The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker, Part 11 of 17

The officials are on their heels. German commandos, monsters, and killers want them dead. Russian bombs will be falling any minute. Every corner they turn, every door they open, presents another way for them to die.

The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is Part 11 of Operation Arm Breaker. If you haven’t read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 yet, check them out first.

Content Warnings: Death, Gore, Violence, Animal Violence, Gun Violence, Mild Swearing, Nazis

WEDNESDAY MORNING, JULY 14, 1943
BRUDERSCHAFTSSAAL E, EBERKOPF
BADEN-ELSAß, NAZI GERMANY

Grease sputtered and mumbled, but he wouldn’t come to. John Graves did his level best to wrap up the sliced skin and split stitches, but blood still oozed through the layers of gauze. He pinned four used morphine syrettes to Grease's ragged shirt. The I-soldier moaned but did not open his eyes.

“You're going to be okay,” Lucky whispered in his ear, even as the mannessers slammed against the barricades.

Neff and Cheddarwright held the rear, their weapons leveled at the door. Arrows and anti-tank rounds would be enough for the mutant dogs, Lucky hoped.

It took three officials to lift Grease: Sinclair and Lucky under his arms with Grand somehow handling both his legs, the flesh and the steel. Grease's blood leaked onto Lucky’s neck, but he ignored the slimy stream running under his collar. Miller hefted the punt gun and followed Quint, who had taken point behind his ballistic shield. Goldbrick stayed to his right, Thompson at the ready, shotgun loose in its holster, while MacLeod carried his BAR to their left. Bucket and the Colonel brought up the rear.

“There's got to be a hundred of them,” Bucket said, studying the cubes as they made their way down the long gallery toward the exit Null had used.

“One hundred and ten,” Miller answered.

“We're just going to leave them?” Lucky asked, studying the cloudy silhouettes as we passed them by.

“We do not kill unarmed, unaware people,” the Colonel said.

“Not kill them, rescue them,” Lucky grunted, pushing Grease higher up on his shoulder. Grease groaned, but stayed still.

“They're too far gone,” Bucket replied.

“I am afraid the sergeant is correct,” Miller added.

“But these are innocent people, some officials even!” Lucky objected.

“Not anymore, not with the electro-stimulants and neuro-tranquilizers Metzger's pumping into their brains,” Bucket said. He tapped the stencil sprayed onto one of the many brass tanks hooked into the nearest cube. It read C₁₁H₁₇N₂NaO₂S and had a rubber tube running through the ice and into the frozen man's arm. He said: “Sodium pentathol for starters, this stuff alone would wipe the gray right off the matter. They're all blank white slates by the time they get like this.”

“What can we do?” Lucky asked.

“The Office has one Brotherhood member in custody at present,” the Colonel said. “When we understand how to cure him, we will come back for the rest.”

“They'll be under a mile of rubble,” Lucky grunted, so quiet that only Sinclair heard him.

“I got an idea, chap,” Sinclair whispered. He nodded up at the huge vents blasting arctic gales and the man-sized icicles that hung from them. Their ducts ran across the long ceiling from a huge humming unit at the far end of the building.

“We shut that down, we shut this down,” Sinclair whispered.

“How?” Lucky asked.

“Leave that to me,” Sinclair said.

“I found it,” Quint called from up ahead.

“Our exit?” Goldbrick asked.

“Yes, sir, maintenance tunnels,” Quint confirmed. He dropped to one knee and hauled a heavy hatch in the floor open. “We can go under whatever perimeter they got set up.”

“Let's do it,” Goldbrick said. “Clear it, Snowman.”

“Yes, General,” Miller said. He clutched the punt gun close and dropped into the darkness. Water splashed around his boots.

The general dropped onto his belly and called down there.

“What do you see?”

“Clear for one hundred meters ahead,” Miller reported.

“Activate your Franklin torches,” the Colonel advised. He unscrewed the bottom of his goop-filled flashlight and dumped a packet of instant coffee inside. One shake and a cool blue beam glowed to life. The general sat up and rifled through his pack until he found his own flashlight to feed.

Quint followed Miller down the hole, splashing when he landed. A spotlight clicked on, built into his shoulder. Humming conduits and condensation-beaded pipes covered the walls, and their lights scattered sparkles in the shallow water on the floor.

“Hand him down, easy,” Quint said. Grand swung Grease's legs through the hole first, then squirmed past and joined Quint below. Sinclair and Lucky lowered him down slow, his bulk almost dragging them into the hole with him. Quint grunted: “Got him, got him.”

