“Morale’s an issue. They’re a spirited lot, but what we told them last night must have come as quite a shock. Three of them took their own lives last night.”
Muller started at this news. He’d heard about it but dismissed it as rumor.
“All the more reason to get them moving,” Adams said. “The fog over the Channel’s lifted. The operation has been moved up. We’re jumping tomorrow night if the weather holds.”
“Christ.” The sergeant flinched. “Sorry, sir. I meant to say, ‘Splendid idea.’”
Weber hissed, “What are you staring at, Muller? You’ve got an odd look.”
“I’m listening to the Tommies talk about the operation.”
“Oh? What are they saying?”
Muller shushed him and listened. Another paratrooper hit the ground and rolled.
“You feel strongly about the three days?” the colonel asked.
“For an operation like this? Six weeks would do nicely, sir.”
“Monty and Eisenhower won’t hold. You’ve got one more morning and afternoon to teach these men our equipment. The party’s on, Sergeant.” The colonel regarded the Germans with cold hatred. “Quite. Carry on, then.”
Wilkins saluted. “Sir,” he said, pronouncing it sah. He turned to the Fallschirm. “All right, once more around, chaps, then you can go get your scoff.”
Muller returned to the top of the platform and made a flawless last jump.
“Well done, para,” Wilkins told him.
“Dankeschön, Herr Feldwebel.” Muller was ready to go to Berlin.
He wasn’t sure he was ready for what he might find when he got there, however.
The city had gone dark. Most of his memories of the capital were troubled. The hard times of his youth, followed by the stifling paranoia of the Nazis. But he had plenty of happy memories with family and friends. Berlin was home.
His father, mother, sister, aunts and cousins lived there. His university professors, the loud neighbors, the friendly postman, the swearing butcher, the girl he’d flirted with in class but never had the courage to ask out.
Everyone he ever knew back home was possibly either dead or worse, one of those ravenous things.
Whatever he’d find, Muller had to know.
“Excellent progress today,” Wilkins told them. “Your officers will have an update on the operation schedule. Dismissed.”
The paratroopers marched to the mess hall eager for dinner.
“Did you see the lieutenant make his jump?” Beck said. “It looked like a suicide attempt.”
“We should be so lucky,” Schulte said.
The men chuckled. Reiser had particularly hated a British sergeant ordering him around, snapping, “Aufgewärmter kohl war niemals gut.” Take heed of enemies reconciled and of meat twice boiled. An old German proverb.
“The lieutenant isn’t so bad.” Weber nudged Muller. “Now tell us what the Tommies said.”
Schneider growled behind them, “I’ll bet they said we’re going on a fool’s errand to clean up their mess.”
“What do you mean by that, Animal?” Schulte said. “Their mess?”
The big soldier spat on the ground. “The godless Americans made the germ, not us. They dumped it on Berlin and killed everybody.”
Weber nodded. “And then they made it look like we did it.”
Muller shook his head. Schneider and Weber was expressing the weltanschauung, or world view, of many Germans. Everybody hated Germany, and the entire world had united in a global conspiracy run by Marxists and Jewish bankers. The only answer was kadavergehorsam. Absolute obedience until death.
“Why are they sending us to Berlin for a pure sample of the germ if they already have one?” Schulte wondered.
Schneider had no answer for that. “I don’t know how they think.”
Facts and logic didn’t matter when stacked against weltanschauung.
“They didn’t do anything,” Steiner said. “We did it. Get it through your thick heads. We’re the bad guys.”
The men fell silent until Schneider said, “It’s all part of the plan to liquidate the Aryan race—”
Steiner let out a loud sigh. “So what were the Tommies talking about, Yohann?”
“We’re jumping tomorrow tonight,” Muller said.
“Good,” Oberfeldwebel Wolff said from his place several ranks ahead. “Once I’m back in combat, I won’t have to listen to this crap anymore.”
“Are you saying you believe Herr Wolfensohn, Oberfeldwebel?” Weber asked.
The sergeant snorted. “I don’t believe anything the SS says, Kugelfest.”
Schneider’s faced broadened in a smug smile. “So you’re saying you agree the Amis cooked it up to destroy Germany.”
Steiner sighed again. “They’re working with us to save Germany—”
“What I’m saying,” Wolff said tersely, “is it doesn’t matter who made it. It’s here, it’s killing our people, and our duty is to destroy it. We’re going. That’s all you need to know.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
BLAME
RAF Station Martlesham Heath fell silent as the world turned black with night. Lying in his bunk, Steiner couldn’t sleep despite his exhaustion. Around him, the paratroopers of three nations murmured and tossed in their sleep. A man cried out, reliving some personal horror.
Horror kept Steiner awake.
Ghouls walked the earth. They shambled toward the Allied lines in their thousands and tens of thousands. They were everywhere in Belgium and Luxembourg. Even more of the things migrated across Germany, turning it into a charnel house.
The war was over, already lost while he got drunk and played cards in Genoa, and a new war had begun. A war of survival against the undead.
He just couldn’t get his head around it.
The Nazis had given the same bug to Wehrmacht forces on the Eastern Front. Right now, it was likely spreading through Poland and the Balkans.
Denied victory, Hitler might just take the whole world down with him.
The scale of this nightmare was too much to comprehend.
No use sleeping now. He got up, pulled on his trousers, and hitched his suspenders over his shoulders. He put on his boots and quilted jacket and quietly crept through the cavernous hangar until the freezing night greeted him outside.
His back to the hangar’s metal wall, he lit one of his Chesterfields and blew a stream of smoke into the frosty air. Around him, the RAF station’s crisscrossing airstrips and big utilitarian buildings stood silent under a starry sky.
The weather was continuing to clear. Good for flying.
As the Brit officer had said, the party was on.
The machine-gunner sagged against the wall until sitting on the cold ground. A crushing weight had fallen on his chest, not just a bone-deep weariness but also an exhaustion in his soul. The crushing weight of shame.
He’d fought for the madman who’d done this.
Steiner hated Hitler now. He’d hated him for a while but had never had the courage to admit it, even to himself.
The black-and-white images came back to him, one grisly sequence standing out from the rest. A German soldier emptying his MP40 into a lurching American. The American staggering, chest smoking, before lunging forward.
The German tearing off his helmet to throw in a final desperate defense against the creature, whose jaws opened impossibly wide as he closed…
Huddled on the ground, the machine-gunner lowered his head against his forearms and sobbed.