Note: This is my own interpretation of the zombies story as I see it. Some of my facts aren't gonna be 100% correct. Either way, enjoy and give me feedback. I will update with the next chapter when I can!

Prologue

I learnt not to ask questions, just to get on with my job. Wittenau lunatic and idiot institute was built in 1880 and its aim was to cure these people of whatever illness they had. Eventually the institute went into disrepair and the Nazis grasped the derelict asylum during their regime apparently setting out to help soldiers with post-traumatic stress and other war related illnesses. So the building’s doors opened once more and every square inch was covered in a Nazi Swastika of some kind. Flags hung from the balconies, the walls and Swastika carpets covered the floors. Yet beyond the institutes so called ‘aims’ lay something dark and disturbing. The majority of bodies entering the building seemed to be dead, wrapped in body bags and wheeled into the Doctor’s operating theatre. Who knows what he wanted with those corpses but as I said, I learnt not to ask questions, just to get on with my job.

My job was simply janitor, cleaner or whatever the hell you want to call it. I wandered the cold corridors wheeling my cleaning apparatus along in a trolley, hearing the soldiers’ troubled screams once in a while. After being there for over a year though it became clear that the head doctor, Ludwig Maxis, wasn’t trying to help the ill soldiers, more like use them as guinea pigs for his sick and twisted experiments. It seemed like after each successive operation he performed I would be cleaning up more and more blood. Bulks of patients never seemed to survive Maxis’ procedures and were subsequently buried in the courtyard. Even the ones that did seemed brain dead and had a strange yellow glow in their eyes.

One Sunday afternoon I was pushing my cleaning trolley down one of the corridors when I noticed blood seeping out from underneath a patient’s door. I immediately alerted one of the wardens who dashed up and unlocked the door to reveal a truly horrific sight; the patient had hung himself from the light cable but not before cutting himself and scribbling various phrases and images onto the walls in his own blood one of which stood out to me. ‘Teddy is the biggest liar’ it read. That sentence still haunts me to this very day. I never discovered what the patient had meant by that and Maxis just cast it off as the deranged thoughts of a psychopath. Indeed the patient had come across as violent before his suicide but I’m still convinced that that phrase meant more than what Maxis was letting on.

My time at the institution came to an abrupt end not long after that curious episode. I was doing my rounds when the alarm was raised that a fire had broken out within the building. We evacuated the sanatorium and stood out front watching as flames began to engulf the structure illuminating the night sky. It was not long before I realised that none of the patients had been evacuated, they were all still inside. I looked up at one of the first floor windows to see a strange sight, a man in a Nazi SS uniform staring back at me, flames flooding the room behind him. He made no attempt to escape he just stood there, staring. I didn’t go back to work the next day and I never even discovered how the fire had started. Maxis disappeared and I was only left with the evidence of the whole incident in my mind. I heard ridiculous accounts of undead Nazis that had originated in Wittenau, but that’s all a load of mythical garbage… right?

Chapter 1 – The Three Stooges

“I know when you’re sleeping”

The swamp lay settled and calm with only the slightest breeze jangling the leaves on the very tallest trees. Murky waters lay still and silent, the skin of the water rippling only from the delicate descent of a stray leaf. Marshes like this where scattered all over Okinawa, Japan but none so as mysterious as this. Standing under the shade of a Banyan tree deep into the swamp stood three men who should only be together in fairy tales.

American; Tank Dempsey grimaced at the thought of walking that far. It had been over two days since he’d had a wink of sleep and he was beginning to get agitated with the company that he was keeping. He scratched his war-torn face and checked his Colt’s ammo supply.

“Alright,” he said, defeated. “Let’s do this.”

The two men standing in front of him, Takeo and Nikolai, both smiled a touch. The three had been arguing for a while now over the existence of a strange camp deep within the swamp in which strange experiments had been going on concerning dead soldiers. Dempsey, although curious, was reluctant to walk that distance for something which they weren’t one hundred percent sure existed.

Nikolai reached for a glass bottle strapped to his belt alongside his PPSH and took a swig. A Soviet, Nikolai Belinski was a short chubby man with a wrinkled face that had seen a lot more of the dark corners of the Earth than any other. He strapped the bottle back onto his belt and burped loudly.

“We best get a move on,” he bellowed with a thick Russian accent. “Night is approaching and I’m almost out of vodka.”

Takeo looked on appallingly at Nikolai. Takeo Masaki was a Japanese man and Imperial soldier of great calibre. Adjusting his Captain’s hat he stared at Nikolai’s vodka bottle and back up at the wrinkled Soviet’s face.

“That drink will cloud your vision,” Takeo said in broken English.

“Shut up Takeo,” Nikolai grunted casually without batting an eyelid.

“Baka…” Takeo murmured in Japanese.

“Okay you two,” Dempsey wiped his brow agitated by the two men’s petty arguing. “Let’s start walking.”

Dempsey lifted up his leg and dunked his boot into the shallow water in front of him. Instantly the dirty liquid began filling up his sock and he shivered slightly. How did it come to this? An all American Marine Raider hanging around with a Soviet and a Japanese Imperial soldier in an Okinawan swamp? Dempsey had recently been selected for the Battle of Peleliu, fought between the American and Japanese soldiers on the Palau Islands. Unfortunately he had been captured along with the rest of his unit in the earlier raids before the main invasion took place. He had felt defeated and beaten, the fact that he was mingling with the enemy in their territory was not helping one bit.