“You pair are next. Soon as you can, hoof it,” Goldbrick ordered. “We'll be right behind you.”

Lucky grabbed one of his ignored C-rations and tore into it, pulling the instant coffee packet first. His stomach grumbled at the sight of the canned food and before he knew it he'd wolfed down a whole chocolate bar. The foxfire fungus inside his Franklin torch soaked through the powdered coffee grounds with eager voracity and excreted brilliant bio-luminescence in return. Lucky screwed the tube shut and shook it like the Colonel had. The flick of a switch opened a lens cap on the other end and Lucky's own fungal beam shone forth. He hooked the light onto his chest and dropped down into the darkness.

The water on the floor was only an inch deep, condensation dripping off the miles of pipes that ran down the tunnel. Lucky’s torch couldn't find either end, only deep darkness that swallowed the light in both directions.

Lucky peeled off his gas mask and stowed it in its bag. The air down there was cold, musty, and heavy with minerals. A flintiness scratched at the back of his throat. he threw Grease's arm back over his shoulder, then noticed Sinclair had yet to descend.

“Be right there,” he called down. Lucky saw him eject the magazine from his M3 grease gun and replace it with one that had been painted red.

“What are you doing?” Goldbrick called up to him.

“The possibility of harming an innocent is worse than the absolute of having an enemy,” Sinclair replied. He raised the submachine gun to his shoulder and let sparks fly. The grease gun spat thirty incendiary rounds, there was an explosion, and the lights and the blasting freezer vents both cut out above.

“If they thaw, at least they'll have a chance to survive and perhaps be cured,” Sinclair called down. The muzzle of his weapon glowed red hot in the darkness. “I do not kill men in their sleep, not even Nazis.”

“That nobility is gonna cost you more than your face one of these days,” Goldbrick growled. Sinclair lowered himself down the hatched and splashed down next to Grease and Lucky.

“I know many P.O.W.'s and M.I.A.'s, and I know that I do not need to find out later I killed one of them myself,” Sinclair told Lucky, who nodded and hefted Grease higher on his shoulders. Sinclair took Grease's other arm.

“You can't give up on anyone,” Lucky replied. Grease groaned.

“This way is north, toward the chateau,” Miller said, his voice echoing back from beyond the reach of Lucky's torch.

“His compass works down here?” Sinclair grunted.

“I have perfect directional recall,” Miller answered. He started a steady advance down the dark tunnel, following the bobbing light of his Franklin torch.

“'Perfect directional recall,'” Sinclair snorted, “Of course he does.”

“Must be nice. I'd wager he can see color, too,” Grand added.

“You wouldn't want to live in that suit,” Lucky said.

“I would be able to shrug off a bullet, though,” Grand replied.

“You'd have to get shot to do that,” Lucky pointed out.

“Fair enough,” Grand said. He and Sinclair chuckled.

The rest of the squad splashed down behind them. Quint cold-welded the hatch shut after Goldbrick dropped through. Bucket waited behind and began stringing trip wires to grenades across the corridor. He wasn't going to let anyone sneak up on them.

“Let's move, officials!” Goldbrick shouted. His voice echoed up and down the black tunnel.

They advanced in silence, only their sloshing footsteps and lost breath making any noise at all. The tunnel curved and sloped, and the frigid water rose and fell with it. Smaller tunnels hooked into it from left, right, and above. Bucket stopped at each branch to plant another booby trap.

Quint squeezed past Lucky, Sinclair, and Grease and took the point alongside Miller. The hatches in the ceiling were growing closer together. The water on the floor was thicker, and had begun to stink. It was a ripe barnyard stink, old leather and trampled dung.

Miller stopped ahead of them, his right fist raised. Something hooted up ahead.

“An owl?” Lucky wondered aloud.

“Bartkäuze,” Miller whispered. Somewhere far behind them, a grenade exploded. There were Nazis in the tunnels.

“Lights out!” the Colonel shouted. Lucky clicked the cap on his Franklin torch shut along with everyone else, leaving them in pitch darkness. He could hear Grease's tattered breaths, and liquid oozing down the walls around them. A light flashed ahead, and Miller wheezed as if the wind had been knocked out of him.

“Enemy in range!” Miller gasped. His suit was hissing. He braced and leveled the punt gun, then fired. The blast sent him kidding on his ass through the muck. Lucky jumped out of the way to avoid getting bowled over.

On the business end of the giant gun, a muzzle flash like hand grenade sent sixteen-hundred BB’s screaming down the tunnel. For an instant, a half-dozen Nazis in black-and-lightning uniforms scalded themselves onto Lucky’s retinas. Then the light was gone, they were gone, and the bodies dropped.

