Red Devils

1

SS-Obergruppenführer Jakob Wolfensohn marched along the narrow corridor towards the dead heart of the extermination camp, his entourage following nervously in his wake, chasing after the tails of his leather greatcoat. SS-Unterscharführer Ruprecht Weigle’s heart raced as he brought up the rear. The noise of marching jackboots was deafening, amplified out of all proportion by the close confines of the grey stone castle walls. Weigle’s nervousness was such that he thought he might pass out, but he didn’t dare. He could not picture a more intimidating place to be, nor a more intimidating commander to be escorting.

Weigle was not alone in his unease. This cold, oppressive, hate and death-fuelled place instilled fear in even the blackest Nazi heart. Wolfensohn’s aggression and clinical hostility was renowned throughout the Reich, and yet even his pulse quickened as they neared the experimentation room.

They were all waiting for him, as ordered. Wolfensohn could see the nervousness in their faces; the way their eyes followed his every move, and how they almost competed with each other to be the first to salute and ‘Seig Heil!’. He strode to the front of the room and sat in an empty chair, facing the wall. The grey concrete was pockmarked. Blood stains and splatters. There were tide marks on the floor.

Obersturmbannführer Scherler, chief of the camp and an odious little wretch in Wolfensohn’s opinion, sat down beside him. ‘I think you will be pleased by our progress, Herr Obergruppenführer,’ he said.

‘I hope for your sake you are right, Scherler. The Führer grows tired of your excuses.’

Scherler squirmed, his mouth dry. He knew what was at stake here, and he also knew he was running out of chances. He was relieved when an inconspicuous-looking door opened and Untersturmführer Honigsman entered and saluted. Behind Honigsman, two civilian scientists followed. After them were two stormtroopers, one of whom dragged a prisoner behind him: a pitifully weak-looking man with a hollowed-out chest, patchy hair, and limbs which looked like skin-wrapped bones, devoid of all muscle and strength. Wolfensohn regarded the prisoner with a mix of curiosity and disdain. His disdain extended to the scientists also. ‘I have little time for these people. It’s soldiers like us who will win this war, not ineffective underlings such as this.’

One of the scientists approached. The taller of the two, this was Professor Anton Eisen, a biologist from Berlin. ‘With respect, Herr Obergruppenführer, the serum we have developed will make your soldiers more powerful than you could imagine. We will—’

‘Quiet!’ Scherler bellowed, jumping to his feet. ‘You will not address the Obergruppenführer directly. Is that understood?’

Professor Eisen nodded meekly and backed away.

The stormtroopers shackled the prisoner to the wall, though the man had such little fight remaining that any one of the Nazis would have easily been able to deal with him on their own. He made no attempt to resist, all energy gone. His fate had been sealed the moment he’d arrived at Polonezköy, he’d known it all along. It wasn’t a matter of if he died here, it was a question of when. He looked at the boots of the Nazis watching him – not daring to look directly into their faces – and hoped it would be soon.

Wolfensohn was growing impatient. The two scientists were busying themselves around a rickety wooden table with no apparent sense of urgency. ‘Schnell!’ he yelled, filling the room with noise. ‘My time is being wasted here.’

Professor Eisen looked at Obersturmbannführer Scherler for permission to begin. Scherler nodded, and Eisen cleared his throat. ‘With apologies. We are ready now.’

Eisen may have been ready, but his colleague clearly wasn’t. He continued preparing phials and syringes.

Eisen cleared his throat. ‘Doctor Månsson, it is time.’

Månsson looked up, but would not be hurried. ‘This process requires great care. If the agent was to be let loose in this confined space, we would all bare witness to its incredible power first-hand.’

‘Show me your research now, Doctor Månsson, or it is my power you will see first hand,’ Wolfensohn warned. ‘I’ll warrant that whatever you have in your damn test tubes is no match for me.’

Månsson almost took the bait, but resisted. Like the prisoner of war shackled to the wall next to him, he too knew his fate was sealed. Yet Månsson had no desire to die just yet.

Wolfensohn turned to Scherler again. ‘Is the involvement of this pathetic Swede really necessary? I’ve little time for the Swedish. They flip-flop between us and the enemy like miserable cowards.’

‘Quite, Herr Obergruppenführer, however Doctor Månsson is an expert in his field. I think you will be impressed.’

