The Aeschylus

1

The cry echoing across the landscape stopped Harald cold. There had been an explosion, and then… then a vast and terrible shriek unlike anything he had ever heard.

“Let me go!” Lucja screamed. He still had a hold of her hair.

“Shut up.”

He looked beyond the girl to the vast expanse of the pit. The explosion had been behind them, but the cry — that horrible, shrieking sound — that had come from crater. His mind flashed upon the instant when Richter had lowered his prisoner into the darkness, and how when he pulled the rope back, there was nothing there. The pit had claimed him as a sacrifice, but sacrifice or not, whatever unholy gods lay at the bottom were no longer satisfied.

As he peered over the edge, he saw something move. The shape that came crawling up looked like an abstraction of man rather than a man itself, as if it had been splattered onto canvas with a broken pen. He watched as it worked its way up the incline, its fingernails breaking against the crater's face. When Lucja saw it, she stopped struggling, her mouth agape.

Harald shot the figure in the head, and when it didn't fall, he shot it again. He emptied his clip, watching the thing stumble backwards and topple over the edge from whence it had come.

When it was gone, the girl struck him. “Bastard! Let me go!”

Doing his best to ignore her, he ejected the clip from his pistol and searched his jacket for another. With Lucja yanking on him, he couldn't seem to find one. Or maybe in the struggle, it had fallen out.

Had he ever thought she was pretty? By God, she looked like a mad woman.

Harald brought the butt of his gun down upon her head, and she stopped struggling, her face slackening in bovine anguish. Then, her eyes cleared, and she was clawing at him again. She yanked against his hand, threatening to rip her own hair out to be free. Months of meager rations were no match for Harald's well-fed muscles though, and he held her fast.

“Stop it.”

“Let me go!”

“First, you will stop thrashing like a fool. You are mine, do you hear me? You will stay with me.”

“Let me go!”

He thought about calling her a Judas, a terrible inbred traitor, but he didn't. Instead, he simply said, “No.”

And then, she started to cry. Large, angry tears welling up in those hazel eyes. Those mongrel's eyes.

Harald used his gun to raise her chin. “I told you to stop it.” He hoped to see some kind of shame in that face, some kind of regret, but he didn't. He saw only rage.

“Help me!” she called up the hill. “I'm down here! Somebody help me!”

Following her gaze, he saw the motorcycle parked up the main path. Its rider was somewhere close.

“Hello up there!” he called. “We have a prisoner trying to escape!” When he got no reply, he pulled the girl towards it.

They were halfway there when he stepped into a rut and lost his balance. Lucja tried to pull away but succeeded only in pulling him down on top of her. They fell in a heap, the back of her head striking the ground. He tried to pull her up, but she was dazed. Was it a trick? He wouldn't have believed her capable of such a thing the day before, but Richter would have warned him better. If he hadn't been so alone, if he hadn't been so weakened by the loss of Mieke, maybe he could have seen it.

The girl went to bite Harald's hand, but her strength gave out, and the hand dropped to her breast. He wondered if, on a subconscious level, this was what she wanted. She had been away from home for months now, and that was good time spent away from all the schoolboys she could have been tempting with her filthy, sideways cunny.

“Is this what you want?” he asked, mashing her nipple. “Is it?”

She cried out, another fake tear dribbling down her cheek.

He squeezed again, and she cried harder. It was cold out here, but her breath was hot. The space between her legs was hot. He could feel it, even through his leather gloves.

How was this girl, this filthy mongrel of a girl having this effect on him? He could feel his cock jutting into his pants, so stiff it was painful. It was drowning his every sensation, even the fear of what was surely coming from the pit.

He slapped the girl again and felt another dizzying throb, almost losing himself.

“Don't,” she whispered.

Something clunked up by the motorcycle, and it was enough to bring him back to his senses. He pushed himself off of the girl and began searching his coat for the spare magazine again. He found it this time, sighing as he pulled it out and slapped it into the gun. As he turned, Lucja reared back on her hind quarters and kicked him straight in the balls.

“This is for my mother, you sonofabitch!” she screamed. “And for all the things you'd do to me! Do you hear me?”

The blow landed full-force, not even a flinch to break the impact. The pistol went off, kicking up dust next to her head.

A third figure came striding down the incline towards them, its silhouette tall and gangly. The outline of a Luger was visible in the shadow. “You've done enough,” it said. “Get away from her.”

Harald squinted through the darkness. Around him, he could hear hissing and scuttling as more of the creatures began to crawl up from out of the darkness. “She's mine!” he called. “Who are you?”

