Finale: An Ending to Things
Hans lowered the Mars Automatic and released his boot from Friedrich Ademar's arm, his shoulders sagging. "Leave. Just get out of here," Hans said. The former U-Bahn councilor stood slowly, brushed himself off, and reached into a pocket for gauze to bind his wounds. "No one else has to die for a dream already dead."
Ademar stared at him for a few moments, clearly trying to find something to say, before he apparently decided to just go. He picked up his gun, trudged down the hill, and disappeared inside the chalet.
There, alone at the edge of the world, Hans Eckhart dropped to his knees by the smoldering hulk of the Natursturm device, thin wisps of black smoke trailing in to the bright sky. The silent bodies scattered around him offered no consolation, no comfort. Only silence.
A futile waste of time. It had all been a futile waste of time. The Final Order, the Bavarian Coalition, Natursturm, Atomsturm, all of it. A waste. So many people had died, killed each other, over something that didn't even work.
He didn't know how long he sat there on the hill behind the chalet, staring at the blood-spattered hulk of the machine that was supposed to change everything. Long enough that eventually scavenger birds began to circle overhead and swoop down to peck at the corpses. Hans stared at them, malformed and mutated by radiation. Just another small reminder of the world he lived in. The world he had grown up in. A world so destroyed by war and yet still did men fight and die over petty ideologies and for control and power. Blind, petulant child ignorant to the damage they were causing by imitating the people who destroyed the world in the first place.
"A farce," Hans said to himself. "The whole thing was a farce."
He sighed and holstered the Mars. He was bleeding from a hundred different cuts and micro-shrapnel wounds. He was dirty, he ached all over, and he was so very tired. All of the adrenaline had finally bled off and he was left weary and exhausted, somehow finding the strength to get moving. He walked down from the hill towards the chalet, looking for survivors, and made sure to pick up his empty G11 as he did. The outside of the house was mostly unscathed, save for the explosion damage from the grenade that had gone off just inside the house, charring the sun terrace. The fire it had started was feeding off the wood floors, unable to catch on the stone of the house itself, but it was already petering out. Fading like the dreams of those who had created it, soon to be gone like so many other signs of the battle that'd had no victors, only victims.
The inside of the house was a mess. Every room, every floor, every wall, every ceiling, was marked with bullet holes. The chairs had been smashed, the tables overturned and riddled with bullets, the walls blown out by grenades. The chalet, the Kehlsteinhaus, which had stood unscathed for over twenty years, had been trashed and ruined in just an hour. The heavy odors of smoke, blood, and sulfur hung in the air. Hans unslung his rifle and began picking through the bodies; gently rolling over the Final Order soldiers and firmly kicking the Coalition soldiers. Dead, every one of them. The officers, the fieldmen, even a panzertrooper, his suit scorched by plasma fire, half a dozen Coalition soldiers dead around him. Hans didn't find the body of Erich Braun, the panzertrooper he'd first seen at the Genetics Institute. A lifetime ago. If he had survived then he was gone.
Hans left the dining room and moved through the halls to the lounge, the room just as trashed as the rest of the chalet. A body of a Coalition soldier lied awkwardly in the fireplace, blood dripping from her hand, her right leg missing at the thigh. Hans rolled her over, just to check, and then moved on. From the lounge he entered the great hall, every chair and table in the room smashed into toothpicks. Bodies lied everywhere, staining the faded red carpet with tacky pools of crimson. As he neared the front door he heard a weak, raspy breathing. An officer of the Final Order was half inside, half outside the house, lying on the metal frame of the shattered glass doors. His breathing stopped as Hans neared. Hans didn't bother trying to save him. There was no point.
He left the great hall and proceeded to the study, the door blown in half by plasma fire. He pushed the door open with the barrel of the Mars, taking in the room. The study had been spared the worst of the battle, though many of the once-intact books had been slagged by plasma. Hans entered the study, looking it over. There were several Coalition bodies by the door, but no Order soldiers. He was about to walk further into the room when he saw someone peek him from around a bookshelf, and then a second time. He tensed up, about to take cover and open fire, when Paul slowly eased out from around the corner.
"Hans?"
Hans lowered his gun as the Lieutenant walked out into the open, STG in hand. For a moment the two of them didn't say anything, just looking at each other. Paul slung his rifle, sat on a chair that had its back blown off, and put his elbows on his knees. Hans holstered his gun and approached him, sitting down on the floor next to him.
