My Immortal The Vampires of Berlin (14 page)

Surrounded by blood and gore, Wolf strained to read a map of Berlin by candlelight. He wondered if the subway tunnels were still accessible. If they were not, the only way out of the city would be through the Russian lines; not a pleasant option.

Suddenly, a moan broke the silence in the Hotel Neptune. Wolf shot to his feet and waved his pistol in the air. He had a rough day and was in no mood for any more chaos—he was ready to shoot anybody at that point, including himself.

“Who is there? Identify yourself!” he yelled, straining to find a target in the dark room. “Come forward or I will shoot you!” Then it dawned on him.
Sebastian was dead.
The vampires took Eva. Whoever was left was either SS or Red Army. Fuck them both.

Just as he prepared to spray the room with gunfire, someone got up and moved into the light. He couldn’t believe his eyes. “You’re alive...”

“I think so,” Sebastian replied. He felt the back of his head for the bullet that had somehow not killed him and tried to sort out vague memories of the fight with the SS.

Then Sebastian noticed the blood. It covered the floor. It covered the walls. Hell, blood spatters even covered most of the ceiling. The fantastic sight excited his senses. His heart raced and he felt different, more alive than he had ever felt before. That extraordinary and almost sensual thrill dissipated when he saw the smashed skull and brain matter on the floor, looking like a disgusting pile of smashed tomatoes and grits. He had to suppress the urge to vomit. “Major, what happened in here?” he asked. “You must have had one hell of a party while I was out.”

Wolf stared at him in disbelief, trying to find the words. “You were dead. I saw you get shot. I saw you die.”

“No, my friend, you didn’t see me die,” Sebastian replied. “I felt the impact, but I’m fine. The round must have bounced off my helmet and knocked me out.” Then suddenly, he remembered. “Where is she?”

Wolf looked around the room evasively.

“Major, where is Eva?”

Wolf knew that his response would only raise far more questions than it answered. “They took her.”

“
They
took her?
They
? Who exactly are
they
? The Russians?”

“No. As you can see, the Russians are dead.” He pointed to Mikhail’s corpse. “They turned that motherfucker into a pretzel.”

Sebastian was angry. He had seen the aftermath of many battles, but nothing like the blood-soaked room. “Major Kepler, what the hell happened here? Why does this place look like the slaughterhouse on the bottom of the sea? How did you kill everyone?”

“I didn’t kill anybody.”

Sebastian angrily pulled the map out of Wolf’s hands and flung it across the room. “You’re sitting by yourself in a room stacked with more corpses than the Leningrad morgue, and you can’t tell me what happened? I want some answers!” he shouted.

“Vampires,” Wolf replied softly.

Sebastian wasn’t sure that he heard him correctly. “What did you just say?”

“Vampires.” Then it was Wolf’s turn for his anger to boil to the surface. He didn’t know who he was mad at—or why—but after a horrific couple of days in Berlin he was ready to completely lose it. Then he did.

“Do you want the truth?” Wolf screamed. “Do you want the fucking truth? Do you want to know why I’m sitting here reading this shitty map surrounded by body parts in Caligula’s fucking bizarro-world nautical-themed fucking aquarium hideout? Because two pissed-off Gestapo fucking vampires slaughtered everybody and took your girlfriend to wherever it is that fucking vampires hide out during a fucking apocalyptic war. My best friend was dead, now he’s not, and I still don’t know how the fuck I’m going to get out of Berlin. Rebuttal?”

Point of fact, Sebastian had no rebuttal to an irrational, angry, obscenity-laced tirade of that magnitude. He had never seen Wolf so mad. He figured that yelling back would accomplish nothing, so he tried another approach.

“
Wunderbar
,” he said, throwing his hands into the air, making the motion as comedic as possible. “We are surrounded by evil vampires, our squad is dead, and my commanding officer has gone cuckoo. I lost the magical princess but gained a babbling idiot and a headache. This is just like
Oktoberfest
without the beer and songs.”

That ridiculous statement got Wolf to break a smile. “They know a way out,” he replied.

Sebastian was not impressed. “I know. Flights are supposedly still getting out. All we have to do is blast our way through the Soviet lines and get on a plane that might be waiting somewhere near the Brandenburg Gate. No problem. There will be a lot of Russians to shoot though. We’re going to need about two million bullets.”

“I’m not talking about Brandenburg Gate, you sarcastic bastard. The vampires know another way out.”

“The
vampires
know another way out?” Sebastian asked incredulously. “Major, we don’t have time for fantasy life. In case you haven’t noticed, the Soviet Red Army has surrounded Berlin and its soldiers are not very pleasant to be around right now. If we’re not getting out on an airplane, we’re not getting out. We don’t have the firepower to survive another day in this hellhole, let alone break through the Russian lines. Wake up already!”

The men stared at each other for a moment, neither one knowing what to say. The uncomfortable silence was broken by the sound of wood and metal crashing to the ground just outside the Neptune.

Battlefield instincts took over. The men moved fast and pointed their guns out the window, safeties off. They were ready for anything ...

They were ready for anything but the seventeen pathetic, weary and dirty German soldiers who stood in the street below them. Weapons of all shapes and sizes littered the ground. Many of the men were covered in bloody and dirty bandages. The sad little group was the picture perfect illustration of the word “defeat.”

“Jesus,” Wolf mumbled.

A weather-beaten old man waved a white flag. His back was shaped like a question mark; his warrior days long since passed. “Attention Soviet soldiers in the Hotel Neptune! We surrender! We lay down our arms! We surrender to you!” he shouted.

