Operation Antarctica

- 8 -

Banks’ head cleared slowly, enough for him to be aware that the squad was all looking to him for direction. This was beyond their training — beyond Banks’ training too — there was nothing here to fight, nothing to shoot, just the golden hovering craft, six inches off the floor with no sign of any controls or engines to indicate how it was done, its sheer impossibility taunting them.

“It’s a trick; it has to be,” McCally said.

“It’s a fucking great trick though,” Wiggins said. He too was looking groggy, but he pushed McCally away when the corporal offered a helping hand. “Under the floor heating, disappearing dead men, and now the grand finale, the incredible levitating UFO. Fucking Nazi wankers are really taking the piss now.”

Banks saw that he was within seconds of losing the squad’s attention completely.

Get them moving.

“Bollocks to it all,” he said. “I’ve had enough of this buggering about in here. This is obviously a job for the boffins, and I’m guessing the brass will send the real specialists to relieve us. So let’s go back upstairs to the wee hut, shut the door on this thing, and drink tea until they get here.”

“No argument from me, Cap,” Wiggins said. “I just about pished myself in there.”

“To be fair,” Hynd said, “you don’t usually need an excuse.”

The humor wasn’t quite as natural as usual, but Banks appreciated the sarge trying, and the men all laughed, albeit without much joy in it.

But it’s a start. Now, get them out of here.

He saw sweat glisten on some of the men’s faces, not from fear, but from the temperature in the hangar, which appeared to have stabilized somewhere in the 60s Fahrenheit, positively balmy compared to the Antarctic air just beyond the dome.

Hell, they shouldn’t have bothered with the saucer. They could have conquered the world without a fight if they’d given us the secret of this kind of heating.

The hut out on the ice was going to feel frigid after this, but he couldn’t bear the thought of spending any more time this close to the empty saucer. His experience among the stars had left him wrung out and shaken, and all he wanted to do was to breathe fresh air again and feel real salt water spray on his cheeks.

“Cally, you and Hughes on point. Wilkes and Patel next up, Wiggins is with me, Sarge and Parker, watch our back. Double time, let’s get the flock out of here. Silent running until we’re topside.”

Cally pushed the hangar door open and checked the corridor before turning and giving a thumb and forefinger okay. The squad moved out. As soon as the double door closed at their back, the temperature dropped, although the golden glow stayed with them for the first ten yards of the tunnel. It was only when they left the limits of its light and had to revert to their night-vision goggles that Banks felt some of the tension flow out of him, tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding onto since waking on the floor of the hangar. Each step took him farther from the dance in the dark, and he felt some of his sense of purpose return at the same time as the beat of the rhythm slowly faded from his muscle memory.

He wasn’t given time to enjoy it. Before they even got halfway down the corridor, the double door at the far end opened. A blast of colder air hit them, then tall shadowed figures stepped into the doorway and walked forward, calmly and steadily.

“What the fuck is this now?” Wiggins whispered at Banks’ side.

Banks didn’t want to speculate — didn’t dare to, for he was afraid that he knew the answer. He saw their eyes first, milky white, almost silver in the night vision. There were at least a dozen of them, led by a tall man in the unmistakable dark uniform and peaked hat. Even in the dim light, the black-on-white swastika was clearly visible on his arm.

It was the oberst. The commander of the base was leading his team. Banks had finally found the corpses he’d been searching for. Or rather, they had found him.

The cold dead filled the tunnel ahead.

“What the fuck is this now?” Wiggins repeated loudly.

“It’s fucking trouble, that’s what it is,” Hynd replied.

“Ears in, lads,” Banks said, and slid the plastic plugs in before checking his magazine. He had a full load in the mag and spare clips in his vest, but even as the dead walked, still calm and measured, up the corridor toward them, he knew he wasn’t ready to fire on unarmed men, not when he still wasn’t sure of the situation.

“They were fucking dead, Sarge,” Wiggins said. “You saw them. We all saw them. Fucking devious Nazi wankers.”

Wiggins looked ready to start shooting, and Banks stopped him simply by putting a hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Not now, eh, lad? Not yet anyway. Keep a lid on it.”

