The Black Gate (24 page)

“Then that leaves us back where we started.” He made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “You may as well have given yourself up.”

“There is one other who might be able to help us,” Peter persisted. “But we must act now. Even as we speak, Hoth is preparing to open the gate for Baumann’s transit.”

Von Falkenstein cocked his head, curious. “Who? Who would be of any real use against Baumann’s men?”
 

Peter stared at him. “Mina.”

“You
are
insane,” von Falkenstein hissed. “I would not help that creature if you held a gun to my head.”

“You’ll live only so long as you’re useful to him,” Peter said. “After that you’ll be nothing more than a snack.” He stepped closer. “We only have this one chance to stop him. If he goes through the gate, we’re all as good as dead. And if his men go through and destabilize the gate, we’re all finished. The Reich will suffer the same fate as Atlantis, or worse.”

That, Peter saw, finally got through to him. “If he goes through the gate,” Peter went on, “Mina will be the only one who might be able to stop him. We must have her help.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” von Falkenstein whispered. After a moment, he gave a slow nod. “Very well. What did you have in mind?”

THIRTY SECONDS

They couldn’t hope to pass von Falkenstein off as anyone but himself, so they didn’t try. The professor strode down the corridor with Peter right behind him, his weapon trained on the older man’s back. For all appearances, von Falkenstein was a prisoner being moved under armed guard, except for the pistol tucked into von Falkenstein’s waistband, hidden by his suit coat.
 

The ruse, however, was entirely unnecessary. Level One was completely deserted.

“Wait,” Peter said as they were about to pass the door to his room. He darted inside and retrieved the two journals and shoved them into his tunic.
 

Von Falkenstein’s eyes narrowed. “Now is not the time.”

“There may not be another,” Peter told him as he shut the door and gestured for von Falkenstein to move on.
 

Their footsteps echoed in the empty corridors as they made their way to the main elevator that would take them down.
 

The plan was simple. Von Falkenstein would do what he could to delay Baumann from sending his men through the gate while Peter freed Mina. With Ivan wreaking havoc on Level Three, Peter was hoping that only a few guards, or perhaps none, would remain on the command platform.

The elevator slowed as it approached Level Two.

“Good luck,
Herr Professor
,” Peter said.

Removing the pistol Peter had given him from his waistband and holding it in a firm, confident grip, von Falkenstein growled, “I have no need of luck.”

The door hissed open and von Falkenstein stepped out. Peter heard some shouts of surprise before the door slid closed and the elevator continued its descent toward Level Three.

When the doors opened and he stepped out onto the third level, he found no one there to greet him. The sounds of gunfire, screams, and Ivan’s rage-filled bellows echoed from the concrete and rock walls. Despite overwhelming numbers, the SS soldiers still had not been able to subdue their quarry.

Peter made his way to the still-smoking wreckage of the laboratory, which had been transformed into a makeshift triage station. Injured and dead soldiers and a handful of Kleist’s minions who must have been in the cell block and got in Ivan’s way were arrayed in orderly rows in the parts of the lab and adjoining rooms that hadn’t been burned. A pair of men in white lab coats that were now streaked and smudged with blood were treating the injured as best they could, even as more casualties were hauled in by their comrades.

The laboratory was rocked by an explosion, then another. Ivan’s roar turned into a warbling scream that was drowned out by a non-stop orgy of automatic weapons fire.

Ignoring everyone around him, Peter stepped over the dead and the dying, intent on his goal.
 

He turned down the first hallway of the cell block and began to unlock each door as he passed, quickly spinning the wheels to draw back the locking bolts before pulling the doors partway open. He did not stop to see what might emerge, and could only hope that the newly freed prisoners would be drawn toward the laboratory and the possibility of freedom, or food, rather than running him down.
 

The hallway behind him was quickly filled by grunts, squeals, and warbles that sent a shiver of fear down Peter’s spine. Heavy footsteps, the scraping of something hard against concrete, the flapping of membranes, and frenetic tap-tap-tapping marked the movement of the prisoners, and Peter hurried faster toward Mina’s cell.

Screams from the direction of the laboratory, followed by gunfire, punctuating the frenzied howls and mewling of the creatures as they fell upon the unsuspecting wounded.

Kneeling down, he skid open the thick hatch over the feeding slit in Mina’s door. “Mina,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Peter,” she gasped, “what’s happening?”

