The Soviet artillery is a steady heartbeat above our heads now. Reminds me of a child stomping about the house inside his daddy’s oversized boots, moving from room to room. Footsteps instead of detonations. I rather like the image. So do a few others in here with me. It lessens the fear. And down in our hole, there’s a lot to fear these days. We all feel it, though some of us are better at hiding it than others.
Fraus Christian and Junge openly weep when they don’t think any of us are paying attention. But they are women, and nothing is expected from them. Wet cheeks are as common here as the weeping cinder block walls.
Some of the military men shield their fears behind grimaces, or wine bottles by the dozens, or by moving around pieces on der Führer’s magnetic wall map, Burgdorf and Weidling and Krebs, to name just a few.
Others, like Axeman and Goebbels, seem almost incapable of fear. They speak about victory as if it’s just days away from occurring; that the pounding the Reichstag is currently taking from the artillery batteries and mortars spanning the capitol like inflamed ringworm are recorded sounds from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or Hippler’s Eternal Jew.
Unfortunately, there are those of us who understand the reality of our world. We know what’s coming. We even talk about it at night, playing cards around the conference hall table.
Still, der Führer keeps predicting a miracle, so we’ll wait to see if one occurs. What else is there to do?
There are whispers of up to eight Soviet armies now surrounding Berlin, more than a million inbred Slavics. Such numbers simply numb the senses.
Fighting rages along Berlin’s outskirts. We can hear the detonations from every direction now, faint and muffled by the thick walls. It never truly ends, almost like continuous thunder. They tell us the big Soviet push into the capitol hasn’t begun yet. We know it’s only a matter of when.
Concrete shavings fall from the ceiling like slashing rain.
We went topside, Otto and I, after the artillery decided to stomp atop the eastern part of the city for a while, leaving central Berlin in relative peace.
Making our way up the featureless, winding stairway of the enclosed Chancellery gardens, we were instantly bathed in sickly sunlight, the warmth goosing our flesh.
We once looked upon this splash of green as a hidden, inner-city oasis. Now such descriptions are ludicrous. The magnificent gardens shadowed by gurgling fountains and botanical greenhouses, they’re gone now. In their stead squat huge craters, smashed statuary and twisted, uprooted trees.
As bad as the courtyard looks, Berlin’s skyline resembles hell’s anteroom, all smeared with ashy crimson. Crazily canted buildings threaten to collapse at any moment, while multiple plumes of black smoke curl above the corpse of the city. Areas are cordoned off with signs of “Achtung!” and “Minen!” that warn citizens of still-unexploded mines. In the distance, street fights flare up like cold sores.
Still, the battered courtyard and crimson-stained skyline are sights tenfold better to behold than the concrete tomb beneath our feet. The air up here is fresh and good. So is the cigarette smoke, cleansing, in its own way. We both wish we could camp here until the war ends, but we know better. We can already see the invisible footsteps of the Soviet artillery barrage slowly walking its way back toward us.
We reluctantly suck the last remaining strands of smoke from our fags and collapse back down into the dank and dark.
I’ve been ordered into Mein Führer’s private study to fix a malfunctioning desk light. Seems like a trivial task, considering how our lone generator has been wheezing along for days now. I don’t exactly know why the SS soldiers couldn’t have handled the problem themselves. Then again, Bavarians are very regimented roosters, and I can only assume a fighting man could not be asked to fix an electrical problem, just as none of the soldiers would expect an electrician like myself to pick up a machine pistol to defend Berlin.
I quickly make my way across the sitting room, really just a long, filthy hallway filled with soldiers awaiting orders, and slip into the conference room. This is where plans are laid bare, mapped out, detailed and ordered into grim, bloody reality. I barely glance at the map, however, as I make my way over to a heavy metal door and give it a soft tap with a knuckle.
“Enter,” a weak voice orders.
“Mein Führer,” I murmur, cautiously pushing my way into the tiny room. I stop, stiffening and clicking the back of my boot heels neatly together. “I’m here to fix the defective lamp.”
