My Immortal The Vampires of Berlin (16 page)

Suddenly, a shot echoed through the tunnel and the dagger flew out of Rodika’s hand. The stunned vampire looked down at her hand and then at Sebastian. He had taken the perfect shot.

“Move! Move! Let’s go!” Sebastian yelled as he charged into the chamber. Thor scrambled to his feet and followed him in. The men unleashed a furious volley of gunfire. Bullets ricocheted everywhere; it was a wild-west gunfight on crack. Several rounds hit Rodika in the chest and knocked her away from Eva.

Wolf punched the ground in anger. Then he got up and joined the attack, followed shortly thereafter by the others. After years on the Russian front where a missed shot meant the difference between life and death, the men were expert marksmen. The vampire’s bodies could withstand a great deal of punishment, but within a minute, all three were on the ground.

As the soldiers approached, only Rodika still stirred. “This is not over,” she warned.

“It is for you, bitch,” Thor replied. He pressed his machine gun against her chest and fired a quick burst into her heart. Rodika’s body shuddered and then grew still.

“Did you see their teeth?” Dieter asked. “Vampires exist, they really exist.” The kid was amazed—the night was turning into the greatest adventure of his life.

“Relax, cadet,” Wolf said. “This isn’t a game.”

Sebastian kissed Eva on the forehead. His heart soared when she opened her eyes.

Axel shook his head and walked away. “Real fucking sweet,” he said. “The frog prince just kissed the princess or however that stupid story goes. We risked our lives and she’ll get to live another hour or two. Wonderful. Now, let’s get out of here.”

Unseen by the men, Zina rose to her feet behind them. With lightening speed, she grabbed a torch from the wall and slammed it into Axel’s face!

“Arrrggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!” Axel screamed and fell to his knees as the blaze engulfed his hair.

Klaus ripped off his jacket and doused the flames as the others sent bullets tearing into Zina’s flesh, knocking the vampire to the ground.

Thor screamed when Rodika and Dumitra got up. “Holy shit! They don’t die!”

“That’s because they’re fucking vampires!” Wolf shouted as he dragged Axel out of the cavern. “Cover me!”

The men provided accurate cover fire, but they were quickly learning that a high velocity slug could only knock a vampire down, not kill one. Once they ran out of ammo, the evening was going to get complicated.

“Run!” Sebastian screamed.

31

Sebastian pulled Eva along by the hand as he ran down the tunnel after the other men. As catatonic as she seemed at times, he considered himself lucky that he could get her to move extremely fast when danger was present.

Suddenly, Eva broke free from his grasp and darted down a small passageway that the others had missed. Sebastian cursed and went after her. Klaus saw the detour out of the corner of his eye, but he was far too scared and out-of-breath to care.
How ironic it would be to escape from vampires only to die of a heart attack
, he thought.

The ultimate question that one faces when you are running for your life and you begin to tire is—when do you turn around and fight the monster? That question was answered for the men when the tunnel floor went out from under them.

They rolled and they tumbled and they tossed and slid and fell down a steep, muddy slope and crashed into a heap at the bottom. That fiasco was followed by a panicked scramble to untangle themselves and grab weapons.

The men aimed their guns up the slope, expecting to be attacked at any second. The only sounds to be heard were the men’s labored breathing and Dieter muttering the Lord’s Prayer in the background.

After a few minutes of terror, the men relaxed. “I think we got away,” Wolf said.

Klaus verbalized their collective thoughts. “Not all of us did. That evil girl led Sebastian to the vampires.”

Wolf scoffed. “Old man, I fought with Sebastian through three miserable campaigns in Poland, Lithuania and Russia. He is as tough as nails and as lucky as a ladybug. He can look out for himself.”

“I respect his experience, Major. But he didn’t fight vampires in Operation Barbarossa.”

Wolf didn’t respond. Klaus was right. Prior combat experience had little relevance now; they were dealing with the supernatural. In the background, Axel coughed violently, the sound of a dying man.

“Keep watch,” Wolf said, thankful for the change of subject. He knelt down and gently pulled the pilot’s hands from his face. Axel’s face was charred and disfigured. He had seen many severe injuries in Russia, but he had never seen anyone survive very long with burns that bad.

“How do I look?” Axel gasped.

“I’ve seen worse,” Wolf lied. “As soon as we get out of here, we’ll get you a doctor. You’ll be okay.”

Axel appreciated the kind sentiment, but he knew that he was dying. There were few doctors and no functioning hospitals left in Berlin. If they were captured, the Russians wouldn’t send him to a medic, they would throw him into a ditch. One way or another, he didn’t have long to live and he had come to terms with it. In fact, his main desire was to speed up the process. “Kill me,” he moaned, desperately hoping that one of the other men had the strength to do what he could not do himself.