“Odysseus.” The figure paused a moment, then shot Harald in the leg, just above the knee.

Blood splashed across his hips, and he dropped his pistol, forgetting all about the pain in his crotch.

“Goodbye, Lieutenant.”

The figure offered a hand to the girl, and she took it. Together, they began running up the hill, back towards the bike.

As they reached the crest, Harald tried to push himself to his feet and couldn't. “No!” he yelled. “You won't leave me like this! Come back! Come back you filthy Mongoloid inbreds!”

The sound of the slithering army grew louder. There were more figures like the one Harald shot, a lot more. They were emerging at the corners of his vision, still slimed from the bowels of the earth.

“Come back! Goddamn you!”

He felt something grab his uninjured leg and begin to tug. Thrashing, he spun and searched the ground for his pistol, but it was lost in the dirt. The thing behind him began to tug harder.

No, he thought. I deserve a better end than this!

A terrible gurgling sound emerged from somewhere deep in his throat. He kept yelling as they dragged him all the way down to the edge of the pit and into the blackness beyond.

2

Linus Metzger was dozing on guard duty when the explosion rocketed through the garage doors and tore the tower supports out of the ground beneath him. He had enough time to wonder if he was still asleep — having one of those falling dreams — when the tower smashed into the ground, and he was flung through the inside like a top. His arm collided with the wall (ceiling), and he heard something snap. In his mind, it was almost as loud as the explosion.

He blacked out but came to a moment later when a gunshot echoed somewhere outside the base. Forcing himself to sit up, he took stock of his surroundings. The tower wasn't destroyed, but the top half was overturned, resting sideways on the ground. Linus managed to push himself out through one of the side walls feeling, by all accounts, like the world was crumbling around him. His arm lay bent at the wrong angle, though he felt no pain. He was vaguely aware that his ears were ringing.

When he peered across the landscape, he was greeted by the caliginous terrain, the world beyond the walls disappearing into space. Then, on the horizon, he saw a headlight. That light had to be Eichmann coming back from his patrol of the perimeter. But there was something wrong. It was moving too fast, and… and there was something chasing it.

Feeling his skin grow cold, Linus could see there was not one thing chasing it, but many. The shapes that loped and trundled behind it were vast and terrible. There were so many, they could not be counted. And without having seen the effects of The Carrion, without having known the corpse of Captain Smit, he somehow recognized them for what they were.

They were the damned. They were legion.

With his good hand, Linus grabbed the cross around his neck and prepared for their coming.

3

Ari dusted the detritus out of his hair and picked himself off of the floor. Someone was yelling, and he couldn't figure out who. His first thought was that he needed to wash the dust from his eyes. The second was that he had dropped Richter's gun.

The ceiling had fallen, the wooden rafters collapsed through the middle of the room. He should be able to see the sky above him, but he couldn't. The dust was too thick. The air had a vaguely pungent smell, and he realized the situation was moving from bad to worse. One of the formaldehyde cylinders stood upright, exactly where they had left it, but the other had fallen to the floor. It hadn't burst, but as Ari got closer, he could hear a hissing sound. The thing was leaking.

As the dust began to clear, he saw Frece lying face down beside him. He grabbed him by one arm. “Thomas. Thomas, wake up!”

“Huh?” The man started awake. “What's happened?”

“There's been an explosion.”

“An explosion?” He looked around. “Where's Richter?”

In the tumult, Ari hadn't even thought to check. Panic seized him when he saw the chair was not where it should be, the bound man gone from the center of the room. Then Frece grabbed him and pointed to a spot beneath the rafters. The commander lay crushed under three of the ceiling beams, the wood planted heavily in his stomach. The compression was such that it had broken the chair, the wood and rope strewn about the ground.

“Done for,” Frece said. “Thank God.”

“We have to find Dominik. He was out there when the blast went off.”

“He was out there? Then he's dead, man! We need to get out of here!”

“We are not leaving Dominik! Or Lucja! We're going to find them. We're going to find them, do you hear me?”

Frece looked at him like he was crazy, but Ari didn't care. Dominik and Lucja were his only family now. He'd thought about that a lot over the past month. Wife gone, no children, no reason to keep going, day after day. But they had given him one; he was Uncle Ari now, and he had a purpose.

“We're going after them.”

“With those things out there? There's more of them, more like Smit. Aren't they?”

“I don't know.”

“What do you mean, you don't know?”