He is sunk down inside the folds of his favorite chair. The man who had conquered Western Europe and the Balkans sits, stiff as a statue, gazing up at the room’s lone decoration, a life-sized oil painting of Frederick the Great, the great Prussian king from centuries past.
I gingerly heft the lamp from the corner of the desk and plug it into a nearby wall socket. Not once does Hitler break eyes from the painting, staring up at the old king in almost silent conversation.
Hitler is a wreck, both physically and emotionally. He’s developed a marked tremor in his left hand after the bomb attempt last year. He’s hid it well for a while, often photographed with arm hidden behind his back. Yet the shaking has spread to the body’s entire left side, and his gestures are slow and jerky, like a man in the advanced stage of Parkinson’s disease. Still, his bloodshot blue eyes can be as hypnotic as ever, and he still retains at least some of the unmistakable aura of power that once instilled awe in complete strangers.
I carefully note one of the cord’s electrical prongs is bent down at an odd angle, and I use a pair of pliers to straighten it out. I place the reading lamp back atop his desk. I can see the clean spot where the lamp has sat amongst the desktop dust.
“Mein Führer,” I whisper, bowing.
He is staring at me, those glittering eyes locked onto mine. They are feverish and red, as if he hasn’t slept in days. Then again, way down here, night and day have little distinction.
“Hentschel,” he says with a croak. I am shocked he even remembers my name. I have orbited him since the early thirties, but I have never been on a first-name basis with him. “I thank you.”
Now I am the one nodding, embarrassed but thrilled.
“Did you know,” Hitler begins, his hand swiping at his watery eyes before stabbing up at the painting, “that Prussia was losing the Seven Years’ War? He—” a second thrusting gesture at the wall, “—kept Prussia on its feet, defying a coalition of European nations.”
His breath stinks, and I take an involuntary step back.
“Just when all looked lost, a miracle happened,” he continues, not noticing my reaction to the stench. “Do you know what that miracle was, Hentschel?”
Every German boy and girl is taught this story, so it is easy for me to tell him about how Russian armies had occupied Berlin, and how Frederick II had been holed up inside his fortress, contemplating suicide. And how, with the unrelated but timely death of Russian Empress Tsaritsa Elizabeth, the coalition against Germany simply disintegrated.
“Miracle of the House of Brandenburg is what the historians like to call it,” Hitler says with an approving nod. “It saved Prussia and all the German-speaking territories.”
He faces the painting. He is no longer speaking to me, but to himself, or perhaps to the long-dead Frederick II. “We face a similar coalition now, before us. Our lands are invaded, and Berlin is again set upon by the Russians.”
He pauses, a bit of saliva pooling at the edge of his lip. A bubble expands and deflates with each breath through his nose.
“Roosevelt’s death is Tsaritsa Elizabeth all over again. It’s already weakened the Allies’ cause. Churchill and Stalin now fight over the cripple’s carcass. A crack will appear, soon to widen into a fissure. This will tear the two apart.”
Hitler glances sharply up at me. His eyes were bright and biting. “We can still snatch victory in the final sprint. The Third Reich will survive!”
His right hand reaches out to me, his left hanging useless at his side.
“That will be all, dear Hentschel.”
Bowing, I delicately grasp the trembling hand and give it a feather-light squeeze. It feels loose and flabby to the touch.
“Heil Hitler,” I whisper.
Der Führer abruptly turns his attention back to the frowning King on the wall while I gather my tools and retreat from the room that smells faintly of death.
The generator is acting up again. That’s my primary task down here, keeping the machine roaring inside its soundproof walls. It’s a beast, roughly the size of a medium Panzer tank, but a necessary beast. Without it, we would have no lights or phones or even breathable air, since the fuel-fed generator operates the bunker’s all-important ventilation system. Frightening to think the entire defense of Berlin hinges on the performance of this single, aging generator.
I spend most of my day attacking the problem, unscrewing this plate, tightening that joint, a few times even hammering its top out of pure spite. But it works. Somehow. Some way.
Stumpfegger later slaps me on the back, congratulating me on a job well done. As usual, he is drunk. I can easily smell the alcohol staining his breath.
“Hentschel,” he says, attempting to speak through a smelly belch, “you can fix anything.”