Wolf leaned in close, but he had no intention of assisting a suicide. Instead, he removed his Iron Cross and pinned it onto Axel’s jacket.
I spent years trying to survive this war for my own selfish reasons
, he thought.
Axel got hurt trying to save someone else. He paid a steep price for his bravery.

“Sir, I don’t...” Axel said.

“You deserve it far more than I do.”

The wounded pilot looked down at the medal and was overcome with emotion. “Thank you, sir,” he gasped. Tears rolled down his blackened face.

“No son, thank
you
,” Wolf replied. He covered him with a blanket and rejoined Klaus on point.

“How long does he have?” the old man asked.

“He’ll be dead in an hour.”

Klaus closed his eyes and sighed deeply.

Axel heard the prediction about his imminent demise and it gave him the strength to speak up. “Klaus, you skinny son-of-a-bitch! I should have shot you twice!”

Klaus laughed. Picking up on Wolf’s puzzled look, he sat down and told his story. “Axel and I were in the Sixth Army. Hitler ordered General Paulus to hold Stalingrad while the Russians surrounded us. It was a stupid military strategy based upon megalomaniacal tendencies. As the situation deteriorated, Hitler promoted Paulus to field marshal simply because no German or Prussian field marshal had ever surrendered before—he wanted to shame Paulus into fighting to the last man.”

“That’s unbelievable,” Wolf replied.

“And it’s true,” Klaus said. “We were starving, freezing
and
running out of ammunition. To make matters worse, we had to rely on that fat bastard Göring and his
Luftwaffe
to fly the food and ammo in. It was dangerous work and they never came close to bringing in enough supplies. Between the miserable Russian winter and the thousands of antiaircraft guns that were brought in to shoot our supply planes down, we were doomed.”

You could hear a pin drop. The men were transfixed by his story. Especially Dieter.

“One fateful morning, we loaded wounded men onto transport planes at our last airfield, the
Stalingradskaja
flight school. Stretchers were laid out all over the frozen runway when the artillery barrage hit. It was terrible. Men were blasted to smithereens. There was no cover, so I put my life into God’s hands and kept loading wounded onto the planes. When Axel saw a young grenadier get cut down, he jumped out of his plane and took the rifle out of the dead boy’s hands. Then he started shooting at the Russians as fast as he could pull the trigger. He went full all-out berserk.”

“Full all-out berserk. Whoa.” Dieter was visibly impressed. He had a mental picture of the brave pilot standing on the wing of his aircraft and taking out his enemies with perfect aim from very far away.

“He fired his rifle at the Soviet artillery?” Wolf asked just to be sure he correctly understood the story.

“Yes. He shot like a madman at artillery that was nearly a kilometer away—it would have been easier to shoot down the fucking moon! That didn’t matter to Axel, he was too angry—a berserker in the true sense of the word. He proved that
Luftwaffe
pilots don’t have good brains or good aim. He shot me!”

The men were stunned.

“But it was a magic bullet—I had become one of the wounded men who we were trying to save. On 23 January 1943, Axel flew the last plane out of Stalingrad. And I was on it!”

The men gasped. Dieter clapped, as if he was at the theater. “That’s amazing,” he said.

“The truly amazing thing about a near death experience is that it changes your perception of the world forever. You suddenly appreciate the little things, the big things and everything in between. When we touched down in Germany, I felt as if I had been born again. Like I had been given a second chance at life.”

“That’s incredible, Pop,” Dieter said, visibly awed. He hadn’t heard this story before—it was the best one ever.

Then the old man’s expression became grim. “The men we left behind in Stalingrad were not so fortunate. The Russians marched 100,000 of them through the snow to Soviet prisons, most of them probably never to be seen again. Hitler publicly labeled
Generalfeldmarschall
Paulus a traitor for surrendering, but Paulus had no choice, you see. We were starving to death.”

“Axel saved your life,” Wolf said.

“He shot me in the ass!” Klaus replied, and the men roared with laughter.

32

Sebastian aimed his rifle up the tunnel and listened intently. He breathed a sigh of relief when didn’t hear anything but the thump of his own heartbeat. He had lost his squad and he had lost Eva; but he had also lost the vampires.

A tap on his shoulder startled him. He spun around and instantly lowered his weapon. “You really need to stop doing that,” he said. “That’s the second time I almost shot you tonight.”

Eva smiled. Then she silently took his hand and led him down the tunnel. He was separated from the rest of the men, but he felt eerily calm in her presence. He didn’t exactly feel safe, but he trusted her.