Bloodthirst

  Bloodthirst

  Marc Alexander

  © Marc Alexander 1979

  Marc Alexander has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as author of this work.

  First Published in 1979 by Legend.

  This edition published in 2016 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd

  Table of Contents

  A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

  The rosy dream seemed endless; an awareness which was neither life nor death, without knowledge of self yet with dim remembrance of a dream dreamed before. Occasionally there was a presentiment that somewhere along the artery of time a new dream would be dreamed.

  At other times it became strangely sensual as the dreamer floated liquescent through hall after damask hall with the stirrings of transient memory … fantastical forms glimpsed through a ruby darkly, pulsations of dread rippling kaleidoscopic walls, a thirst for something forgotten but still desired, crimson flashes of hate which slowly lapsed back into the calm of the dream.

  With this calm came vague comprehension that without life there cannot be death; the inkling that a cycle must complete and the dreamer's time would come again.

  Chapter 1

  Sheet lightning shimmered over the eastern horizon, reminding Heinrich Kobler of artillery flashes. Perhaps the main body of the retreating Panzers was still embattled with the Ivans but if so it had little interest for him. Corporal Bauer often said the war was only ten square metres round you and, as usual, the corporal was right. Heinrich remembered seeing a Mark VI tank wrecked by an explosive shell. From a safe distance he had watched a crew member try to haul his flaming body through the hatch. The agony of the frantic puppet meant nothing to him; yet when a ‘Stalin organ’ fountained white and orange so close the blast sent him reeling, his veteran bowels voided like those of a recruit in his first bombardment.

  Corporal Bauer knew all right! That sausage butcher from Hamburg who, in keeping with the traditional joke, was sometimes called Hummel, was a professional survivor. Hummel or not, that morning he had saved his fleeing squad when he repaired a staff car which had been strafed by a Stormvik. A dead officer with lightning flash insignia had been slumped over the wheel. His companions had bolted and Heinrich hoped the Ivans or the Hungarian partisans had caught the bastards. That would teach them war was something more than strutting in black uniforms and booting Jews and Gypsies about …

  As he plodded at the head of exhausted men, Corporal Hans Bauer enjoyed thinking back to the Mercedes. It proved what a useless lot these jumped-up officers were when it came to anything practical. They had abandoned their car, yet he only had to lift the bonnet to find the damage caused by a random bullet. He shortened a broken lead, reconnected it and they were bouncing along as though they were all wearing oak leaves. That was one in the eye for The Professor …

  Klaus Wankel — known without affection as The Professor — kept his pink-rimmed eyes on the bulging back of Corporal Bauer. To remain fat, when the hungry nightmare of the East European offensive had reduced the army to shambling skeletons, was a tribute to his uncanny power of self-preservation. For the thousandth time Klaus wished Bauer would stop using him as his butt.

  Of course, he knew it was class prejudice. In the long gone days of peace Corporal Bauer sweated long hours in stinking surroundings while Klaus Wankel carried his teacher’s briefcase leisurely in Bad Kreuznach, the spa town of nightingales and roses. Bauer had the contempt of his class for the bourgeoisie; and this was increased by an irritating habit the Professor had never been able to control — that of imparting information.

  Mentally he tried to excuse himself that it was because his mind had always been so active. Was it his fault if he had an intellectual approach to life? Yet it placed a barrier between him and the rest of the squad. For example, when the order had come for the withdrawal he had given an impromptu lecture on Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, pointing out that only a third of the army managed to return to their French Fatherland. Corporal Bauer had shouted, ‘Shut up, Professor, or I’ll lose my boot up your arse.’

  Klaus still felt shame about this. He knew it had been very wrong to lower morale even further — if that were possible — and he had desperately wanted to rectify his error, even though he could not alter the fact he had been a professional man while Hans Bauer had the soul of a peasant, and in this dreadful freezing country it was only peasants who stood a chance. Yet part of his mind still pictured the ghosts of the Grande Armee watching from snow-sheeted firs the repetition of a once invincible force collapsing before what the Russians called Comrade Winter …

  Little Werner Hase reeled as he tried to keep up with the small party. God alone knew where they were, or what had happened to the Panzer brigade. Everything had become chaos after Ivan’s artillery had caught them in the valley, while Stormviks howled through it like death angels. Finding the abandoned staff car had saved them. They had escaped the bombardment but had lost the column, supposing there still was a column. Corporal Bauer had driven it until there was no more petrol and now all he could do was lead them west, west to the Fatherland, west to Werner’s beloved Bavaria and his beloved Lotte in Schwangau. In his fantasies — especially when Red Army guns threw tall snow columns about them — he imagined being in an enormous feather bed with Lotte, melting into her generous warmth and finding refuge from the world.

  Through his fatigue he felt a sudden spasm of hate for die Fuhrer and the slogans which once sounded glorious — ‘Strength through joy!’ and ‘My blood for the Fatherland’.

  It started with parades which brought tears of pride and ended in this bloody shambles. It had been the greatest confidence trick of all time. Ludwig had been right, poor misunderstood King Ludwig of Bavaria who had died mysteriously on the shore of Stamberg Lake, a lunatic in the eyes of the world. He built beautiful palaces instead of buying glory on distant battlefields with the lives of his subjects.

