J.G. Grimmer

Nazi Los Angeles, 1939

Gideon, on point, raised his armor-piercing sword; blue electricity arced like lightning from gleaming leads connected to his backpack; the last rays of the setting sun bathing the blade bloody.

“What in the name of Sheol?” Lilith hissed, as she stumbled into my tree trunk-sized iron leg. “Behemoth! A little warning!”

“Gideon signaled a halt, She-Demon.” Samson chided her, his armor-plated riveted shoulders, chest, and torso gleamed dully beneath his long black hair.

“Yeah,” Dybbuk joined in, black lips opening to reveal black teeth. “Fall asleep during training?” 

Lilith favored them both with a middle-finger salute.

“QUIET.” David whispered.

The ear-piercing squeal of heavy treaded vehicles could be heard in the gathering darkness above us as searchlights strafed the southern slope of Mount Hollywood.

The Griffith Observatory formerly occupied the space, but was transformed into SS, Gestapo, and Abwehr HQ/California.

We’re the Breed Street Shul Boys, and we’re gonna send them all back to Berlin in tiny little pieces.

“Behemoth, can you see anything?” Gideon whispered.

I leaned my massive head forward, raised one, then four jointed iron fingers. I’m in command.

Gun towers.

We’d reached the outer security zone.

“This is gonna be fun!” Lilith said gleefully. Her teeth, filed to dagger sharp points, flashed white as she thumbed back the hammers of her dual Colt M1911 Cannons.

“For Boyle Heights!” Gideon said, and charged forward, the Gatling gun attached to his right arm spinning to explosive life.

Samson and I raced for the gun towers as red and white tracers split the air and tore up chunks of earth at our feet, while sparks flew from bullets that hit their marks with little effect.

David loaded his sling, taking aim at the gunners unleashing belt after belt of explosive ordinance. Two lead balls whispered, a large hole opening between the eyes of the first gunner, then the second.

I ripped a gun tower from its concrete footing and swung it like Babe Ruth into its neighbor. Steel screamed, wood shattered, and bodies of gunners broken and bloody flew through the air.

Samson snatched a falling MG-42 out of the air and unloaded it at retreating Germans, their bodies dancing as the bullets shredded them like cabbage.

“We got company!” I shouted, as four mechs of the special armored security unit, the Führerbegleitbrigade (Fuhrer Escort Brigade), backlit by the blood red California sun thundered toward us, iron treads crushing everything in their path.

Mobile weapon platforms taller than me, bristling with cannons, mortar tubes, grenade launchers, and machine guns opened up, and the world exploded.

Lilith and Dybbuk moved so fast they were blurs; weaving in and out of tracers so thick they filled the air. At sixteen, the youngest members of the Breed Street Shul Boys activated the jets on the bottom of their steel shoes, their lithe slender bodies leaping into the air.

“Hey Sugar!” Lilith said to the startled SS operator through the windscreen of his mech, then unloaded both barrels of her M1911 Cannons into his face. As he fell to the ground, she leapt off, rolled, and got up laughing, her filed teeth gleaming.

Dybbuk landed so softly on the back of his target, I don’t think the SS operator knew he was there — he would, and soon.

I don’t usually watch. This time I did.

Dybbuk languidly draped his slender black mesh metal clad form against the mech’s armor-plated surface. Eight spidery cables burst from Dybbuk’s back and sliced into the armor, penetrating it easily. Abruptly the mech stopped firing, walked a few steps, then stopped, thick metal arms dropping lifelessly to its side. The SS operator’s eyes bulged, his mouth opened in a silent scream. 

Dybbuk’s cables pulsed, as milky-white light coming from the ends inside the armor coiled around them and into Dybbuk’s back. The SS operator’s eyes rolled into his head as his face shriveled to nothingness. His life-force ripped from him.

Dybbuk looked directly at me, two impenetrable black goggle lenses stitched over his eyes made them look like empty sockets. His white face and black open hole of a mouth was the visage of Death himself.

I’d give anything not to have seen that. What were Rabbi Osher Zilberstein and his Zohar mystic body engineers thinking?