The stormtroopers moved to either side of the room now, leaving the prisoner alone and exposed. He wore only a pair of loose-fitting trousers and an equally baggy over-shirt which was torn and hung open, exposing his painfully thin torso and protruding ribs. One of Wolfensohn’s entourage took a photograph, and the flash startled the prisoner as if it had been a gunshot. In his mind he imagined the picture being placed alongside a family photograph he’d had taken several years ago. He had a flickering, fleeting memory of the man he used to be: proud and strong, hard-working, a good father and a loving husband. That man was gone now. All self-worth lost forever. Broken. Bare feet on concrete. Mouth full of ulcers. Muscles full of pain. Piss and blood stains. Hopelessness.

Professor Eisen jabbed a needle into his upper arm, and the prisoner prayed it would bring the blessed relief he craved. The edges of his vision quickly lost focus, and the world became black momentarily. He felt his legs buckle, but he did not feel the fall. Still strung up, little more than a skeleton wrapped in rags, he juddered, twitched and shook, and then was still. Blood-tinged spittle dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

Wolfensohn was not impressed, and wasted no time in letting his displeasure be known. ‘Pathetic,’ he shouted angrily. ‘You bring me all this way, and for what?’ He stood up and drew his pistol, pointing it at Eisen then Månsson in quick succession. Eisen cowered, Månsson did not. ‘I already know how to kill, you imbeciles.’

‘Wait, Herr Obergruppenführer, please,’ Eisen said meekly, but Wolfensohn was incensed. He kicked the prisoner’s outstretched leg, then emptied several rounds from his Walther P38 into the dead man’s chest.

Wolfensohn turned his weapon on Scherler. ‘You promised me progress,’ he bellowed. ‘You said these men had created something which would ensure victory.’

‘And they have, Herr Obergruppenführer, look.’

Scherler pointed at the prisoner. Wolfensohn took a step back with surprise. The dead man’s hands were twitching in his shackles. His body was broken and his torso filled with lead but, incredibly, he appeared to still be alive. His movements were initially slow and laboured, but regained strength and purpose with each passing second. Soon he was standing completely upright, face-to-face with the stunned SS officer.

‘I suggest you move a little further away, Herr Obergruppenführer,’ suggested Professor Eisen.

‘What? You expect me to give ground to this miserable—’

His words were abruptly truncated when the prisoner launched himself forward with astonishing violence and fury. So violent was his attack that one of his shoulders was dislocated, wrenched from its socket, and yet he appeared oblivious to any pain. Wolfensohn staggered back with surprise, knocking into chairs and almost losing his balance. The prisoner craned and strained to get free, clawing at the air, desperate to get at him.

‘This is… impossible,’ Wolfensohn said. ‘How can this be?’

‘With respect, Herr Obergruppenführer,’ Eisen said, ‘the science is rather too complex to explain. Suffice to say, Månsson and I have between us developed a method to defer death …to imbue the dead with the control of the living.’

‘It’s a relatively simple process, actually,’ Månsson began to explain. ‘One just has to identify the chemical compounds responsible for—’

Scherler silenced him with a wave of his hand.

Wolfensohn approached the captive man again, edging nearer, but ensuring he remained just out of reach. ‘The implications are vast… incalculable. The Führer will be pleased. This discovery of ours will alter the course of the war.’ He edged closer still, as if taunting the reanimated corpse, teasing it. The dead man duly reacted, pulling hard against his shackles. A prisoner showing such fearless dissent when facing a senior SS officer – it was unheard of.

‘An undefeatable army,’ Wolfensohn mused. ‘A soldier who cannot be killed because he is already dead, a warrior who acts without fear or hesitation… the enemy will have no answer to an unstoppable force such as this.’

‘It is more than that, Herr Obergruppenführer,’ Eisen said. ‘Witness the full change in our subject’s character. Just a few minutes ago, this man barely had the strength to hold up his own head. Now look at his fury. Look at his anger. His hatred.’

Wolfensohn glanced back at the rest of the room. Some of his underlings were nodding and agreeing obediently. Others seemed quite unable to process everything they were witnessing.

In the brief moment Wolfensohn was distracted, the dead man lunged again. This part of Polonezköy was dilapidated and rarely used, and the unnatural strength of the corpse was sufficient to yank several rusted screws from the plaster and brick wall. A few extra inches of reach was enough, and the emaciated cadaver grabbed hold of Wolfensohn. The two of them stumbled down to the ground together. The SS officer was caught off-guard, but fortunately the prisoner was yanked back by the one arm still chained to the wall. The dead man’s teeth snapped inches from Wolfensohn’s face, spraying blood-tinged spittle. The Nazi forced one leather-gloved hand up and gripped tight the crazed creature’s painfully thin neck. He hefted the body up and away, helped by SS-Unterscharführer Ruprecht Weigle who happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. All Weigle wanted to do was run, but the consequences of failing to help the Obergruppenführer did not bear thinking about.