“I can’t fix the war,” I answer, but I do so quietly, where only I can hear it. After all, loose tongues have a tendency to be pulled from their roots when it comes to the SS and their loyalties to the Third Reich.
I pass Eva Braun. She’s a splash of color in this hive of numbing gray, flashing her white teeth in amusement at my soot-splashed face. She touches me on the cheek; tells me der Führer is pleased with my work.
Later, Eva and a bunch of her personal staff, along with high-ranking Wehrmacht soldiers, leave the bunker for the abandoned Chancellery basement above.
Things, I’m told, quickly grew out of hand, drinking, debauchery and even an orgy erupting among the soldiers and secretaries. Not surprising. A release of some sort was desperately needed. We could all feel it.
Sadly, Soviet artillery shells forced everyone back down into the earth, like digging moles.
Two dead. Thirteen wounded. Spirits smashed.
The medics will be busy tonight.
Soviet rockets crash down around us on an almost continuous basis now. One can almost see the bunker’s walls vibrate with each thudding impact.
Our hole in the ground is built fifty feet below the earth’s surface, but the ground cocooning it is marshy and wet, explaining why the walls weep so much water. Should one of those rockets kiss the bunker directly, it could crack cement. Should that happen, we would all drown down here like shipwrecked rats.
Following an intense barrage, I am forced to shut down the ventilation system lest we all suck in sulfurous fumes. To accomplish this, I am forced to meander throughout the bunker, closing off the metal vent screens, one room at a time. This includes the war-room, which sits adjacent to the conference room and its wall-sized map of Europe.
I enter this room, apologizing my way past the gathered military types, seeking the vent in the room’s far corner. Squatting before it, I slip out my pair of trusty metal-clipping pliers to snap the cover shut.
Seated nearby in the room’s only chair, Hitler is discussing the details of his plan that he hopes will shatter “the vice currently squeezing the juice from the city.” He speaks of our nation as if a critically ill patient; that his plan will be the tonic capable of making Germany the military envy of Europe once again.
“I only need you all to hold out,” Hitler rasps from his chair, peering at his assembled generals, “until the medicine is ready to save the Reich.”
A few of his words are punctuated by distant explosions topside, and most of the men inside the room look openly skeptical.
As I screw back in the vent cover, Hitler asks about Felix Steiner, one of his favorite generals. The “army Detachment Steiner” will save Berlin, he says, by attacking the northern flank of the huge Soviet salient blanketing Berlin. At the same time, he orders the German Ninth Army to attack north in a pincher move, the type that has worked so wonderfully in France and western Russia.
“Then we’ll have them,” he says, spraying saliva in glistening arcs. “We’ll have them. We’ll push them back on all fronts.”
The coming miracle, he continues, would have a similar historical impact to the defeat of the Persians by Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans.
Standing before him, Hans Krebs wipes at his beaded forehead. In a hushed but surprisingly calm voice, he informs Hitler that Steiner’s army is currently surrounded and outnumbered ten to one.
“There will be no pincher move,” he finishes in a whisper.
A long pause follows. As the silence stretches, my curiosity gets the best of me, and I glance over at der Führer. He sits frozen behind his desk, his face haggard. Curled into a bony claw, his left hand makes several swipes before knocking the pale green reading glasses from his face.
“Mein Führer,” Krebs continues, “there is another matter. There have been attacks—”
Hitler’s eyes seemed to suddenly focus. “—Attacks?”
“—Inside the city, Mein Führer.”
“Attacks?”
“We’ve lost two hundred men since sundown.”
Hitler says nothing, though he is obviously agitated. He just stares at Krebs with boiling eyes.
“The attacks continue. That’s all we know for sure,” General Krebs continues, openly sweating now. “We don’t know who is responsible.”
“Leave me,” Hitler commands.
Without hesitation or muttered words, we all file from the room. Only Krebs, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Burgdorf and Martin Bormann stay behind.
Even before the door shuts, Hitler’s screaming begins. He spits hateful things, how the men in uniforms ignore his specific orders; how the entire lot of them are a collection of “traitors and incompetents, the scum of the loyal German people.”