"What happened? Where is Chancellor Dietrich?" Paul asked, and Hans shook his head.
"Dead. Kommandant Wolfgang, too. Have you seen Erich?"
"No, I lost track of him during the battle. I haven't seen Hilda or Klara yet, either."
"Klara's dead," Hans said, and he began to wonder if sparing Ademar had been the right call. "I don't know about Hilda yet." He leaned forward, his left elbow on his knee, and put the side of his head in his hand. "The Natursturm device was destroyed, not that it fucking matters anyway..."
Paul nodded. "So it was all for nothing, then," he said, and slowly stood. Hans did the same, feeling just so very tired of it all. "Might as well go and take one last look around. See if we can find anyone else."
Hans followed the Lieutenant out of the study and back through the charred and shattered halls of the Eagle's Nest, checking each and every body they came across. Dead, every single one of them. They stopped only to take ammo, food, and meds from the corpses. At least, the solid corpses that remained. The piles of ash and puddles of steaming blue goo could be looted for nothing.
The two of them reached the back of the chalet and stepped outside, the cold October air gently blowing. Hans looked up at the peak of the hill behind the chalet and saw Hilda standing by the Natursturm device, staring at it. He and Paul slowly ascended the hill and Hilda turned as they approached, gun in hand. She was bleeding slowly from a cut on the left side of her forehead, her face sticky with blood. and her left pant leg was slightly torn. She noticed Hans' gaze, took his hand, and gave it a squeeze. "Hans..." she quietly exclaimed. "Grenade, in the dining hall. Jumped out one of the windows and paid the price," she said, gesturing vaguely at her body. "Got cut up and twisted my leg when I landed funny, but it could've been a lot worse."
Could've been a lot worse... That was Hans' only consolation, that it all could've been a lot worse. He was alive, Hilda was alive, Paul was alive. Why they had survived Hans could only guess, but he supposed he should be grateful for it. Klara and Walter's deaths would haunt him for the rest of his days, but so long as he lived he could work to honor their memory. There was nothing else he could do.
She released his hand, slung her MP5, and hugged him, and Hans returned the embrace. "I thought you were dead. I thought everyone was dead..." she said. Hans held her tightly, buried his face in her hair, and desperately fought back the urge to just collapse onto the ground.
Hilda broke away from him after a moment and turned back to face the Natursturm device. "What happened to Klara?"
"Dead," Hans said, trying to ignore the simmering pool of goo she'd been turned in to as it slowly cooled next to Paul's feet, the lingering uncertainty of letting Ademar go nagging at him. He wondered if he'd ever see the man again and, if he did, what he'd say or do. "Klara, Commander Wolfgang, Chancellor Dietrich, all dead."
"Ademar too?" Hilda asked.
"Yes," Hans lied.
"Director Jaeger is dead, too," Paul said, his hands folded over his stomach. "Seems like we're the only ones who made it. And Erich too, I guess. We didn't find his body, so unless he got turned into blue glue he must've left once the battle ended..."
The three of them just stood in front of the Natursturm device, silently struggling against the torment and misery it had inadvertently brought them. Hilda took a few minutes to tend to both her wounds and theirs, cleaning and binding them, before turning back to face the machine that was supposed to save their country. On the ground, next to the heap of scrap the GECK had become, were the apples, undamaged. Mocking them.
"I still can't believe it..." Hilda said, her voice thick. Hans wrapped an arm around her and she turned to face him. "What was the point? What was the fucking point?!" she said, gripping Hans' shirt. "Everything we did..."
She pressed her face to Hans' chest, too distraught and exhausted to go on. Hans just held her, him and Paul looking at each other with knowing expressions. How were they supposed to carry on? How were they supposed to cope with the knowledge that they had sacrificed so much for absolutely nothing?
"What was the point...?" Hilda asked again, and looked up at Hans. He didn't know what to say, didn't know how to soothe the anguish that both of them were experiencing. All he could do was hold her tightly and try to be strong for her.
Hans looked up as Paul approached and put a hand on Hilda's shoulder. She flinched and looked at him, but didn't say anything. "The point was... Everything we did, every loss we've suffered, was to make Germany a better place. That it was all for nothing in the end is a crushing feeling, but I can take comfort in the knowledge that it was a good cause. Our friends, my comrades, all gave their lives for a good cause. The only cause that matters. For what it's worth, I'm...satisfied with that."
