Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon

CHAPTER NINETEEN

2014 GMT, 24th November 1987

Barrow-in-Furness Bus Depot, North-West England

GULAG APPEARED FROM behind the back door of the Saracen and wrapped his piano-wire garrotte around the neck of one of the SS soldiers. He dragged him backwards, clearing the Fräulein’s field of fire to cover the driver. Vadim and Princess covered the last two soldiers. They’d left Skull to catch up.

“On your knees,” Vadim ordered the men as Princess disarmed them and took their ammunition. Gulag’s victim was drooling blood as the Muscovite started sawing through the neck. The SS soldiers ignored Vadim to stare at their friend’s murder.

“Now!” Vadim snapped and they went down on their knees.

“Out!” the Fräulein snapped at the driver, dragging him out and pushing him onto his knees next to the other two.

“Watch,” Gulag whispered in English to the three prisoners; the Fräulein had taught him the word at his request. He let the soldier slide to the ground, before putting his boot on the back of the soldier’s head and sawing faster. The SS men watched in horror.

“Please,” one of them whispered. He spoke with a British accent.

“It’s the spinal cord that’s the most trouble,” Gulag muttered in Russian. Vadim gritted his teeth. Even he didn’t like the sound.

The Saracen hadn’t been difficult to track through the black snow, even stopping at a hardware store en route for Gulag. By now they had worked out that they were in Barrow-in-Furness. Vadim was sure he’d heard the name before, from a list of sabotage targets; he was sure the shipyards built military vessels.

It had been a short journey further north through the town to a large depot housing the local bus fleet. The SS men had hurried in before attracting too much attention from the dead. It hadn’t been difficult for Vadim, Gulag, Princess and the Fräulein to find their own way in, and Skull would have no problems following them.

Gulag’s man’s head fell off.

“No!” one of the soldiers cried out. Another soiled himself. The third man’s hand shot to his mouth, tears in his eyes. Gulag let the dripping garrotte hang from his hand.

“Tell them it’s harder than it looks,” Gulag said in Russian.

“As members of the SS, I won’t insult your integrity by assuming you’ll talk after such a display. You are, after all, the Master Race,” Vadim told them and nodded to Gulag. The Muscovite made a show of cleaning the garrotte, coiling it and putting it away. He took the hammer out of his webbing and one of the nine-inch nails from a pouch, then tipped the helmet off the crying SS man, the driver. He was a nondescript man, balding a little, with glasses. He looked soft, more like a bureaucrat than a soldier. He reminded Vadim a little of the photographs he’d seen of Himmler.

The man started begging.

“Shh, dignity,” Gulag admonished in Russian. He tired to hold a nail to the man’s head, but the man threw up, fortunately – for him – missing Gulag.

“What do you want? Please, just tell me what you want,” he begged. Vadim held a hand up to forestall Gulag.

“Who are you people?” Vadim asked.

“My name’s Bernie, Bernie Andrews. I own – I owned a garden centre,” he whimpered. Vadim wasn’t entirely sure what a garden centre was, but it wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

“You’re English, correct?” Vadim asked. The man nodded. “Why are you dressed like that?”

“We’re re-enactors,” he said, as though that explained everything. Vadim looked at him blankly. “We dress up as soldiers from the past and re-enact their battles.”

“Why?” Vadim asked, mystified. Bernie stared at him.

“Y’know, history.”

Vadim did not know.

“And they give you real weapons for this?” the Fräulein asked. “Live ammunition.”

“Well, no, but some of the guys… we meet dealers and other enthusiasts, so we’ve amassed quite a collection.”

“The tanks?” Vadim asked.

“Just the MGs, the main guns aren’t functioning; that’d be insane.”

“Yes. Yes, it would,” Vadim muttered. “You bought the tanks?”

The man nodded again.

“For playacting?”

“To learn about history, by recreating parts of it.”

“The worst parts of it,” the Fräulein muttered.