“EWWWWW!” Lilith shrieked. “I just LOVE it when he does that, don’t you?” She said, elbowing me in the leg. 

“Get back in the fight, Breed Street Shul Boy!” I snapped, startled.

“Okay, Okay! Sheesh!” Lilith replied. “Hey ya big galoot, who ya callin’ a BOY?!” She yelled over her shoulder slamming two clips home. 

I roared, and pounded my steel-plated oversize skull, trying in vain to get Dybbuk’s face out of my head. I needed to crush something — and fast.

That would make me feel better.

Samson clambered onto the front of a mech, ripped out machine gun and cannon barrels, still red hot and smoking, and then punched through the windscreen, pummeling the SS operator’s face to pulp.

The remaining mech turned its weapons on me. I smiled and rammed it, driving it into the ground and ripping the SS operator apart; starting with his arms, then his legs, and finished with his head.

It was a start.

Security Zone Two lay ahead.

Then what we came for. 

The head of SD Commandant Doctor Amon Wolf-Bolverkr, The Butcher of California.

Nazi Los Angeles

Nazis had visited California since the early 30’s.

1936 was the year they moved in permanently.

Like the clap.

Or ticks, the way they dug themselves in.

They moved quickly, with the tacit approval of Mayor Frank L. Shaw, L.A. Police Chief Jim “Two-Gun” Davis, California’s Jew haters, and the Los Angeles Diocese. In one day they strung up twenty of Hollywood’s best and brightest; Busby Berkley, Charlie Chaplin, Jimmy Cagney, Walter Winchell, Irving Thalberg, Rabbi Edgar Manin, and Louis B. Mayer, to name a few.

The mass executions continued for two days.

As the bodies were left to rot and be picked at by crows, the Kalifornien Pogrom proceeded. Rabbi Zilberstein got to work; aided by a group of Zohar mystics who also happened to be very gifted body engineers.

In the nick of time too.

Boyle Heights was next on the Nazi’s list of things to do; an entire community to massacre.

That’s when I came in. The others too. Answering the Rabbi’s call for volunteers.

Right after the Hollywood land sign was changed to Hitler Land bracketed either side by huge red and black swastikas.

After the grease monkeys were through with us, Rabbi Zilberstein christened us the Breed Street Shul Boys/Herschel Grynzpan Squad.

Last year Boyle Heights was surrounded by barb-wire, joining many newly minted ghettos sprouting up throughout the state.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Behemoth

“Hey ya big oaf!” Lilith screamed at me. “Get your head out of your ass!”

“What?”

“Incoming!”

A bruise-toned light zigzagged through the trees like it had eyes and hit me full in the chest, knocking the wind out of me. When my vision cleared and I could breathe, I found myself flat on my back.

“What did you make of that, genius?” Lilith asked, snidely smirking.

I sat up, all my metal parts, pretty much all of me were vibrating, and my steel teeth gave me a pain that felt like my jaw and face was being stabbed by ice knives. “An energy bolt of some kind.” I replied and got to my feet.

“No shit.”

Security Zone Two appeared deserted; the quarters of the HQ staff, as well as the Reich Security Service were checked out by David and Samson who confirmed them clear.

“That’s odd,” Gideon said.

“Yeah,” Dybbuk replied. “Nazis aren’t known for retreating.”

“Or subtlety.” David whispered, sling ready, eyes darting and alert.

“I don’t like it. Smells like a trap.”

“Smells like a trap to me too, Lilith,” I said. “Everyone on guard. Eyes and ears open. No sound. Shake a leg.”

The HQ staff quarters and Reich Security Service barracks were dark. I would say brooding. If I could feel a chill I would have.

The slope above was repeatedly strafed by searchlights; Doctor Wolf-Bolverkr’s little shop of horrors a beehive of activity — like any ordinary day.

As though our attack never happened.

The ground started shaking and shifting beneath our feet, reminding me of the 1933 earthquake in Long Beach. A loud whirring and stomping erupted from both buildings. The doors burst open. A steel fence sprang out of the ground behind and in front of us, buzzing with electricity.

