Astronomy(57)

Susan sensed movement in the smoldering alleyways around them. She pointed out a darkness moving through the flames of an overturned mobile shower van. Another swift-moving shadow passed through the clearing right behind. She heard the first one clambering up the stairs at her back.

“Get ready for company,” she said. She knew who they were, of course—recognized them by the fluid quality of their movements. But she had forgotten how large they were. The same creatures as the ghouls. Instantly, she was trembling. She pulled one of Florian Mueller’s hand grenades off her belt. She wasn’t sure how far she could throw; she wasn’t sure it mattered. She would not be consumed—that was paramount.

“Hang on,” Charley said. “Something else is down there.” He pointed beyond the dark creatures moving up the ladder to a larger mass filling in the darkness below. “What do you make of that?”

It took her a moment to make out their pale faces in the reflected white light. They stared up at her dully. They wandered around each other. Now and then, two would bump together and tear each other’s limbs off.

“Totenstürm,” she said. “Walking dead.”

“This is what Malmagden went to find.”

“And these creatures are herding them around, like sheep dogs running a flock.” In its way, she supposed, it was a rather complex social interaction.

What did catch her up short was the silhouette standing on an overturned truck—an aristocratic German officer with a pleasant smile and a severed blonde head dangling from each hand.

Charley called down: “I was starting to worry if you’d found them, or if they’d found you.”

Malmagden laughed. “You would not believe the incompetents Herr Kriene put in charge of his Totenstürm program.” He raised the heads for them to see. “These two Einsatzgruppe idiots had a small army of walking dead. They had six creatures to lead them, even larger and more brutal and cunning than my ghouls. I could have terrorized the Red Army with such resources. What a waste.”

“So you relieved them of their, uhm, responsibilities.” Susan pointed with the hand grenade.

Malmagden was a little self-conscious about the heads. “These are a little token from the group. You know the way a cat will lay a dead mouse on your kitchen floor?”

Susan cringed at the comparison. Malmagden shrugged.

“I couldn’t very well insult them, could I? Not at a time like this.”

Charley frowned. “You say you’ve got six in your group. I only count four.”

“They are a skeptical lot. I told them of the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of Von Junzt. They required an example.”

Susan saw the four monsters look sideways at each other. That word “example” rankled them. They looked happy to make an example of Malmagden, if the opportunity arose.

Susan was dubious about alliances with dead people anyway. She couldn’t help noticing a pair of them near the back of the crowd. Each had hold of the other’s head and was trying to rip it off. She suspected Malmagden’s new guard may have set a poor example for their troops.

“Are they really going to be useful and controllable?”

“Oh, they’re calm now. They require only a firm hand. I’d say they are positively eager to please.”

One of the dead at the back of the throng had won his tug of war. Susan saw a head pop into the air like a slice of toast and bounce along on a sea of grasping, outstretched hands. A lowing sound of unrequited hunger rolled up from the crowd.

“Indeed.”

“You were in Berlin. You know what they can be like.”

“I remember you drowned hundreds of German children to keep them from establishing themselves on the surface of Berlin.”

“Oh, but this is an island,” he said. “They will be fine. If we can only find a way into the Summoning Tower, they will follow after us.”

“We’ve got maybe thirty minutes to get there.”

Malmagden waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “The island is riddled with sewers and accessways. You and I must use other means to get inside the tower. But my new recruits are familiar with the subterranean networks. By the time we breach the tower, they will be waiting. They shall pour in and destroy Jürgen Kriene’s unholy undertaking.”

Susan looked at Charley. He didn’t like it either. He shrugged at her, Give me something better.

At thirty minutes till the point of no return, she was fresh out of ideas.

Malmagden addressed his personal guard: “We are going now to find the entrance into the Summoning of Azathoth. Your task will be to lead the Totenstürm into battle. Use the sewers between here and the Summoning Towers. They are passable. I expect the trip to take you half an hour—no longer. Remember, if you are late, the human race will die.”