Burning Angels

‘At the Deutsche Ahnenerbe, in Berlin, they unfroze her and began to clean her up, in an effort to make her presentable to the Führer. But the corpse started to collapse from the inside out. Her organs — liver, kidneys, lungs — seemed to have rotted and died, even as the outer being still lived. Her brain had been transformed into a mush; a soup. In short, she had been something close to a zombie as she’d stumbled into the icy crevasse and perished.

‘The men tasked to make her perfect — a perfect Aryan ancestor — didn’t know what to do. Then one, an archaeologist and pseudo-scientist called Herman Wirth, tripped while carrying out his work. He reached out to save himself, but in doing so he cut both himself and his Deutsche Ahnenerbe colleague — a myth-hunter called Otto Rahn — with a small glass inspection slide. No one thought too much about it, until both men sickened and died.’

Kammler raised his eyes to his long-distance audience, and a terrible darkness seemed to have filled them. ‘They died voiding thick, black, putrid blood from every orifice, and with terrible, zombified expressions on their features. No one needed to carry out a post-mortem to know what had happened. A five-thousand-year-old killer disease had survived, deep-frozen in the Arctic ice, and now it had come back to life. Var had claimed her first victims.

‘The Führer named this pathogen the Gottvirus, because nothing like it had ever been seen. It was clearly the mother of all viruses. That was in 1943. The Führer’s people spent the next two years perfecting the Gottvirus

, fully intending to use it to repel the Allied hordes. In that, sadly, they failed. Time was against us… But not any more. Now, today, as I speak to you, time is very much on our side.’

Kammler smiled. ‘So, gentlemen — and one lady, I believe — now you know exactly how you are going to die. And you know what choice you have before you. Stay on that island and die quietly, or help spread my gift — my virus — to the world. You see, you British never understood: you cannot defeat the Reich. The Aryan. It has taken seven decades, but we are back. And we have survived to conquer. Jedem das Seine, my friends. Everyone gets what they deserve.’

As he reached out to cut the live link, Kammler paused.

‘Ah! I almost forgot… One last thing. William Jaeger — presumably you were expecting to find your wife and child on my island, were you not? Well, you can relax: they are indeed there. They have been enjoying my hospitality for quite some time. And it’s high time you were reunited with them.

‘Like you, of course, they are also infected. Unharmed, but infected all the same. We injected them several weeks ago. This is so you will be able to watch them die. I mean, I didn’t want you to die as one happy family. No, they must go first, so you can witness it at first hand. You’ll find them in a bamboo cage, tethered in the jungle. And feeling more than a little sick already, I believe.’

Kammler shrugged. ‘That’s it. Auf Wiedersehen

, my friends. It only leaves me to say a final Wir sind die Zukunft.’

His teeth gleamed in a perfect smile. ‘We — my kind — we really are the future.’

83

A form struck out at Jaeger, driving a sharpened bamboo stake repeatedly towards his face. The figure whirled around, wielding the crude weapon like an ancient gladiator would a spear. It yelled curses. Cruel insults. The kind of words Jaeger had never imagined her capable of, not in his wildest dreams.

‘GET AWAY! KEEP AWAY! I’LL SLICE YOU UP, YOU… YOU EVIL BASTARD! TOUCH MY SON AND I’LL RIP YOUR BLACK HEART OUT!’

Jaeger shuddered. He could barely recognise the woman he loved; the one he’d spent the last three years searching for relentlessly.

Her hair was long and matted into thick clumps, like dreadlocks. Her features were haggard and drawn, her clothes hanging in dirty rags around her shoulders.

My God, how long had they kept her like this? Caged like an animal in the jungle.

He sank to his haunches before the crude bamboo structure, repeating the same phrase over and over, trying to reassure her.

‘It’s me. Will. Your husband. I’ve come for you, like I promised I would. I’m here.’

But each utterance was met only with another swing of the stave towards his tortured features.

To the rear of the cage Jaeger spied Luke’s emaciated form lying prone — presumably unconscious — as Ruth did all in her power to defend him from what she perceived to be her enemies.

The image broke his heart.

In spite of everything, he felt he loved her more now than he had ever thought possible, and especially for this spirited, desperate, frantic defence of their son. But had she lost her mind? Had the terrible incarceration and the virus broken her?

Jaeger couldn’t be sure. All he wanted to do was take her in his arms and let her know that they were safe now. Or at least until the Gottvirus started to bite and to fry their very minds.