“I don't know because I was down here with you, in case you forgot. Now, I'm going up there to look for them. Are you coming?”

Frece seemed to hover. “We need a gun.”

Ari felt a fresh wave of anger, this time at himself. “I dropped it.”

“I saw it, though! It's under the rafters!”

Richter's Walther PPK was lying in the corner beneath the debris. Ari could just make it out through the dust. He coughed again, the smell of the formaldehyde growing stronger. “Leave it. If I stay much longer, I'm going to pass out.”

“I'm not leaving it!”

Before Ari could stop him, Frece dropped to his stomach and began crawling through the wreckage. Ari debated chasing after. The thought of Frece with the gun was all kinds of bad.

The man moved along the ground, climbing over the wrecked pieces of the chair. He passed Richter. And Richter woke up.

The commander came to life with a howl, his arms flailing towards the sky. He was crushed, the lower half of his body pinned, but he sat up just the same.

He grabbed Frece's legs. “Where are you going?”

The other man yelled, trying to kick him off.

Richter's free hand fumbled along the ground, finding a piece of a shattered beaker. He shoved it into Frece's spine, and the blond man yelped, still groping towards the gun.

“You may wear a white man's skin,” Richter said, “but you're a mongrel lover. Aren't you? You just had to interfere.” He slashed him again. “We never”—slash—“should have”—slash—“kept you”—slash—“alive!”

Thomas tried to pull away, but his legs had given up, red soaking through his back. Richter dropped the glass and began to bite the man. In seconds, he was clawing and grabbing and sinking his teeth into the man's neck and head.

The sight finally broke Ari's paralysis. He leapt forward, oblivious to the shape now coming down the stairs behind him.

4

Dominik's first impression was that Richter had been infected with the black fungus, but when he saw the truth, it was somehow worse. Richter had never looked more human in his life. More human, and more monstrous.

The commander wiped his mouth, the body flopping off of him bonelessly. When he looked up, Ari stopped cold.

“So close, isn't it? The desire to be a hero.” Richter pulled himself an arm's length closer to the gun without taking his eyes away. “You should know better by now.”

“What are you doing?” Ari whispered.

“Maybe you should run while you have the chance.”

“I… no…”

Richter pulled himself again. Dominik didn't know how he was doing it. Surely, his insides could be no more than jelly.

“After more than half a century on this miserable planet, I think you should know you're no hero.”

“I know who I am,” Ari said, yet he didn't move. He was mesmerized by the force of that bloody smile.

And then, Dominik realized it was having the same effect on him. He wanted to rush in and kick Richter in the teeth, to stomp him, to break him, but he couldn't. The man was crippled at the waist, and yet Dominik stood paralyzed. He searched for a sign. He looked for something, anything, that could be used as a weapon. His eyes settled on the metal shelf in the corner. All of the beakers had fallen on the floor and broken, all but one. It was resting on the edge, the top plugged tight.

Throwing himself across the room, Dominik grabbed the glass in one quick motion. Richter's eyes darted to him, his face black with hate, but he couldn't stop him. Dominik tossed the glass to the ground, and it shattered. The formaldehyde sprayed out in a whoosh, splashing Richter's face and mouth. It began to vaporize, transforming his head into a bubbling mass as he turned into the light.

Then Dominik heard something he never thought he would hear: he heard the commander wail. His limbs thrashed. His spine twisted. Foam began to run from his mouth, his cries becoming babble.

A moment later, Ari grabbed his friend around the arm. “Thank you, Dominik. Oh heaven, thank you.” He paused. “Ettore?”

Dominik shook his head.

“Then it's just you and me. We have to go, Dom. We have to go!”

Dominik let himself be led, knowing he had to get away from that thrashing form as fast as he could. Then as they passed the surviving tank, he stopped. “Wait.”

The lever on the tank hung in the air, beckoning. A single pull of that lever would open the valves, releasing the formaldehyde through the vents and up into the world above. That had been the plan: release the gas and choke them all, escape in the aftermath.

“I… I can't do it. I can't do it to all of them, Ari. I…” His voice broke. “I don't want to damn my soul.”

The other man hugged him, a gesture both incredibly welcome and incredibly out of place. When Dominik looked up, he saw Ari's eyes were gleaming. “No more,” he said. “I'm tired of being their plaything, Dominik. I don't care if they all end up like Richter. I don't care.”

Dominik shook his head.

“You know they'd do the same to us. What if we had a chance to end it right here and now, to save all the people who will come after us?”

