“Lieutenant, you and Zimmer clean this up. Inform me when it's done,” Richter said.
Dietrich and Zimmer went about with their smashing. They tore the animals from their poles, removed the wire from the walls, and gathered the bodies in a pile. It would not be long before it was ash.
Hans couldn't watch. He pulled himself together and snuck out of the cave, slinking through the darkness so as not to be seen. He had always been so careful coming in, and here he was sneaking out for the first time.
And the last time.
That brought more water to his eyes. He didn't want it to be there, it made him feel like a sissy, but it was all he could do to keep from breaking down completely. He could deal with being hit. He could deal with being laughed at. That was all right. He'd been putting up with that since he was a little kid. But not his friends. There was no reason to take James and Lucas and Friedricke and Hans Junior and all of them away. Not when he was the one to blame.
Outside, the night air had never felt so cold. He could see the torches dancing around the perimeter of the crater like fireflies. With all of the hubbub, he wouldn't be missed. He supposed he could find new friends. He could make a new home. It would be hard if he couldn't sleep at the base any more, but maybe he could sneak back and get some of his things. He still had the bulge under his coat too, and that might come in handy. Hans didn't know how he would use it yet, but he knew it wouldn't be on any more penguin experiments.
Maybe he would get revenge. He stopped and thought about it. Yes, revenge! That sounded good.
“Revenge,” he said.
Isn't that what you were supposed to do when someone hurt your friends?
Down below, the torches went on dancing. The men would be out there for hours, still looking for old, crazy Kriege.
They would never find him.
6
With the dirty work done, Harald stepped outside of the cave to get some fresh air. He left the actual fire-building to Zimmer, and he had no desire to stare at the mutilated bodies any longer than necessary. Good God. His urge to return home, usually so distant and abstract, became a thundering, pounding need. He was disgusted, both with the men, and with himself for being so bloody ignorant. So let Zimmer deal with the blood.
Though he didn't yet know it, this was to be his saving grace.
A minute after Immanuel Zimmer doused the corpses and threw a match, the heat became so intense that it spread to the corners of the room. While the ensign was smart enough to stay out of the smoke and the heat, the remaining explosives Private Wägner kept buried in the cave, having no sentience or mind of their own, were not. The explosive ordnance, the gunpowder, and the collection of Model-24 grenades heated. And sparked. And blew.
With no warning whatsoever, the cave behind Lieutenant Harald Dietrich erupted in a ball of thunder. Harald was blown to the edge of the crater, rock shrapnel raining down behind him. The entire cave collapsed in a mass of dust and debris. Zimmer — along with Friedricke, Lucas, Hans Junior, and Jesus — was simply obliterated.
Chapter 19: Nightfall
1
The four figures rose from the water in the light of the dying sun. Mason knew its passage marked the birth of the winter season, but none of them would live to see it. He crawled up the beach like a spider, only regaining his full height when his boots hit solid ground. He felt taller somehow, leaner. It was as if every part of him that was not muscle and bone was being burned away.
“To me,” he said. Even his voice had changed. It was slick, serpentine.
His men slipped quietly from the water and came to stand beside him on the beach. Their skin had become splotchy, covered in those bruises that were not quite bruises. He could see the stuff had webbed through his own forearms, lacing up his skin with a varicose intensity.
Of course it had.
They had stood on the deck of The Aeschylus and inhaled the spores of the burning Carrion for the better part of an hour. Every one of them had been wounded, and so every one of them was changing. That didn't matter now, because that same damnation had saved them. It had saved them from the waters, and it had given them strength.
In some strange way, he felt he had come home. The tentacles curled about the hills above them, whispering to him in the back of his mind.
He turned to his men. There would be no speeches this time, no final words of do or die. They were here for one purpose, and it would be foremost in their minds until their minds were no more. They would need to get a lay of the land first. He thought they would start at the docks. AJ would have landed there, and they would be searching for the McCreedy woman. His old pal surely could not know she lay safely tucked behind a locked door at the base. After he took care of his old understudy, Mason thought he might have another go at her. There was no point in keeping her locked away now. They could all have fun with her, if they wanted. It was a nice thought, if it was to be their final act. Her cries would be a welcome and lustful thing.
All of this, he sensed, his men understood.
Without a word, he began walking up the shore. They would take the high ground, and they would search.
They would seek.
And they would kill.
2
When AJ stepped from the bunker, he was decked out in full black, his pants buttoned and his shirt tucked. A pair of jackboots had replaced his shit-kickers, a gun belt looped around his waist. He adjusted his cuffs and ran a hand through his damp hair, now returned to its normal fiery hue. “What do you think? Handsome?”
Kate was sitting on the ground, Indian-style. “No, creepy.”
“They had a choice of regular army or S.S. I figured I'd go all out.”
“How does it fit?”
“A little tight in the shoulders, but I'll manage.”
“I found something while you were in there.”
“Oh yeah? Just a sec.” He ducked back inside and returned with a pair of infantry rifles. He placed them on the ground, then checked the gun in his belt. Kate didn't remember the name for it, but it was one of those German war pistols you always saw in movies, the ones with the skinny barrels.
“Hurry up,” she said.
The two bodies in the supply bunker were not the only ones unaffected by the fungus. Kate had discovered a third man, this one crushed under the weight of the ceiling inside of the collapsed basement. Knowing that The Carrion hadn't wanted them after they had expired was comforting, in a way, but she was never going to get used to the sight of someone who had died in agony.
“Grisly,” AJ said when he saw it. “Is this what you wanted to show me?”
“No, look at this.”
The fallen supports had created a ramp, and Kate navigated down them, balancing herself with her hands. If the man in the hole had still been alive, she would have been adding to his misery. At the bottom, she jumped to the floor and walked over to a huge, metal cylinder. It spanned the height of the basement, touching what remained of the ceiling in the corner. Half a dozen tubes and ducts ran off of it, most of them broken. She pointed to a stain on the floor, a large splotch where one of the tubes had been shorn off.
“What is that?”
“You can't see it, but there are cages here. There's glass. It's weird, but I think they were using this stuff to kill it.”
“The Carrion?”
“The tentacles. I know how it sounds, but I just have a feeling.”