Hans nodded. "So...what happens now?" he asked. Hilda pulled away, her hands on Hans' shoulders. She looked at him, her youthful face devoid of the usual vigor. She'd put so much into the Order's teachings, believed so deeply in the promise of the Natursturm device, not to mention a chance to learn how to read and write, only for it all to be taken away from her in less than an hour. In Hans' mind, that was the real tragedy of it all; that so many had believed in the dream of Natursturm, fighting and dying for it, all for nothing in the end.
Hans looked at Paul, who shrugged, and then back at Hilda. "Let's... Let's go home. To Berlin. Maybe we can get people to come back to the U-Bahnen, and get all the stations back up again" she said.
Hans and Paul shared a look, shrugged, and nodded. "Home... To Berlin..." Hans said, suddenly feeling like it'd been years since he'd left the city. "I guess it's the only choice we have now. Let's go, then."
"I'm...going to stay. For a while," Paul said, and slung his rifle. "My comrades, someone should take care of their bodies. There's no space to bury them, so I'll burn them. Somehow a Viking funeral seems appropriate, yeah?"
"Let us help you, then" Hilda said, and Hans nodded. The three of them began the slow, arduous process of finding and rounding up all the intact bodies of the Final Order's soldiers and officers in and outside the chalet, carrying them up the hill to the Natursturm device and setting them down on top and beside it. The force that had been gathered to defend the Eagle's Nest was big. So much so that Hans quickly lost count.
After close to ninety minutes the whole lot of those who hadn't been turned to ash or goo had been assembled on the hill behind the chalet, stacked up on top of and across each other like building blocks. The three of them stood in front of the pile, incendiary grenades in hand, and looked at each other. Among the pile were familiar faces; Kommandant Wolfgang, Director Jaeger, Chancellor Dietrich.
"We didn't find Klara's body..." Hilda said, looking at Hans. "Or Friedrich's."
Hans swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded. "Klara...was atomized. I doubt it was painless, but at least it was quick. As for Friedrich..." he trailed off, thinking of a believable story. "I kicked his body off the mountain after he was dead."
"Serves him right."
Hans turned back to Paul without a word, and the former Lieutenant of the Final Order nodded. They each pulled the pins on their incendiaries and chucked them into the pile. The blinding, searing flash of thermite erupted, engulfing the entire pyre in an intense and violent inferno, charring each corpse within seconds and turning some into ash within minutes.
When it was over, the final survivors of Projekt Natursturm stayed around long enough to make their final peace before, forlornly, turning away from the dream they had toiled for for so long, and had sacrificed so much for.
Together Hans, Hilda, and Paul walked back down the hill and made their way through the chalet to the elevator that would take them down to Kehlsteinhaus's entrance tunnel, the elevator's gate open and waiting for them. The inside of the elevator was marked with bullet holes, the bodies of a few Coalition soldiers lying around it. As best as Hans could tell the Bavarian Coalition had gotten their hands on a few vertibirds and had hit the Eagle's Nest from two directions: the elevator, and the outcropping down from the chalet. "What about them?" Hans asked, pointing to the bodies of the Coalition.
"Leave 'em for the birds" Paul said.
The trio stepped into the lavish elevator, pressed the descend button, and rode it down. At the bottom the elevator opened up on the entrance tunnel and the three of them proceeded down it and back out into the morning sun. All around the opening outside the tunnel, lying amidst the rusting hulks of pre-War cars, were dead bodies. Order and Coalition. This is where the battle had truly started, with no way for anyone at the top to know. They stood there, taking in yet another reminder of the futility of it all. Defenders killed defending a useless hunk of metal, and attackers killed trying to take something that they didn't even know didn't work.
After a few minutes to round up the bodies of the Order's soldiers there and burn them as well, they got moving again. Hilda took hold of Hans' hand again and the trio began the long trek down the mountain, to begin the much longer trek back to Berlin, where they hoped to find another chance to rebuild their shattered lives. Another chance to reshape the world into a better version of itself.
And, another chance to begin again.
Story created 1/16/2022. Principal writing finished 10/27/2022. This story was a long time in the making. I first got the idea for a Fallout story set in Germany in 2019, at first being nothing more than a short skirmish around the Brandenburg Gate, with hints at life in the German Wasteland sprinkled throughout the subtext. From there, that little thread was spun into the story that Fallout: Germany is today. Not everything survived the cutting room floor, but here, at the end, I'm very satisfied and proud of what I've created with this story.
Ich kann nur hoffen, dass Sie es auch sind.
