We were never given a name. Just an objective.

Several days before what was considered the "end" of the warfront in Nazi Germany, I served as the crew chief aboard an XB-15 bomber known affectionately as the Castaneda, part of a squadron tasked with decimating artillery positions that were pounding the piss out of our Red friends. The Soviets had since discovered what they had thought of a secret passage to Berlin, straight through German lines, but Hitler's cronies apparently anticipated such an attack, so the element of surprise was long since lost. And now, it was up to us, the weary flyboys of the Castaneda, to bail the Russians out, lest we want the war to drag on even further.

"Alright, y'all!" the Southern-American pilot hollered; "We are closin' in on the Kraut lines! Man 'yer stations and 'git ready to rain hell on them Nazis!"

"Enemy reinforcements incoming, straight ahead!" the copilot bellowed as dozens of German fighters moved in to intercept out bombing run. Our own fighter escort quickly went full speed ahead, engaging the Nazi planes in a savage dogfight that took place mere meters away from our bombers, and unsurprisingly, the bombers were taking some major damage as a result of their close proximity.

"The Timberwolf is down!" our redneck pilot screamed in reference to our closest bomber, which I watched go spiraling down to the ground thousands of feet below us.

"That's us if we don't get the hell out of here!" the copilot urged.

"Look there!" the pilot yelled as he pointed towards the distant gunfire from the Soviet-German battle taking place, "Them Reds need our help, and Command ain't gonna let us throw in the towel and call it a day! Stay the course, and-"

"Look out!" I shrieked as an American fighter was destroyed directly ahead of us. The Nazi plane it had been fighting got the upper hand, striking several consecutive hits on its engine and fuel tank; both vital organs of the mechanical bird violently ruptured, but not before doing the Castaneda in too.

Everybody, myself included, clenched their eyes shut as the chassis of a demolished airplane slammed into the cockpit of our own.

...

I haven't the slightest damned clue when exactly I came to, but I can vividly detail everything around me when I did.

Night had long since fallen. It was a foggy, misty night, lit only by a massive full moon sitting on the horizon. Bright flickers of light came from the smoldering ruins of the bomber I had spent the entire war in. The Castaneda's cockpit, unsurprisingly, had been completely destroyed, though there was no sign of the friendly plane that caused the catastrophic damage in question. The right wing and turbine associated was completely gone; no trace whatsoever, and with nothing supporting it the downed bomber was leaning on its right side. The propeller on the left-hand side of my bomber, though damaged and dented, still spun, presumably powered by the burning flame within the unsalvageable turbine itself.

The plane wasn't the only thing horrifically mutilated, however. The bodies of my comrades looked like mere roadkill, and it wouldn't be too surprising if some passerby would mistake them for animals, as opposed to heroic American men, assuming local predatory wildlife didn't take advantage of an easy meal before somebody would arrive to make such a conclusions. I didn't know what, if any, large animal predators called Germany home, since we weren't really briefed on how to deal with any animals or even instructed on if there even were any animals. Still, even if no predators came over to the crash site, there was a strong chance that Nazi search parties might, and luckily enough I was prepared, albeit slightly.

Resting in my holster was a Colt .45, a pistol people had told us we were never going to use, but were instructed to carry just for personal safety in that "what-if?" scenario. And now I understood what it was like being in that "what-if?". But this "what-if?" was unlike any other...

As I looked onto the moonlit horizon, I spotted figures moving in a formation, albeit a bit of a fragmented one. I didn't have the strength to call out for help, though given the territory I was in it probably would have been suicidal to do so. All I could do was ready my weapon and wait. Unless I heard English, playing dead was probably my best chance at this current moment.

I found myself kind of going in and going out, and when my vision stopped shaking, I made another disturbing observation about these approaching things. Not only were they in no standard German, Soviet or American patrol formation, but they had no weapons in their hands, and they walked like a drunken Irishman. Some of them moved with their arms in front of them, some dragged their arms and legs through the soil, and some staggered around like imbalanced crippled folk.

I went out and in again, and they were closer. And one of them was running.

Straight towards me.

One glance up, and I saw that this man's eyes were glowing a bright orange color. The sprinting figure was running rather frantically; not sprinting straight at me but limping at a disturbingly high speed, his arms swinging around with his legs. He, or at this point, it, snarled in an animalistic way, and with no other options I opened fire. One shot crippled its knee, which effortlessly snapped like a meaty twig, and despite the crippling injury, the being kept on going, forcing me to put several more rounds into its head, which burst like a melon and sent murky, miscolored blood flying every which way. I was breathing heavily as I examined this dead creature - it was in German uniform, but everything else about it was devoid of humanity. Between having skin as pale and white as the moon, large chunks of skin peeled off and removed as blood poured down gigantic open gashes, as flies hovered around their new mobile home, it was clear to me that this was no natural occurrence. This thing was, was...

A zombie.

And as if one Nazi zombie wasn't bad enough, there were about twenty more of them closing in on me.