Wiggins had the sense to go quiet, but his eyes betrayed what Banks guessed they were all feeling.

This just isn’t possible.

But he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried, make himself believe in dead men walking — it went against everything he’d seen in his years of service. Once you’re down, there’s no coming back; he’d seen it often enough to know the truth of it. So he wasn’t about to order a shooting gallery.

But when he turned to look back toward the hangar bay and saw the golden glow showing through the windows, he knew he also wasn’t ready to retreat, not to a place where he’d so recently been so vulnerable.

“Stand ready,” he said quietly. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet. But we do know they are, as Wiggins here put it, fucking devious Nazi wankers, so don’t let them get too close. And watch my back.”

Banks stepped forward before he could have second thoughts. He had his rifle in hand, pointed straight at the approaching German officer, ready to shoot at the slightest provocation. The man — the impossibly dead man — kept coming, as did the men behind him, a mixture roughly half split of military and civilians, all with the same milk-white eyes glowing silver in the night vision. Banks’ finger closed on the trigger, ready to shoot, but the tall officer slowed five yards away from him and came to a stop. The other Germans stopped behind him, and the tunnel fell quiet.

Banks felt the cold coming off the bodies of the dead, as if they weren’t composed of flesh at all, but somehow manufactured, perfect mannequins carved from ice. The pale eyes of the oberstleutnant started straight at Banks, unblinking. His lips were gray-blue where they should be red, his skin smooth, almost translucent, like alabaster. Veins, as blue as his lips, showed proud just beneath the surface. Banks was too far away to see any pulse, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if there wasn’t one.

“What happened here?” Banks asked, aware as he spoke that he was attempting a conversation with a man he’d seen most definitely dead not too many hours before. The German did not reply, but his head cocked slightly to one side, as if listening.

“What happened to you?” Banks continued. “We’re here to help.”

The officer raised his left hand and pointed, over Bank’s shoulder, toward the hangar. The gaze of the white eyes stayed fixed on Banks the whole time, but the intent was clear enough.

“You want to go through there? No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Banks said.

The officer kept staring and pointing. The ranks of dead men behind him inched forward, each of them, in parade ground step, taking a short pace up the tunnel.

“Stop right there. That’s far enough,” Banks said, and showed the German the rifle. If it gave the frozen oberstleutnant any pause, it didn’t show. The officer’s pale blue lips moved, as if uttering a command, and he pointed again with his left arm. Although no sound came, the order had been given.

This time when the dead men took a step, it was a full one.

“Cap?” Hynd said behind Banks.

Banks heard the tension in the sergeant’s voice. He took two steps back. The German officer took two steps forward, followed immediately by the dead behind him, who again moved as one in military precision. They stopped, and the oberstleutnant stared at Banks, and pointed up the tunnel toward the hangar with his left hand.

“Cap?” Hynd said again in a whisper. “Maybe we should just let them pass. Let them go wherever the fuck it is they want to go.”

“Give them access to that saucer? No fucking way. They might look like dead men, but these are fucking Nazis, man. I’m not letting them near anything that might be a weapon.”

“So what then?” the sergeant asked.

The matter was taken out of Banks’ hands when the oberstleutnant pointed again, and began to walk forward, faster now, the dead stepping in time behind him.

“Fuck this for a game of soldiers,” Wiggins shouted, and for once, Banks agreed with him.

“Fire,” he shouted.

The tunnel filled with the crack and roar of rifle fire. If the Germans had been flesh, the assault would have reduced them to bloody scraps of red meat, but Banks was dismayed to see that none of them fell under the shots. The squad was hitting their targets. Bits of ice flew where the shots clipped shoulder or skull, but in the main, the bullets seemed to have no effect at all. Banks took careful aim and hit the oberstleutnant in the chest, saw a small hole in the uniform at the impact site, but the tall pale-eyed figure didn’t so much as flinch, just kept coming forward at the same steady pace.

They kept firing.