At one point, der Führer wishes he had executed the entire lot of them, as Josef Stalin had done to his own generals.
“There should have been a second night of knives,” he screeches.
Outside, those waiting to see der Führer freeze at this rather uncharacteristic outburst, most of them looking shell-shocked, while a few of Hitler’s personal secretaries cry.
Some people leave the corridor, sickened by what they are hearing.
I am one of them.
“Berlin is dying.”
Otto and I are back up in the garden, smoking our cigarettes and watching the sun slip beyond the horizon.
“I know,” I finally mutter.
Four armies approach central Berlin, from all four points of the compass. And all are converging on the Reichstag, Hitler’s seat of power.
I glance over at the Chancellery wall, which sits within spitting distance of the Reichstag. Someone has painted “Bleib Ubrig” in big, blocky letters. I chuckle.
“What?”
I gesture at the blocky letters.
“Survive?” Otto reads, before barking out a derisive chuckle. “Little use of that now.”
I suck on my smoke.
“Someone would be shot if he happened to write that down in the bunker,” he adds.
I glance at my friend. “What have you heard?”
The big man shrugs. “They are calling it the beast.”
I stop in mid-suck, trailing out twin clouds of smoke from my nostrils. There once had been a nearby zoo. A flak tower had been erected inside the grounds to fire on marauding bombers. Most of the caged animals inside had been killed or starved over the long months. Others had been evacuated or accidentally let loose, either by key or bomb concussion. There are now rumors that lions and tigers and bears roamed Berlin’s streets.
“I don’t understand. Beasts. Do you mean zoo animals?”
“No animal,” Otto says, discarding his butt and immediately lighting up a new one. He appears grim. “A beast.”
“I still don’t—”
“Something is making its way to us.”
“Something?”
“It came out of the west,” Otto continues, acknowledging my outburst with a slight nod. “That’s all we know. It just appeared, suddenly, with soldiers dying soon after, literally ripped to pieces, Hentschel.”
“How many?”
“Eighteen the first night; thirty-two the following day; all the way up to seventy by the end of the second night.”
“The Soviets?”
Otto shakes his head no.
“Artillery, then? Or rockets?”
“It’s not like that. It’s not widespread. Not like an artillery or mortar barrage, Hentschel. There’s precision at work here. The attacks are occurring along a straight line, and leaving behind corpses. Whatever it is, it’s headed toward the Chancellery building. And this bunker, of course.”
“The Americans?”
Another curt head shake.
“How can you be so sure?”
“It’s how our men die.” He eyes me with a haunted look. “In the most horrific fashion, forms torn apart, limb from limb. Not a shred of mercy.”
I still haven’t quite grasped what Otto is trying to tell me. “So order the Luffwaffe to bomb the entire area.”
Now Otto laughs. It sounds slightly crazed. “We have. But we haven’t killed it.” He inhales smoke. “Or maybe it can’t be killed.”
I search his face for the punch line that never comes.
“Der Führer’s confused. Maybe a bit frightened,” Otto continues. “Hell, we all are. Whatever this thing is, neither the Wehrmacht nor the Volkssturm knew how to handle it. A trained SS company has been ordered to kill it. They’re now in position. We’ll know more within the hour.”
“What if they fail?”
“Then this thing will be upon us by nightfall.”
I say nothing, peering off at Berlin’s burning horizon.
Otto throws aside his new cigarette, making a farting sound of disgust. “You should get out. As a friend, I’m telling you to get out.”
I stare at him.
“Get out while you still can.”
But I don’t. Instead, I slink back down into the bunker and collapse atop my mat beneath the generator.
Hours later, I again seek out Otto. I find him with the other soldiers. They all look grim. He glowers when he spies me. I can tell he’s angry.
“You wasted your chance,” he whispers at me, his voice harsh.
I ask him about the SS attack.
“Slaughtered, all of them.” Otto sounds scared. He looks scared, hands visibly shaking. His manner shocks me more than his words. Understand, Otto is a giant of a man, who intimidates most strangers simply by standing next to them. But the dismantling of an elite group of SS soldiers has penetrated his armor, and he now looks shaken and wounded.