Scherler tried to help Wolfensohn up, but the senior officer brushed him away and used an upturned chair for support instead. He stood upright and cursed the state of his once-impeccable uniform, now drenched with the dead prisoner’s rancid blood.

‘The tenacity of this monster is remarkable,’ Wolfensohn said. Even now the damn creature was still struggling, still fighting to escape its bonds.

Professor Eisen crept forward again. ‘Do you understand now, Herr Obergruppenführer? We can create a race of super-soldiers which are impervious to pain and which want nothing more than to kill.’

Wolfensohn, his composure returning, pointed at SS-Unterscharführer Weigle. ‘I want to see you fight that creature. One on one.’

‘But sir…’

Wolfensohn was in no mood for dissent. He glared at one of the stormtroopers who’d chained the prisoner to the wall. ‘Remove his chains,’ he ordered, ‘and the rest of you keep back. I want to gauge the ability of Professor Eisen’s creation.’

Without hesitation, a bubble of space formed around SS-Unterscharführer Weigle. The shackles were removed, and the prisoner came straight at him. Weigle side-stepped, and the dead man flew into the space where the young Nazi had just been, then kept going and collided with the wall. His head left a bloody mark on the grubby plaster, but his injury seemed not to bother him in the slightest as he turned around on leaden feet and fixed Weigle in his sights again.

Weigle had a new-found confidence now. Buoyed up by his opponent’s slothful reactions, he wondered whether this was as dangerous a situation as he’d originally thought. The dead prisoner came at him a second time and, once again, he was able to slip out of the way.

‘I ordered you to fight the prisoner, not dance with him.’

Nervous laughter echoed around the room in response to Wolfensohn’s jibe, but Weigle wasn’t laughing. He had his rifle ready now, and as the dead man came at him for a third time, he opened fire.

It was the prisoner’s speed which caught him off-guard. Although he blasted the man’s pelvis and one knee, and hit him in the neck and once more in the chest, the drug-fuelled monstrosity had enough forward momentum to keep coming through the gunfire. The prisoner grabbed hold of Weigle, gripped his tunic tight, then pulled himself close enough to sink his yellowed teeth into the unterscharführer’s neck. Blood poured from the vicious wound and the Nazi dropped to the ground, buried under the dead man’s relentless attacks.

With a casual nonchalance, Wolfenson grabbed the prisoner by the scruff of his neck and lifted him up. He continued to twist and writhe, but the Nazi’s strength was sufficient to keep snapping jaws at bay. He raised his Walther again, held it to the dead man’s temple, and blew a hole in his head. He immediately became limp – as if a switch had been flicked – and the Obergruppenführer dropped him and wiped his bloody hands. ‘Most interesting…’ he said as he paced the room. Scherler and Professor Eisen followed close behind, scurrying after him nervously. He stopped. ‘There is some potential here.’

‘Forgive me, Herr Obergruppenführer,’ the professor said, sounding nervous yet excited, ‘but there is more than just potential. Our work will change the direction of the war.’

The Nazi turned to face the professor who visibly cowered. Despite being several inches shorter than the willowy scientist, his aggression, rank and physical strength was clearly intimidating.

‘Professor Eisen, may I remind you that almost the entire world is presently at war. May I also remind you that there are many directions on a compass.’

‘I do not follow…’

‘A change of direction is one thing, but do not allow your parlour games, as impressive as they may be, to give you a false sense of security. The direction we take must be the direction the Führer wishes us to take. We must not be hasty and choose the wrong option.’

‘But Herr Obergruppenführer—’

‘This serum you have developed,’ Wolfensohn continued, ‘it has potential, but I also foresee risks. We must maintain control.’

‘Herr Obergruppenführer, I can assure you that we will have full control of—’

Wolfensohn roughly shoved Eisen to one side and fired his pistol directly into the pallid face of dead Unterscharführer Weigle who was now back up, coming at them on unsteady feet, a hair’s breadth from attacking the professor. Wolfensohn’s aim was dead-on and the back of Weigle’s head exploded crimson against the grey plaster wall.

‘Professor Eisen, I do not believe you can assure me of anything just yet. I have seen enough to appreciate the potential of this development, but potential alone will not win us the war. You will leave with us for Berlin tonight and continue your work there.’

‘Of course, Herr Obergruppenführer, but I have all I need here. Månsson and I have adequate facilities and all the bodies we need for experimentation. Please allow me to remain here…’

Eisen stopped talking, because it was clear that Wolfensohn wasn’t listening. He’d turned his back and was already on his way out of Polonezköy.