Outside of Volgograd, Western Front, 1948

Word reached them after having traveled many miles, over the western front, and right through the German lines. The helicopter had taken a tremendous amount of flak and had crashed 50 or so kilometers from their position near the Volgograd after finally running out of fuel.  Only two of the soldiers managed to survive the entire journey, both injured, one missing a boot, and badly frostbitten. They stood tall none the less, charred and bloodied, and handed the documents to Junior Lieutenant Kazan, the platoon commander, who immediately relieved them and called for medics.

With the light from the Mao’s floodlight behind him, he read the dispatch from Senior Sergeant Pyotr Yegorov.

“Axis plans to flood the streets of Zverograd with the undead. Contact with Totenmeister. This must reach Polkovnik Vasiliev.”

Without skipping a beat, Kazan gave the orders to wake the men and saddle up. They’d be heading out, using the storm for cover. They’d follow the Volga to Zverograd and deliver the message personally. He, along with the rest of his command team, boarded the Mao and secured their gear. The other two teams of Red Guard were doing the same, some of them handing their PTRSs-47s to troops already up on the Mao’s back. They had enough time to get comfortable and throw the Mao into gear before the first sounds of a skirmish could be heard, even over the wind. A patrol came running through the rubble, a few of them firing blindly into the storm. They had made contact with the enemy, and in their retreat encountered what they described as an allied walker to the south, blocking the road that would lead them to Zverograd.

“Like the much maligned Odysseus,” mused Kazan, “Fucked, are we.”

The Mao surged forward into the blizzard and the rubble surrounding their camp, right up against the mine fields which boxed them in on their eastern border. With confident gestures and curt orders, Kazan’s men fanned out down the line and followed the Mao like ducks in a row, keeping eyes out for the mentioned patrols.  They were heading towards a dummy mine field they had placed near the southern road, an emergency exit they had set up when first digging in, when they spotted the aforementioned Allied walker. It had hidden itself in a building, the wily thing capable of leaping into the air like some giant armored toad. It almost certainly had support nearby, but they had made themselves scarce. The Mao’s radio crackled to life along with the command team’s own coms. One of the anti-tank teams had spotted infantry moving in the distance. Axis this time to the east on the other side of the ruins, accompanied by something matching the description of the Totenmeister, which meant the troops skulking about in the blinding snow were likely not of the living and breathing variety. This posed some real problems. The Axis already knew where they were going; anyone would have done the same, making a b-line for the closest stronghold. The allies, however, were likely here on reconnaissance. Denying them any information of the axis push could be incredibly useful as the Axis forces would catch them unawares and weaken their holdings in Zverograd, and they had unfortunately placed themselves directly in the path of the SSU retreat. The plan came together quickly, their options limited and their choices obvious; crush the Allied command team, scatter their recon force, and get the hell out of here.

“Tell them to take up positions until we clear the way.” Kazan told the radioman. “Lead the walking corpses into the mines and then retreat while covering one another.” The radioman nodded and immediately complied. Kazan motioned to one of his troopers who banged on the side of the Mao’s turret with his PTRS-47. The hatch opened and the tank commander poked his head out and recoiled from the frozen air. He frowned almost immediately and turned to Kazan.

“Yes, Junior Lieutenant.”

He pointed to the walker and the building behind where it hid. “Do you see those buildings?”

The tanker turned and nodded, taking a second glance over his shoulder to spot the allied walker. “Yes, I see them.”

“I want you to pull up there and open fire on that walker and see what responds. I want to flush its friends out of this storm. Once you kill it, listen to the radio for instructions,” Said Kazan, pulling back the bolt on his submachine gun. “And whatever you do, don’t stop. Keep moving forward.”

After a moment the tanker nodded. “Understood,” he said, putting the pieces together.

Kazan looked him in the eyes, searching them for a moment as if trying to ascertain whether his orders would be followed. When he was satisfied, he hefted the leather satchel containing the Axis dispatch and pushed it into the tank commander’s arms. “If that doesn’t get to the polkovnik, many more will die. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Junior Lieutenant.” He responded, nodding once and disappearing into the tank.