“What do we do?” I finally ask, even as I dread the answer.
“Der Führer’s now in the war-room,” Otto continues. “I saw the Berlin map when I was preparing the room. It’s not good.”
He means the strategic map of Berlin. We see it every day. All along the city’s eastern edge and in a sloppy circle around Berlin are scrawled numerous red marks, indicating the most updated Soviet positions. Way over on the west side of the map, near its edge, are the blue arrows of the Americans, mostly concentrated around the Elbe River. Added to the map overnight is a third addition, Otto says—a straight, yellow line, as narrow as a medieval arrow, thrusting aggressively from Berlin’s western edge toward the Chancellery building in the city’s center.
“The enemy is at our doorstep,” I whisper.
Otto simply nods.
“So it seems.”
Hitler and Eva are in their respective rooms, closed off and under constant guard. A sense of gloom hangs heavy in the bunker, like a lingering stench.
We know it’s not the Americans, nor the British, probably not the Soviets, either. Nobody really knows what the hell it is, only that it can’t be killed.
“So what is it?” I ask Otto, as both of us eat a late dinner in silence.
“Some thing.”
“You mean a man?”
“No,” he says with a curt shake of his head. “A thing.”
I scoff at his words.
He tells me it’s more than that. A thing implies an animal of some sort, something relying and surviving on instinct rather than heightened intelligence. Yet our new enemy uses intelligence in its attacks, stalking soldiers, doubling-up on its prey, using flanking maneuvers, and even initiating ambushes.
Later, I overhear two SS soldiers whispering behind the generator as they trade nips from a canteen of Schnapps. One of the men says the enemy is a lone man, a naked man, even. He says there have been dozens of eyewitness accounts about this thing, which falls from artillery and rifle shot, violent barrages that would kill a normal man, but somehow climbs back up to kill again.
“It’s a man,” the man swears, swigging alcohol from his metal flask, ignoring the drops spattering his chest, “but it’s not a man. Different.”
The thing has successfully melted through the defending Volkssturm and Hitler Youth like boiling water through crusty thin ice. To that end, General Weidling has spread the last few remaining veterans from the battered 56th Panzers to create a last defensive ring around the Chancellery building.
The new enemy has crossed the Landwehr canal and slipped inside the Tiergarten, which is less than two blocks from our position. And through it all, Soviet artillery pummels the ground above us.
Reports from the front are grim. This last ring of steel won’t last the day. They plan on a final, massive artillery barrage against the thing before retreating beneath the ground, perhaps closing off the Chancellery’s basement entrance with explosives, and taking up positions throughout the tunnel leading to Hitler.
I comfort Hitler’s private secretary, Traudl Junge, after Weidling’s words brought forth fresh tears. We later make love beneath the generator.
Three battalions of infantry, some Wehrmacht, some SS, some Volkssturm, and some Hitler Youth make their last-ditch stand in front of the Konigsplatz. Carried on by internal jolts of adrenaline, these men and mere boys clash with the enemy. There was savage hand-to-hand fighting, I’m told. It was like Stalingrad all over again, with our boys using knives, bayonets, and even the wooden butts of their rifles.
And all of them died.
The artillery barrage sounded like thunder when it finally erupted above our heads. For precious seconds, still clutched by sleep, I thought I was back on my parent’s farm in Hanover. I even reached out with my left hand to open a window by my bed, so the misty rain could wash my face. But I touched the wall instead, whose cold flakes of chipped paint were raining down into my hair.
There are no details about how these last three battalions were decimated. Apparently some German soldiers climbed up to the second floor to wave a white flag, but an officer tore the surrender flag to shreds.
But those few survivors who witnessed the fight with the beast, they only talked about a man, a lone, naked man, who simply refuses to lie down and die.
The beast is inside the underground corridor, despite the planned detonation and destruction of the Chancellery’s basement.
I can clearly hear the sounds of fighting echoes at first, slowly solidifying into the horrific and grotesque. If you press your ear against the door, you can clearly hear the tearing bursts of machine guns, the individual pops from pistols and the screams from those dying and being torn apart.
