A Promise for the Future
“A heavy machine-gun nest… ha.”
Hans pocketed the radio, from which only thin screams still leaked, as his officers gathered in front of him. Below the railing, the work of hauling corpses into the incinerator was in full swing.
“It seems pursuing the escapees will prove difficult, sir.”
“Major, then what about treating the wounded…?”
“Damon of Second Squad has assisted as an orderly on several occasions. Assign him as provisional physician for the time being, and search the surviving inmates for anyone with medical experience—doctors, veterinarians, nurses, and so on. Status of the armory?”
“The fire is out, but it burned completely. Nothing salvageable.”
“Most of the ammunition and explosives are gone. We still have enough to rearm the SS roughly three times over, but…”
“The technicians we’ve secured are already dissecting the structure and redesigning the rounds. They say the design is simple enough to copy easily, and they’ll work in any shotgun chambered for twelve-gauge.”
“Even so, Major, aggressive search operations and expansion on the old scale have become impossible.”
“There is no need to expand.”
Hans tore a page clean out of his notebook, crumpled it into the waste bin, and began rolling his pen across a fresh sheet.
“Every one of you standing here placed your faith in me because I promised a better life and a better future, did you not?”
“Yes, Major.”
“We are here to wrest power from those pigs steeped in narcotics and alcohol, lost in empty dreams, and to build a proper empire. Is that not so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why should we follow the methods they used?”
No one answered. They simply stood at attention, spines locked straight, chins lifted before their new commander. The sharp clatter of jackboots drew the eyes of those hauling corpses up to the railing. Even the SS trooper bandaging a prisoner’s minor wound turned his head.
Confirming that every gaze had gathered on him, Hans raised his voice.
“Inferior blood is everywhere, gentlemen. Beasts that wear the mask of the superior and exist only to feed their own hunger spread quietly, like a cancer. The situation we face now is the direct result of incompetent men failing to do their jobs. Is it not?”
The pen moved faster. The pressure of his hand on the barrel grew heavier.
“We must understand just how wretched we became under those who wasted time filling their own sense of superiority and greed instead of doing what needed to be done. Am I right?”
“Yes, Major!”
The more zealous of the SS stopped their work and answered at full volume, still at attention. Not to be outdone, those in the green uniforms of the Wehrmacht rose from their places as well.
“From this moment on, we will cut the useless things out of the empire. We will strip away every cumbersome, inefficient part and reorganize so that we can advance toward a single goal.”
A simple sketch was held out for the surrounding soldiers and officers to see: a rough map of the bunker that housed the Zeroth Reich. Crude symbols marked the positions of the Wehrmacht, the SS, the technicians, the wounded, and the pursuit teams.
“Rome endured its vast territories by recognizing individual differences and elevating the capable. But when it tried to keep that bulk without the ability to sustain it, it got sick.”
A red X was drawn over the section where the critically wounded prisoners had been placed.
“And France? Did they not grow greedy? Seized by arrogance, they made countless enemies, and drunk on superiority they wanted more than they could hold.”
Another X marked the positions where the hopeless pursuit teams had been isolated.
“What of America, with its claim of Pax Americana? Determined to spread its influence across the globe, it poured money and precious lives overseas even as its own taxpayers screamed—while its own soil was being polluted by hordes of immigrants who still longed for their ‘homelands’ and never understood what it meant to be American.”
The communications officer’s name—Jakob Weber—was written down and then struck through with a red line.
Jakob opened his mouth in panic, but soldiers seized him at once and kicked the backs of his knees. The face he had held so high was driven straight toward the floor.
“And look how our own incompetent Sacred Halls brought the Zeroth Reich to this end. No proper distribution of supplies, no necessary maintenance, no treatment the soldiers who sustained the empire deserved—everything pickled in morphine and alcohol. Just like Adolf Hitler at the end of the war!”
He set the pen down and laced his fingers.
“Do we pursue drug addicts, gentlemen?”
“No, Major.”
“Do we revere fallen, crashed failures, gentlemen?”
“No, Major!”