The tunnel went silent, or at least it did to Lucky.

More bullets cracked against concrete and pipes around him. The Bartkäuze were using flash suppressors.

“Shoot back!” Goldbrick yelled. His roar was like a whispered suggestion.

Quint yelled wordlessly and pushed forward. Shotgun barrels popped out of his arm, loosing buckshot, flechettes, and phosphorus rounds. The weapons disappeared into their panels as quickly as they’d appeared.

Bartkäuze fell with each blast. Miller's grease gun chattered from the floor, and Lucky pulled his old Colt out and emptied the magazine into the darkness.

“Officials!” a mega-phoned voice reverberated down the tunnel. Some noise was starting to make its way through. “Run or fight. We will take you.”

“Skorzeny,” Sinclair growled. “I owe him a face.”

“They have Vampir scopes,” the Colonel said. “Their advantage is in the dark. Castaño, neutralize it.”

Quint's arm whirred and clanked and shifted again. His silver hand split in half and a small nozzle emerged. He looked at Lucky and said:

“Watch this one.”

He sprayed jellied napalm all over the walls and ceiling. He snapped, his thumb and forefinger created a bright spark that sent it all up,

The tunnel lit up orange and a wave of heat washed over everyone. The flame roared into a brilliant wall between the officials and the advancing Nazis. Anyone aiming down a night scope would be blinded.

“Climb and hide,” the Colonel ordered, pointing at a set of rungs that ran up the wall. There was a vertical shaft above him and three others nearby. They had to be under another building.

“Retreat, officials down, pull back!” Goldbrick shouted, so loud it reverberated through the tunnel. The Colonel put a finger to his lips and pointed at the ladder.

“Castaño, MacLeod, take Grease,” Miller ordered. He had more fresh tape plastered on his chest. He grunted and hauled the punt gun up off the ground.

The Scotsman sheathed his sword and grabbed Grease by the webbing on his back while Quint latched onto his belt with his mechanical arm. Somehow the pair hefted the unconscious hulk up the ladder and perched at the top. Miller climbed up behind them.

“Lucky, with me,” Sinclair said. Lucky followed him toward the flames and scrambled after him up another ladder. The Colonel and Grand joined them.

“Weapons at the ready,” the Colonel ordered. Lucky wormed his arm through the rungs and clung tight while he eased a fresh magazine into his Colt, and checked his Garand and De Lisle. Everything was locked and loaded.

“Fall back!” Goldbrick yelled again, his voice further away.

The orange glow from the napalm sputtered and dimmed, finally dying.

“Shhh...” the Colonel hissed.

There was black silence below. Muck continued to drip and flow. Then there was a splash, a boot hitting the stinking floor. More splashes followed, and closer. The Bartkäuze were passing below, coyotes eager to tear into wounded prey.

WEDNESDAY MORNING, JULY 14, 1943
DRAIN TUNNELS BENEATH EBERKOPF
BADEN-ELSAß, NAZI GERMANY

“Quietly now,” the Colonel whispered. He descended the ladder slowly, rung by rung. Grand, Sinclair, and Lucky followed. The Bartkäuze’s boots fell were fainter by the second.

The officials eased themselves to the tunnel floor, not daring to breathe. Once they were in position behind the advancing Nazis, the Colonel eased back the hammer on his Webley Mk VI revolver, loud and distinct, echoing down the tunnel. The distant splash of jackboots ceased.

“Rally fire!” the Colonel shouted. His revolver roared, washing away the dark with each trigger pull. Lucky fired as well, loosing shots until his Garand went dry. He dropped it onto its sling and brought the De Lisle to bear, firing, racking the bolt, and firing again at the shadows of panicked Nazis. Grand and Sinclair were picking targets, putting down fascists with deadly efficiency. Screams and splashes bounced between bullets. The fastest Bartkäuze tried to escape, only to run into Bucket's trip wires. Explosions rocked the tunnel.

More Nazis than Lucky could count fell to their ambush, either cut down outright by bullets and booby traps or wounded and trampled into the muck by their frantic comrades.

Somewhere in the chaos, another grenade burst, filling the tunnel with black vapor.

“Gas, gas, gas!” Grand shouted. Lucky pulled his mask back on right as the billowing substance washed over them. It formed in phantasmal black tendrils, thick and frigid and hanging in the air like a damp curtain.