A dozen pairs of glowing eyes revealed two lines of robots, their chest plates emblazoned with the swastika, as they marched out of the buildings.

Samson launched himself into two of them. A sudden bruise-toned light flashed and boom, he was flung into the air, landing heavily. The two robots were unharmed.

“They’re electrified too!” I shouted. “Weapons free! No hand-to-hand!”

Kneeling at Samson’s side, I saw electricity arcing up and down his body. He twitched and convulsed. “Hang on, old buddy,” I said.

Bloody foam poured from his mouth. His eyes rolled up into his head. His body raised in a violent convulsion which popped rivets and sent armored plates bone and blood flying.

He was dead.

Four robots stood behind me when I turned around.

When they reached for me I engaged the powerful pistons in my legs and leapt over them. Reaching the barracks I ripped out two eight-foot long thick oak planks, then enraged, waded into them swinging.

All four flew into the fence meant to keep us in.

They writhed wildly as they sizzled and cooked on the wire.

“Behemoth, get over here!” Lilith shouted.

As I ran to her, the wood beams I wielded crushed four more Nazi robots; I launched the six-foot planks like spears at the last two, the ends going into and through their heads.

“Take a look at this,” she said, and stuck her finger into the tennis ball-sized hole made by her Colt M1911 Cannon, then pulled it out — it was covered in blood, and slick with gray matter. “They were human once.” The She-Demon said, and wiped the gore off on the grass.

“So were we.” I stood up. “Let’s go, we’ve got a job to do.”

A steel fence twelve-feet high appeared out of the dusk, Doctor Wolf-Bolverkr’s last line of defense. In the distance to our left on Mount Lee, the Hitler Land sign was all aglow.

Fuckin Nazis, I thought. “KILL THEM ALL!”

“For Samson!” We shouted and charged.

David let loose with a volley of balls that took out the gunners, while Lilith shot out the searchlights and the transformers powering the fence. 

Just as Gideon was about to slice through the gate, it opened.

“Now, that’s a trap.”

“Sure as shit is, Lilith.” Gideon replied.

“What do ya think, boss?” 

I looked at David and the others. “We walk in. Dybbuk, you and Lilith take to the air, see what’s what; while Gideon, David, and I make our entrance — just not where the Nazis think.”

The Nazis

-WAIT, MY CHILDREN-

The words of our Commandant coursed over our cogs and gears, through our wires, soothing us.

-LET THEM COME-

Dozens of video screens lit the bloated face of SD Commandant Amon Wolf-Bolverkr in an ugly greenish light. He uttered a guttural sound he thought was a chuckle, which reverberated across and along the circular metal walls of his sanctum, as his eyes, magnified to an impossible size behind the thick lenses of his spectacles, tracked the Breed Street Shul Boy’s movements.

-MY MY, YOU HAVE BEEN BUSY, HAVEN’T YOU, ZILBERSTEIN?- He spoke aloud, to himself. -OOOH, I LIKE THAT ONE-BRING HIM TO ME-THE OTHERS-KILL-

Behemoth

We cautiously approached the large doors of the central dome, flanked by roof to ground swastika banners. Still no resistance.

Then searchlight beams blazed like twin suns exploding, we froze like rats.

Stomping feet concussed the ground from every direction, but heading only in one — ours.

“Well,” Lilith said, slamming two more clips home. “Finally we’ll have something to shoot at.” Running her tongue over her teeth.

“Can someone start by taking out those lights?” Gideon said. “I can’t see anything.”

Before anyone could fire, soldiers burst from the doors, as well as out of the darkness and into the light.

“Now what are they dressed up for?” Lilith asked.

“And why do they walk like a stick’s been driven up their ass?” Dybbuk observed.

“And what are they wearing on their heads?” David asked.

All good questions. 

What lurched toward us glowed with the same black and blue light that knocked me on my behind and killed Samson. They wore a glass dome which covered their heads, to which black corrugated hoses sprouted out of the back and into packs on their back.

