buildings ran down the right-hand wall, between two of the towers. If Bernie and Bill’s information had been correct, and they seemed to agree, then the first hut was empty, unless the refugees and crew from the Dietrich were being held there. It looked dark. There was no way to be sure if there was anyone inside or not, though there were no guards posted outside it. The second hut was where the children were kept, the third hut was the so-called Joy Division, and the fourth was the barracks for the single men.

On the left in the back corner was the building he had seen, some kind of hall. A huge, blood-red banner with a swastika painted on it hung down from the roof. Vadim made out a number of military trucks parked against the rear wall.

In the middle of the grassy yard next to the hall, a pit had been dug out and then lined with multi-floored scaffold boxes, like crude bleachers around an arena. Nazis packed the stand, looking down into the pit and cheering.

Finally Vadim saw Captain Schiller, standing in the yard outside the bleachers. A chain ran from his neck to a substantial-looking iron ring that had been hammered into the tarmac. His ears had been cut off and he was very clearly dead. He was swaying from side to side like a caged predator, watching Vadim as he was escorted past the captain of the Dietrich . There was no recognition in his eyes at all. It took a great deal of effort for Vadim not to start killing there and then.

Then he got his first look at Hauptsturmführer Kerrican. Wooden steps ran up the side of the hall to a walkway overlooking the arena, ending in a door into the hall. Kerrican stood on the walkway looking down into the pit, like Caesar on his balcony. The flickering light of a flaming torch illuminated his grinning face.

Vadim reckoned Kerrican would be thought of as handsome, though his high cheekbones and the cruel set of his mouth made him look arrogant. He looked at home in the grey SS smock and soft forage cap. Bernie hadn’t been lying when he’d claimed that this man had served; it was plain to Vadim that he was looking at a soldier.

The guards marched Vadim up the wooden steps to the walkway where Kerrican stood. On the way up, he got a view into the pit. New Boy and a badly-beaten Harris were facing off against three zombies, armed with a broadsword and a cricket bat with nails driven through it. The body of a fourth zombie lay on the muddy ground of the pit. New Boy and Harris looked exhausted. Part of the pit had been fenced off to form a corral for more of the zombies.

Vadim was staggered by the waste of effort and resources. It had been only nine days since the world had ended, and yet somehow these people had decided this was the best use of their time. Nine days. Again Vadim had to force himself not to react. He just turned away as another of the zombies lunged.

The Hauptsturmführer tore his eyes away from the spectacle in the pit to face Vadim. Up close, the captain realised Kerrican was wearing a necklace of ears. He looked into his green eyes and didn’t see himself. This man was irrevocably mad.

Kerrican looked him up and down.

“You look fucked, mate,” he said, and then grinned. He had a charming smile. Vadim had seen smiles like that before on other psychopaths. “Let’s talk in my office.”

Vadim nodded. There was more cheering from the scaffolding, and Vadim risked a glance. Harris had embedded the nailed end of the cricket bat into the head of one of the zombies. It sank to its knees, spasming. Another charged the police officer but New Boy rammed the broadsword into the thing’s mouth, the tip of the sword exploding out of the back of the dead man’s head. “Looks like the nig-nog can fight after all,” Kerrican muttered, before leading Vadim through the door and into an office. Vadim had no idea what a ‘nig-nog’ was.

THE OFFICE WAS warm and well-lit with electric bulbs, suggesting a generator somewhere in the compound. There was another door in the opposite wall. Vadim figured it had once been the office for the commander of the TA unit stationed here. It was neat and ordered. It was obvious Kerrican had added the framed picture of Otto Skorzeny, a Waffen-SS officer who some credited with being the father of modern special forces operations. Vadim was not one of those people. Kerrican followed Vadim’s gaze.

“Old Otto, he was a lad, wasn’t he?” Kerrican asked, grinning. Three of his soldiers had escorted Vadim into the office. Kerrican nodded to one of them, who slung his SLR and went back onto the walkway to watch the end of the pit fight. The other two, both armed with double-barrelled shotguns, remained in the office, keeping an eye on Vadim. He assumed they knew how to kill him, or they wouldn’t have lived this long, and the shotguns were good tools for the job in close quarters. Instead of answering Kerrican, Vadim turned his attention to a rifle hanging from a hook, along with two canvas pouches, each containing three spare magazines.

“Like that?” Kerrican asked. “That’s an StG 44, one of the first assault rifles ever made.”

“Came in towards the end of the last war,” Vadim said. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Kerrican was trying to impress him. He wasn’t. “Still didn’t save the Nazis. I thought Britain had very strict rules own gun ownership.”

“Yeah, and they were just about to get tighter,” he said with distaste. His accent was very different from the locals. Vadim was no expert but he was pretty sure he was from London, or its environs. “Some of us had licences, mostly for the bolt-actions. Some of the deactivated weapons weren’t too difficult to reactivate if you knew what you were doing, but you’d be amazed at how much of this stuff was just left hanging around, if you knew where to look. Add to that a few shotguns off the farms” – he nodded towards one of Vadim’s guards – “and what they had in the armoury here, and…”