Dempsey raised his fist into the air and the two other men ceased arguing and stopped suddenly behind him. The three of them had been walking for over two hours now and Tank hadn’t muttered a single word but now he had spotted something. He raised his Colt up to his eye line and remained still. Nikolai was about to blurt something out but held his breath when he heard a slow groaning sound emerging from some shrubbery in the distance. The groan was quiet at first but gradually grew louder and louder. Suddenly a human figure burst out dressed in what looked like a Japanese Imperial army uniform. Takeo raised his eyebrows confused at to what one of his fellow comrades was doing all the way out here. He was about to say something when Dempsey began firing shots from his pistol. One, two, three, shots into the strange man’s chest but nothing happened. The blood seeped through his shirt but he didn’t appear to be in pain, not even flinching. The Imperial soldier began limping towards the three of them while continuing to make the slow groaning sound. It was when it was just a few feet away the group realised something was terribly wrong. The man’s face appeared to be covered in blisters and was as blue as the Pacific Ocean, almost as if he had been suffocated. Yet it was his eyes that caught the men’s attentions, they were orange as if a fire was burning inside this soldier’s head. Three more shots from Dempsey’s Colt and the man fell flat on his face into the murky grey water in front. Tank turned to the two men who looked on with jaws agape.

“I think we’re close,” Dempsey commented with a smile and a raised eyebrow.

Avoiding the bloodied corpse the men continued walking in the direction this strange soldier had emerged from, not knowing exactly what they were letting themselves in for. It was over an hour before the gang made any more discoveries and not one of them said a single word. The Imperial Soldier they had encountered previously was still playing around in their heads over and over.

Dempsey stopped again and the other two followed suit. He began brushing back a bush to reveal what looked like a mesh fence. Without addressing Nikolai or Takeo he scaled the fence and began walking straight on over the other side. The others followed close behind, Nikolai playfully pushing Takeo as he attempted to climb over.

The air seemed calm and the other side of the fence only seemed to lead to what looked like even more swamp. Nothing lay calm for long though, in the distance the slow groaning sound began to start up again, this time louder than before. Dempsey, alerted by the noise raised his Colt once more. Nikolai took a swig of vodka and unstrapped his PPSH from his belt while silently giggling to himself at the fact that Takeo was still struggling to get over the fence at the same time cursing quietly in Japanese. Eventually Takeo made it and upon noticing the groaning pulled out his Bolt-Action Arisaka Rifle from the side of his leg.

Nikolai was sharply taken by surprise when a hand reached out of the mud to grab hold of his leg. Confused he fired his PPSH wildly into the hand narrowly avoiding his own foot and sending mud and blood splashing into his face.

“Did you just see that?” he yelled while still staring down at the ground dumbstruck.

The other men didn’t respond though. It wasn’t that they hadn’t heard him it was the fact that over fifteen Imperial Soldiers had began raising out of the muddy ground just in front of them. Dempsey shook his head and began firing his Colt into the hordes of diseased looking men who all made the same groaning sound. Takeo took aim and blasted the head off one of them sending bits of skull and brain matter flying everywhere. Nikolai wiped the mud that was caked onto his eyelids away and began firing his PPSH into the crowd of soldiers causing several limbs to break off their bodies and fly into the air.

Dempsey had the look of utter concentration on his face but his Colt was doing nothing to help him, only injuring the soldiers a touch and it wasn’t long before his ammo supply was completely drained.

“Shit,” he murmured to himself. “Out of ammo.”

Yet he wasn’t the only one; Nikolai was attempting to squeeze the last few bullets out of his weapon while Takeo had pulled out what looked like a Katana sword to aid him. The three of them couldn’t survive. It wasn’t physically possible. Soldiers were still rising out of the ground and even more appeared to be coming from the sides out of the bushes. The groaning had merged into a cacophony of noise that affected the nerves of even a hardened soldier like Dempsey. A shiver went up his spine and he awaited the end, not even wanting to think what these creatures would do once they got their hands on him.

Suddenly what looked like a bolt of lightning emerged from the bushes, whipping across the ground and hitting into the Imperial Soldiers. The electricity seemed to go straight through their bodies causing them to convulse. Eventually the surge made their orange eyeballs pop out as they grasped their heads and fell to the ground. It appeared to go in a chain, hitting into one soldier, then another and another until they all hit the ground dead and lifeless. Then all was quiet again. This lightning had missed Dempsey, Nikolai and Takeo and had practically saved their lives. Worn out the men dropped their weapons and fell to their knees.

“They’re dead,” Dempsey was breathing heavily and could barely get his words out. “They were dead when we got here. They’re zombies. There’s no way… No way this is real.”

Tank could of said more but he stopped talking and looked up at what was walking towards them, what looked like a tall man in Nazi uniform brandishing a sci-fi looking metallic weapon. He was giggling to himself slightly and then he spoke in a demented voice;

“Guten tag, I’m Doctor Richtofen and I see you’ve met our… little problem.”