Their faces, what was left of them, could briefly be seen between clouds of brownish-yellow gas. Faces the stuff of nightmares. Some missing half their head, some a bottom jaw; while many had no head at all, just a shriveled brain that pulsed obscenely atop an exposed spinal column in the gas.

The things wore the simple field gray uniform of an SS-Mann, armed with an MP-40 and a belt of stick grenades around their waists.

We formed a defensive circle in the courtyard.

“We waiting for these things to shoot first?” Lilith asked. Always spoiling for a fight.

“No,” I replied. “Mow ‘em down in five, four, three…”

Abruptly they stopped, stood shoulder-to-shoulder, and emitted a growling that rumbled my insides.

“Shit! What’s happening?!” Lilith cried, dropping her guns and clutching her stomach.

The growling got so loud we screamed while trying to block our ears, then the glowing blinded us.

The world bled white, then everything went dark.

Behemoth

“Touch me again, you jar-headed freak, and I’ll tear you to shreds when I get outta here!” Lilith screamed.

I woke screaming at my own jar-headed freak who was trying to open my power pack with a cattle prod. 

The pulsing brain in the jar moved as though it was looking at me, actually shushed me, and continued.

I tried to move, but was bound by coils of bruise-toned current that sapped my strength.

Besides Lilith and me, Gideon and David were in the same fix, except they weren’t moving. I hoped that was because they were unconscious.

“Where’s Dybbuk?!” Lilith whispered. “Behemoth, you see him anywhere?”

“No,” I groaned, as the cattle prod went into action again.

“I’ll be ready,” Lilith hissed through clenched teeth. “Just say the word.”

“Soon,” I replied.

Dybbuk

Dybbuk woke up on a metal floor which thrummed with unseen pistons in a circular metal-walled room. What the pistons powered he saw when he sat up.

In the center of the room was a raised circular dais, atop which sat a six-foot iron block teeming with dials, knobs, and hoses pumping God knows what into other hoses connected to the sides of a glass dome on top.

If he was capable of blinking he would have, better yet if Dybbuk could close his eyes he would prefer that. All he could do was stare.

Inside the glass dome was the large head of a man, face bloated like a monstrous toad wearing thick spectacles staring and smiling at him. -AREN’T YOU PRETTY?-

“Thanks,” Dybbuk replied. “Wish I could return the compliment, but, damn, you’re one ugly — I’m sure you know the rest.”

A guttural grating sound emanated from the head and iron block. -YOU ARE A MARVEL! ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF – I AM AMON WOLF-BOLVERKR SD, SS, AND GESTAPO COMMANDANT OF KALIFORNIEN-

“It’s CALIFORNIA, dumb ass! This is America!” Dybbuk retorted. “How are you even alive?! You’re a HEAD?”

Thick worm-like livid lips pursed like they were going to kiss the glass.

-REMARKABLE, NO? – THIS WONDROUS MACHINE PROVIDES ALL I NEED-

Taking a closer look, Dybbuk observed that tubes attached to the severed neck coiled down into the huge machine. “Still, must make getting around, you know, taking a walk, getting some fresh air kind of a bitch, no?”

-IF YOU’RE ATTEMPTING TO PROVOKE ME WITH INSULTS YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME-

Dybbuk snickered. “Clearly, judging by the size of your head, you must have been quite the fat slob! Am I right?!”

The hugely magnified eyes widened, threatening to escape the confines of the lenses. -I SEE – YOU THINK STALLING FOR TIME WILL BRING YOUR COMRADES CLOSER TO RESCUING YOU – THAT EVENTUALITY IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY – LOOK- 

The enormous triple chin nodded and flapped, directing Dybbuk’s attention to about a dozen screens bolted to the steel wall behind him.

Behemoth, Lilith, Gideon and David writhed on steel tables restrained by coils of electrical current; each hovered over by a jar-head freak — they were being cut to pieces. “NOOOOO!!!!” 