“It’s a bit of a long story,” he told her as he began to spin the wheel on the door. “The most important thing is to get you out of there, and then we need to…”
 

“Peter, no!” She cried. “Stop! Don’t let me out!”

Peter stopped spinning the wheel. “Why? We have to…”

“I need more food,” she rasped. “I…I killed that last man they left in here, but I’m still hungry. Starving. I might…I might hurt you. I can’t control myself.”

Peter felt like the world had just dropped away. Kneeling down so he could look at her through the feeding slit, he said, “Mina, Baumann’s opening the gate as we speak and plans to go through and take his men with him. It’s just as you said in von Falkenstein’s study that night. Too many men going through in a short time could destabilize the gate and allow whatever’s on the other side to come here. We’ve got to stop him.”

Peter couldn’t imagine what might be in Hell, as von Falkenstein had called it, but she had seen it for herself, and he saw the remembered horror reflected in her eyes.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “He mustn’t, Peter. He can’t!”

“He can and he will if we don’t stop him! Von Falkenstein is on the command platform to try and slow them down, but I don’t trust him any more than Baumann. I’ve got to get you out of there.” He stood up and began to spin the wheel again.

“Peter, no! You can’t let me out,” she cried. “Don’t make me hurt you, too!”

Screams broke out somewhere deeper in the cell block, followed by a fusillade of gunfire. It was close.

He stopped spinning the wheel. “I have an idea,” he told her. “I’ll be right back.”

Taking off in the direction of the sound, he came upon a trio of soldiers who had just killed something that looked like a spider the size of a banquet table, but with human skin and hands on its feet. It was hard to tell what the rest might have looked like after a pair of grenades and several dozen bullets had done their work. A pall of smoke and dust shrouded the corridor, and the acrid smell of gun powder combined with the stench of offal assaulted Peter’s nose.

“You men, with me!” He shouted. “I know a way out!”

“Show us, then, damn you!”
 

Peter recognized the man and his two companions. They had been the ones who had tried to rape Mina. Peter saw the fourth would-be rapist on the floor, the serrated mandibles of the spider-thing clamped around his crushed neck.
 

“Follow me,” he said before turning away, hoping they hadn’t recognized him.

They had almost made it to Mina’s cell when the
Oberscharführer
, the leader of the trio behind him, finally realized whom he was following.
 

“
Halt!
” The sergeant shouted, skidding to a stop and raising his weapon.

Peter stopped and turned, using the movement to mask a backward step closer to Mina’s cell. Raising his hands, he took another step back. “Whatever
Brigadeführer
Baumann told you, whatever orders he gave regarding me go directly against orders from
Reichsführer
Himmler himself.” Another step back. “He has gone rogue!”

“We will see what the
Brigadeführer
has to say about that. Now, turn around, and…”

Peter decided it was time to use the oldest trick in the book. Putting a terrified look on his face, which was not at all hard to do under the circumstances, he pointed and screamed, “
Behind you!
”

The three men whirled around in unison, firing down the corridor without waiting to see their target. The distraction gave Peter just enough time to reach Mina’s cell. Spinning the wheel the last half revolution until the bolts drew back from the door frame, he dove for the floor as the men turned back around, the smoking muzzles of their rifles already tracking him.

The three inch thick metal door slammed open, smashing the lock wheel into the concrete wall. Mina stepped out into the corridor, her glowing eyes fixed on Peter, sprawled at her feet.

“Open fire!” The three soldiers blasted away at her, and Peter watched in rapt fascination as the bullets tore the chest of her coveralls to ribbons. Blood seeped from the wounds and sprayed out her back as the bullets passed through her flesh and bone.
 

One of the men made the mistake of making direct eye contact with her. In an instant, his face went slack and he released the trigger of his rifle, then stood still as a mannequin. The other two men turned to run, but Peter shot them in the legs. They fell to the floor, writhing in pain.

With a feral snarl, Mina moved with blinding speed to the man who stood frozen. Putting her glowing hands to the sides of his head, she quickly drained him of life. Casting the shriveled corpse aside, she pounced on the next man, batting away his rifle as if it were a child’s toy. He beat at her with his fists, trying to knock her hands away from his head, then drew his knife and tried to stab her. Before the blade could prick her skin, she grabbed his wrist and gave it a brief squeeze. Bones snapped and the man shrieked as the knife clattered to the floor. He hammered on her a few more times with his good hand until he was too weak to raise his arm from the floor. A few seconds later he was still. Not long after that, his body was nothing more than a vacant husk.