  Dear God, thought Werner, I’d give my soul to walk the forest path round Neuschwanstein once more and listen to the thunder of the cataract …

  ‘Halt!’ Corporal Bauer ordered.

  The five soldiers closed about him.

  ‘We’d better eat and rest,’ he growled. ‘Up there looks all right to me.’

  Their eyes followed his sausage finger to where, in the spectral glow of snowlight, they saw a ruined church surrounded by a coppice of shattered tombstones.

  Bauer looked it over with an experienced eye. Its walls were blown outwards, indicating a direct hit, and the graveyard was pocked with small craters, but in a far comer a low mausoleum remained intact. Surprisingly an allegorical statue was still in place above an arch from which bronze doors had been wrenched by the blast.

  ‘In here, lads.’

  ‘But, corporal, it’s a grave,’ protested Heinrich Kobler. ‘It’d be bad luck … ’

  ‘Mensch! You should know by now to fear the living, not the dead,’ retorted Bauer. ‘In there we can boil coffee and the partisans won’t see our fire.’

  Excited by the thought of a warm drink in their bellies the sold
iers stumbled down steps into the tomb. The corporal lit a stump of candle, making shadows caper grotesquely. They were in a large marble vault lined with massive stone shelves on which rested ancient coffins. Bauer held his candle close to one, its flame reflecting on a dark panel of carved wood.

  ‘In those days corpses of aristocrats were better housed than living workers,’ he muttered in disgust.

  Werner Hase made a little pyramid of the dry sticks which had made his greatcoat pockets bulge. Another man unhooked a pan from his pack while a third produced a tin of ersatz coffee. Soon flames from the small fire illuminated the worn faces of the Germans and the tiered sarcophagi behind them.

  The corporal put down his Nagan machine-pistol and held up a flask.

  ‘I’ve got a treat for you bastards,’ he grinned. ‘What do you say to some schnapps in your rot-gut coffee?’

  ‘Hummel! Hummel!’ laughed Heinrich Kobler. ‘Where did you get that, Hummel?’

  ‘It’s by courtesy of the captain we found in the Mercedes,’ Bauer answered. ‘His SS mates were in such a hurry they forgot to take it off him.’

  ‘Swine — those SS,’ Werner Hase muttered as he crouched over the burning sticks. ‘It’s because of what they’ve done in our name the Reds crucify prisoners.’ He shuddered. To him the Russians were devils rather than flesh-and-blood enemies. Oh yes, he’d seen plenty of dead Ivans frozen stiff with bandages round their feet instead of socks, but only once had he actually seen the living enemy — white shapes slinking through trees like wolves. From his trench he’d opened up with his MG38, but he never knew if he’d hit any of the phantoms. No one dared to leave the emplacement to see.

  Water began to bubble in the pan. Candle in hand, Bauer prowled to the far end of the chamber.

  ‘One of these fancy boxes has been knocked down,’ he called. ‘Looks like there’s a kid inside it.’

  Two of the party joined him. In falling from a slab of red stone the lid had been displaced. In the trembling light they could see the small figure wrapped in a yellowed shroud, but showing no signs of decomposition.

  ‘He’s kept well,’ the corporal commented. He peered at the metal plate on the lid, but it was too tarnished for him to read name or date.

  ‘I’ll have this,’ he muttered and prised it from the ancient wood with the point of his bayonet. ‘I’ll bet you it’s silver.’

  Klaus Wankel gazed with fascination at the body. It was about the same size as the boys he had taught before he was mobilized, but none of his pupils had shown such dignity of feature even in repose. The boy’s eyes were closed, the face gaunt but serene.

  Heinrich Kobler said: ‘Funny he hasn’t rotted. I thought they turned into dust in the end.’

  ‘It is unusual, yes,’ answered Klaus Wankel, and before he could check himself he had launched into his role of The Professor.

  ‘The superstitious Catholic Church regards the lack of decomposition as a sign of holiness,’ he declared. ‘It was a factor always considered in the canonization of saints. But in East Europe the Orthodox Church took the opposite view. A body which did not decompose was regarded as something evil. For example, in Greece graves were often desecrated because the ignorant feared … ’

  The sentence was lost in the staccato din of a submachine gun reverberating in the confined space. Flashes from its muzzle illuminated the mausoleum like a strobe light. From his crouched position Corporal Bauer saw his companions assume warped postures of death, their screams obliterated by the noise of the gun which winked like an orange eye at the vault entrance.

  The burst ended and Bauer realized he was the only one still alive. His ability to survive had not deserted him. Because he had been kneeling at the coffin the swathe of death had passed over him. By the firelight the corporal saw three figures in camouflage white. As they stepped into the chamber they reminded him of monks in white cowls.

  Dropping the piece of metal into the open coffin, he straightened up and held his hands shoulder high.

  ‘Kamerad! Kamerad!’ he said, and grinned.

  The three came close.

  ‘Zhal potratit patron na etu svoloch!’ said the one with the submachine gun, leaning against a coffin.