Away from the wreckage of the Castaneda, I ran, despite not having the slightest fucking clue where I was running, though any place where zombies weren't present seemed like a fair trade to me. In fact, I would rather be caught and imprisoned by actual, living Nazis as opposed to becoming a fresh snack for those horrifying, maggot-filled monstrosities.

After several hectic minutes of high-paced running, I found myself at a bombed-out building. A brick house that must have been hit by a stray bomb or something, with a truck that looked to be beyond repair, much to my despair.

The front door was open, thank God, and I not-so graciously invited myself in before violently slamming and locking said door. I'd put some fair distance between the zombies and myself, which gave me a brief amount of time to study my surroundings.

A spiral staircase that lead upstairs was blocked off by a large couch, and a large door in the back seemed inaccessible from the front, with no handle to use. I did carry a few grenades, sure, but they weren't powerful enough to blast the door open, judging from how thick it was. There were numerous windows, the glass long since gone, but the funny thing was that they were boarded up with plywood planks; large piles of spare planks and nails sat on the ground beside them. What caught my attention most, however, were chalk outlines of two radically opposed weapons. One was of the German Army's standard-issue infantry weapon, the high-caliber, bolt-action Kar98k rifle, and an M1A1 Carbine manufactured in the good old U.S. of A, and used by paratroopers and elite commando units. As I approached the chalk outline of the M1A1, I felt some sort of mysterious tingle that was amplified the closer I got to the wall; almost as though it were telling me to reach out and touch it.

Disregarding common logic, I extended my arm and, implausibly, reached through the wall until I felt wood. Reflexively, I quickly yanked my arm out of the wall, only to have magically pulled out an actual, functioning M1A1, as well as several loaded magazines for it.

Ooo... kay...

I wasn't about to question a mysterious wall that allowed me to magically pull weapons out of the time-space continuum or something, because my zombie "fans" had since tracked my scent to the abandoned house.

I took aim at a zombie, keeping its pus-coated head in the ring of my gun sights, before sending a high-velocity bullet straight in the thinker. The thing's head cracked like an egg, spilling its yolk-like insides across the ground, but more zombies just kept on coming. I heard a thumping from behind, and turned to see a pair of zombies smashing through the thick, sturdy wooden boards of one of the nearby windows. I switched to my .45 and went wild on the trigger, dumping several high-powered bullets into their shredded torsos. These two zombies, however, were far more durable than the first ones I'd killed, and I found myself having to load a second magazine of pistol ammo into my sidearm and repeating the process of hosing them down with bullets until they both dropped like rocks.

I heard an alien shriek, and I turned to see that several zombies had smashed through the barricade I was just at, and were slowly staggering towards me. I unloaded on them with what remained of my pistol, before I swapped back to my Carbine and began spewing lead at them.

As more zombies poured in, and my kill count ascended, I could hear a demonic, ghostly voice usher "Come...", and said voice got louder as I approached the otherwise impregnable door that I had noted earlier. Realizing what had happened previously with my acquisition of an otherwise nonexistent rifle, I slid my arm through the door, completely ignoring the physical impossibilities that were happening as I somehow opened the door and bought myself more room to maneuver around in.

This next space was vacant, with just slightly less room to run around in. More chalk engravings and boarded windows, but then something caught my eye. It was a sight that burned itself into my vision, and I could never unsee it.

A strange wooden chest, long and thin, just resting on a stack of boxes. It was made from old, old wood, and somebody - or something - had cut or carved question marks into it. A mysterious purple glow seeped through the cracks in the box, and after quickly gunning down a nearby zombie, I cautiously waved my hand over it. I leapt back like a frightened animal when it began elevating, shaking mildly and glowing even more strongly, as a childish tune played from a source unknown. The lid of this mystery box opened, and a rapid slideshow of weapons from every corner of the planet flashed in rapid succession. Brownings, Garands, Trenchguns, a Flamethrower, and several other American-manufactured firearms were some of the ones I could identify, since those were fairly common sights in the armed forces. Several other highly-advanced guns made cameo appearances; judging by how mechanical and technologically superior these ones were, I could only assume them to be of German origin. I caught a glimpse of what looked to be some sort of scarlet-colored science-fiction-esque beam weapon, but it was just a glimpse. The slideshow of worldly and otherworldly firearms ended on a double-barreled shotgun, which was kind of a mixed blessing. High power, but two shots followed by a lengthy, life-threatening reload. Still, I took it, but before I could turn around I was in the arms of a zombie.

I crammed the barrels of my shotgun up through the chin of my attacker, before pulling the trigger and sending a fountain of gore up to the ceiling. The kick of the shotgun, however, caught me by surprise, and I found myself knocked back against a wall, where I began hearing footsteps crunching through gravel and soil on the other side. I began reloading my shotgun, but not before two pairs of rotting arms in blood-soaked sleeves punched clean through the concrete and grabbed me, pulling me through the wall into the darkness beyond.

It was truly the night of the undead.