“Why the SS?” Vadim asked, still not sure he understood what was happening. If members of a society could afford to equip themselves with military equipment for fun, then that society had to be pretty decadent.

Bernie shrugged. “They’re interesting,” he said.

“What’s happening?” Gulag asked in Russian.

“They dress up like this for fun,” Princess told him. Gulag looked confused.

“So you’re not Nazis, then?” the Fräulein asked suspiciously.

“Of course not, that would be terrible.”

“Where are the people you took prisoner on the beach?” Vadim demanded. There was a quiet tapping on the side door that they’d snuck in through. Gulag strolled over towards it.

“We didn’t take them prisoner, we rescued them from the dead,” the man said. One of the other prisoners, the one who hadn’t soiled himself, shot a glance at the balding man. He looked younger, harder; he was bigger built and was frightened, but not frightened enough.

“Why’d you beat the police officer who was with us?” Princess asked. “And shoot at me?”

“I wasn’t there,” Bernie told her. Princess didn’t look happy with the explanation. Gulag opened the side door and let Skull in. They walked back towards the prisoners with Gulag trying to explain the situation to the sniper.

“So you’re just looking after them, then?” Vadim asked.

“Well, it’s complicated, isn’t it? I mean everything’s changed. Somebody’s got to be in charge.”

“Shut up!” the younger one snapped.

“If you don’t keep talking, he” – Vadim gestured towards Gulag – “will drive a nail through your skull, and get the answers we need from him.” He pointed at the one who’d soiled himself.

“You want them as slaves, don’t you?” the Fräulein said. Vadim hadn’t quite got there himself yet, but the answer was written all over Bernie’s face.

“It’s not that simple—” he started.

“Don’t say another word, you fucking traitor!” the young one shouted. Vadim nodded at Gulag, who knocked the younger one’s helmet off. His head was shaved. It was a struggle for the Muscovite to hold him still, but eventually Vadim heard the all-too-familiar crack of nail through bone. The two remaining prisoners were screaming and crying.

“Shut up, or you get the same,” Vadim hissed, wondering how many zombies would be attracted by their noise.

Gulag knelt and rolled up the sleeves of the dead man’s camouflage tunic. “Boss,” he said.

Vadim looked down. The shaven-headed boy had Nordic runes and a stylised swastika tattooed on his arm, along with the words Meine Ehre heißt Treue, written in gothic script. It wasn’t often that Gulag looked disgusted.

“Not Nazis?” the Fräulein demanded. She sounded genuinely angry. Bernie held up his hands.

“Okay, look, there are a few nutters in the company; but most of are just ordinary guys with an interest in history!” he protested. Vadim wasn’t sure what a ‘nutter’ was.

“And slavery,” Princess added.

“Look, you’re making that sound worse…”

“And your interest in history is still a priority during World War Three?” Vadim asked.

“It’s practical in the circumstances. We were at a show nearby when the bombs started falling.”

“If it was just a few ‘nutters’, then you stand up to them, ask them to leave,” the Fräulein said.

“Have you invaded?” Bernie asked. He sounded eager to change the subject. “Look, we can work with you…”

“Be quiet,” Vadim snapped. He was struggling to control his distaste. It was the tattoos that bothered him the most. Perhaps most of them were just overzealous history buffs; but he couldn’t understand why a citizen of a country that had stood up to the Nazis at the height of their powers had grown up to reject the lessons of history in such a way.

“Where are your families?” the Fräulein asked.

“Many of them were with us at the show,” he told them.

“And the rest?” the Fräulein persisted, and Bernie stared at her. It was the first sign of defiance they’d seen out of him.

“We’re from Essex,” he said. “Y’know, near London.” Vadim presumed London had been a target for nuclear weapons. “We were making our way back there when the dead attacked. One of the guys was in the TA; he said they had a centre, with an armoury and vehicles, on Walney Island. The bridge meant we could isolate it from the mainland.”

“And the people on the island?” the Fräulein asked, disgusted.

