Red Devils

29

The dead seemed to come at Wilkins and Steele like a tsunami of rotting flesh. ‘No need for quiet anymore, eh Lieutenant?’ Steele said, and he ran headlong into the crowd, firing shot after shot at the foul cadavers. It was impossible to spot the little girl in the madness out here, and equally impossible to stop and search for her.

‘Split and find her,’ Wilkins ordered, shouting after him. ‘Holler when you have her. Remember the whole world depends on us.’

He too ran into the chaos, doing everything he could to ignore the searing pain in his left shoulder and still hold onto his pistol with his good right hand. He chose each shot with as much care as he could, knowing that once this round was spent, he wouldn’t have time to reload.

Steele headed for the area where he thought he’d last seen the girl. There was just a forest of sickly cadavers here now, balancing on spindly legs, all of them pivoting awkwardly when they heard him, starting to move in his direction. He dove through them, battering some away with his rifle and shooting others, feeling like he was about to drown in this rotting tide.

And then he thought he saw her.

Nothing, just more bodies. Had he been mistaken?

He shot a foetid Nazi between the eyes, and when the hideous creature dropped, he saw clear space behind.

There she was!

He could see her intermittently between the ghouls which still surged towards him. They were coming at him with ever increasing speed and ferocity, not giving up and not letting him pass. One caught his jacket, another the strap of his rifle, a third clung onto his leg… but Steele kept moving because he could definitely see her now, almost touch her…

One last push…

He broke through and grabbed the girl’s hand, and as soon as he had hold of her it was as if he had become invisible to the diseased masses. They turned away and he moved among them without fear. Impervious. And as for the girl beside him – she was the strangest creature. Pallid skin, ice-cold to the touch… anyone would think she was dead. It occurred to him that she most likely was, and it took all the inner strength he could muster not to let go of her tiny hand.

‘I’ve got her, Lieutenant,’ he shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the engines of the Douglas aircraft which swept down low over the camp on its way to the airfield.

Less than ten minutes remaining.

Captain Woody Rickman couldn’t believe the chaos on the ground below him. ‘You seeing this, Garfunkle?’

‘Yeah, I see it,’ his co-pilot replied.

From the air, Polonezköy looked like it was imploding. Palls of dirty grey smoke rose up from several unchecked fires. The guards had clearly lost control, because the prisoners were unrestrained. They were fighting with each other to get out through an ugly breach in the outer fence. And there were bodies everywhere; the grubby grey courtyard was awash with blood.

Rickman guided the Douglas out towards the airfield. On the ground below he could see a constant stream of prisoners making their way in the same direction they were heading. ‘Jeez, they’d better have that landing strip clear, otherwise we ain’t putting down.’

‘It’ll be clear. Captain Hunter’s a good man. He’ll have the job done.’

Rickman pointed down. ‘It’s not him I’m worried about, it’s them. Even if we get down, chances are we’re going to struggle to get back up again. What’s the betting all those people are going to want a ride out of this place.’

‘Well we ain’t taking none of them,’ Garfunkle said, indignant. ‘Wasn’t our brief.’

‘I know that and you know that, Garfunkle, but try telling them.’