“Overcaster,” Sinclair said. Lucky almost jumped. Sinclair sounded like he was two feet away but the fog was so thick and pervasive that Lucky couldn't see his hand in front of his face. It was like swimming in crude oil.

A hand grabbed Lucky's shoulder. He twisted away in shock.

“We have to go up,” the Colonel urged. “Overcaster fog is ultra-violet permeable. They will be able to see us with their Vampir scopes.”

“I can't even see my own feet,” Lucky stammered.

“They will not hesitate to kill the blind,” the Colonel replied. He grabbed Lucky's sleeve and led him to the rungs they'd just descended. “We must take our chances up there.”

Lucky grasped the first rung and pulled himself up, taking each one until there wasn't another. He reached out, only to find he'd emerged at the top, with open space and flat, slimy floor around him. He stood and swung his Colt around, blind.

“Keep moving, it clears up,” Sinclair said somewhere ahead. Lucky took two steps forward and his sight came back like someone had pulled a sack off his head. He looked back to see a swirling black column rising from the hatch. The Colonel materialized it a second later, revolver in hand.

“My Lord,” he gasped, staring past Lucky. The building they'd emerged into was narrow but tall, barely twenty feet wide but open inside and nearly three times as tall. It went on for more than a hundred yards in either direction. Both walls on either side of them rose with endless wire cages, floor to ceiling. Inside those cages, sunken in shadow, was a starscape of gleaming red dots.

Lucky knew those dots. Gremlin eyes. Thousands of them.

The walls must have held ten thousand cages, each housing a maturing giant rat. Their waste coated the floor and their cages and the stink of it filled the air, even through Lucky's mask. He looked down. He was soaked in the filth up to his knees.

“So nasty,” he muttered. The gremlins chittered back at him, mimicking his rhythm. He glared at them. “Shut up.”

The closest gremlins pressed back into their crates.

Another hatch creaked open to Lucky's left, sending the officials spinning around. They all had their sights set on the rising overcaster smoke when Quint and MacLeod appeared, dragging Grease behind them. Someone kicked the hatch shut and battened it down. Goldbrick appeared out of the lingering cloud seconds later.

A third hatch popped, sending the rest of the squad scrambling out. Neff and Bucket dragged Cheddarwright out of the hole, leaving drops of red behind. Her green sleeve was soaked through with blood.

“Bloody bastards!” she grunted. She pulled a grenade off her webbing and dropped it down the hatch. The blast carried hot fog and German screams up and out, throwing her back and startling the leering gremlins.

Grand slid to Cheddarwright’s side so examine her wound. He held her arm in the air, showing light through a hole in her hand and slowing the bleeding.

“We're in the roosts?” Quint asked.

“It appears that way,” the Colonel replied, studying the cages. There were so many of them. He took off his helmet and scratched his balding head.

“Patch her up, no time to rest,” Goldbrick ordered. Cheddarwright rolled her sleeve up. The small hole was pumping dark, dark red, running all the way down her raised arm, past her elbow. Grand pressed a wad of gauze against it while he rummaged through his medical kit.

“If this blasted blood would stop…” Cheddarwright groaned.

“Definitely a through-and-through, brilliant,” Grand determined. He sprinkled sulfa powder into the wound, then wrapped her hand up like a mitten.

“MacLeod, Ford, lock them down there,” Goldbrick ordered. Lucky lurched to his feet and joined MacLeod at the closest hatch. Together they wracked its handle and forced its bolts closed. MacLeod pulled some wormline out of his pack and tied it shut.

“Cannae make it easy for the scabby scunners, can we?” he asked, then he hauled on the knot as hard as he could, jamming the hinge shut for good.

They did the same to two more hatches, locking them down and tying them shut. The gremlins watched them work in silence. Lucky watched them back, and it took him a minute to realize that none of the closest was any larger than a dog. They didn't have an alpha like the swarm in Spain.

“Aren't so much to be afeart without a napper in their gobs,” MacLeod observed.

“They are plenty scary,” Lucky said. Despite their timidity now, he knew what the things could do. And so did MacLeod. He'd been on The Express when the gremlins had killed Delroy and Moore.

The Scotsman drew his long sword and pointed it at the cowering rats.

“Any a' these buggers gets near mae ah'll chop its manky throat,” he shouted. He clanged the steel blade against his helmet and added: “Hear that, ye bastards? Ye'll all be havin' a swallae o' ma claymore afore ye be bitin' ma nut.”

“Hey,” Lucky said, stopping in his tracks.

“What issae?” MacLeod asked, still staring down the ten thousand gremlins at once. Lucky readied his rifle.