Otto and the Burghorf and Krebs and a few of the more loyal SS soldiers bolt the huge steel doors, forever sealing us from the outside world.
The wails of the dying, the liquid splashing of men being torn apart, all of it terrifies me, particularly their mindless screaming.
It simply never ceases.
There’s a thump on the steel door.
Everyone freezes.
Another thump fills the bunker, demanding, almost impatient, like an opened palm slapping the door. No voices, though.
There are five or six soldiers on our side of the steel door, weapons at the ready. A few more stand behind them, guarding Hitler’s bedroom and study, where der Führer and Eva and even Goebbels cower. Most of the others have been pushed to the back of the bunker.
A third thumping noise sounds.
“What is that?” one of the soldiers asks.
“The beast,” a scared soldier whispers.
Krebs is helming the defense of the bunker, and he nods to a nameless captain. “Open the door.”
“What?”
“Open the fucking door.”
There’s a voice floating over from the other side of the steel door now. It’s German.
Two boyish-faced soldiers shoulder their rifles and motion for me to help them with the doors. Electronic locks bolt them down, and I have to hit the primer to first charge them, and then a fat button to release them.
A soldier, ear pressed against the door, suddenly barks out an excited noise. “It’s dead! The beast! The thing! They say it’s dead!”
I punch the primer, count to ten, and then mash down the release button. The men curse as they push open the steel monstrosities.
The smell hits us first.
Seconds later, a bloodied German soldier falls through, his hands shaking, a nervous tic savaging his left eye.
There are only a handful of survivors on the other side of the door.
“It’s over,” the man with the tic whispers. He’s bleeding from the skull and chest, and crimson stains the corners of his puckered mouth.
“Where’s the beast?” Krebs barks, pushing his way forward.
“He just fell over,” the man said, gasping. “Hasn’t moved.”
He?
As the soldiers secure the entrance, Otto, Stumpfegger and myself follow in the wake of the initial rush. I’m amazed at the level of destruction. The walls are smeared with explosive soot. There are bits and pieces of men on all visible surfaces, stuck to the walls, even sprayed atop the roof. I try not to step on the chunks littering the floor.
And in the middle of it all sprawls the thing.
But it’s not a thing. Nor is it an animal. It is a man, a shriveled, naked man.
“Surround him,” the captain orders, gesturing with his machine pistol. The soldiers obey.
He’s bald, this man, except for a fringe of white haloing his skull. There’s more white fuzz on his naked chest, beneath each arm and at his groin. There are even tiny little tufts growing on his toes, which are curled in death.
“The rumors are true,” I whisper.
“How so?” Stumpfegger asks.
I nudge the dead man’s arm with my boot. Lettering has been burned into his flesh.
900298
“What the hell do those numbers mean?” Otto wants to know.
“Concentration camp number,” I whisper. “We number them before slaughtering them.”
Silence descends.
The Jew at our feet flops once, and then rolls over, as if preparing to push himself to his feet.
I dive away as the soldiers move in and riddle the body with bullet sprays. My ears are dead to the world, ringing, as I turn back to stare at the body. It no longer moves.
The soldiers step back, smoking machine pistols still held tightly in their hands.
“Bastard was playing possum,” Krebs says with a sneer, kicking at the corpse.
The three of us move back in to examine the body. Otto prods the man’s naked thigh with the steel-tip of his boot. I stoop to examine the numbers on the arm, as well as the man’s face. It has changed, looking radically different than it had just moments before movement and bullet sprays. Can death change facial features so dramatically? This intrigues me.
Above us both, Stumpfegger scowls. When he finally grunts, I peer up at him.
“What?”
He ignores me, squatting down next to me to check for a pulse. He immediately shakes his head, mumbling beneath his breath.
“Does he live?” I ask.
“No.” But it’s obvious he’s distracted by something.
“What’s wrong?”
Stumpfegger glances around so the others can’t hear, and then leans in to whisper, “Where are his wounds?”
