Berlin or Bust

^{CHAPTER EIGHTEEN} BIVOUAC

They made it as far as the top level before a messenger from Hauptmann Werner told them the regiment was bivouacking here for the night.

“Billet where you stand,” Reiser said.

Muller sat on the floor exhausted. Steiner moved along on his hands and knees, sweeping as much of the loose papers as he could into a pile.

“What are you doing, Otto?”

The machine-gunner grinned. “Making a bed.”

The squad exchanged glances then dove to the ground to sweep up the paper. Tonight, these pages documenting the Reich’s secret weapons projects would make great bedding and future kindling. The British sergeant watched them with amusement before joining in to fashion himself a pillow.

“Herr Leutnant, should we dispose of the bodies?” Wolff asked Reiser.

“We achieved our objective,” the lieutenant said. “Heroes do not clean up. Let the other platoons deal with the mess.”

Muller picked up a random sheet from the dusty floor. The top of the page was stamped with a swastika and the words, TOP SECRET. He read:

Once the body’s surface is penetrated, the Overman bacterium, like any foreign bacterium, scavenges for free iron required to multiply, invading tissues and encountering complex defense mechanisms that respond with inflammation.

The Overman bacterium then distinguishes itself, in several ways. First, it is encased in novel proteins that protect it from opsonization and phagocytosis—

He crumpled it up with disgust. The corruption of the Wehrmacht, the fall of Berlin, the threat of creeping extinction for Germany, none of it just happened. It was the result of dedicated effort by minds far brighter than his. A grand scientific endeavor documented in fifty-mark words typewritten on thousands of sheets of paper.

Given time and resources, the scientists might have succeeded. They might have created the Overman, a super soldier of limitless strength and endurance. They might have conquered the world.

But Germany had been losing the war. Hitler was about to gamble everything on Autumn Mist. The scientists didn’t have time. They cut corners, jury-rigged what they needed, experimented on prisoners in Poland.

And produced this malevolent bug that took over its host and reprogrammed it to kill, eat, and destroy.

The squad jumped to its feet. Oberst Heilman had entered the center, trailed by his staff. The British sergeant remained on the floor, scooping up sheets and reading them before either discarding or shoving them into his jacket.

Hauptmann Werner snapped his fingers. Another squad of Fallschirmjäger set a series of steel vacuum flasks on the floor.

“It is time to meet the enemy,” Heilman said.

What was left of the Wehrmacht and Allied armies wasn’t at war with the dead, not really. They were at war with a bacterium, one of the tiniest forms of life on the planet. A mindless aberration of life carefully engineered to organize in a host and control its behavior.

Werner unscrewed the cap on one of the thermoses. Dry ice fogged into the air. He reached inside, gingerly extracted a sealed test tube, and handed it over.

Heilman held it up to inspect in the waning daylight. The mottled solution glowed a faint green that made the officers look like ghouls themselves.

Muller winced in disgust. Burn it, he thought. Kill it.

The bug was a work of profound, diabolical genius. It was also evil.

“Your company is to be commended for securing it,” the colonel said.

Werner raised his chin in pride. “Danke, Herr Oberst.”

“At dawn, we will proceed to the airport on schedule. You will deliver these samples to the plane. You will guard them with your life. Ist das klar, Herr Werner?” Is that clear?

“Klar, Herr Oberst.”

“All of us are expendable from this moment on. These materials are not. They must be returned to England. The future of the German nation depends on it.”

“Jawohl! Leutnant Reiser, come with me.”

The officers left while the rest of Eagle Company filed into the facility to bivouac on the lower levels.

Muller glared up at a portrait of a stalwart Hitler gazing down at him wearing a glowing white lab coat, surrounded by symbols of technologies the Nazis claimed to have invented, highways and rockets and medicines. Hitler portrayed as greatest scientist who ever lived, just as the war propaganda always proclaimed him as the Greatest Field Commander of All Time.

“Expendable,” Muller snarled. The whole country was expendable. The whole world, all to feed one man’s infectious vanity.

Schulte lay on his paper nest and rested his head on his helmet. “Ja, ja. Like we weren’t expendable before?”

The paratroopers shared grim smiles at the gallows humor.

“You know who’s expendable—the rest of the regiment that has to camp outside in the woods,” Beck said. “Glad I’m in here. Safe and warm.”

Steiner produced his steel Esbit stove, which looked like an animal trap and was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. “Ivan put us behind schedule. The whole regiment should be sleeping in apartments on the other side of Tiergarten.”

He unfolded the stove, inserted a little chemical brick into the base, and struck a match. The tablet ignited with a barely visible blue flame. The machine-gunner keyed open a few cans filled with K rations and dumped them into a mess tin, which he set on the burner to heat up for the squad’s supper.

Muller’s stomach roared at the rich aroma of meat. Another canned dinner, but he didn’t care. He was starving.

“Better to camp here anyway,” Wolff grunted.

“How do you figure, Herr Oberfeldwebel?” Muller asked him.

“Fewer ghouls in the park, and less chance of a big swarm walking up to us. If one does show up, the men outside won’t be trapped in a building with only one exit.”

Muller looked around at the research facility’s concrete walls. Suddenly, being outside, with the ability to retreat in almost any direction, looked better to him.

Leutnant Reiser returned wearing a rare happy smile. “Achtung, Fallschirmjäger. Hauptmann Werner commended our platoon on securing the facility without loss.”

Muller smiled too. The rest of the squad stared back at the lieutenant with taciturn stares. He wiped the smile from his face to imitate their cool.

The British sergeant turned away with a wince. In his view, securing the facility had come at an enormous loss.

The lieutenant set three steel canisters on the floor. “The hauptmann ordered us to safeguard the samples. Each squad will receive three.” His piercing blue eyes roamed Muller’s squad. “Oberfeldwebel, you will carry one. Your machine-gunner another. And…” His eyes lighted on Muller. “Ah, Jäger Muller.”

Wolff stood and scooped up the vacuum-sealed canisters. He gave one to Steiner then set Muller’s in front of him. “Guard it with your life, jäger.”

“Jawohl, Herr Oberfeldwebel,” said Muller.

He’d wanted to prove himself to Reiser and apparently had. As a result, the officer now more likely to assign him difficult tasks.

Scheisse, he thought.

Reiser surveyed the tired squad still wearing his smile. “Eat well, heroes. At dawn, we will complete our mission.” With that, the lieutenant left again, never tiring nor seeming to need food himself.

Muller looked at the canister and shuddered with loathing, his appetite gone.