– NOW THAT THAT’S BEEN ESTABLISHED – WE HAVE BUSINESS, YOU AND I-

Dybbuk snarled, turned, the spider-like cables erupting from his back, he leapt across the room snarling. “I’ll fucking KILL YOU!” 

The tips sliced through the iron like butter and started pulsing.

-NO! STOP!-

The fat face screamed, white and terrified.

“You will die, oh so slowly!” Dybbuk sneered, black teeth tightly clenched.

-NO DOUBT, MY FRIEND-

Dybbuk grimaced. Something was very wrong.

-BUT NOT TODAY – AND CERTAINLY NOT AT YOUR HANDS-

Dybbuk became weaker and weaker, his vision tunneling.

The head-in-the-jar’s static, electronically-mimicked laughter echoed in the Breed Street Shul Boy’s ears, a powerful feedback forcibly ejected his probes, one-by-one they whipped through the air; he lost consciousness, and fell hard to the steel floor, dislocating his shoulder in the process.

“I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch.”

Then everything went dark.

-HE’S COMING AROUND – GIVE HIM SOME AIR-

Dybbuk found himself restrained like the others on a steel table; jar-headed freaks connecting his power pack and probes to wires and hoses that in turn were connected to Wolf-Bolverkr’s own machine.

-ONCE MY CHILDREN HAVE COMPLETED THEIR WORK – I WILL KNOW ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT YOU – THEN THE BOYLE HEIGHTS GHETTO WILL BE LIQUIDATED-

“You killed my friends.”

-WE WILL KILL YOU ALL-

“I. Will. Kill. YOU, Nazi bastard.”

-THAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN US – YOUR PEOPLE LIVE IN A FANTASY WORLD – WHILE WE IN THE THIRD REICH LIVE IN THE REAL ONE – YOU – SHOW HIM-

A jar-head’s cold clammy hands gripped Dybbuk’s head, and forced it to turn. What he saw made Dybbuk’s blood turn to ice.

Samson’s dead white eyes stared at him through the glass jar, his long hair sheared to the scalp. His face shrunken so as to look like a skull.

-YOU TWO-

Gideon, then David, what was left of them, stepped forward – lost to this Nazi lunatic. Dybbuk screamed in rage and despair.

-NOW WE WILL BEGIN-

Dybbuk

When he returned to consciousness, Dybbuk found himself alone in a cell barely big enough to raise one’s arms. Unrestrained, he checked himself over; everything was where it was supposed to be.

One bare bulb provided scant illumination, but Dybbuk found a steel door just five steps from the chair he sat on. The door had no knob, and was flush with the steel wall in which it was set. A recessed drain in the floor behind the chair was what passed for a toilet.

He ran his metal-sheathed fingers over the door, walls, and floor. The surface was impeccable, perfect. A thrumming rippled over it constantly; he didn’t know what kind of machine powered this installation, but its output was off the dial.

Just have to find a way to tap into it.

Soon as I get out of here, Dybbuk thought. I’m going to burn this hellhole to the ground.

“Use the gift we’ve given you, Dybbuk. Focus and you will know the root of ALL THINGS.”

These last words spoken by Mekubbal Asher, the Kabbalah Mystic before the Breed Street Shul Boys were sent on this mission, filled Dybbuk with comfort.

Now he knew what to do.

And how to do it.

The bulb went out, plunging his cell into darkness.

Hurry

-IT IS TIME-

Dybbuk’s energy/life-draining probes flashed from his back, piercing the floor, walls, and ceiling like blades in the gut.

-AND YOURS IS UP – BREED STREET SHUL BOY-

Doctor Amon Wolf-Bolverkr watched the video feed with satisfaction, and if he was honest grudging admiration, if not respect. This Dybbuk was quite the persistent annoyance.

If a predictable one.

He started the machinery. The dials arrayed on the front of his iron box lit up, the needles moving rapidly into the red.

-SOON, DYBBUK YOU WILL BE ONE OF US – JUST LIKE YOUR FRIENDS-

Dybbuk’s cell pulsed and began to glow like a living thing. He didn’t bother to respond to Wolf-Bolverkr’s taunts. He simply couldn’t spare the energy.