The debris from the bullets and grenade detonations has pockmarked the walls and ceiling, while the remains of the Germans slowly dry where they were torn and spattered. But despite a hail of bullets from the German soldiers behind me, there isn’t a single blemish on the naked Jew’s body.
Could his wounds be internal?”
Still glowering, Stumpfegger shakes his head no. “And his features have changed.”
I look. The face had changed again, somehow. What had once been an old man covered with white hair when we first entered the corridor has abruptly morphed into that of a young, bald men, with wiry muscles and a hairless chest.
“And the number,” Stumpfegger urges.
I peer down at the man’s arm. Inexplicably, the concentration camp number now reads 722065.
Dumbfounded, I ask him how this could be.
Before Stumpfegger can answer me, Krebs is barking more orders. His face a typical clean slate, the general orders the soldiers to secure the perimeter and to wrap the body in blankets.
“We are to burn this man without delay, der Führer’s orders.”
Of course, the men do what they are told to do, carelessly rolling the body onto a large medical blanket and lifting the corners up across their shoulders. There, they march the body through the bunker and toward the distant stairway leading up to the outside courtyard.
Hitler emerges. Looking down at the body, his face turns into an ugly thing.
“Mein Führer,” Krebs whispers, saluting him with a stiff arm. Hitler ignores him.
“Fuckin’ Jew,” he says with a wet sneer. He dribbles out a sperm of spit and plops it into the dead man’s left eye. Wiping at his mouth with his useless left hand, he turns and shuffles back inside the dark of his study.
We move on, into the guardroom down at the end of the corridor, turning right and moving up the four flights of stairs to the Chancellery’s garden. Our senses have grown accustomed to the damp haze of the bunker. But the wind and the smells it carries is a stimulating tonic. Men can become intoxicated on such things.
Krebs stays behind, but the captain, the man who’d led us through the steel doors, orders the Jew dropped into an old artillery crater. They do so, unceremoniously. Another grasps a metal tank of precious gasoline and hoses the corpse down.
“Hentscel?”
Nodding, I hand the captain my lighter. He flames it, then tosses it atop the body. We all take several steps back at the sudden eruption. We stand, spellbound, as the flames eagerly sample the dead man’s flesh.
“A smoke?”
It is Otto, holding out a cigarette.
“Thank you.”
He lights the end. He’s now passing around cigarettes to those who smoke. We are all fearful of the Red Army’s artillery, yet none of us really want to sink back down into the bunker’s stench.
“Beautiful day,” Otto says to me.
“It is.” I say with a nod, sipping a long drag. “Reminds me—”
The Jew sits up in the crater and casually tears off Otto’s left leg.
The big man doesn’t even make a sound as he slides down inside the crater, cigarette still absurdly grasped between two fingers. There, the old Jew grabs Otto’s shaved head and, like the leg, casually pulls it off.
Guns bark around me as the soldiers duck away from the crater, howling. Down below, the burning corpse down at the crater’s bottom moves.
Stands.
I can’t see much of the body beneath the licking flames and heat; it’s mostly just movement of fire, broken down into limbs. But I see black hair and a solid build; certainly not an old man. The number on the arm almost seems to glow: 622567.
The beast stalks from the crater, heading for the door leading back down into the bunker. Each step the corpse takes imprints a burning footmark comprised of little bits and pieces of it. The top of the burning mass turns back and forth, like a swiveling head.
A German soldier stationed at the door stands paralyzed, his machine gun hanging uselessly from its shoulder strap. He stirs at the last moment, though, cycling a round and firing it into the thing’s face.
All of us see this thing’s head violently whip back, and we all expect the thing to totter and fall.
And it does. It lands, still aflame. And it changes, somehow. It’s still a man, but old again now, with a burning beard.
But then it rises, lurches forward, reaching out with flame-encrusted hands, grabbing the young blonde soldier by the back of the neck and pulling him face-first into the pillar of fire. It’s almost a tender gesture, something a mother might do to a weeping child. But there’s nothing tender about this for the poor Wehrmacht soldier. We can hear the soldier’s gurgling screams, can see his legs kicking at the ground, before the beast suddenly releases its hold and the dying soldier stumbles away, his upper torso aflame, his head a blackened, bubbling mess.
