The Escape
Dr. Jones tried to control his breaths as his heart pounded against his chest. Two elite Übersoldaten and three of Vogel's men were standing not ten feet from his hiding place amongst the cadaver shelves, ready to tear him to shreds in a second if he revealed his position. Silently, he listened as one of them, his pompous attitude betraying his officer's rank, began to speak in German.
"That lazy Wagner isn't responding on the comms, the idiot. How a damn idiot ever made Lieutenant, I will never know."
"I bet he is neglecting his guard duties," one of the soldiers offered. "You know how people from Danzig can be. He's probably taking a shit or something."
The officer chuckled. "Either way, his earpiece better be out of battery charge or he is a dead man."
The footsteps paused, as the group of soldiers stopped just in front of the lockers.
"Where the hell is the doctor? General Vogel's favorite subject is here, dead without permission, and that fucking doctor has the nerve to leave his post?"
A second soldier spoke up: "Perhaps he had the decency to inform the General of his mistake himself?"
"No matter, these tin cans and I will check up on Wagner and the American, and you two stay here. Look at that panel, there are two corpses ready for incineration. Why don't you dispose of them for the good doctor and then retire to the recreation car?"
Shit.
Dr. Jones began to panic as the Übersoldaten exited the car and the two soldiers walked over to the racks. He grabbed his pistol as the latch to the door on his locker began to click, ready to place a bullet in the head of the Nazi as soon as he opened the lid.
"What the fuck are you doing?" The second Nazi said, causing Dr. Jones to pause. "Do you want to carry a mutilated body through this car over your shoulder? These lockers come out on wheels." He heard a mechanical rolling sound as the locker next to him, the one containing the unconscious doctor, was pulled from the wall.
"See? It is just like an ambulance stretcher. We roll it up to the incinerator, lock it in the wall, and the machine pulls the body into the flames on its own. Now, help me roll this thing, it is a two-person job you know."
Dr. Jones lowered his pistol as the two Nazis rolled the stretcher away from the lockers. As he heard the door close, he quickly pushed open the latch on his locker, which flopped open quickly thanks to the loosened latch.
He pulled himself out of the hole and flopped onto the floor, wincing in pain as he landed on his bad leg. As he pulled himself to his feet, he considered his situation, and he realized the true nature of his mistakes. He looked to the left side of the medical car. That officer is going to find a dead Nazi and an empty jail cell. He then looked to the right side of the room. And those soldiers are going to come back here in a few minutes and find a missing cadaver.
Dr. Jones considered his situation. He knew that the alarm on the train would be raised in a matter of seconds no matter what he did, destroying all chances of escape. Perhaps in his younger years he could have stolen a rifle and shot his way through Vogel's men, but he was far beyond his prime. He was still in excellent physical condition for his age, but the years had still taken their toll on him. He rubbed his aching right hip as he surveyed the medical car for anything he could use to escape.
The layout of the room was what could be expected for a hospital- three medical beds lined the opposite wall, each of them with health monitoring equipment. Dr. Jones stood in front of nine cadaver lockers arranged in a 3x3 square, and the rest of the wall was lined by cabinets. The ceiling was of a standard height, lined with sterile white panels and lit by arrays of florescent lights and the silvery glint of two steel ventilation covers.
He looked at the nearest of the two vents, and he smiled. A little cliché, but that will work.
With no time to lose, Dr. Jones quickly rolled one of the medical beds beneath the vent and climbed up onto it. Rising to his feet, he pushed upwards on the vent, attempting to wiggle it loose. After a few tense seconds of loud metallic banging, the vent finally broke free of its jam and he pushed it open. Happy to see that the vent was plenty wide enough to crawl through, he pulled himself up and into the vent.
He pulled the vent closed behind him just as the two Nazis re-entered the room with the empty cadaver cart, ready to collect the second corpse.
You aren't killing me today, he thought as he crawled through the vent.
Suddenly a voice echoed through the ventilation shaft, booming loudly as an officer's voice flowed through dozens of intercoms and through the ceiling vents, right into his ears:
"Alarm! Alarm! Prisoner escape in progress, soldiers down! Get to your stations and find him!"
He gritted his teeth. Why can't this ever be easy?
W + J
Dr. Jones felt as if he had been crawling for months. The ventilation shaft extended across the entire train, allowing him to make excellent progress without having to deal with any of the many Nazis currently searching the train for him. So far, he had passed through a sleeper car, a dining car, two storage cars, and he was currently making his way through a recreation center.
As he approached a second vent, he paused- there were two Nazi soldiers dressed in their everyday clothes, their body armor stowed in their cabins their rifles held loosely in their hands as if the alarm had interrupted their resting periods. They were leaning against a wall directly below him, and he would have to wait for a distraction before he could pass.
"I hate fighting terrorists. Back during the war, you were always on the offensive, and you knew exactly where the enemy was. All I had to do was point and shoot- none of this 'get up in the middle of your break and wait for someone to jump out of the walls and stab you in the back with a knife' bullshit."