Deep within the black depths of the sockets behind the lenses, Dybbuk made contact with Behemoth and Lilith – they seemed still themselves. Attempts at contact with Gideon, David, and Samson so far were reflected back.

Let’s see if I can shut off some lights, Dybbuk thought. When some outside floods went dark Dybbuk smiled, then turned them back on. Don’t want to attract attention, just yet.

It was a start.

The Breed Street Shul Boy did as Wolf-Bolverkr expected; sticking his probes where they didn’t belong. Soon you will pay, the fat head in the jar thought to itself.

All the dials were vibrating in the red.

Wolf-Bolverkr felt the power, the God-like power, grow.

His version of sex.

Building to climax.

It will be soooo good, he thought; and made the turbines rev faster.

Dybbuk started to feel the head-in-a-jar’s machine’s attempts to suck his power dry. All right, freak, he thought. I’ll play your game, and allowed a little to be siphoned off.

“Dybbuk? Is it really you? How did you get in my head?”

“Yes Lilith, it’s me, be ready.”

“Honey, I was born ready.”

“I heard all that,” Behemoth said. “After this is over, you two should really think about settling down.”

“I think it’d be best to keep our relationship on a strictly professional level.” Dybbuk replied. “Now shut up, and let me work. We’re a long way from home free.”

“Ain’t he a charmer.”

“Hurry up.” Behemoth ordered.

Behemoth

You better be hurrying, Dybbuk, I thought. I don’t like the way Private Half-Head is eyeing me. Probably taking measurements for a glass jar all my own. “Lots of luck finding one that’ll fit,” I said. “That’s why I shop at the Big and Tall.”

Private Half-Head ignored me, but I knew he could hear me.

Playing dumb’s second nature with these guys.

“Hey, Behemoth, you really think Dybbuk and I have a shot?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“We’re not too young?”

Didn’t realize I hit on something. “Probably wouldn’t hurt to see how things go the next three years.” I replied. “You know, take it slow til you’re both sure.”

Lilith nodded, laying on the next metal table over. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Right now, focus — and be ready.”

“Oh honey…”

“I know, you were born ready.”

“Damn right!”

Suddenly Private’s Half-Head and Brain-In-A-Jar left with the appearance of three more jarhead freaks entering the lab.

“What’s this, the changing of the guard?” Lilith quipped, then screamed her throat raw when Gideon, David, and Samson came into view, drills and saws whirring to life bolted where their hands used to be. Dead faces obscured by mist, heads in jars.

Wolf-Bolverkr’s Bunker

-ALL UNITS INVESTIGATE POWER DROP-OFFS – REPORT TO ME IMMEDIATELY-

In the meantime, Wolf-Bolverkr increased power to the turbines, revving them well beyond capacity. Yet, across every system energy and power output was dropping at a precipitous rate. It had to be caused by the Breed Street Shul Boy.

-BREAK YOU FREAK – BREAK!!!!-

Dybbuk looked into the camera and smiled. “You first.”

Götterdämmerung, 1939

Samson stepped toward me, the bit of his drill sending up sparks as it touched the surface of my power pack, while Gideon’s flashing spinning saw came ever closer to my leg, when a surge of energy coursed through me.

Good job, Dybbuk. 

With little effort I broke free, kicked Gideon across the room, and punched Samson, cracking his glass jar.

Lilith snarled, activated her rockets, and flew off the metal table while the jet blast lifted David off his feet to slam against the wall. Our She-Demon landed like a cat from Sheol and tore the lab apart until she found her guns.

Samson, Gideon, and David lay still like broken dolls.

I ripped the laboratory door from its hinges, and Lilith and I found ourselves in a long steel tunnel with no signs or any indication where we were.

Or how to get out.

“Any ideas, egghead?”

“Yeah,” I replied, bending nearly in half to keep from striking my head on the ceiling. “Pick a direction, kill anything that gets in our way; find Dybbuk, kill Wolf-Bolverkr, and burn this place down.”

