The Strain: Another Season
Episode 10
Author's Note: The fighty stuff was again written by my husband.
The Dismembered
Chapter Two
South East Flanders - November 1918
A handsome man in his late twenties with dark blond hair and a grey horse gallops up to an unpleasant scene, wearing the uniform of a leutnant in the Imperial German Hussars.
An even more handsome boy with jet-black hair is lying on his side behind his badly injured mount, with his arm disappearing under the stricken creature's tail. The boy has a nasty grin on his otherwise perfect face. He seems to be in his mid to late teens and he is in a husar's uniform.
'God in heaven, Hussar!' cries the officer, shocked. 'What in Hades are you doing to that poor mare?'
The boy removes his arm to show that he's holding his bayonet but guarding it with a bloody hand to prevent damage to the horse's bowels.
'I've run out of bullets, Lieutenant, and she's badly hurt,' he explains. 'I thought I could sever her aorta per rectum. Make it quick and painless.'
The young hussar's mount is clearly in extremis, with multiple pieces of shattered cannon bone protruding from one foreleg and several feet of colon spilling out of a hole in her abdomen, some ribs are exposed by a huge gash in her chest as well. The officer greens and turns away. When he turns back, his eyes have gone somewhere else and his jaw his tight as he shoots the mare between the eyes.
'Hurry up boy, the British are nearly upon us,' the Lieutenant says. And indeed, pistol cracks and English cursing can be heard in the distance as he grabs the boy's arm and drags him to a snorting, terrified grey.
He threads an arm through the reins and as he grasps the boy by the waist to hoist him aboard the charger, he catches sight of the lad smiling back at him in a very disturbing way. He makes the instant decision that the boy rides in front of him rather than behind.
He urges the horse into a canter and steers him (with some difficulty) to a building on the horizon.
They take refuge in a barn on the outskirts of a town. The horse is exhausted and so are they. They must rest.
'You're one of mine aren't you, hussar?' says the officer as he removes the panting horse's tack. 'I remember you from the skirmish at the church.'
'Yes, Lieutenant Eichhorst. Hussar Dreverhaven, sir.'
'You wanted to slaughter the entire village when the French surrendered. And I had to stop you firing at the English when they went to recover their wounded at the Somme.'
'I was overcome by the scent of victory, sir.'
'Huh! But weren't you the one who wants to become doctor after the war?'
'Yes, sir.'
A pause while the older man rubs down his mount with a handful of hay.
'How old are you?' he asks.
'Eighteen, sir.'
'How old are you really, Dreverhaven?'
'Sixteen, sir. I wanted to fight.'
'Why?' Eichhorst turns to look at his companion in disbelief.
'For the glory of it.'
'Have you experienced any of the glory of the war, hussar?' The other man asks bitterly.
'Oh yes sir, very much so,' replies the enthusiastic Dreverhaven. 'I've had a wonderful time.'
'You enjoy violence on a grand scale?' The officer stares at him, incredulous.
'Violence is beautiful and ... and… well, when one is struggling for life and death with another man, it's a perfect, ecstatic moment of intimacy. It's almost erotic, sir.'
Eichhorst stares at him for a long time, a look of deep disgust on his face.
'That is the most depraved thing I have ever heard, Dreverhaven,' he says eventually. 'And I believe that deep in your soul, if you have one, you must know that. '
'Would you prefer it if I said I enjoyed inflicting suffering on the enemies of the empire?'
'If you meant it.'
'Oh, I do, sir.'
The boy does indeed look as if he gains pleasure from causing pain but Eichhorst appears to doubt whether his sadism is as discriminating as the hussar claims.
'Enemies,' muses Eichhorst, after some time contemplating his young charge. 'The British, I presume you mean. Or do you refer instead to one of the nations we invaded?'
The young man shakes his head. 'Not anymore,' he says darkly.
'Oh,' says the Lieutenant, now only half-interested. 'Who are Germany's enemies now, do you think?'
'The Jews, sir' replies Dreverhaven definitely. 'We were winning the war and yet the Jews at home surrendered. And they're bleeding the country dry. They're a race of lying, cheating, underhanded criminals sir. Everyone says so.'
'Everyone, Hussar?' the older man raises his eyebrows sarcastically. 'Even Levine and Rosenberg?'
'Who are they sir?'
'The Jews who died covering our retreat,' Eichhorst snaps meaningfully, before turning back to rug his horse with some old sacking.
This is evidently conversation over for now but eventually the officer orders, 'Get some rest now, Dreverhaven. We'll make a break for it just before dawn.'
Eichhorst sneaks out in the dark for a bucket of water for men and horse, blankets for the boy and hopefully some food for everyone, even if the two soldiers have to share horse grain.
The building they've taken refuge in is the haybarn of the dairy farm on a suburban estate. The main house is huge and Eichhorst catches sight of some of the family in their parlour, lit by two candles.
Shabbat candles.
They are Jews.
He creeps closer and stays to watch as the family complete the Havdalah ritual marking the end of the Sabbath. The older man has his heritage stamped all over his face but the others are fair and Germanic-looking, especially a young woman with her long blonde hair demurely covered. She is breathtakingly beautiful and young Eichhorst is transfixed. Her elders call her Tzeitel and after the candle flames have been extinguished and the fires relit, her younger brother teases her about all the suitors who have called during the week.
Dreverhaven wakes to find a thoughtful Eichhorst standing at the barn door watching the stars in a frosty sky. He announces that he's decided to stay and tries to persuade the boy to take his horse onwards to Germany, asserting that the border must be only a couple of hours' trot away at most.
The boy doesn't seem to want to leave his lieutenant alone. Perhaps he's grown fond of him or he's grateful for being rescued from the British. Or maybe he's scared to leave on his own.
