The sudden noise of shifting metal within the room distracted the defenders. The soldiers instantly spun around. But before guns were fired, a frightened voice cried out.
‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’ It was Elsa.
Blomberg rushed forward and pulled Elsa from her hiding place. Like a frightened rabbit she had cowered between a series of bent catwalks.
‘What are you doing down there?!’ he cried. His voice betrayed the fear that coursed through him.
‘I’m hiding, just like you,’ Elsa stated. Like the doctor, fear ruled over her.
Blomberg pushed her roughly onto a nearby ladder. ‘Goddamn it! Acting like Red Riding Hood won’t save you from him!’ He pointed up the ladder. ‘Get to the observation-deck. Hurry, if you value your life.’
The doctor returned to the injured soldier, his boots sloshing through the growing pool of blood on the floor. He reached into his pocket to pull out a small metal tube. Inside were a number of glass vials which contained poisonous cyanide. Kneeling down, he slipped his hand underneath his friend’s head and gently lifted it up. He looked back at the melting door one final time as if to reaffirm his grim decision. At the same time, his colleague seemed to sense Blomberg’s actions and smiled approvingly. Blomberg then popped the vial into the man’s mouth and pressed his jaws together. A dull crunch indicated that the vial had been successfully crushed, and the man’s body went limp.
Meanwhile, Elsa ran to the central-column. But as she grabbed the ladder’s rail, she hesitated. Her eyes were drawn towards the pending battle – the desperate soldiers on one side, the rapidly melting door on the other. And as she watched, and to her horror, two hands started to push their way through the bubbling metal.
‘Move!’ Blomberg shouted at the prisoner.
Elsa finally did as she was told and scurried up the ladder. She too knew exactly who was coming through that door.
Like the inevitability of an unloved season, Stahl pushed his way through the viscous, amorphous metal as if he was clawing his way through an embryonic sac. Once through the melted door, he bashed the makeshift barricade out of the way and smiled gently at the two soldiers who opened fire upon him. Again, tracer bullets impotently swung away and avoided their target. Then, like a wizard, Stahl waved his hand and the soldier’s weapons instantly sagged and became as pliable as plastic. The stringy guns poured through the screaming soldiers’ hands, the red-hot metal melting flesh and muscle, scorching bone and boiling blood.
Moving forward, Stahl savagely wrenched the first soldier’s head messily from his shoulders. The gore sprayed Stahl’s smiling face and the second solider who wept bitterly as he awaited his fate. It soon came when the resurrected Nazi reached out and pressed his fingers upon the tear-smeared face. A gut-wrenching scream emitted as he squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. A wet crunch sounded when the gory task was complete.
Blomberg didn’t stay to greet his former colleague. He followed Elsa and climbed up the room’s central column without a backward glance.
By now, Zeigler had entered the control room to cringe before his master like a mingy dog. Ziegler had watched as Stahl murdered the injured crewmen in the sickbay soon after his resurrection, then the soldiers who had attempted to destroy the spire’s entrance. Like the soldiers inside the module, their deaths at the hands of Stahl were painful and bloody. Men were torn limb from limb, entrails were spilt and blood had filled the air. All this horror had been witnessed enthusiastically by Ziegler, and so in Stahl’s eyes, these sights had further tempered the former Nazi Gauleiter. This man was pure once again; his thoughts and actions devoid of emotion and unpolluted by human weaknesses such as compassion or understanding. He was once again a man of iron – his man of iron. And so to reward Zeigler’s devotion, Stahl reached down and racked his hands through a pool of blood on the deck. He then drew a crude bloody swastika upon Zeigler’s forehead.
‘Rejoice, my comrade,’ Stahl said. ‘The last of the sub-humans have been cleansed from our new Fatherland! The pestilence has been wiped away. Soon their blood will be a distant memory after we write our new history. If we had spared even one of them and allowed one drop of their blood to survive, all of our plans would be in danger.’
‘This will be a day long remembered,’ Zeigler cried. ‘A day to cherish!’
‘Indeed, it shall. But first we have other matters to attend to.’
Stahl’s head snapped towards the module’s upper level. A pounding resonated, its echoes bouncing around the spherical, misshapen walls. It was the sound of metal upon glass.
Stahl smiled. ‘The last of our congregation awaits our pleasure…’
Blomberg swung a metal bar wildly at the domed window. The bar bounced off the thick glass, its sickening concussion running down his arms and painfully jarring his body. The pain he felt should have acted as a deterrent, but if anything the pain encouraged Blomberg to continue. Elsa stood forlornly nearby. She was imprisoned again, not in a jail cell, but locked within this glass cage. She knew that beyond the dust-smeared dome was Konrad. Praying, she hoped that he would come back and somehow break into the module. Elsa didn’t expect a dramatic rescue with all its swashbuckling clichés; she just wanted Konrad to be here with her. But it was sadly apparent that her end would take place alone amongst these Nazis.
Then, with a whoop of success, Blomberg managed to crack the window. He reached up and ran his fingers along the spidery fissure. This small success encouraged Blomberg. He heaved the bar above his head again, and with a great grunt, he smashed the crack. The white line skittered across the glass surface as the fissure grew in size.
Sensing victory, Elsa moved closer. She smiled hopefully as Blomberg readied himself for one final blow, but he suddenly stopped mid-swing and stared at something behind her. She saw the quivering bar and slowly turned around.
Stahl and Zeigler stood before her like the angels of death.
‘Here we all are,’ Stahl said, ‘just like one big happy family!’
Blomberg bravely stepped forward to confront the abomination. He pulled the bar above his head again. This time the brutal weapon was aimed at his fellow Nazi.
Stahl wagged his finger. ‘I’d delay your actions, my comrade, if I were you. Any actions on your part would be foolish,’ he hissed.
‘ I should kill you right now! It’s my duty!’ Blomberg shouted.
‘Your duty is to listen to your superior officer and listen to my offer.’
‘Don’t listen to him, Herr Blomberg,’ Elsa cried. ‘Kill him. Kill him now!’
Blomberg’s eyes darted toward the prisoner as he considered her brutal suggestion; however, there was something in Stahl’s voice, an unheard note which hooked him. As a result, he now hesitated, his eyes narrowing with interest.
This sudden hesitation emboldened Stahl. He slowly moved forward and waved his hand briefly in the air. The drops of blood that lay scattered across the deck and across Stahl’s pale features started to roll and pool together. The growing bloody mass rose and hung in the air above the deck, the gore rising up in inverted rivulets, twisting and swirling together. Eventually the scarlet liquid coalesced into a shape, a shape horribly familiar to the doctor. Tears coated his eyes when he finally realised that the grotesque tableaux was transforming into his wife.
‘Heidi!’ The grief was evident in Blomberg’s voice.
The apparition developed further. In the woman’s arms rested a small child. The child pulled itself from its mother’s breast and turned toward Blomberg, its blank-lifeless eyes softened by a warm smile of recognition. As a result the metal bar wavered, then it slowly lowered as the doctor’s rage evaporated away.