“The last hatch,” he said quietly, “It's open. Someone else is in here.”

A sub machine-gun opened fire from above, sending Lucky diving to the side as lead tore into the concrete floor where he'd just been standing.

“Die, Amerikaner!” Rochus Skorzeny screeched. The Bartkauz leader was perched in a monitoring station on the far end of the building, halfway up the high wall. He fired over the top of a console with his MP 40.

“Shit!” Bucket yelled. He let his StG 44 clatter to the floor as he scrambled to drag Cheddarwright out of the bullets' path.

MacLeod let his BAR do his talking and sent a salvo of rounds upward. The heavy rounds punched right through the thin platform. Skorzeny slammed backward into the wall. His legs kicked out beneath and his MP 40 slipped out of his grip.

“I do not die alone,” the Nazi managed to gasp. He hauled himself to his feet, blood pouring out of his chest. He laughed down at the officials then coughed up red and fell forward onto the console.

“Not today, I'm afraid,” the Colonel said, his voice steady and grim. He leveled one of his Webley Mk VI revolvers, this one with pearl grips, and fired. The heavy round hit Skorzeny like a truck, throwing him up off the console.

The bullet blew the Nazi’s innards out of his back and spattered them against the wall. His throat swelled like a bullfrog as he died, and a gout of bubbling green liquid sprayed from his mouth, all over the console.

His body crumpled and came to rest draped over a handrail.

The vomited fluid was steaming, and smoke rose from the console, followed by popping and sparks from every spot the kraut's upchuck had landed.

“Malfeuer,” Sinclair grunted. It was the same stuff that Skorzeny had spit onto his face.

“Holy hell,” Lucky whispered.

“The jerries sewed acid bladders into his throat. One squeeze and he can spray the foul stuff everywhere,” Sinclair explained. He spoke dispassionately, as if the corrosive chemicals hadn't eaten his own face away that very morning. He tapped his bandaged chin, where Skorzeny had carried his own burn scars, and added: “It makes them as ugly as homemade sin, however.”

“I promised him an arrow,” Cheddarwright grunted from the floor, keeping her wounded hand elevated.

“There will be plenty more arrows,” Sinclair assured her.

A small flame erupted from the console where the acid had eaten through a live wire. A red flashing light activated in the wall. Lucky braced himself, waiting for a klaxon to blare. Instead, he heard something worse.

All around them there were clicks, a mechanical cacophony. It was the sound of ten thousand cage doors unlocking at once.

WEDNESDAY MORNING, JULY 14, 1943
DER KOBOLDHORST, EBERKOPF
BADEN-ELSAß, NAZI GERMANY

“Ah, hell,” Bucket whispered.

Every cage door creaked open. Lucky raised his Garand for just a second, but found too many targets to even aim. He lowered the rifle and backed away from the wall of gremlins.

“Tip-toe it, now,” Goldbrick whispered, nodding to the far end of the building. He inched along with a gun in each hand, muzzles down. There was a large set of double doors that would have seemed close under any other circumstances.

Right then, they looked miles away.

Cheddarwright stood, hooked her bow around her back, and drew her pistol, a German Luger. She took one step, then staggered. Fresh blood splatted onto the concrete floor. Grand lifted her pierced hand, but the bandages hadn't bled through. She had a second wound.

Grand laid her back down. A red pool was growing around her, blooming through her ghillie suit. She clenched her teeth and rolled her shirt up to her ribs. There was a steady stream pumping from a bullet hole two inches above her hip on her right side. Grand pressed one hand down over it and slid his other under her back, feeling for the exit wound.

“The bullet's inside,” he told her.

“Leave it before it gets company,” Cheddarwright grated.

“We can't move her,” Grand hissed. Blood was oozing between his fingers where his hands were clamped down over her stomach.

“I am fine,” Cheddarwright grunted. Sweat had almost completely washed the green and black paint from her face.

“Lucky, Miller, Edgard,” the Colonel said, then drew a circle with his fingers in the air. They circled up around Cheddarwright, weapons at the ready, while he knelt next to her and asked Grand: “What can I do?”

“On three, I'm going to move my hands off her wound. Lucky, help her sit up. Colonel, get gauze onto her before she loses any more blood,” Grand explained. The Colonel nodded, taking the bundled gauze from Grand's bag. “One, two, three.”

Grand pulled his hands off Cheddarwright's stomach. Red streamed onto the floor. The Colonel pressed the gauze down to staunch it. The closest rat sniffed the air. Its green ears perked up. It knew that smell.