Whatever the reason for Dreverhaven's reluctance, Eichhorst is adamant.
'Germany holds no future for me now,' he says firmly, still with his back to the boy. 'I'm a cavalryman, Dreverhaven, and trenches and tanks have made me as obsolete as the warhorse. I'm a nobleman when the empire is failing. I ride and I fight. That is all I know how to do. My world is vanishing, and with it any need for men like me. What else is there for me to do back home?'
He finally turns to address Hussar Dreverhaven directly. 'You will become a doctor,' he smiles down sadly at the boy. 'And whatever kind of Germany rises from the corpse of the empire will need much healing. Go, my young friend and go soon. Leave me and make good use of your future. And, Dreverhaven…'
'Yes, Lieutenant,' he says respectfully.
'Gain a better understanding of the meaning of the word "enemy".'
The young man mounts and sets off but after a few paces, he swivels around in the saddle and calls back with much less deference, 'You'll find out, my dear Eichhorst. You'll see I'm right!'
He kicks the horse into a canter and an open-mouthed Eichhorst watches him ride away until the cold moon no longer lights his already-impressive physique. Then, smiling slightly to himself, the lieutenant crawls under a pile of hay and blankets and falls asleep.
Fet's Place, Richards Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn – The Present
Everyone braces for the final onslaught, as yet another line of Kelly Goodweather's strigoi come at them over the rubble. Angel Guzman Hurtado is trapped alone on the far side of the workshop but the vampires seem to be largely focussed on the main group around the cabinet hiding the increasingly agitated Dutch Velders.
Everyone, that is, except for the Goodweather family, newly and emotionally reunited. Dad Dr Eph Goodweather holds his son Zach and his strigoi wife Kelly in a group hug and barely notices an athletic brunette slide down the roof of the SUV above his head.
Captain Lena Bartoli formerly of the NYPD, now head of the vigilante group known as the Force, bounces off the car bonnet and swings across the room on a heavy iron chain (no doubt a remnant of the building's industrial dockland history), over the heads of leaping, snapping strigoi.
Angel has had a long career in show business, first as a Mexican wrestler, then as a movie hero and he knows when a new star is upstaging him with a grand entrance. He covers his head with his silver-knuckledustered hands and charges through the pack of strigoi as they stare up at Lena.
The next thing the group defending the cabinet notices is the sudden appearance of an attractive woman between them and impending vampire sucking. Lena's gun pop-pops a few times and the first row are down, each one a clean kill with a bullet in the centre of the forehead.
Then a roaring sound heralds Angel's return. He barrels through pushing two strigoi towards Lena.
She twists and kicks one deep in the belly sending it to the floor. The other unfortunately lands and lashes out at Setrakian behind her. She quickly grabs its head top and bottom, stopping it from opening its mouth. Once she has the creature's head firmly in her grasp, she drops to her knees pulling the vampire backwards and throwing him over her shoulder where he lands thrashing its head from side to side beside her. Without hesitation, she unsheathes a knife from a scabbard on her back and skewers it through the ears.
The next attacker gets swiped across its chest before she grabs the stinger with both hands and yanks it clean out through the poor creature's mouth. The strigoi drops dead at her feet and Lena uses the papillated proximal end to smack another assailant around the face.
'Another way to kill 'em,' cries Fet gleefully. 'Never seen it done like that before.'
Angel's jaw drops and he glances at Gus, who says thoughtfully, 'I have.'
'Watch out for the worms,' calls Setrakian but Lena ignores him, cutting through another stinger and decapitating the panicked vampire. She seems uncontaminated so far, though.
Kelly looks deep into Eph's eyes and murmurs, 'Come with me.' There's an edge of pleading but mostly it's a statement of how things will be. She leads her family slowly up the damaged, unstable stairway and through the debris-strewn living area to the hole in the wall.
Meanwhile, the injured Dr Nora Martinez is lying grey-faced at the base of Dutch's cabinet, chewing her cheek with the effort of not crying out in pain. Professor Abraham Setrakian is increasingly distracted by her plight and becoming vulnerable himself as a result. Fortunately, Lena Bartoli has a knack of always being where she is needed and she gets down to business.
She steps in and efficiently takes out one opponent coming unnoticed from Setrakian's blind side. Another slips past Sandra's guard making her give out an involuntary yelp. Lena turns to it, grips it by what's left of its clothes and pulls it in close to her. She deftly puts her gun to the creature's temple and blows the other side of his head off. Then she calmly grabs the strigoi tackling Reggie and twists its head around a few times before discarding it across the room.
However efficient Lena Bartoli is at killing strigoi, she is only able to hold them off and maintain a stalemate rather than making noticeable inroads into the vampire offensive.
Fortunately, she knows that reinforcements are on the way. The first signs that the Force have arrived is the sound of a gunfight from outside, swiftly followed by a spray of strigoi body parts all over the workshop as the attackers are cut apart by heavy gunfire. Coming in through what's left of the side of Fet's place is a squad of well-trained and fully equipped vigilante cops. The strigoi that survive intact flee as if called off by their commander, which is probably what has happened.
'Nothing like the cavalry turning up at the last minute,' says Sandra, grinning at a large and impressive officer.
'I think the cavalry showed up a little bit before that,' says Gus staring in awe at Lena Bartoli. It looks like he's developing something of a crush.
South East Flanders - November 1918
Eichhorst is woken by Tzeitel singing to herself as she enters to get hay for her horse. He watches her and listens and is captivated by the lovely Jewish girl.
Although her family appeared very well-to-do the previous night, she wears a simple dress this morning to tend to her mare and do other chores around the dairy.
Simple to the point of peasanty.
It is very, very similar to the dress Eichhorst gave Sandra to wear in Berlin.