“We’re Germans, you idiot!” Wolf yelled back. “Go surrender to somebody else!”

Old man Klaus stopped waving the flag. He felt sorry for the ignorant soldier in the window who would soon suffer a violent death. “Come with us!” he yelled. “The war is over! The Russians guarantee the safety of all who surrender!”

“Get your fat ass off the street before I use it for target practice!” Wolf replied.

Frederick, the leader of the group, pushed Klaus forward. “Come on, soldier. You’re wasting time on a dead man. Let’s go.” Klaus raised the flag and the miserable trek resumed.

Wolf was disgusted. He had seen many dismal things in the German army, but watching a group of once-proud soldiers march off to their death under the white flag of cowardice was the worst.

Suddenly, Sebastian got up and ran downstairs.

Wolf watched him run out of the Neptune and down the street after them. For a second, he thought Sebastian decided to surrender, but that analysis changed when he heard him call out to the group. “Wait! Wait a minute! I need to talk to you! Hold on!”

Wolf sighed. He knew what that meant.

28

Down on the street, Klaus pushed Sebastian away. “Young man, you have
no
right to tell me anything. I fought for Germany in the first war, before you were born. We lost a generation in those trenches and our economy was destroyed! Then Adolf Hitler—who wasn’t even born here—rearmed Germany and led us into another stupid war. Those of us who were dumb enough to pick up arms are now left with a choice. Surrender or die!”

“There’s still a way out!” Sebastian insisted.

“Fairy tales! This battle is the sequel to Stalingrad, only Hitler and his cronies are stuck here with us in the
Kessel
this time. There is no way out, no means to fight back and nothing left to fight for!”

Klaus dismissed Sebastian with a wave and the despondent group trudged down the street after him.

But Sebastian wouldn’t give up. “You have to believe me! There is a way out!” he shouted.

Klaus stopped in his tracks and went straight for Sebastian. The other men crowded around the two warriors, like a schoolyard fight. Just when they were about to come to blows, a kid with round glasses and an oversized helmet jumped right between them. “Are you sure you can get us out of Berlin? Are you really sure?” he asked.

Sebastian looked at the kid and the bazooka-like
Panzerfaust
that he clutched in his arms in disbelief.
Jesus. Is this what had become of the invincible Wehrmacht? There truly is no hope.
“How old are you, kid?” he asked.

“Thirteen, sir. Next month.”

“What’s your name?”

“Dieter, sir. Dieter Hübner.”

“Well, little Dieter Hübner, you should be at home with your mother, not wandering the streets of Berlin with a weapon that is bigger than you are.”

Dieter held up the
Panzerfaust
. Large red letters on the metal tube read
Achtung! Feuerstrahl!
“I may be young, sir, but I can fight like a man. I blasted a T-34 yesterday!”

Axel, a handsome young
Luftwaffe
pilot with long, unkempt blonde hair slapped the kid on the back. “And the Russians they pulled out of it looked like burnt schnitzel!”

“And then a thousand tanks replaced it,” Frederick replied. “Stalin has an endless supply. We must surrender. It’s our only hope.”

“If you surrender, they will kill you,” Sebastian said. “And if you’re not lucky enough to be killed quickly, you will get shipped off to Siberia to experience a wintery hell in a prison camp until you die from frostbite.”

Wolf arrived. He was nervous and uncomfortable to be out in the open with snipers in the area, but he was determined to get his friend out of there. “Sebastian, leave these men alone. They made their decision and we made ours. We have to leave. Now.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Dieter asked. “Do you really know a way out of Berlin?”

“No, kid. No, I don’t,” Wolf replied. “And don’t listen to my friend here. He got shot in the head tonight. I think that maybe his brains spilled out.”

“Major, we need firepower to get to the Brandenburg airfield,” Sebastian argued. “They can help us get there and we can save their lives in the process.”

Wolf laughed out loud. “Are you out of your mind? Children and men who are old enough to remember the Battle of Waterloo are not going to help us do anything but die. That’s not the firepower we need—we need
soldiers
.”

Sebastian raised his voice just loud enough to be heard by everyone. “Attention group. My commanding officer and I have devised a plan to get out of Berlin. We can’t promise you that it will work, but we can promise you that we’re going to shoot anybody who gets in our way.”

The soldiers laughed.

Sebastian pointed at Dieter, “Who else—besides this brave member of the Hitler Youth—will help us execute our plan?”

Wolf angrily grabbed Sebastian’s arm and whispered into his ear. “
Plan?
What the hell plan are you talking about? We don’t have a plan.”

“I agree with you, major. Our plan is
genius
,” Sebastian said loudly. He prayed that Wolf wouldn’t interrupt him again. “Raise your hand if you will join us!” he shouted. “We have a genius plan—who is with us?”

No one moved.

Wolf smiled. “Can we go now?”

Sebastian looked into their eyes, desperately trying to get a read.
Their spirit is broken
, he thought. It was time for a more drastic approach. He put his arm around Dieter. “Is this little guy here the only one among you who isn’t a sniveling coward? Now, who is brave enough to join our squad?”

That insult brought a murmur from the group, but their anger dissipated when Klaus handed the white flag to Frederick. “I am brave enough to join your squad,” he announced. “If you are brave enough to accept an man who is old enough to have fought against Napoleon.”

Sebastian was undeterred by the qualifications, or lack thereof, of the squad he was trying to assemble. “If you were brave enough to put that uniform on with the Red Army closing in on Berlin, you’re brave enough for me. Now, who else is brave enough to help us implement our genius plan?”