"Hey, this is still better than my last station. I was in Jerusalem, and I had to deal directly with the Jewish and Muslim locals."
"Jews belong in gas chambers, why in the hell did our dear leaders send so many of them to the holy lands?"
"The way my superiors explained it to me, it is for the purpose of eternal punishment. If we exterminated the entirety of their race, that would be the end of it, and they would no longer be able to pay for what they have done to us. Instead our leaders have decided that a Jewish population will be kept alive in the Holy lands, where they will forever be subject to the fist of Aryan justice."
"So you had a position where you had an unlimited source of untermensch ass to kick, and you are complaining about that?"
"No, it was not that simple. The Jews are subservient, they have learned their place. It is the fucking Muslims we have to deal with. We give them their own lands, we allow them to keep their backwards monkey religion, and how to they repay us? They constantly attack us and the Jews. They hate the Jews almost as much as we do, and they do not care about punishment, they just want them gone. They are not like American or French terrorists, they just strap explosives to themselves and blow themselves up next to civilians and soldiers alike."
"Civilians? You mean you…"
"That's right, I had to protect the fucking Jews from terrorists. That was my job for two years, protecting Jews."
"Good God, you are right, this is WAY better than that."
Dr. Jones heard a door opening out of sight, and a soldier in full battle gear ran from the back of the car, stopping in front of the two soldiers. "What the fuck are you two standing here for? Can't you lazy assholes hare that fucking alarm? The prisoner has escaped, and he is killing our comrades everywhere. Get your armor on and report to your post!"
"Guarding the rec room *is* our post," the one on the left lazily replied, his rifle held casually in his hands.
"And besides," the second replied, "the prison car is on the other end of the train. He is miles away."
The new soldier slapped the insubordinate guard, knocking him to the ground. "You fucking idiot! He has been killing lazy men like you all over the fucking place, he even got as far as the medical car, probably because we have so many imbecels like you who have no idea what 'combat readiness' means."
The soldier clambered to his feet, nursing his bruised jaw. "Yes Seargent, I understand. C'mon Fritz, let's get our…"
Dr. Jones gasped as the sound of an explosion reverberated along the ventilation shaft, the metal walls magnifying the BANG as the entire train car shivered.
"Is that coming from behind us? God damn it, the American must have passed us! Come on you two, lets go!"
The three Nazis hurried out of his sight and, glad for the distraction, Dr. Jones continued to crawl along the shaft, puzzled over what caused the diversion. Did something rupture a gas line?
His ears rang as a second, larger explosion occurred. This one, however, was followed up with the telltale automatic gunshots of two sturmgewher firing at once, alongside the frantic screams of several German soldiers.
What the hell? Is there someone else trying to escape this train? He thought. Whoever he is, he doesn't sound like the type to ask questions. I better be careful…
Dr. Jones' thoughts were interrupted by screeching metal and the familiar adrenaline rush that coincides with a weak section of ventilation tubing tearing and dropping the elderly man to eight feet to the floor below. He hit the floor flat on his belly, and he winced as the air was evacuated from his lungs.
Struggling to breathe, he lifted his head. He had landed in the middle of a large room that must have been a dining car, with around a half-dozen tables and chairs hastily thrown against the left and right walls, clearing the floor of obstacles. A large mahogany dining table was jammed, on its side, against the entrance to the car approximately fifteen feet in front of him. In the space between the far wall and him stood an entire quad of ten Nazi soldiers and an officer, all of them crouched next to the walls and leveling their rifles at the door, although now they were far more interested in the man who had just fallen through a hole in the ceiling.
Dr. Jones stared at the Nazi officer as he approached him, unable to move or even reach for his pistol as he struggled for a breath. The officer leisurely approached him, methodically drawing his pistol and leveling it at his head. The officer smiled and was on the verge of speaking when a bullet struck his face, spraying blood and brain matter backwards and showering his men.
The American felt two feet land to each of his sides, with an unseen assailant standing directly over him. He winced as two machine guns opened fire simultaneously above his head, the noise deafening his senses. He watched as all of the soldiers before him crumpled to their feet, unable to mount any resistance before their chests could be perforated with dozens of 7.92 rounds. The gunfire eventually ended, and the man stepped to the side, dropping one of the rifles and replacing the magazine on the other one. Dr. Jones looked over to him, and gasped.
The man was around 6'3", built like a gorilla and sporting an inch-long beard. A large scar crossed his face, and he appeared to be wearing some form of collar around his neck. He was wearing casual clothing, with an old 1947-issue ammunition belt slung around his shoulder. What caught his attention, however, was the blood- the assailant was almost completely covered in blood, the red liquid seeping into every creative of his jacket, and several spray-lines of broken veins crisscrossing his face. The assailant slung the rifle band over his arm, looked down at Dr. Jones, and did the last thing he could possibly expect him to do- he saluted him.
"Colonel Jones, I am Captain Blaskowicz. I'm here for your evac."