“Are still there.”

“As slaves?” Princess asked.

“We’re just organising things.”

That was enough for Vadim. He knelt next to Bernie. “Now, you need to answer these questions, and don’t you dare fucking lie, understand me?” he said.

Bernie nodded, terrified.

“Where is your compound?”

“It’s in Vickerstown, just off the A590—” he started.

“Draw me a map from the bridge,” Vadim demanded. The Fräulein found a piece of cardboard and a pencil. Bernie drew them a map, explaining as he went, obsequiously eager to please.

“Where are our people?” Vadim asked.

“They were in the yard when I saw them. Probably in one of the portacabins along the west wall, or in the assembly hall on the other side of the yard.” Vadim wasn’t happy with the answer, but he was also pretty sure that Bernie was telling the truth.

“How many of you are there?” Vadim asked.

“About a hundred of us,” Bernie told him.

“Defences in the compound?”

“Towers at each corner with machine guns, then a lot of guns and the vehicles.”

“Who’s in charge?” Vadim asked finally. Bernie’s expression changed: part fear, part awe. The other prisoner, the one who’d soiled himself, who was staring down at the concrete floor, started to snivel.

“Hauptsturmführer Kerrican, Steve Kerrican.” Vadim had to strain to hear what the man was saying. “You don’t want to mess with Stevie. He’s a proper psycho.”

“One of the ‘nutters’, then?” the Fräulein asked.

“He was the real deal, he served with 3 Para, Ulster, the Falklands—”

“You just watched my friend here saw one man’s head off and drive a nail into the skull of another,” Vadim pointed out. Bernie looked up at Gulag, who grinned back at him.

Bernie shook his head and looked down. “Look, I’ve told you everything, what are you going to do with us?” he managed. The other prisoner started to sob. Vadim regarded them both with distaste.

“What would your Hauptsturmführer do, I wonder?” he asked.

“Please…” Bernie said.

“We’re going to let you go,” Vadim said finally. Bernie looked up at him, hope in his eyes. Vadim nodded to Gulag and then climbed into the back of the Saracen with Skull, Princess and the Fräulein. Gulag made his way over to the main doors.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Bernie cried. Vadim closed the Saracen’s rear hatch. In short order, the depot’s metal doors ground open.

“You okay, Liesl?” Princess asked the Fräulein. Vadim turned to stare; even Skull looked momentarily surprised. Neither of them had ever heard Princess ask a question like that before. Vadim couldn’t make out if the Fräulein was upset or just very angry. He wondered if it had anything to do with her being German. He himself had thought that the Nazis were the worst monsters that the world had ever seen, at least until he’d come to understand the extent of Stalin’s purges. There were screams from outside, but they were screams of fear for the time being.

“Fools,” the Fräulein muttered before looking over at Vadim. “We’re going to get them, aren’t we? All of them.” He wasn’t sure if she meant kill the fake Nazis or save the refuges. Vadim nodded anyway.

“You seem to be taking this very personally,” Vadim said. Something hit the outside of the Saracen hard enough to make the vehicle rock on its suspension.

“Do you know what my first memory is?” she asked. Vadim, Princess and Skull were all looking at her now. This wasn’t the sort of thing Vadim expected from his second-in-command. The screams of fear outside had turned to howls of pain now. They ignored them.

“I was only three years old, and my insane mother took me to see my father executed. I’m not sure if I actually remember her saying this on the day, but she said it many times afterwards. She wanted me to know whom I had to hate: the bad people who had done this to my father for trying to stand up for his people. Just in case I might forget, she framed a picture of him hanging on the end of a rope. Black and white, artfully done. I saw it every day of my childhood.”

“Your father?” Skull asked.

“He wasn’t even a fighting man. A cowardly Totenkopf SS.”

“Which camp?” Vadim asked.

“Ravensbrück, one of the women’s camps.” She shook her head. “She almost did it as well. Almost turned me. She spun all these lies that she’d convinced herself was the truth. An unrepentant SS widow. I found out, though; found out who my father was, what he’d done. Why he’d been hanged.”