“What every man here remembers is the golden age of the empire, is it not? That brilliant era everyone feared, respected, and sought to emulate?”
“Yes, Major!”
“We will not follow the path of the empires that came before us, gentlemen. We will forge our own road. We will neither follow those who failed nor inherit their dreams.”
The pen was flung aside. Hans planted both hands on the railing.
Soldiers who had wagered on the future instead of wealth and pleasure. Men who had gritted their teeth through hardship and endured injustice. Before them, Hans Schulz shouted with everything he had.
“But we will succeed. We will select those of value who fulfill their share with excellence from those who do not, and we will build a great empire once more!”
“Yes, Major!”
“We will begin by discarding the useless completely. And that beginning will start not with the enemies of the soldiers alone, but with the enemies of those who propped up our foundation and labored hard for our comfort.”
Hans drew his sidearm. He hauled the kneeling Jakob upright and shoved him against the railing.
“H-however, Major, I clearly secured the communications—”
“Why do you think the only doctor fled with a technician she had never met before, Jakob?”
When the muzzle touched the back of his head, Jakob turned to his own men. Not one of them looked at him with pity. The women who had traded maid uniforms for work clothes glared at him with pure hatred.
“This isn’t fai—”
The shot rang out. The body hit the floor.
The prisoners who had been watching rose, one by one, and began to spit on what had been Jakob.
“You son of a bitch—this is for my little sister…!”
“You groped my chest and then said they were too small, didn’t you?”
Still, no one intervened. Even when a tool smashed the corpse’s skull, the soldiers did not so much as blink. Only the officers swallowed hard, tense. And then, at last, every eye turned to Hans.
Prisoners. Men who had belonged to the Wehrmacht. Men who had belonged to the SS.
We walked and walked along the corridor until we reached a new settlement. It was a good place—generators, a shower that would work with only a little fixing, even toilets. We took it for ourselves. A careful sweep of the surroundings turned up none of the creature nests we had found before, so it seemed safe enough.
“…You said you needed this, right?”
While I was in the middle of building barricades, Ms. Dietrich came over carrying a toolbox.
“Thank you. You can go rest now.”
“No, no. I feel like I should help with something.”
“Even though you’ve been exhausted all day?”
“Well—that’s true for everyone, isn’t it?”
Sky-blue eyes watched me from the side as I crouched, driving nails into wooden blocks.
“…May I ask a question?”
“Sure.”
“The old man… um, Curtis Omen. Mr. Omen, was it?”
“That’s right.”
“The soldier who fought in that war…”
“It’s a military family. Curtis’s son James was a soldier too, and Sara was preparing to enlist.”
Is she uncomfortable with World War II because she’s German?
“They’re all good people. If they weren’t going to welcome you, they would have said so when we first met.”
“…No, it isn’t that part, exactly.”
“Then what?”
“Brutal, I suppose you could say.”
Ms. Dietrich let out a long breath and leaned back against the wall.
“For a while I couldn’t even properly hear what any of you were saying. It felt like cannons going boom, boom. Bombs going off. You know?”
“Yeah.”
“…As someone who saves both animals and people, honestly… I should say it’s hard to accept that those kinds of things happen. I mean—I know it sounds spoiled. It’s just—”
“No, I understand.”
There were a lot of things to keep in mind when managing a settlement. Personal convictions were one of them.
“Someone who has spent a lifetime holding a scalpel to save lives watching people die in front of them—how could that ever be an easy sight?”
“…Still, the people who died were Nazis. So… don’t you think they deserved it…?”
“You can’t just decide that about everyone.”
In twenty-seven years of living—and while playing this game—that was the thought I kept coming back to.
“Some people did it to eat. Some for their families. Some for love. Even the Nazis, from what I know, rose out of the hard lives people faced after the First World War, didn’t they?”
“Probably. Of course, that part is… awkward, so I never really studied it properly. The fact that my grandfather was a soldier for the Axis—it’s like that, you know? He was a good person to me, but…”
“To someone else, he was a devil.”
I sat down beside Ms. Dietrich as she lowered her head and leaned my own against the wall.