“I knew you weren’t just another pretty face!” Lilith said, holding up her cocked and ready pearl-handled M1911’s.

Suddenly the dank, dripping tunnel came alive with revolving red lights and the banshee shriek of a klaxon. 

“Didn’t take long for them to know we’d escaped.” Lilith quipped, as she shot the alarm, obliterating it.

I nodded. “Move out.”

A metallic clicking sound echoed down the tunnel toward us.

“Hear that?” Lilith asked.

I nodded. It was slow and steady, and getting louder.

The end of the tunnel filled with two hulking shadowed figures. Eyes shining like red beacons. 

“Are they?”

“They’re growling at us.” I replied.

Lilith growled back. As she took aim, something growled behind us. “Shit!” 

I turned slowly around, without making any sudden movements, bent over as I was. The spinning red alarm lights flashed off metal, fur, and a muzzle-full of silver knife-like fangs. “Lilith, take out those two in front of us — I’ll take out Mr. Alpha. Don’t stop shooting til they’re dead.” I whispered, never taking my eyes off the giant WarWolf creature — it smiled at me.

Like it understood what I said.

“You got it, boss.”

Lilith’s dual M1911’s exploded as the WarWolves charged toward her, their legs powered by well-oiled diesel pistons. The high caliber rounds obliterated the eyes of one while punching into the armor-plated massive chest of the other.

“Boss, they’re still coming.”

At the sound of her voice Mr. Alpha roared and leapt, covering what had to be ten yards in seconds. He collided into me, steel fangs snapping inches from my face, steel claws scrabbling against my torso, sparks flying through the air.

If I’d been flesh and blood, I would’ve been ripped to bloody chunks.

As it was, it took all my strength gripping its massive neck to slowly push the thing’s snout and flashing fangs away from my face.

It twisted out of my grasp like a coiled spring, choking diesel exhaust pumping from vents arrayed along its sides.

I heard Lilith yell “look out!,” then something slammed into my head.

I fell into a darkness that flashed with lightning.

Something gouged into the back of my neck. Lightning flashed, but it wasn’t lightning. It was Lilith blazing away. The thunder from her cannons was ear splitting.

“Die, motherfucker! Die!!!” Our She-Demon screamed. Her guns clicked on empty chambers. “Shit! Hold on, boss!”

I felt flame and heat on my ass, as Lilith activated her rockets, a sudden stomach-shrinking acceleration, then we stopped.

“Take a minute, Behemoth, I got unfinished business with Toto back there.” Lilith said as her empty guns clanged on the metal floor. Her She-Demon war cry reverberated down the tunnel. 

I managed to sit myself up in time to see.

Lilith landed on top of Wolf-Bolverkr’s iron-plated WarWolf, the flames from her rockets searing the thing’s fur. It howled in agony. Her claws flashed in the light, plunging to rake and tear chunks of WarWolf flesh, fur, and iron.

As the WarWolf whimpered and impotently snapped at her, Lilith sank her silver fangs into the top of its head and tore the top of its skull away in a spray of blood, brain matter and oil.

She spit it out to land wetly on the floor, and favored me with a blood and gore-stained smile. “Ready to go, Boss?” She said, sauntering up to me.

I started to rise. “Let’s kick some Nazi a…”

Thunder boomed, Lilith’s eyes widened as a monstrous giant roared down the tunnel, lights shattering in its wake, its massive spiked shoulders ripped through the metal walls like butter. It struck Behemoth, squashing him like a bug, blowing Lilith back in a shower of his blood, steel-fused bones, and viscera.

As she lost consciousness. she heard…

-FAFNIR – BRING THE SHE DEMON TO ME-

Wolf-Bolverkr’s Bunker

As she came to, Lilith felt a crushing weight on her chest, and she started clawing at it. She weakened, and started to black out, serenaded by that flat mechanical voice again…

-FAFNIR – GIVE OUR GUEST SOME AIR-

Lilith gasped and retched. Breathing didn’t come easy, and when it did, she wished she was dead.

