“Let me go!”
He thought about calling her a Judas, a terrible inbred traitor, but he didn't. Instead, he simply said, “No.”
And then, she started to cry. Large, angry tears welling up in those hazel eyes. Those mongrel's eyes.
Harald used his gun to raise her chin. “I told you to stop it.” He hoped to see some kind of shame in that face, some kind of regret, but he didn't. He saw only rage.
“Help me!” she called up the hill. “I'm down here! Somebody help me!”
Following her gaze, he saw the motorcycle parked up the main path. Its rider was somewhere close.
“Hello up there!” he called. “We have a prisoner trying to escape!” When he got no reply, he pulled the girl towards it.
They were halfway there when he stepped into a rut and lost his balance. Lucja tried to pull away but succeeded only in pulling him down on top of her. They fell in a heap, the back of her head striking the ground. He tried to pull her up, but she was dazed. Was it a trick? He wouldn't have believed her capable of such a thing the day before, but Richter would have warned him better. If he hadn't been so alone, if he hadn't been so weakened by the loss of Mieke, maybe he could have seen it.
The girl went to bite Harald's hand, but her strength gave out, and the hand dropped to her breast. He wondered if, on a subconscious level, this was what she wanted. She had been away from home for months now, and that was good time spent away from all the schoolboys she could have been tempting with her filthy, sideways cunny.
“Is this what you want?” he asked, mashing her nipple. “Is it?”
She cried out, another fake tear dribbling down her cheek.
He squeezed again, and she cried harder. It was cold out here, but her breath was hot. The space between her legs was hot. He could feel it, even through his leather gloves.
How was this girl, this filthy mongrel of a girl having this effect on him? He could feel his cock jutting into his pants, so stiff it was painful. It was drowning his every sensation, even the fear of what was surely coming from the pit.
He slapped the girl again and felt another dizzying throb, almost losing himself.
“Don't,” she whispered.
Something clunked up by the motorcycle, and it was enough to bring him back to his senses. He pushed himself off of the girl and began searching his coat for the spare magazine again. He found it this time, sighing as he pulled it out and slapped it into the gun. As he turned, Lucja reared back on her hind quarters and kicked him straight in the balls.
“This is for my mother, you sonofabitch!” she screamed. “And for all the things you'd do to me! Do you hear me?”
The blow landed full-force, not even a flinch to break the impact. The pistol went off, kicking up dust next to her head.
A third figure came striding down the incline towards them, its silhouette tall and gangly. The outline of a Luger was visible in the shadow. “You've done enough,” it said. “Get away from her.”
Harald squinted through the darkness. Around him, he could hear hissing and scuttling as more of the creatures began to crawl up from out of the darkness. “She's mine!” he called. “Who are you?”
“Odysseus.” The figure paused a moment, then shot Harald in the leg, just above the knee.
Blood splashed across his hips, and he dropped his pistol, forgetting all about the pain in his crotch.
“Goodbye, Lieutenant.”
The figure offered a hand to the girl, and she took it. Together, they began running up the hill, back towards the bike.
As they reached the crest, Harald tried to push himself to his feet and couldn't. “No!” he yelled. “You won't leave me like this! Come back! Come back you filthy Mongoloid inbreds!”
The sound of the slithering army grew louder. There were more figures like the one Harald shot, a lot more. They were emerging at the corners of his vision, still slimed from the bowels of the earth.
“Come back! Goddamn you!”
He felt something grab his uninjured leg and begin to tug. Thrashing, he spun and searched the ground for his pistol, but it was lost in the dirt. The thing behind him began to tug harder.
No, he thought. I deserve a better end than this!
A terrible gurgling sound emerged from somewhere deep in his throat. He kept yelling as they dragged him all the way down to the edge of the pit and into the blackness beyond.
2
Linus Metzger was dozing on guard duty when the explosion rocketed through the garage doors and tore the tower supports out of the ground beneath him. He had enough time to wonder if he was still asleep — having one of those falling dreams — when the tower smashed into the ground, and he was flung through the inside like a top. His arm collided with the wall (ceiling), and he heard something snap. In his mind, it was almost as loud as the explosion.
He blacked out but came to a moment later when a gunshot echoed somewhere outside the base. Forcing himself to sit up, he took stock of his surroundings. The tower wasn't destroyed, but the top half was overturned, resting sideways on the ground. Linus managed to push himself out through one of the side walls feeling, by all accounts, like the world was crumbling around him. His arm lay bent at the wrong angle, though he felt no pain. He was vaguely aware that his ears were ringing.
When he peered across the landscape, he was greeted by the caliginous terrain, the world beyond the walls disappearing into space. Then, on the horizon, he saw a headlight. That light had to be Eichmann coming back from his patrol of the perimeter. But there was something wrong. It was moving too fast, and… and there was something chasing it.
Feeling his skin grow cold, Linus could see there was not one thing chasing it, but many. The shapes that loped and trundled behind it were vast and terrible. There were so many, they could not be counted. And without having seen the effects of The Carrion, without having known the corpse of Captain Smit, he somehow recognized them for what they were.
They were the damned. They were legion.
With his good hand, Linus grabbed the cross around his neck and prepared for their coming.
3
Ari dusted the detritus out of his hair and picked himself off of the floor. Someone was yelling, and he couldn't figure out who. His first thought was that he needed to wash the dust from his eyes. The second was that he had dropped Richter's gun.
The ceiling had fallen, the wooden rafters collapsed through the middle of the room. He should be able to see the sky above him, but he couldn't. The dust was too thick. The air had a vaguely pungent smell, and he realized the situation was moving from bad to worse. One of the formaldehyde cylinders stood upright, exactly where they had left it, but the other had fallen to the floor. It hadn't burst, but as Ari got closer, he could hear a hissing sound. The thing was leaking.
As the dust began to clear, he saw Frece lying face down beside him. He grabbed him by one arm. “Thomas. Thomas, wake up!”
“Huh?” The man started awake. “What's happened?”
“There's been an explosion.”
“An explosion?” He looked around. “Where's Richter?”
In the tumult, Ari hadn't even thought to check. Panic seized him when he saw the chair was not where it should be, the bound man gone from the center of the room. Then Frece grabbed him and pointed to a spot beneath the rafters. The commander lay crushed under three of the ceiling beams, the wood planted heavily in his stomach. The compression was such that it had broken the chair, the wood and rope strewn about the ground.