Kazan flinched when the hatch clanged shut. When the muffled groan of metal on metal ended with a final loud ‘clack’, he lept off the tank and ordered his men to follow. The Mao lurched forward again, spewing black smoke from its exhaust, its engines rumbling.  In one practiced maneuver, it strode forward, turned its turret, raised its guns and with a sound like the war drums of the gods it began to tear huge chunks of material off the face of the building, peppering the walker inside with fire. Almost immediately it replied firing a shell at the tank which bounced off the sloped armor of the Mao. Kazan and his team huddled behind the tank as the Red Guard squad accompanying them surged over the small hill they were coming upon and fired their PTRS-47s into the mine field blocking their way, their comrades unloading with their SMGs as well. The world was nothing but explosions for a few moments but when it ended, there was no time to take a breath.

“GO!” shouted Kazan, following the ant-tank team. “Get to the building. I want that walker dead.” His orders were followed without a second thought. The men reloaded their rocket launchers and picked their way through the now pocked field where once there had been mines in an attempt to get a bead on the walker. As they leveled their launchers they came under fire from an alleyway where a ranger team had appeared, their dual machineguns throwing streaks of tracers from seemingly out of nowhere, the white-out of the falling snow obscuring them from any form of reprisal. Two men fell to fire, one of them dragged backward by a teammate and back up onto the hill and into cover where a medic began tending to his wounds. Somewhere in the distance there was a chorus of explosions. Panzerfausts. The second Red Thunder team was no longer responding on the radio, either due to sudden departure from this world or because they were running in an attempt to stay a little longer. Either way, the door was closing and more time could not be spared.

Snatching the hand piece for the radio from his operator, Kazan shouted, “DRIVE FORWARD!” The tank did as commanded, providing a nice, mobile wall of cover. Its turret tracked the entire way, following the allied walker which obliged by leaping up to one of the upper floors in an effort to fire down on the Mao. Seizing the opportunity, the Mao opened fire on the temporarily airborne Pounder, shredding its legs from beneath it and ripping chunks out of its belly. When it finally landed, it couldn’t support itself and topped backward into the ruined building, vomiting smoke from a ruptured fuel line. It struck the third floor which held for a moment and then crumbled as well, sending up a great cloud of grey dust and snow.  Shouts came from the building adjacent to it as the Allied commander hollered into his own radio, giving away their position.

“Do you see them?” Kazan shouted into his own radio, but the turret on the Mao was already turning as the tank continued to advance, sprayed by machinegun fire. One of Kazan’s men leapt up on top of the Mao and grabbed the machine gun on its turret and the other men followed, grabbing onto the rungs bolted to the side of the behemoth. As soon as the tank was in range it rolled to a stop. There was silence for a brief moment, save for the sounds of the wind blowing and the tank idling. Kazan raised his hand and kept it there, watching the building across from them and waiting. Whether rising to the challenge or simply accepting their fate, the Allied commander and his gunners stood up, leveled their guns and opened fire on the Mao. Kazan wasted no time and dropped his hand. Three rockets each leapt into the air, their jets igniting with their characteristic ‘POOM’ before they screeched off on trails of smoke and fire. The dull explosions tore great chunks from the side of the building, and on cue, the guns of the Mao Zedong belched fire. “FORWARD!” ordered Kazan.  “KEEP FIRING!”

Moments later the Mao stopped shooting and rounded the corner between the buildings.  If anything was still alive beyond the huge multi-story hole in the side of the building, it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Somewhere behind them in the snow they heard the unmistakable crunching of snow under jackboots and the low groans of Axis untertoten. The Mao’s engine switched gears and began to climb over a mound of rubble in the road. The command team helped the rest of the troops who had made it on to the back of the tank, each man being grabbed by a sea of arms and hauled upward. The radioman made three transmissions to the missing team which had never made it back through the blizzard but nobody offered any optimism where their fate was concerned.

The Mao cleared the rubble and began its decent down the other side and it’s first steps toward Zverograd to deliver its cursed message.