Cally had to step back to reload. Hughes stepped up in his place, just ahead of Banks, and was the closest of the squad members as the approaching German officer took three more steps forward. Banks saw that the private had moved too far ahead of the rest of the squad and was isolated a few paces in front of the others.

“Hughes, fall back, lad,” Banks shouted, but it was too late. The German officer was almost within arms’ length of the private, who fired three rounds, point blank, into the dead man’s face. One hit the milky white left eye and blew it into icy shards, but the oberst kept coming, ignoring the weapon and reaching out for the man. Pale hands caught Hughes by the neck, and the man’s eyes rolled up as he fell to one side. Banks stepped in and slammed the butt of his weapon against the dead man’s head, chipping off more spattering flakes of ice and frozen flesh. The oberst’s grip tightened on Hughes’ throat, and Banks heard the sound of the private’s neck breaking even above the roar of the gunfire.

There was no time for mourning. The dead man dropped Hughes, already forgotten, and took another pace up the corridor. Banks stepped up quickly, put the barrel of his weapon in the German’s left ear and fired, three rounds that should have blown the head apart. The reaction wasn’t as conclusive as Banks had hoped, and he only managed to blow a fist-sized hole where the ear had been, sending red-tainted shards of ice flying, but it was enough to drop the officer to the ground. Banks kicked the dead man’s head for good measure and immediately regretted it — it felt like kicking a solid piece of ice-cold stone.

He kept an eye on the other dead Germans, but none moved to attack him as he bent and with his left hand grabbed Hughes’ collar and dragged the dead weight back toward the rest of the squad.

He saw that Wilkes was struggling with another of the dead Germans, with Patel trying desperately to wrench a cold blue hand from Wilkes’ left arm. Sergeant Hynd had obviously seen how Banks dealt with the German officer. The sergeant stepped up and put three rounds into the German’s ear. The body fell to the floor like a sack of cold rocks.

The ranks of the dead took another step toward them, stepping up to stand just behind where the dead Oberst lay on the ground.

“Fall back,” Banks shouted again, and this time, the squad was all able to comply. Cally and Parker took charge of Hughes and dragged him away while Banks, Wiggins, and Hynd covered Wilkes and Patel. Wilkes looked pale and pained, but was able to walk, and brushed away Patel’s helping hand.

“Stop being a bloody auld woman,” he said. “I’m fine.”

Banks checked the corridor as they backed away toward the hangar.

The cold dead stood still and unmoving behind the two toppled bodies on the ground. The oberst twitched, twice, then, as if doing a press-up, pushed himself up off the floor. The movements were slow and stiff, almost stylized, but ten seconds later, the officer was standing upright at the front of the ranks of the dead.

Banks knew that the oberst had been shot in the left eye — he’d seen the crater for himself. But when the officer looked up and stared along the corridor, it was with two pale, milky eyes, each as round and iced over as the other. *

The squad backed away fast toward the hangar. When they reached the double door and went through, Wiggins moved to close the doors behind them.

“No, leave it. I want to see those bastards coming,” Banks said. “Leave the doors open, but barricade the entrance with tables, chairs, whatever you can find lying around here. It’s deep into injury time and we’re one-nil down, lads. We make our stand here, or not at all.”

“You heard the captain,” Hynd shouted. “Arseholes and elbows, get a fucking move on.”

Wiggins, Parker, and McCally moved quickly to drag tables over and overturn them in the doorway, stacked such that they blocked the entrance up to almost head height, and were jammed tight between the walls of the tunnel just in front of the doorway, holding the doors open.

McCally put his shoulder against the barricade, testing its strength. It didn’t give, and he turned to give Banks an okay sign with thumb and forefinger. Banks stepped forward and looked over. He had a clear view down the length of the corridor. Far down in the shadows, almost at the limit of what he could make out in the dark, the ranks of dead Germans still stood where they had left them, the tall oberstleutnant at their front. As yet, they showed no inclination to come any closer.

Banks called McCally, Wiggins, and Parker over.

“You three are up first. Keep an eye on the buggers, Cally. If they so much as twitch, shout.”