“It’s the apocalypse. No rules, no laws. In a situation like that, people can’t always be good.”
“…I know. I understand it in my head, but my chest still keeps getting tight.”
“You’d better get used to it.”
A voice came suddenly out of the dark. I looked up to find Sara trudging toward us with a water bottle in hand. Without ceremony she planted herself between Ms. Dietrich and me.
“Here. Wet your throat a little. You too, Ms. Dietrich.”
I took the bottle she handed out and drank. Sara wiped the sweat from my forehead.
“You said you were a doctor?”
“A veterinarian. I served as a physician in the Zeroth Reich, though.”
“Heh, a vet. Not sure there are dogs down here.”
“There will be. People brought pets with them when they came underground.”
That was true. If you picked the Tamer job, you could probably designate a dog or cat as a partner.
“So. Are you uncomfortable with my grandfather or me? I thought I heard you say you didn’t like people getting killed.”
How much of the conversation had she overheard? Sara was already glaring at Ms. Dietrich as if her mood had soured badly. We couldn’t start like this already.
“Ah—no. I wasn’t trying to say it was wrong. You saved my life too, and honestly… everyone only made it out safely because those people died—”
“Let me be clear.”
Sara turned, her body screening the comparatively slight Ms. Dietrich from view. Whatever expression she wore, Ms. Dietrich flinched and shrank back.
“If you’re thinking of starting in on morality or whatever now, you’d better drop it. My family has dealt with plenty of people like that. My dad especially hates them. Very, very much. Understood?”
“…Yes.”
“You go to war for your country and come home to ‘How did it feel to kill people?’ and ‘Don’t you feel guilty?’ I’m sick of it.”
Before her voice could get any rougher, I set a hand on her back. We had gone to too much trouble bringing a doctor here to lose her over a conflict.
“Sara. That isn’t what Ms. Dietrich meant.”
“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but that’s how it sounded to me.”
“Ms. Dietrich was a doctor for the Zeroth Reich. Among the people who died, there may well have been some she nursed with real care. That’s what’s weighing on her, isn’t it?”
Ms. Dietrich looked at me, startled. As if asking how I could know when she had never said so, she slowly nodded.
I’ve talked enemy doctors around hundreds of times over two thousand hours of play, so…
“So it wasn’t her saying that what Curtis or Sara did was wrong.”
“….”
Now it was Sara’s expression that looked awkward. This was the problem with bringing people in. Fail to take the old group’s side and their favorability dropped. But after going to the trouble of recruiting a precious doctor, I couldn’t refuse to take the doctor’s side either.
“Fine. If that’s how it is. I’ll let it go for Hyunwoo’s sake.”
“No—please don’t. I’ll… go thank each of you properly later—”
“Don’t make it that cringey.”
Sara gave the barricade a couple of light knocks, then looked at me.
“So. What now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Plans going forward, that kind of thing. You’ve already brought a doctor. Are you thinking of dragging in a whole pile of people after this?”
“No.”
I could say that firmly. Too many people too early made management a nightmare. The only reason I was treating Ms. Dietrich so carefully was one thing: I could not afford to lose the rest of us to disease. Expansion could wait until she was fully absorbed into the group, at the earliest.
Which meant—
“Our safety comes first for now. We still don’t know when the pursuit teams might come after us again. Starting tomorrow we’ll need a water supply if we want to wash and drink.”
“Nothing but work in that head of yours. Work, work, work…”
“It’s the only thing I can do. Make sure everyone can live a little more comfortably.”
“There are a few other things you could do besides that.”
“…A few things?”
I thought it over carefully, meeting the eyes fixed on me—eyes a different color from Ms. Dietrich’s.
“Massage?”
“Mas— hah.”
“Ow!?”
She clipped me across the head.
Why?
“You dense idiot.”
After a heavy sigh, Sara vanished down the corridor without another word.
What did I do wrong?
“…Pfft.”
Watching me flounder, Ms. Dietrich suddenly burst out laughing.
What.
What is it, seriously.