“Colonel,” Lucky warned. He was busy holding Cheddarwright upright while Grand wrapped her her all the way around her torso. There was a red spot blooming in the white fabric already.

The curious gremlin was now sniffing furiously.

“Do not fire,” Goldbrick ordered. Lucky's finger hadn't touched the trigger. He knew what would happen when that shot rang out. The gremlin edged forward and nudged its cage door open with its nose. It was unsure of whether to investigate the smell or shy away from the intruders.

High up, on Lucky's right, another gremlin had ventured out of its cage to sniff at Rochus Skorzeny’s corpse and the sparking, smoking console.

“Folks, we have to move,” Bucket implored. Still more gremlins were emerging, these curious about the blood caked all over Grease.

“Almost ready,” Grand grated. Sweat was running down the canals formed by the deep scars in his head.

“Quint, when they're good to move, I want a wall,” Goldbrick said.

“Tank's empty, boss,” the sergeant replied, tapping a hollow spot on his metal arm. “Used all the napalm downstairs. Gas grenades are eighty-sixed, and the cold weld's running light.”

“Then load up everything else,” Goldbrick ordered. Quint's arm clanked and twisted and split into a dozen wings and panels, spitting exhaust and sprouting gun barrels. The closest gremlins reeled back into their cages, chittering and hissing. Quint swung his armory around, drawing a reaction from the agitated swarm.

“Slow down, hold fire,” Goldbrick warned again. “Neff, you and Miller on point, I want our exit clear.”

The pair eased past the increasingly-anxious creatures and made their way to the exit door, careful not to make any abrupt movements.

“She is stable,” Grand reported as he taped down Cheddarwright's bandage.

“Then we move,” Goldbrick ordered. He pointed at Grease and said: “Him too.”

MacLeod and Quint gathered up Grease, while Grand threw Cheddarwright's arm over his shoulders. The wounded archer yelped with pain, but bit her tongue and bore it. Even so, her half-second’s outburst was enough to make the closest gremlins uneasy. They chittered with agitation, snapping their long teeth together.

Bucket's finger tightened on his trigger.

“Stay calm,” Lucky whispered. He searched again for an alpha gremlin, but there was none. Long fangs gnashed and snapped, claws scratched across bare metal. The sounds were becoming deafening as more and more gremlins got worked up.

At the far end of of the building, Neff creaked the airlock-style door open and followed his rifle out, sweeping its sights across whatever was outside. After a tense second, he popped his head back in and nodded to Miller.

“The exit is clear!” Miller called out. A thousand gremlins seethed at his raised voice.

“Move, move,” Goldbrick ordered. The swarm was hissing together in a horrible rhythm, like the exhalations of a venomous snake, readying its strike.

“Steady,” Bucket whispered. They took a few tentative steps toward the door.

The floor hatch at the far end of the building exploded, shredding gremlins with shrapnel. A geyser of overcaster fog boiled up, and a trio of Bartkauz soldiers emerged from the boiling blackness.

“Run!” the Colonel yelled. Lucky took his suggestion. The Bartkäuze raised their weapons but the nearest gremlins poured from their berths like a green tidal wave. They surged over the three Nazis with carnivorous fury.

Their screams only lasted seconds.

Gremlins kept coming, gliding to the floor on their newly-implanted flaps to get a taste of the fresh kills. The frenzied creatures began snapping their long teeth together in a hunting cry that reverberated through the hall.

The rhythm spread through the nervous swarm, with each creature taking it up in turn until the whole building shook. One gremlin jumped from its cage on a beeline for the officials, but it was already in Lucky's sights. He fired, though dozens of others were in flight before it hit the floor. The other officials opened up, felling gremlins by the score. Green blood and bodies rained down, but the horde was endless. They rose high, then crashed crashed upon their prey.

The officials ran.

Lucky sprinted after them. The mass of furious mutants was closing behind him. He could smell them. The great hall dimmed: the gremlins above and and in front of them were taking flight. There was so many that they were blocking the lights, like green walls collapsing inward.

Cheddarwright screamed as Grand struggled to run with her. Bucket fired off a last burst then threw Cheddarwright's other arm over his shoulder. She grunted in pain but the three of them were able to hoof it.

“Lucky!” MacLeod shouted. He was struggling with Grease's legs. Lucky rushed over to them, taking the metal leg under his arm.

“Nae, both,” the Scotsman grunted. He shoved Grease's flesh-and-blood leg into Lucky's chest, leaving him and Quint to support the I-soldier's whole weight. They stumbled under the burden.