“Twitch? They’re already fucking dead, Cap,” Wiggins replied. “How the fuck are they up and moving?”

Banks knew they all had questions — he had plenty of his own, but he had no answers to give them, and turned away to see to Hughes, fearing the worst. Hynd was bent over the fallen man and turned at Banks’ approach. He shook his head and confirmed what Banks already knew.

“He was gone as soon as that fucker broke his neck,” the sarge said.

“Poor sod,” Banks replied. “No more, do you hear me, Sarge? One down is one too many.”

Hynd nodded, and Banks helped him drag Hughes’ body over to rest sitting upright against the wall near the door. Banks closed the private’s eyes before turning away, relieved in a way to see that there had been a dead stare looking back at him, and not a pair of milky marbles.

“We should maybe watch him,” Hynd said, keeping his voice low so that the three at the doorway wouldn’t hear him. Patel, who was helping Wilkes out of his jacket and flack vest, heard it clear enough though, and let out a harsh laugh.

“He’s hardly going to get up and walk, is he?” he said.

Hynd replied first.

“That’s exactly what I’m worried about, lad. You saw those fuckers out in the corridor, and you know they were dead fuckers themselves when we saw them earlier. So, we watch Hughes, and we watch him close, until we’re sure.”

Patel looked like he might reply, then looked like Banks felt, that there were no words, no questions that made any kind of sense here. All chat stalled as Wilkes finally got stripped off enough that they saw what had happened to his arm. A black handprint, as livid as any tattoo, curled around his biceps. When Banks moved closer, he saw that the skin itself was dead and crisp, as if it had been burned rather than frozen. Wilkes winced as he flexed the arm, all color draining from his face, and livid red cracks appeared in the wound, like volcanic fissures in a lava field.

“Don’t do that, lad,” Banks said. “You’re not helping. Let Patel get you bandaged up. We’re going to need you and your gun at the barricade.”

“It hurts like a fucking burn, Cap,” Wilkes said. “Here’s a wee tip for all of you. Don’t let one of these buggers near you.”

Hynd answered first again.

“Aye, we get that. And you saw how Cap here put the officer down. Don’t let them touch you, but get close enough to plug them in the noggin. That seems to be the only way to stop them.”

“Stop them? Did we do that, Sarge? Are they stopped?” Patel asked. This time, it was Hynd who didn’t have the answers.

Banks left Patel and the sarge to tend to Wilkes’ wound. He checked with McCally and got a shake of the head in reply — all was still quiet in the corridor. He reluctantly turned his attention to the thing he’d been trying to avoid ever since they’d returned to the hangar — the impossible saucer at their backs, silently hovering six inches off the floor. It looked like he could step over and push it with a finger to get it moving, but although he didn’t know much, he knew that would be a spectacularly bad idea in a day full of plenty of bad ideas already.

He didn’t move too close to the saucer. There was too much heat radiating from the glowing golden lines on the floor for one thing, and, for another thing, he felt the tug of the dark places between the stars, felt the call of that strange hypnotic dance that had taken him under its spell. It was seductive, far too much so. He’d lost one man here already, and if he gave in to the needs of the saucer, he was liable to lose even more, if not them all.

The gold of the circles reflected in the almost mirror-like sheen of the saucer’s metal, the glow seeming to radiate outward, threatening to spill out of the circles and wash across the hangar. They’d obviously started something by entering the thing in the first place, and Banks wasn’t at all sure he wanted to know what ending he was being led to.

Almost reluctantly, he dragged his gaze away. The things in the corridor were his prime concern at the moment, and how to best protect his squad from the menace. He had no idea how the dead had managed to avoid the squad’s detention or where they’d been hiding after their disappearance, or how they were even up and walking, given that they were clearly fucking dead. Too many questions, and no answers.

But they’re here now. And that’s all I’ve got to go on.

The relief mission would be here, experts, and sooner rather than later, or so he hoped. His only job now was to keep his squad alive long enough for them to be rescued. But when he turned away from the saucer, it was with a touch of regret. The dance in the dark was still there, still waiting.

And a part of him wanted to dance with it.