She was in a cylindrical metal room dominated by a frog-faced head in a glass jar that was hooked up to a massive machine, and a giant who held Behemoth’s head on a spike. 

The giant that killed him.

-WELCOME BACK, MY DEAR-

“You’re going to pay,” Lilith hissed at the giant, “for killing my friends.”

The giant had to be ten-feet tall, freakishly massive body encased in Krupp steel plates that reached to his neck; his head was completely bald, the back of it covered by steel molded to fit, with corrugated hoses connected from it to a plate lit with dials and gauges on his back.

It’s arms and legs were twice the size of Behemoth; clear tubes flowing with oil ran from his wrists to his shoulders, terminating in the giant’s neck.

Lilith smiled at him. “Gonna take you down and make Humpty Dumpty out of you.”

The giant’s eyes looked vacantly at her.

“You pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down, big man?”

-FAFNIR IS QUITE MUTE-

Lilith peered up at the giant freak’s face. “What ya say?”

-YOU KNOW VERY WELL IT IS I WHO’S SPEAKING, GIRL – ADDRESS YOUR COMMENTS TO ME-

“Hey, big man, you’re very good! But if I were you, I’d get myself another dummy — the fat head in a jar would just scare the kiddies.” Lilith quipped, smirking. “Oh, and I’d suggest changing your name — Fafnir? What kind of name is that?!”

The giant looked completely oblivious, pointed a finger at himself, then looked to Wolf-Bolverkr.

-FAFNIR, YOU IGNORANT WENCH, IS THE LEGENDARY GIANT IN WAGNER’S MAGNUM OPUS DIE NIBELUNGEN – A TITAN OF OUR GLORIOUS FATHERLAND-

“Oh, that Fafnir!” Lilith said wryly. “I was thinking of someone else. My mistake!” Dybbuk, I hope you’ve got a plan, she thought.

One by one, the video screens filled with static, then went dark. Then the dials and gauges on Wolf-Bolverkr’s big black machine inched into the red; the lights on the control panel started blinking faster and faster.

-WHAT IS GOING ON?!- Wolf-Bolverkr panic-stricken shouted, eyes bugging out, then narrowed suddenly. -KILL DYBBUK – KILL DYBBUK NOW-

The Butcher of California started to turn red, then green as the glass jar where his head resided started filling up with yellow and purple smoke. Amon Wolf-Bolverkr opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His eyes exploded, splashing the thick lenses of his spectacles crimson, blood poured from his ears.

Fafnir stood and lifted his foot to grind Lilith into the metal floor when he froze, his eyes rolling into his head.

A door Lilith didn’t know was there opened.

“We better get out of here,” Dybbuk said, as explosions could be heard, and the floor and walls shook. His eyes found Behemoth’s head and he fell to his knees.

“We’re not going to leave him here,” Lilith said, activating her rockets, deftly removed their friend and leader’s head, as the video screens exploded and crashed to the floor. 

The machine that kept Wolf-Bolverkr alive started making shrieking sounds, as the turbines within ground themselves into shavings. The sides of it bulged outward as internal explosions erupted. Sparks shot out from the bent steel, then a massive belch of thick black smoke-filled Wolf-Bolverkr’s glass jar, then a sudden gout of flames shattered it obliterating the Butcher of California forever from the face of the Earth.

Then it exploded.

Lilith felt warmth on her face, a glow like that from a furnace penetrating her closed eyes. Slowly she opened them.

“About time you woke up,” Dybbuk said. “I was afraid you were going to miss the show.”

The SS, SD, Gestapo, and Abwehr HQ no more than a smoldering ruin; tongues of fire licking the night sky.

“How, how did we get out?” The She-Demon of the Breed Street Shul Boys asked.

“Had a little help.” Dybbuk said and Fafnir rose behind him.

But, HOW?”

“I found the root of all things.” 

J.G. Grimmer’s been imagining things long before putting pen to paper. Since then there’s no stopping him.
His fiction has previously appeared in SNAFU: Last Stand, SNAFU: Holy War, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Aphelion, and HyphenPunk.