“Keep walkin',” MacLeod huffed. He drew his long claymore sword and chopped at the air, then tucked his BAR under his left armpit. He shouted over his shoulder: “Go on then, git!”

Lucky and Quint struggled under the weight, but kept moving. Gremlins swooped in at them, but MacLeod's BAR tore into them before they could land. The Scotsman was a whirlwind, ripping off bursts from his machine gun with one hand and chopping through two and three gremlins with each slash of his mighty sword. He could reload the gun with one hand while hacking away with the other. He was a titan.

Then the walls came down.

Gremlins slammed into Lucky at full speed, gnashing and clawing with feral fervor. He could feel their claws raking his flesh, though somehow their steel-rending jaws missed him. He dropped Grease and drew his Colt 1911 and let it roar, splattering green gore with each shot.

They kept coming.

Lucky could hear other shots, but they were distant, muffled by the seething wall of angry rats surrounding him. He could not find Grease anymore, just green blood and green pieces and green monsters.

He fired the Colt until it was dry, then used it as a hammer, pulverizing skulls and rib cages. His knife slithered from its sheath and found flesh with each desperate slash, but the weight of them was pulling him to the floor.

Lucky couldn't see, he couldn't breathe, he could only fight.

The weight pressed him down, and green closed in. He kept stabbing, but he couldn't find the light, just thrashing flesh and oozing emerald fluids. Then there was no space to stab and they pressed his arm against concrete. Piling dead mutants squeezed the air from Lucky's lungs.

The green became black.

Lucky’s felt his ribs flex. The air pressed from his lungs. Claws and heat and weight tried to squeeze him through the cracks in the concrete floor.

Black became red.

A glimmer peeked between scaly tails and grasping claws. Then more of the bodies were swept away and Lucky found Grease standing over him.

Grease reared back again to knock more gremlins away. The weight lifted. Lucky drew in a breath like a fish returned to water. Grease was wheezing, red leaking from his dozens of wounds, green splattered over the rest of him. He reached down and wrapped Lucky's uniform around his fist, then lifted him out of the bloody morass. Lucky found footing on a mound of dead gremlins and looked around.

The other officials were standing and fighting. They'd held fast against the the first wave, but the bulk of the gremlins were coming, thousands still, crawling down the cage wall like a steel ladder. These were smaller pups, voracious teethers who did not trust their wings yet.

“We gotta go,” Grease wheezed. He pointed at Lucky's left arm. “And that's nasty.”

Lucky looked down to find his arm coated to the elbow in thick green bile, dripping like he'd dipped it in emerald glue. His arm was cold, though the gunk was steaming, letting off a stink like wilted roses. One shake dislodged most of the stuff, but he didn't have time to worry about any more of it, or his tingling skin.

Lucky ejected his magazine and racked a fresh eight-pack of .45's into his pistol.

“Run, run, run!” Miller was yelling from the door. Lucky could barely hear him over the hissing and snapping. Miller took out a half-dozen gremlins menacing Grand, Bucket, and Cheddarwright with a salvo from his M3 grease gun. The trio made it to the door through a rain of jade viscera.

Shadows fell over Miller. More of the swarm was peeling off the cage wall, another avalanche of gremlins crashing down.

“Hoof it!” MacLeod roared. His voice shook the room and made the closest mutants cower at its booming reverberation. Lucky shoved Grease and followed him toward the door as MacLeod fired his BAR over their heads. Perforated gremlins dropped around them.

Lucky could only see Grease's back as he ran, and could only hear the Scotsman's rattling machine gun. Green blood splashed every time his boots hit the floor. Gremlins snapped and slashed within inches of him, ripping his uniform. He could feel their hot breath against his skin.

Ahead of Lucky, the creatures were pouncing onto Grease's wide shoulders. Grease snatched each off as it landed to crush it like an egg, but another always took its place, screeching and biting deep into his flesh.

Lucky holstered his Colt and caught up to Grease when a solid weight slammed into his back. He pitched forward and slid across the blood-slimed floor on his chest.

Furious claws ripped at Lucky's pack, eager to shred through the canvas to get to him. The gremlin hissed in anticipation of an easy meal. Its yellow teeth lined up with his exposed neck. Arterial emerald splashed Lucky's face, then its head bouncing and tumbling away.

MacLeod whipped his sword around, flinging the green from its silvered blade.

“Up off ye gut, Lucky!” he shouted. He batted a swooping gremlin out of the air with his empty BAR and slashed another with his claymore. Lucky scrambled to his feet and leveled his knife at the coming swarm. MacLeod stepped between him and wall of green, yelling: “Keep poundin’, lad!”