“I don't know, Ari.”

“Well I do. I'm not leaving it to chance. You and Lucja are getting out alive. Me too, if I can, but I'm not risking your lives. Even if you don't want me to do it for you, let me do it for her. Her life is worth a thousand Richters. It's worth more than a thousand of any of them. Now step aside, and I'm going to pull that handle.”

They stared at each other, their friendship as deep as years and decades and millennia.

At last, Dominik nodded. “Together,” he said. “We'll do it together.”

He undid the safety catch, each of them placing a hand on the grip. When Dominik looked into his friend's eyes again, he knew it was time. They yanked the lever down as one, awaiting the hiss that would spell doom for the men they had known and despised for all of these terrible, long weeks.

But no sound came.

5

They breached the door and stepped into the yard, the plan forgotten. Frece was gone. Ettore was gone. Lucja had disappeared, and the tanks had failed when they had needed them most.

Outside, the soldiers stumbled about desultorily. The young ones scrambled for weapons. The older ones seemed to be looking for officers. But they were all lost, wandering through the explosion smoke as if they didn't know where they were.

“Where are you going?” someone shouted.

Dominik looked over and saw Doctor Gloeckner, the idiot physician. He and Ari kept walking. “Lucja!” Dominik called. “Lucja, where are you?”

The doctor came up behind them. “Take me with you! Take me with you if you're getting out of here!”

Dominik pushed him away. “Get off me!”

The man fell backwards, looking hurt and dazed. “You… you can't leave me here!”

“Get away from us!”

Gloeckner ran, stopping another soldier a few seconds later and getting similar treatment.

Something was wrong here, something far worse than the explosion. No one was stopping them. No one was even paying attention.

They walked all of the way to the gate, Dominik's anxiety growing with each second. Two soldiers already stood at the fence, both of them staring into the great beyond.

“My God,” one of them said.

Half a kilometer away, Dominik saw an overturned motorcycle, its headlamp still shining. It had been carrying two riders, but both of them were laying on the dirt face down. He thought they were dead until one of them began to get up. Seeing long hair drop from beneath the helmet, Dominik felt his mouth sag.

“Lucja!” he cried.

He began to move and then stopped. Over the ridge, he could suddenly see what was coming. The hordes were tumbling upwards from the abyss, rushing towards the base. Men and birds and beasts alike, black as pitch and violent as a hurricane. They spilled over one another, sprinting and running and tearing up the dirt with claws outstretched. Their shrieks rolled towards him like thunder.

Ari and the soldiers disappeared from his view. He was staring only at his daughter, his eyes wide. “I have to get her.”

He ran towards the oncoming horde. He ran towards Lucja.

6

Lucja pulled her helmet off, her head feeling like it had been sloshed inside of a water tank. “What was that?” She didn't know if Jan was hurt or even alive, but when the man didn't respond, she asked again. “What was that?”

Jan pushed himself slowly upwards. “We hit something.”

“Did you see it?”

Instead of responding, Jan nodded towards a shape on the ground. It lay crushed beneath the sidecar, as black as the things that had grabbed Harald. Her father had told her about them, but she hadn't believed. How could she, without seeing one with her own eyes?

As for the sidecar, it had detached from the bike during the fall. The attachment bar lay bent out of proportion, one wheel strewn some distance away. That didn't bode well for the bike if they hoped to ride it again.

She clutched at Jan's arm without thinking. She didn't know why, but it felt safe. Staring at the thing on the ground, she needed to feel safe. His body grew rigid in her hands, but he wasn't looking at her — he was looking towards the crater.

An army of shapes was rushing towards the base, crying and screeching and clawing their way forwards. Jan shoved her aside, a gun suddenly in his grip. For a brief moment, she thought she had felt some warmth in him, but now, she saw him as he truly was. Jan was a weapon. If she were to clutch him again, she'd feel the same comfort she would feel clutching a very large, very well-trained attack dog.

Two stragglers broke off from the pack and charged them. Jan aimed the gun and fired. It took all eight shots to bring them both down.

Lucja ran back to the bike. The wreck had been terrible, but up close, it looked all right.

Reaching beneath the seat, she touched the engine and burned her hands. “Aa!”

Jan looked over but didn't comment. He ejected a clip from his gun and thrust in another. More shapes were coming up the path.

Lucja reached under the bike again, being careful to keep her hands off of the metal, and she tried to lift it. She couldn't. The thing felt like it weighed a ton. A few meters away, Jan began firing again. When he was empty, he turned. “If you're going to get that bike up, I suggest you hurry. I'm almost out of shots.”

