My Immortal The Vampires of Berlin (23 page)

A few minutes later, Axel emerged from the water and collapsed on the ground next to him.

Sebastian came out last, cradling Eva in his arms. She was still out—she fainted again after taking out the searchlight, her energy drained. He wondered if she had been poisoned or was under some sort of supernatural attack that he couldn’t perceive. In any event, they had to get moving. “Let’s go,” he called out. “Rise and shine.”

No one moved.

“No rest for the wicked,” he shouted. “Get up!” When still nobody moved, he kicked Axel in the leg. “Get up, pilot! Let’s go—we’re not out of this shit yet!”

Finally, the men stirred. As Axel got to his feet, he touched his chest and panicked—the Iron Cross was gone! “Major, I’m so sorry. I lost your medal,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Wolf replied.

Axel was devastated. “That decoration meant everything to you,” he cried. “It meant everything to me. I am so sorry, Major Kepler.”

Wolf stared at him in disbelief and wondered how a young man who had lived through so much that day—shootouts, getting his face burned off and fighting a vampire in a river of blood—could possibly be worried about a silly piece of iron. “You’re alive, son. That’s all that matters right now. Nothing else. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

Axel bowed his head. “Yes.”

Artillery rumbled in the distance. “It sounds like Germany’s last stand will be in the
Reichstag
,” Sebastian surmised.

“They’re wasting their time. Hitler burned it down for them years ago,” Wolf replied. Underneath the dripping sarcasm, he was worried. The Soviet forces had advanced much further and faster than he had anticipated. Which meant they were probably still behind enemy lines.

The men gathered around as Wolf drew a crude map in the dirt with a bayonet. “The Russians will attack with everything they have at sunrise. Before then, we need to get right here,” he said, pointing to a mark in the dirt. “The landing strip near the Brandenburg Gate. If we can get to the gate, we might be able to get on a plane.”

Axel scoffed. “The great
panzer
divisions couldn’t break through the Russian lines and they had waves of
Stukas
to support them. How do you plan to break through?”

The roar of a T-34 tank engine in the distance answered the question.

54

Yuri revved the powerful engine. He was in the driver seat of his beloved tank, the place where he felt the safest in the entire world. The steel beast had a soul. It protected him and gave him the means to strike back at a potent enemy who had taken so much from him.

Tokolovskii shouted to his men over the roar of the engine. “Give Yuri a hand—get the beast ready!”

As the drunken crew stumbled back to the tank, Tokolovskii pressed a crushed packet of cigarettes into the German woman’s palm and closed her hand. “I have to go kill more of your friends and family,” he said. “Buy yourself a new dress on the black market,
fräulein
. Make yourself prettier for the next time.”

The woman shrieked and threw the cigarettes into the fire. Tokolovskii laughed as she ran off into the darkness, her dress in tatters. He liked German women. He hoped to be stationed in Berlin after the war.

Suddenly, a hand tapped him on the shoulder. Tokolovskii turned around. He smiled because he thought that he was looking at one of the thousands of pathetic German soldiers who were surrendering to anyone and everyone in a Russian uniform. With the hour of the final assault approaching, Tok didn’t have time for a prisoner. Instead, he decided to make the end of the war quick and painless for this German. “Give me your pistol,” he ordered.

Sebastian didn’t move a muscle. He just stared at Tokolovskii as a blind rage boiled deep inside of him.

“I told you to give me your pistol.”

Sebastian grabbed him by the neck and lifted him off of the ground.

The Russian remained defiant. “You Nazi scumbag,” he gasped.

“I am not a Nazi,” Sebastian replied. “I am a German citizen and I am a fucking musician. I just added vampire to my resume, so you are highly advised against antagonizing me further.”

“Bite me.”

Sebastian bared his fangs and Tokolovskii had a sudden change in attitude. He gasped in terror and tried to form the words to beg for his life from a vampire in a German uniform.

“You should respect the innocent,” Sebastian said as he squeezed his airway closed. Then he punched him so hard that bones shattered. Blood, spit and little white crunchy pieces of teeth gurgled out of his mouth as Sebastian threw the whimpering Russian into the fire.

The crew heard the garbled scream over the engine. They grabbed their side arms and unleashed a furious volley of gunfire at the intruder in their midst.

Sebastian felt the bullets rip into him as he fell. When the shooting stopped, he had been shot exactly twenty-seven times, by his count. The impact of those bullets, however, felt no worse than getting poked with a stick. Annoying, at best. He didn’t ask to be transformed into a creature of the night, but if it was going to get him through the war, so be it.

As the petrified crew looked on, Sebastian stood up and brushed off his jacket. For the encore, he held up a smoking bullet, blew on it and threw it back at them.