With a deep sigh, Mina sat up and licked her lips. The glow had faded from her eyes.
 

Beside her, in a widening pool of his own blood from the bullet wounds in his leg, the
Oberscharführer
was begging for mercy, blubbering like a child.
 

Mina knelt beside him and smiled. She grabbed his crotch, taking hold of his genitals, and squeezed.
 

Getting to his feet, Peter looked away as the man’s scream rose higher and higher in pitch before the soft organs in Mina’s hand exploded like overripe fruit under the pressure of her grip. Then she took the other soldier’s knife and rammed it through the gagging
Oberscharführer’s
heart, burying the tip of the blade in the concrete floor beneath.

With a final heaving sigh, she stood up and came to Peter. “I hope God can forgive me,” she whispered.

“God had nothing to do with this.” He told her, terrified of looking into her eyes, but unable to help himself. But the fire was gone. For now. “Come. We have to get to the gate!”

He led her back toward the laboratory, following the sounds of the screams and gunfire.
 

“Oh, my God.” He stopped as he came around a corner. A creature resembling a cross between a snake and a squid was coiled in the center of the corridor, its tentacles lashing at a group of soldiers who were caught between it and some other horror on the far side whose appearance was masked by smoke. Bullets sparked off the snake-squid’s thick hide. A long tentacle, as big around at the base as Peter’s thigh, flailed forward into the crush of men and came back with a victim. The suckers at the end of the tentacle were the size of Peter’s palm and had vicious looking hooks in the center. Wrapped around the victim’s chest, there was no hope of escape.
 

Peter had to give the man credit for his courage. His screams were curses of rage, and he emptied an entire magazine into what might pass as the face of the creature before it thrust him into a clacking beak and bit him in half.

Mina pulled Peter back. “We must find another way,” she whispered. “Men, I can fight. Things like that…” She shook her head, a look of terror in her eyes.

“The service tunnel,” Peter said. “We’ll have to go back through the tunnel. We can reach Level Two that way.”

Retracing the steps Peter had taken earlier after releasing Ivan, they made their way toward the service tunnel. They passed what remained of Ivan, who was now little more than a dismembered hulk, fallen among a mass of smashed and torn bodies in blood-soaked SS uniforms. Peter said a silent prayer for the man Ivan had once been.

They caught glimpses of other bestial impossibilities wandering the corridors, but all of them were heading away, drawn toward the laboratory where the bulk of the fighting was taking place.
 

Peter opened the service tunnel door and stepped through. He didn’t bother closing it behind him.
 

Ahead, he could hear the crackling of the energy discharge from the gate. He hurried faster, cursing his leg with every step. He sensed a sudden surge of energy, then the sickening tug of artificial gravity as the gate snapped open to that distant, horrible place. “They’ve opened the gate!”

As they approached the gate chamber, they heard cries of terror mingled with pleas for help.

Coming around the corner where the tunnel opened into the vast subterranean cavern, he saw several hundred people packed into a crude electrified corral directly below the huge ring.

“Oh, no,” Mina whispered. “Those poor people! They’re food for Baumann and his men after they pass through the gate. They’ll be massacred!”

Peter’s eye was caught by movement above them. “Look!” He pointed to the upper catwalk, which was just visible over the edge of the glimmering ring and its opaque black disk. Baumann and von Falkenstein were up there, just short of the departure cage, grappling with one another. A group of men were clustered along the rear half of the catwalk, watching the contest between their superiors. All of them could have been brothers, and some could have been twins. Tall, broad-shouldered with narrow waists, boasting blond hair and, Peter was sure, blue eyes, they were each the picture perfect genetic model of Aryan superiority portrayed by Nazi propaganda. One of them was sprawled on the grating, unmoving, a smear of red on his chest. Von Falkenstein still clutched his pistol, and as he and Baumann turned in their dance of death, Peter saw a fresh gunshot wound in Baumann’s shoulder. He and the other soldiers were stark naked, prepared for their journey through the gate, while von Falkenstein still wore his suit.