The moving torch enters the darkness of the entranceway, ignoring the multiple hits stitching its back, the head and neck, the legs. The beast falls again on the steps, but rises. The flame and smoke covers both the thing’s features and its number, but no doubt both have changed. Re-animated, it glides down the stairs, a dark spider-shape on the stairs.
We follow, avoiding flaming bits left behind in the beast’s wake. A grenade goes off below. For a second the thing’s form is splashed against the wall, like the strobe from a camera. Unfortunately, it doesn’t slow the thing.
I scream down to the men below to shoot the thing. But there’s confusion. They hesitate when they see what turns the corner. They think it’s one of them, a burning German, perhaps, stumbling at them for help. But then a soldier goes down, a good chunk of his face ripped away by one of the thing’s flame-splashed arms, everyone in the central corridor of the bunker is then lighting the dead Jew up.
Some of the bullets come bouncing up toward us, and we throw ourselves to the ground. I’m screaming for them to watch their targets. But others around me are screaming for different reasons. Stumpfegger slumps against the wall, a hole in his forehead. Two others lay dead from the friendly fire, while a third takes a few minutes to bleed himself out.
On my hands and knees, I crawl to the bottom of the stairs. Seconds later, I peek around the edge.
There’s furious barking. The nine German Shepherds have been released from their pens. I glimpse the Jew lift a finger. The dogs see this, tuck tail, and dart off. Included in the group is Blondi, Hitler’s favorite canine.
I lay there, panting, as the screams wash over me. I don’t know for how long. I eventually get my legs moving.
The dead litter the corridor and, beyond, the carpeted lounge. There has been a fierce hand-to-hand struggle here, with skulls split open and leaking juice; others disemboweled. I had to walk on them since there was no other place for me to step. Here and there are little fires in spots along the wall and floor, on a nearby sofa, on satin armchairs. Trailing off are more fiery footprints. Some are still aflame, while others have cooled into tufts of ash.
The entrance to Hitler’s bedroom and study is aflame, the laminated surface bubbling from the heat.
I continue to gingerly step over bodies.
There’s movement in the room. A tearing sound—
A scream.
Moments later, Eva Braun’s head flies from the doorway, bouncing off the far wall. The head sounds like a dropped wet sponge when it lands near my feet.
I duck inside the room.
There are more flames here. One entire wall is splashed with flickering yellow. A chair is engulfed and blackened. Face down on the carpet is Eva Braun’s headless body. Her blue dress is splashed with blood. One leg twitches periodically. With the head gone, it takes time for the rest of the body to die. I’m too shocked and sickened to mourn the corpse at my feet.
I move across the room.
My cheeks redden from the waves of heat sizzling from Hitler’s small study. I can hear crackling flames inside the room; can see the strange, animated shadows spilling across the doorframe.
I can hear a voice, a babbling of guttural German. It’s Hitler. The voice sounds strong, like he used to sound back before the war sapped his strength.
Flames crackle, like a spit over a wood fire.
There’s an audible gasp from Hitler, followed moments later by a wet, ripping sound.
Seconds later, there’s a splash of liquid on the floor, like water from an overturned bucket.
Silence.
I step into the room.
Hitler’s desk has been thrown halfway across the room, up on its side with two legs snapped off. Frederick the Great is still perched on the wall, but flames are quickly eating the dry fabric. There are gouts of blood vomited across the floor, and a sluggish mass of glistening wetness. It takes me a few seconds to realize the pile is Hitler’s entrails, where the Jewish beast has eagerly disemboweled him. The rest of der Führer lies curled into a burning mass of goo.
There’s no beast. It’s as if the body has finally vaporized.
But there are words. Four of them, smeared with Hitler’s blood, in a language I don’t recognize. Only later do I note the words are Hebrew. And long after that do I finally discovered what those words actually meant.
Look up the Bible. Book of Daniel, chapter 5. It has to do with the ancient Hebrews. God had taken a strong dislike to Babylon, and decided to put an end to it. In doing so, four words had been written in blood.
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
God hath numbered thy kingdom
…And finished it.