  ‘Fellow workers,’ said Corporal Bauer. ‘I am kamerad, a worker like you. I spit on the bosses who make workers kill each other. You must understand that … ’

  A burly figure stepped forward and looked into the German’s stubbled face. He smiled, exposing a row of metal teeth, then raised a knife and placed the razor sharp point against Bauer’s neck, just below the comer of the jawbone. He made a neat downwards cut.

  As the blood from the nick trickled under his collar Corporal Hans Bauer knew from his peacetime experience what was to come. How often had he done the same to a pig dangling by its hind legs from a chain!

  The enemy turned the knife tip in the incision, then moved his arm with skilful strength. The corporal’s last thought, as he felt his life gush away through his gaping throat, was that his executioner really was a fellow worker — the Ivan had been a butcher.

  The body buckled and collapsed across the open casket. The three Russians frisked the corpses, grunted with satisfaction when they found the schnapps and were soon retracing their steps along the tracks which had led them to their prey. Sheet lightning shimmered over the eastern horizon. Inside the sepulchre the stillness was broken only by the soft sound of blood dripping into the coffin of the long dead child.

  Chapter 2

  Anyone who claims not to believe in mental telepathy cannot have worked in a hospital. The currents of information which sweep such establishments without visible means of communication are nothing short of miraculous. So it was one dull, late-winter afternoon at the London Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System, in Fleming Ward, Sister ordered a snap tidy-up campaign exactly seven minutes before Matron phoned a warning that Sir Henry Beresford was on his way with a very special ‘tourist’ party.

  Nurses scurried from bed to bed straightening coverlets, clearing locker-tops, parting old men’s hair and wresting chromium-plated ‘bottles’ from incontinent males who wanted to keep them within easy reach. It was made clear that the bedpan service would be discontinued until Sir Henry departed, and God help any patient blasphemous enough to feel a call of nature while the great man was in the vicinity.

  The ward was immaculate when he hove into view, white coat fixing dramatically, at the head of his visitors. Elegant, wealthy and Edwardian in style, he was one of the two top neurologists in Britain. The other also worked at the hospital, but was the antithesis of the tall Sir Henry with his beautifully barbered steel hair, trim moustache and grey aristocratic eyes.

  The visitors were the executive board of a charitable foundation which, having been left half a million pounds by a conscience-stricken property tycoon, were seeking a worthwhile cause in which to invest. Behind walked several doctors to supply tactful answers when required.

  Nurses stiffened to attention as the party entered the ward, then relaxed as it was led straight to a side room.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Sir Henry as they ranged themselves opposite a row of beds in which several children were asleep, ‘the aim in such a specialized institution as this is threefold; to care for the sick, to train specialists and carry out research. This work falls in the latter class, and Dr Pilgrim is carrying it out through the aid of a Lord Foundation fellowship. I am sure he is best fitted to explain it.’

  ‘Here we are investigating the causes of narcolepsy,’ Dr Pilgrim said with an easy smile. He was of middle height with a well-proportioned frame and a straight-nosed face which, at unguarded moments, tended to be tight-lipped. Heavy brows overshadowed thoughtful hazel eyes and his only physical concession to the fact his next birthday would be his 30th was threads of grey in his long dark hair.

  ‘Briefly narcolepsy is a rare condition in which the patient suffers from sudden attacks of sleep,’ he continued. ‘In some cases it is a tendency to doze off at u
nexpected moments, in more severe ones the victim will become unconscious in the middle of speaking a sentence. The length of these unnatural sleeps also vary, but they can be very distressing. No narcoleptic can drive a car or work at a machine or do anything in which an unexpected loss of consciousness might injure him or those about him. It can carry social stigma where the disease is not properly understood — family members, social acquaintances and workmates may regard die victim as being idle or lazy. Narcolepsy is so rare hardly any research projects have been carried out on it. Indeed, apart from being thought to originate from a damaged hypothalamus, nothing of value is known, and certainly there is no effective treatment as yet.

  ‘These children are severe cases from all over Britain. Their periods of sleep are often very long, almost comatose at times — I say “almost” because the difference between sleep and coma is that in the latter case the patient cannot be roused. These children can be awakened with difficulty. Now what we are attempting here … ’

  ‘What you are attempting, Dr Pilgrim,’ interjected Sir Henry with modesty at first deceiving. With experience gained through a tough career, it was his rule to be included in a project only when it was proving successful.

  ‘What I am doing is to catalogue every symptom. Periods of sleep and wakefulness are monitored, together with all associated bodily functions and brain activity which is tested regularly by encephalograms. This data is processed to enable a pattern to be formed, and it is through the building up of this pattern I hope to narrow down the likely causes of the disorder. My greatest problem is not having instant access to a computer.’

  ‘Thank you, Dr Pilgrim,’ Sir Henry beamed. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps you would care to see our surgical suites.’

  As the party approached the operating theatres on a lower floor, a trim, fair-haired sister walked briskly down the corridor. As she passed the group Dr Pilgrim dropped his ballpoint and, as the visitors moved on, he and the girl bent together to pick it up.