Lucky backed away toward the exit. The other officials were picking off as many of the gremlins between the stragglers and the door as they could, but there were so many.

MacLeod shouted a savage battlecry and heaved his emptied BAR like a spear, smashing a crawling teether. He whipped his sword in deadly arcs, spraying jade gore with every swing. Legs, heads, and verdant innards flew around him in liquid arcs, but the creatures kept coming.

One gremlin slipped under his blade, leaving a long incisor slash across his bare calf before his could split it into two kicking halves. Another came in high, knocking his medieval helmet away and taking a knot of his blazing red hair with it. Sweat and blood poured down his face, stinging his eyes. Then the gremlins hit him in a wave.

He hacked their first scrabbling line to wet pieces and took off after Lucky, gremlins inches from his heels. They were relentless.

“Right on yer arse!” he called out to Lucky. They were just a few dozen yards to safety.

“Lucky!” Grease yelled. He'd made it to the door. MacLeod and Lucky were the last ones left in the roosts. Gremlins were pouring down in front of them. Lucky vaulted mutant after mutant, lashing out with his knife and kicking at the ones he couldn't get over.

A big bull rat glided in, fast and low, but he saw it coming. Lucky ducked low under its pale, soft belly and pushed up under it, rolling the ravenous bull over his shoulder to put it behind him. He kept running.

“Shite!” MacLeod shouted. The bull recovered and bounded off the floor to hit him in the stomach. He stumbled, slowing him enough. The horde washed over him like a fanged flood and dragged him to his knees, but still he kept slashing with his sword, splitting the mutants like rotten melons.

“MacLeod!” Lucky shouted. He skidded to a halt and turned, knife ready. The gremlins were up to MacLeod's waist now, a seething mob climbing over their dead. Lucky'd dig MacLeod out with steel if he had to.

The Scotsman saw Lucky coming and shouted at him through clenched teeth:

“Ah said bolt, ye bugger! Ah'll hold 'em!”

A gremlin pounced onto MacLeod’s sword arm and sank its long teeth into his wrist. The claymore fell from his hand and was swallowed by the swarming mutants. MacLeod pulped the rat's face with his free hand, punching like a jackhammer until the gremlin's skull was broken into so many pieces that its locked jaws released his arm.

“Go!” MacLeod boomed, even louder than before. The gremlins on him froze at the sound of his roar. Lucky saw MacLeod's hand go for the bandoleer across his chest, to the grenade hanging there. His finger hooked its ring just as the swarm recovered. They reeled back then rolled over him. His body disappeared under the green tide.

The closest gremlins were tearing into him, but thousands more were coming, scrabbling over the melee. Their beady red eyes were all focused on Lucky.

“Shit,” he muttered. He spun and ran.

MacLeod's grenade exploded in his hands before Lucky made it five steps.

Lucky ducked as heat, smoke, and dead mutants washed over and past him. Emerald corpses, splintered and shredded, splatted onto empty cages and across the floor.

He dodged the few he could and plowed through the rest. Organs and limbs pelted him as he dashed the last few yards to the door. Lucky jumped over living and dead gremlins alike, avoiding pooled carnage and snapping jaws. A legion hiss and the synchronized snapping of teeth chased him. The monsters had already learned the lessons of their brethren in Spain: they were ready to hunt together.

Grease had retrieved his punt gun from Miller and settled it against the door frame. Lucky ducked low and slid under the barrel. The instant he was on its safer end, Grease fired. It was as loud as a cannon going off inches above Lucky's head, and it bowled him over, leaving him dazed with ringing ears. BBs shredded another score of gremlins, but the rest kept coming.

The Colonel yelled something, but Lucky couldn't make out the words. Grease hauled Lucky aside, and Quint slammed the door shut and fired a shell from his arm into the lock. The slug left a red-hot hole that spat molten metal.

Bucket pulled Lucky to his feet, yelling something as well. He pointed to the fire back where they'd come from; the fallen hangar and barracks were still burning. A thunderhead of black smoke was blocking out all of the ceiling's blue.

Sinclair grabbed Lucky's gremlin-blood-soaked jacket and looked straight into his eyes. He asked something, his bloodshot eyes blue and watery. Lucky couldn't hear him, even six inches from his face. Lucky tapped his pealing ears in frustration. Sinclair nodded, then pulled Lucky closer and mouthed one word. Bandages covered his lips, but Lucky knew there was only one thing he could be asking about.

“Dead,” Lucky tried to answer, unable to tell if he was speaking out loud, “MacLeod's dead.”

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres.