CHAPTER 1

His head was throbbing, more than a morning after a night at the Burgh Inn in France.

He could hear a truck engine and the sound of tires rolling over deep gravel. He tried to sit up but every part of his body ached. He gave up the attempt, letting his head smack back against the riveted metal he was lying on. He groaned softly as he cringed from the newly acquired pain.

After laying there for a minute longer, he tried to open his eyes. Dark night sky silhouetted with millions of stars and various pummels of smoke filled his blurry vision. After a few minutes of looking up at the sky, he reattempted to move his body. After being semi successful, he surveyed his situation. The metal surface he was lying on was the back bed of a large troop transportation truck.

There were others in the truck with him. Three men were huddled together against the side of the truck bed wall; two more were lying oddly in the far corner, blood pooling from their bodies. The three men huddled together were wearing tattered U.S. Army uniforms. They were bruised up pretty bad.

Finally there were two tall men standing at the front of the truck looking over the cabin. They were dressed in crinkled black uniforms with tears in the fabric. One was twitching quiet frequently. Both were holding bolt-action rifles. Looking at their shoulder cuffs, a Nazi swastika was sewn on.

A voice broke the redundant rhythm of the truck's engine. He turned back to the American soldiers to see one talking to him. At first he couldn't make out anything he was saying. But after time, the world came back down to a dull roar and the soldier's voice could break though the cacophony.

"Captain, are you alright sir? You hit your head pretty good"

Captain! Reality smashed into his mind as his life came back to him in a flash. He was Master Sergeant Ryan Deckard, 2nd Platoon commanding officer of the 98th Airborne. The soldier asking about his state of health was Corporal Jerry Keller. A well built African American from Louisiana. Despite the state of origin, he did not possess a Southern accent. The other soldiers were Sergeant Wesley Baker and Private First Class Francis Hale. Baker was a tanned man from Jersey with the attitude included; Hale was the communication officer of the platoon. Born in New York, he was going to be a kindergarten teacher when he got his diploma. Instead he got a letter from the draft and the rest was history. The man could barely hold a rifle, let alone the thought of killing someone. The situation being what it was would call for him to change his outlook killing the enemy or survival was impossible.

"Sir, are you alright" Keller asked again.

"I'm fine" Deckard answered with a slight groan. "Where are we"?

"Deep in German back country by the looks of it, Sir. We've been driving for about two hours now. Do you remember what happened in Glasucht yesterday, Sir"? Keller asked.

Chaos. That was the first thing to come to Captain Deckard's mind. Then the chaos started to form into soldiers, and gun fire, and death. A town was in cinders. Screams of the death echoed through the filthy streets. Orders falling upon death ears.

The Germans were making a run out of Germany. Captain Deckard and his platoon had been ordered to stop all escape attempts coming through the village of Glasucht. At first they had meet little resistance when they first dug in around a coffee shop next to the main road running through the city. But soon his 36 soldiers were outmanned and out gunned by an entire Nazi company. They held the line the best they could, but with low ammo reserves before the battle had begun, defeat was indefinite. The last thing he remembered was gunning down enemy soldiers with his 1897 Winchester shotgun until the weapon ran dry. Proceeding to cracking some skulls with hand-to-hand combat, a Nazi came up behind him and knocked him unconscious with a rifle.

"The Germans overran our position and I got knocked out. How come we aren't Nazi fodder yet" Deckard asked.

"Beats us Sarg" Baker retorted, "They got a bunch of us together and threw us on this truck. Patterson and Terrence tried to escape on the way here. Nazi bastards just killed them without a seconds thought. But they've kept them on the truck over there".

"Those fucking bastard! They shot them in cold blood. This is fucking hopeless, we're all dead" Hale whimpered.

"With an attitude like that, yes, we are all going to die and it will be your fault Francis" Baker said "now shut the fuck up!"

Captain Deckard looked back at the two bodies near the end the of truck bed. Corporal Jimmy Patterson and Private Howard Terrence. The two had been the best of friends, inseparable even in death as it seemed. They were good men, good soldiers. The Nazi's had probably kept them on the truck so they didn't get any ideas about escaping a second time. But why had they taken them prisoners in the first place. They were fighting a losing war. There had been rumours that Hitler had been killed a few days before they had fought for the town.

"Have they said why they are taking us prisoner Keller" Deckard asked.

"No, they haven't said anything to us. I think these guys are off their rockers. They're yelling at nothing all the time and one of them has been twitching quite a lot. They look like they haven't slept in days and they smell like shit. Something really bad is going on Captain and I think we are heading towards the source" Keller answered.

Deckard moved so he could get back on his feet. Once he was in a low crouch, he took a look through the window in the back of the truck compartment. He could see a large facility through the windshield. It looked like some sort of asylum. Moss and weeds had overrun the buildings walls and patches of the roof had caved in. It looked as though they were driving into Hell itself.

One of the two Nazi soldiers in the truck bed with Deckard and his men looked back to see him. He started yelling at him in sloppy German; spit flying from his mouth furiously. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen; his face was pale and shrunken. He took steps towards him, shoving the barrel of his rifle in his face. Deckard had no idea what he was saying; he could only crawl back towards the end of the truck bed, hoping the crazed German would calm down.

"I don't know what you're saying you crazy fuck. Stop shoving the gun in my face" he yelled back at him. The Nazi didn't take well to the retort by hitting Deckard in the face with the rifle butt. Ryan's head slammed back onto the steel truck bed, an all too familiar feeling. He could see Baker start to get up to attack the Nazi but Deckard waved him off. He didn't want any more of his men dying for his sake. He turned to hold his hands up at the German in a sign of surrender. He only laughed at the sight of the American surrendering to his will. The other Nazi in the truck was now yelling at his comrade in protest of his actions. The two began to argue, showing the sense of sanity had truly left the minds of these soldiers of the Third Reich. The attacker seemed to not be taking in his fellow soldier's words of advice as he started to kick the helpless American. Ryan took the strikes as best he could, trying to lurch in his stomach's with the kicks to lessen the pain, but soon the Nazi figured out what he was doing and began kicking him in the back. The pain was insurmountable as his body felt as though it was on fire. There were shouts coming from all around but Ryan couldn't tell where. The situation was well out of hand as he could feel himself blacking out.

A shot rang out as blood splashed over Deckard's face. Silence followed as he tried to wipe the blood from his eyes. A body fell to his side with a large thump, landing next to the bodies of Patterson and Terrence. Getting one last glimpse, he saw the violent Nazi soldier's eye's as he felt his life bleed out of him through the hole in his neck. The sudden jerks made his death seem slow and painful.

Good. Ryan thought, watching the man's eyes roll into the back of his head. Hell's waiting for you, you spineless fuck. A final breath escaped the soldier's mouth and he went limp. Deckard's vision rolled into blackness as he fell unconscious.