Necroscope

'Go now!' urged the dead thing where it struggled to its bony feet and lurched forward headlessly. 'Kill some of them for me.'

Harry narrowed his eyes one last time through flurries of snow and fixed the location of the fire-spewing outbuilding in his mind, then rolled sideways through a Mobius door — and into the pill-box.

No time for thinking in there, and little or no room for movement. What had looked from outside like an old cowshed was in fact a cramped nest of steel plates and concrete blocks, slate-grey gunmetal and shining ammunition-belts. Grey light fought its way in through arc-of-fire and viewing slits, turning the cordite and sweat-smelling interior to a drifting smog in which call-sign One and his second in command coughed and spluttered where they worked furiously and feverishly.

Harry emerged in the tight space behind them, dropping his shield to the concrete floor as he swung up the loaded shotgun.

Hearing the clatter as the shield fell, both Russians turned in their steel-backed swivel chairs. They saw a white-faced youth in an overcoat cradling a shotgun, his eyes bright points of light above pinched nostrils and the grim, tight line of his mouth.

'Who — ?' gasped One. He looked like some strange, startled, waspish alien in his Chateau uniform, with his headset for antennae above goggling eyes.

'How — ?' said his second in command, his fingers automatically completing the task of fitting a new belt to the machine-gun.

Then call-sign One was scrabbling to snatch a pistol from his holster, and his second in command was coming to his feet, cursing.

Harry felt no pity for them. It was them or him. And there were plenty of others just like them to welcome them where they were going. He pulled the triggers: one for One, two for his second in command, and blew them screaming into the arms of death. The stench of hot blood quickly mingled with acrid cordite and the reek of sweat and fear, causing Harry's eyes to water. He blinked them furiously, broke open the shotgun and reloaded, found another Mobius door.

The next pill-box was the same, and the one after that. Six of them in all, they were all the same. Harry took them out in less than two minutes.

In the last one, when it was done he found the chaotic mind of one of the fresh dead defenders and calmed him. 'It's over for you now,' he said, 'but the one who brought all this about is still alive. You'd be home with your family tonight if not for him. And so would I. Now, where's Dragosani?'

'In Borowitz's office, in the tower,' said the other. 'He's turned it into the control room. There'll be others with him.'

'I expect there will,' said Harry, staring into the Russian's shattered, smoking, unrecognisable face. 'Thanks.'

And then there was only one thing left to do, but Harry fancied he'd need a little help to do it.

He snapped open the clamps that held the machine-gun in place on its swivelling base, took up the heavy gun and hurled it down to the hard floor, then lifted it and threw it down again. After being dashed to the concrete three or four times the hard wooden stock splintered lengthwise, allowing Harry to break off a jagged stake with a flat base and a sharp, hardwood point.

He reached for his cartridges and found only one left, gritted his teeth and loaded the single cartridge into his shotgun. It would have to be enough. Then he pulled open the pill-box door and stepped out into the swirling snow.

In the near distance, softened by night and the fast-falling snow, the Chateau blazed with light, its searchlight beams cutting to and fro as they searched for targets. Most of Harry's army — what remained of it — was already at the walls of the Chateau itself, however, from which the staccato yammering of machine-guns now sounded unceasingly. The remaining defenders were trying to kill dead men, and they were finding it hard.

Harry looked about, saw a group of latecomers leaning into the snow as they plodded towards the beleaguered building. Eerie figures they were, gaunt scarecrow men, creaking past him in monstrous animation. But death held no fears for Harry Keogh. He stopped two of them, a pair of mummied cadavers a little less ravaged than the

rest, and offered one the hardwood stake. 'For Dragosani,' he said.

The other Tartar carried a great curving sword all scabbed with rust; Harry reckoned he'd used it in his day to devastating effect. Well, and now — with any justice — he'd use it again. He pointed to the sword, nodded, said: 'That, too, is for Dragosani — for the vampire in him.'

Then he opened a Mobius door, and guiding his two sere companions stepped through it.

Inside the Chateau Bronnitsy it had been all hell let loose almost from the beginning. The place had been built two hundred and thirty years ago on an ancient battlefield; the building itself was a mausoleum for a dozen of the fiercest of all the Tartar warriors. And its protection had kept the peaty ground pliant, so that the bodies which had lain there were more truly mummies than fleshless corpses.

Also, Dragosani had ordered the great stone flags in the cellars lifted and floorboards ripped out in his search for signs of sabotage; and so, at Harry Keogh's first call, there had been little to deter these re-animated Tartars as they'd struggled up from their centuried graves to answer his command and prowl the Chateau's corridors, laboratories and conservatories. And wherever they found ESPers or defenders, they had simply put them down out of hand.

Now all that remained were the fortified machine-gun positions in the Chateau's own walls, which allowed the men within them no egress, no means of escape. The machine-gun posts could only be entered from within the Chateau; there were no exterior doors, no way out. The voice of one such call-sign trapped in his fortified position told Dragosani the entire story in every gory detail where he raged and frothed in his tower control room:

'Comrade, this is madness, madness!' the voice moaned over Dragosani's control radio, blocking all other traffic — if any remained to be blocked! 'They are… zombies, dead men! And how may we kill dead men? They come — and my gunner cuts them down and shoots them to pieces — and then the pieces come! Outside, a pile of pieces wriggles and kicks and builds itself into a wall against the wall of the Chateau. Trunks, legs, arms, hands — even the smaller pieces and the naked bones themselves! Soon they will pour in through the gun slits, and what then?'

Dragosani snarled, more animal now than ever, and shook his fists at the night and the drifting snow beyond the tower's windows. 'Keogh!' he raged. 'I know you're there, Keogh. So come if you're coming and let's be done with it.'

'They're inside the Chateau, too!' the voice on the radio sobbed. 'We're trapped in here. My gunner is a madman now. He raves even as he works his gun. I've jammed the steel door shut but something continues to batter at it, trying to get in. I know what it is, for I saw it; it stuck a leathery claw inside before I could slam the door on its wrist; now the hand — oh God, the hand! — claws at my legs and tries to climb. I kick it away but it always returns. See, see? Again! Again!' And his voice tapered off into static and a crackling peal of laughter.

Simultaneous with the idiot sounds from the radio, suddenly Yul Galenski cried out in terror from his anteroom office. 'The stairs! They're coming up the stairs!' His voice was shrill as a girl's; he had no experience of fighting; he was a clerk, a secretary. And in any case, who had experience of such as this?

The DO had been standing at the window, white-faced, trembling; but now he snatched up a machine-pistol and rushed through to Galenski where he backed away from the outer door to the landing. On his way he grabbed blast grenades from Dragosani's desk. At least he is a man! thought Dragosani, grudgingly.