The crew ran for their lives, but they didn’t get far. Sebastian was just beginning to realize his newfound speed as a vampire. When the massacre was over, he pulled the three badly wounded Russians into a dark corner of a bombed out building. Eva quietly joined the feast as he quenched what was becoming an unyielding thirst for blood.

Alone in the tank, Yuri never heard the commotion, nor did he have any idea that the rest of the crew was dead. He was annoyed as hell though. “Those drunken slobs will be late to their own funeral,” he said to himself. When he opened the hatch to read the crew the riot act, a gun was stuck in his face.

“Get out,” Wolf ordered.

Yuri put his hands up and climbed out of the tank. He loved his machine, but there was no reason to die for it. The
Wehrmacht
was on the verge of annihilation and the Great Patriotic War was over. His main fear was that the psychopath who just pulled him out of the tank at gunpoint might not see it that way.

When he saw Tokolovskii’s body in the fire, Yuri panicked. He dropped to his knees and begged for his life in broken German. “Please, don’t kill me ... I have family ... three little babies ... please.”

Wolf didn’t know that Yuri was lying about his family, but he wouldn’t have cared if he did. He was tired of the death and destruction. He motioned for Yuri to leave.

Yuri froze. He was convinced that Wolf would shoot him in the back.

“Go,” Wolf said.

Still, Yuri didn’t budge. He pointed to Wolf’s pistol and shook his head. Wolf smiled and put the pistol back in his holster. “Relax, Ivan. I’m not going to shoot you.”

Yuri sobbed and kissed Wolf’s hand.
“Danke schön!
Danke schön!”

“Get the hell out of here before I reconsider my offer.” Yuri didn’t give him a chance to change his mind. He jumped up and ran for his life.

With the crew out of the way, Wolf and his men inspected their new prized possession—a Soviet T-34 battle tank.

Sebastian put Eva into the turret. Then he climbed into the driver’s compartment and studied the controls. Although different from the Panther that he had driven until a few days ago, the driving mechanism looked close enough to figure out.
This small crew compartment is more like the inside of a submarine than a tank
, he thought.

Wolf climbed into the turret. “Get in here with us,” he told Axel. “I’m gonna load. You’re gonna shoot. It’s very simple. Got it?”

Axel was dumbfounded. “You want
me
to shoot that freakin monstrosity?”

“You’ll be fine. Besides, the loading system on a T-34 is complicated; not as efficient as our
panzers
.”

“I’ve never even been inside of a
panzer
before. Are you really sure that you want me to fire the cannon?”

“Listen, pilot. I can’t let you drive this thing unless we want to crash in the first five minutes. It’s better to have you shoot the enemy than blow us up from within, which is exactly what will happen if I put someone as stupid as you in charge of the high explosives.”

Axel shrugged and climbed into the turret. “Good morning princess,” he said to Eva. “I’m here to blow shit up.”

“Sit down and pay attention if you want to live,” Wolf warned. “I have three rules for the gunner. First, line the target up in the crosshairs before you pull the trigger. Second, don’t press any button or pull any lever if you don’t know what it does. And finally, and most importantly, don’t shoot anything unless and until I tell you to shoot it, under any circumstances. I don’t care if Stalin himself dances into your line of fire; do not shoot him unless I give that order. Do I make myself clear?”

Axel saluted smartly. “Crystal clear, sir.”

“Good, because basic tank training is over. You’ll have to learn the rest as we go.”

55

The T-34 roared down the street as Sebastian navigated around and through the Russian positions. The tank was a challenge to drive—especially given the horrible condition of the streets—but he was getting the hang of it. A few blocks later, he grew confident enough to roll over a shot-up Mercedes, crushing the car as flat as a pancake.
This is a monster,
he thought.

Russian infantrymen waved as the tank passed, never imagining in their wildest dreams that they were greeting their mortal enemy.

In the cramped turret, Axel poked Wolf. “I was skeptical before, but I must admit it now. Your plan is genius.”

“Your plan is genius,” Eva parroted as she curiously studied the interior of the tank. She had no idea where she was, but she felt safe with the men.

Wolf gave Axel the thumbs up, but their problems weren’t over. The real trouble would start when they got to the German lines—they had no radio capable of communicating with German units to convince their nervous anti-tank gunners that their Russian tank wasn’t a threat.

Fifty meters up the street, Major Federov watched the T-34 rumble towards him on what he expected to be the greatest day of his military career. In the weeks that led up to that proud moment, he had never stopped reminding his men that the unit that planted the flag on the top of the
Reichstag
would be
Heroes of the Soviet Union
for all time.