The screams had died down. There was a knock on the Saracen’s armour.

“It’s me,” Gulag said. Vadim opened the rear hatch just long enough for him to climb in. The captain tried to ignore the sound of the dead feeding outside. Gulag sat down and looked around, picking up on the atmosphere.

“What’d I miss?” he asked. They ignored him. The Fräulein was still brooding. Gulag shrugged and inspected the weapons they had taken off the fake SS patrol. “This’ll do.” He picked up an MP-40 submachine gun. Vadim couldn’t help but think it suited him.

VADIM AND PRINCESS had stolen a flat-bottomed dinghy, to present the smallest target. Vadim found himself having serious misgivings about its seaworthiness as they drifted across the channel towards the island. He and Princess were lying down in the dinghy, and there was a deepening puddle of water in the bottom of the small craft.

They had started just north of the heavily fortified area on the opposite bank, which Princess said could be crossed at high tide. They drifted north, occasionally leaning over the side of the boat to guide it with a paddle. The small village just north of the heavily-defended shore was dark, though there was smoke coming from some of the chimneys and candlelight shining through gaps in the curtains. They heard, but didn’t see, a vehicle on the island. Vadim assumed it was one of the motorised patrols Princess had told them about.

There were hands waving in the water, zombies who had become stuck in the mud and left there for high tide. It lent their brief voyage an even more surreal feel.

Vadim and Princess were to make a reconnaissance before the squad made plans. Vadim would have preferred to do this with Skull, but the other sniper simply couldn’t keep up on his leg.

They dragged the dinghy ashore into some nearby trees that bordered an airfield. There was little point in hiding; there were dozens of similar craft moored up and down the channel.

Vadim had left his AK-74 in the Saracen, which they were using as a mobile base; Princess had left her empty AKS-74, and the Dragunov, to preserve what little ammunition she had left, taking instead one of their stolen SLRs.

Vadim and Princess had crept back south, picking their way along the shoreline to the edge of the village.

“What now?” Princess whispered. “Go into a house?” Vadim was concentrating on the village, trying desperately to ignore Princess’s proximity, the vibrancy of her life.

“How much were you taught about the British in your assassination squad?” he asked.

Princess gave the question some thought. “A bit,” she said, “they were a potential target.”

“Where’s the best place to find British people,” he asked, “even after World War Three?”

VADIM FELT THE atmosphere in the pub as soon as he walked through the door, even before the clientele had the chance to work out who and what he was. He could feel the anger in the room, and had seen the bodies hanging from the unlit lampposts outside. The people were frustrated, helpless.

Two men in SS uniforms stood at the bar laughing. Vadim was surprised by his own fury as he laid into the first man with his saperka. The man was screaming. Vadim felt the warm blood splash on his face, and it took every last ounce of self-control he had not to fall on the fake-Nazi and feed. He didn’t even hear Princess shoot the other man in the head with her suppressed pistol.

“Boss,” she said in Russian. His victim was a red mess on the bare wooden floorboards. Drool dripped from Vadim’s mouth. He straightened up and looked around at the room as Princess closed the door behind her and leaned against it. With the burning log fire, he suspected it was the warmest she had been since they’d abandoned the Dietrich.

The pub was small, cramped, bowed and blackened; the modern furniture and fittings looked strangely incongruous. The clientele were mostly middle-aged men clearly used to life working outside. Rough hands ingrained with dirt told Vadim the kind of people he was looking at. They were all staring at him, horrified.

“Fools!” the woman behind the bar spat. “They’ll kill us all.” She was a plump lady, in her mid-sixties or so. Vadim turned to look at her and she took a few steps back. He reached down, removed the weapons and the ammunition from the dead SS men, and placed them on the bar. The room watched, silent.

“My name is Captain Scorlenski—”

“You ’ere ’a finish t’ job?” a red-faced man in his forties demanded. Vadim had to play the sentence back in his head to work out what the man had actually said.

“Everyone thinks we dropped the bombs ourselves,” Princess muttered in Russian. A few faces turned to her.

“I’m here to kill Nazis,” Vadim finished.

“You can’t!” the bar woman cried. There were tears in her eyes.

“We have to do something, Denise!” another man shouted.

“They’ll kill them all!” the bar woman, presumably Denise, protested.

“Kill who?” Vadim asked with a sinking feeling.

“They took all the woman of a certain age, and all the children,” said another man in the corner. He had the same build as many of the people in the pub: reasonably powerful, but running to fat. All of them looked like people who did hard, physical work but enjoyed their food and drink. Vadim guessed he was in his seventies. Something about him made Vadim think that he’d served in the military. He was old enough to have fought in the last war; if so, he couldn’t have been pleased to see two men wearing SS uniform in his local pub. “They said the children were to be indoctrinated. That lunatic they have in charge is calling them the Stevie Jugend, but they’re just hostages.”

“The women?” Princess asked, her voice like ice.

“For their Joy Division,” the old man said. Vadim went cold.

“They’re not from here, are they?” he asked. “Why did you let them across the bridge?” It was out of Vadim’s mouth before he could think. It was just frustration, it wouldn’t help anything.

“’Tweren’t us,” the old man said. “They turned up a few days after the dead came, after we saw the flashes and the fires from Manchester and Liverpool. The way we heard it, they threatened to shell Vickerstown with the tanks, so they lowered the bridge.”

They weren’t to know that the main guns on the tanks weren’t working.

“Why are you telling him anything, Bill?” a short, hatchet-faced man at a different table said. “He’s one of them, look at him.”

“The Russians fought against the Nazis, Sam,” Bill said.

“I don’t mean Russian. He’s dead,” Sam said. There was a collective intake of breath and some shuffling away from Vadim. Princess rolled her eyes.

“Can’t be,” someone else said. “He’s talking, he’s not trying to eat us.”

“He’s not breathing. Look at his colour,” Sam persisted. Vadim caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror behind the bar. They were right. He didn’t look human anymore.

“Yes, I’m dead,” Vadim said. “But the Nazis have our people. We have a common enemy, that’s all that matters.”

“You people did this!” spat the red-faced man who’d first spoken. “You destroyed our cities, killed millions of people, brought this disease, turned our families – our friends – into cannibals!” He was on his feet, tears in his eyes. The men at his table were reaching up for him. Denise’s hand was over her mouth. It looked as though they expected Vadim to kill him. Vadim took a step towards him, and he held his ground, shaking off his friends’ hands. It was clear he’d had enough.

“My government did this. We had no part in the decision. My squad and I attacked New York, not Britain, but for what little it’s worth, I’m sorry. I wish you and yours no ill will. We’re deserters now, traitors. We just want to see our people safe. Yours too.” The man had tears streaming down his face. Vadim wasn’t sure why he did it but he took the man in his arms and hugged him. There was a moment of resistance and then the man was shaking in his arms, sobs wracking his frame.

Despite the heat of his life, despite the proximity of his flesh and the reek of blood from the corpses on the floor, Vadim felt none of his usual urges. He was just another sentient creature in pain. Pain inflicted on him by circumstances beyond his control, and compounded by petty, thuggish evil. Perhaps Gulag’s vision of the world was right.

But if it were – if the new world belonged to warlords like this Steven Kerrican – then he may as well go down fighting.

“They took my daughter,” the man sobbed. Vadim had nothing to say that would comfort him. They would try to get his daughter back – try to get everyone back – but they would be firing military weapons in a compound filled with civilians. It was a fight that had to be fought, but he wasn’t going to make promises. He let the man go.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Roddy,” the red-face man told him. He sniffed and wiped away his tears, and then nodded almost apologetically to Vadim. There was nothing more to say, but somehow the two of them had come to an understanding.

“New York was you?” Bill asked from the corner.

Vadim suspected the question had been asked just to break the awkward silence. He nodded.

“We saw there had been terrorist attacks all over the US. Here as well. Greenham Common, Holy Loch, Faslane.”

“That was people like us,” Vadim told them. He wondered if it made any difference to explain that the virus wasn’t supposed to have been used in Europe. He couldn’t see how. If anything, it might make things worse.

“Any idea where the closest Soviet forces are?” Princess asked.

People shook their heads.

“We haven’t seen any round here,” Sam told her.

“A few of the zombies wear your uniforms,” Bill added. “But that’s all. We heard rumours that you’d invaded, but the telly went off shortly after the bombs fell.”

For a moment, the futility of it all struck Vadim. Even if they managed to get the women and children out, it was only so they could die of radiation sickness or cancer from the fallout. This was assuming they didn’t freeze or starve to death, or die of disease. You have to keep fighting, he thought. He wasn’t sure why.

“We need you to tell us as much as you can about this Territorial Army compound, anything at all, but especially where the hostages are.”

“No!” Denise cried from behind the bar. “You should be ashamed of yourselves! My Barbara is in the compound, so are her two little ones! You can’t send people like that in there! They’ll get them all killed!” She had tears running down her cheeks as well.

“They won’t stop, Denise,” Bill said, looking down at his pint. “They’ve had a taste of power. They’ll fill the holes inside of them by hurting your Barbara, and Davie, and the tyke.” He nodded down at the Nazis bleeding onto the bare floorboards. “I saw people like that in the camps in Burma. Doesn’t matter if they’re Japanese, German, their lot” – he nodded at Vadim – “or English; by the time they get to this point, all you can do is put them down like a dog gone wrong.” He looked straight at the barmaid. “Now you won’t like this, Denise, but there’ll come a time that they’ve done so much damage Barbara and the children would be better off dead.”

Denise tried to stifle a sob. “But you came back, Bill,” she said through the tears.

He looked down, studying his pint again.

“It was a close-run thing, love. A lot of my friends died, too many by their own hand, and I very nearly became the worst kind of man. If it hadn’t been for my Edna…” Another old man put a hand on Bill’s shoulder, and he looked up and nodded in acknowledgement and thanks. “These dress-up Nazis, they just can’t just let folk be folk.” And then to Vadim: “Like your lot.” Vadim wasn’t sure he disagreed.

“We can’t trust them,” Sam said, glaring at Vadim and Princess.

“You hate them?” Bill said to Vadim, gesturing towards the two fake SS men.

“I grew up in Stalingrad,” Vadim told him.

Bill crossed his arms and turned to Sam. “Good enough for me,” he said.

“They’re not just in the barracks,” Denise said. “The ones with families took over the nicest houses in Vickerstown.”

“Do you know which houses?” Princess asked.

“We can find out,” Roddy said.

“Do you have any weapons?” Vadim asked.

“What little we had was mostly confiscated, but there are probably a few bits and pieces still lying around. Those’ll help,” Bill said, nodding towards the MP-40 and the two pistols on the bar that Vadim had taken from the bodies.

“Can you clear the ones out in the town and we’ll do the compound?” Vadim asked. Bill thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Why were you drinking with them?” Princess suddenly asked. Almost everyone turned to look at her.

“They came here to look after me, love,” Denise told her. Princess didn’t seem entirely happy with the answer, but she didn’t say anything else.

“You realise, if it gets out what we’re trying to do, it’s all over?” Vadim told them.

“We’ll only get people we can trust involved. Nobody’ll tell ’em owt,” Bill assured him, to much mumbled agreement in the pub. Vadim wasn’t sure what had just been said to him, but it seemed to mean they wouldn’t share information with the enemy.

“Okay, tell me what you know, and be sure you get where the hostages are being held right,” he told them. And then to Princess: “And then you’re going back for the rest.”

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To meet with der Führer.”