Shadows Will Fall by Trey Garrison

Author:Trey Garrison [Garrison, Trey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-01-31T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY

Poenari Citadel

Wallachia Region

In darkness broken by the flickering emergency lights, the descending flare, and torchlight, the people in the outer courtyard of Poenari Citadel panicked. In the center of the outer courtyard, hundreds of the creatures were feeding on the remains of the storm troopers who had charged into their midst. Hundreds more were shambling toward where the living were gathered, just outside the gate to the inner courtyard.

The living dead were among them. A dozen frightened engineers carrying torches made a mad dash toward the outer castle door, hoping to circumvent the throng of ravenous creatures that surrounded Übel’s machine and those now moving toward where the inner courtyard. Before the engineers could make it halfway they were set upon by the creatures and torn to pieces. The things were getting faster, Terah noted. Major Hoffstetter was screaming in a high-pitched voice for the SS soldiers to protect him. A few formed up around the major, but only two of them had weapons.

The sight of the undead closing on them caused some technicians and engineers—and a few soldiers—to run mindlessly away. The outer courtyard was enclosed, so they ran straight into packs of the creatures no matter which way they ran. The creatures moved more slowly in death, but they were quick enough. The screams of the dying echoed off the castle walls.

Few kept their heads. Skorzeny was one of them.

First he grabbed one of the SS soldiers, one whose uniform bore a signals unit patch.

“Soldier, I need you to get to the radio room,” he ordered.

Then he grabbed two engineers by the back of their necks. They were wide-eyed with fear.

“You two, get it together. I need you to go with the corporal here. Get him to the radio room and then get those generators back on.”

He pulled a pad from his pocket, scratched out a short coded message and gave it to the corporal.

“As soon as you have power, send this message on the alert three frequency,” Skorzeny said. The corporal was surprised—that was one of the highest priority signals in the military, usually reserved for field marshals.

Skorzeny jumped up on the platform. The undead creatures were still a good fifty yards away, and most were still busy feeding on the platoon of SS men and the ones who had panicked.

“Achtung!” he barked in his command voice. “All armed soldiers, form up right here. Fall in!” he said, pointing to the left of the platform.

His commanding voice and confidence somewhat calmed the soldiers and the engineers.

About fifteen soldiers formed up. They carried Schmeisser MP-40s. A few only had their service pistols. Skorzeny looked over to the prisoner enclosure, where he saw three soldiers armed with machine pistols. They hadn’t fallen in.

He jumped down from the platform, sprinted toward the enclosure and grabbed one of the three by the front of his tunic.

“Are you deaf? Form up over there,” he barked at him.

“I . . . sir . . . we are needed to guard the prisoners,” the soldier replied.

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