And then another voice, this one behind them: “Lucja! Lucja!”

As she saw her father running down the path, she was hit with a moment of terrible déjà vu, her mind returning to the shore, to the moment when Hans tore her sister away.

He tackled her. “I love you, darling! I love you. I love you!” Her face was thick with grime, and still, he covered her with kisses. “I'm sorry. I never should have let you go alone!”

“It's all right, but help me. Help me, Papa!”

When she bent down, he bent with her, and together, they put their hands under the bike. They lifted as one, her father's face growing purple with effort. He was never a strong man, her father, but he was strong today. Yes he was.

“There!” he said, laughing.

The motorcycle stood upright once more. She wasn't sure if it would work, but it wasn't leaking any fuel, and the wheels didn't look bent.

We're going to be all right, she thought. We're going to be all right, all of us!

“Step away from the bike.”

When she looked at her new companion, she saw that Jan was not the savior she thought him to be after all. He was pointing the gun at her father.

“What are you doing?” she barked. “Jan, what the hell are you doing?”

His eyes were brimming in the dim light, but they were resolute. “That bike only holds two.”

“What?”

“We're not going back to the base. It's too late for that, now. I think I can get us to the shore if I cut through the hills, but only two of us are going to make it.”

“We'll fit three. We have to! I don't weigh very much, I—”

“No,” Jan said.

She looked at the man, and then she looked at her father. For the past week, he had been a man possessed. He had plans within plans, he had a will as hard as stone. Whenever she and Ari had faltered, he had been there to pull them out of the rut. So when she saw him there, his expression low and knowing, she didn't understand.

“Can you drive a motorcycle?” Jan asked.

Her father shook his head.

Jan lowered his weapon. “Then it's decided.”

Lucja was sure her father would pounce on the man. He would wrestle him to the ground and take his weapon. Or he would pull out some magic powder and blow it in the man's face, blinding him. And she would help him. She would be right there by his side to make a daring escape, maybe circling back around once for Ari. Because as grateful as she was to Jan, if she had to choose sides… well, there was no choice to be had.

As the seconds ticked by, it became clear her father wasn't going to do any of those things. Instead, he took a step back, letting Lucja hold the bike alone. It was not heavy once it was upright, but holding it meant she could not step away.

Jan threw a leg over the seat. It was only then, in that gesture, that Lucja realized the gravity of what was happening.

“No. No! You can't do this!”

“I love you,” her father said. “And you have to go.”

“Not without you!”

Dominik stepped to her and put his hands on her cheeks. “The man is right. I can't drive a bike. So it can't be me who saves you this time. I'm too late, Lucja. I'm always too late.”

“Then I'm not going.”

“Yes you are!”

When he looked at Jan, the man grabbed Lucja by the scruff and hoisted her onto the bike behind him. For some reason, she didn't fight. She felt paralyzed from the neck down.

“I'll be all right,” her father said. “Now go!”

There was so much she wanted to say, so many reasons why it couldn't happen like this. She wanted to tell him how much she loved him. She wanted to tell him how sorry she was for being angry, for doubting him, for blaming him for what had happened to her mother, Magdelena. She wanted to tell him that what happened to Zofia wasn't his fault. When she opened her mouth, however, nothing came out.

One of the forms broke ahead of the pack. It was targeting them, leaping over rocks and bounding up the dirt.

Jan removed a knife from his belt and tossed it to her father. Dominik caught it, then took his glasses off and folded them neatly into his pocket. He looked so different without them, so much younger.

The bike engine came to life beneath the toes of Jan's boot. Lucja thought it would be just in time; the thing on the path was almost upon them.

“See you,” her father said. He kissed two of his fingers and held them in the air.

She reached for his hand, but then, the bike lunged forward and she was grabbing at Jan's waist, doing everything in her power to keep from falling off. It sped across the landscape, the two of them flying at break-neck speed.

Jan leaned to the left and guided the bike past a new group, a hair-raising stunt that brought their knees within touching distance of the ground. Then, he righted the bike and continued weaving through the masses. When the area opened to its widest, Jan cut diagonally across the path, leaving the crater behind and heading towards the hills as promised.

It was only then Lucja felt safe enough to look back. Mere seconds had passed since they had left her father in the dust, and she didn't know what to expect, braced herself for the worst, in fact. What she did see filled her with equal parts hope and horror. When she turned, her father was simply gone.