The Veil War

“Fuck!” Recoil drove the weapon hard up and to the left. Those tiny little arms myst be stronger than they look; that little popgun has a wicked kick to it, I thought. I dropped my arm, let the machine pistol swing. OK, my awesome attack from behind Rambo tactics worked awesomely. With Idaho and Cherry down, we’re minus one effective.

“Arechiga, get eyes on the trail. Richardson, start looking down in the valley, the fuckers must have come from somewhere. In the movies, there’s always a shiny glowing gate or some shit that the monsters come through. Find it. The rest of you, pretend like you’re in the Army.”

I walked over to the dead dinosaur Nazis. Ramirez was going at his task with a will, sorting through the dead fascist lizards’ belongings with the cool unconcern of a veteran butcher. Or, the blank incomprehension of a low-grade moron. One of the two.

Buckshot was being more diffident. I came up behind him, “Dead lizards don’t bite,” I whispered. Half of Buckshot jumped three feet in the air, startled beyond all measure. The other half, aware that his beloved sergeant was in the AO, didn’t. The result was amusing beyond all measure.

God, I love my job.

Ramirez had made a pile of loot. Aside from the military gear – ammo pouches and random kit there were some wallets and personal items. I picked up a wallet and opened it. The main pocket had some money; I pulled it out and saw ones, fives, a ten. They all said “Reichsmark” and had pictures, clumsily printed in reddish-orange and kind of blurry. The fivers had Hitler. Wasn’t sure, but the ones maybe had fat Goering. There was a dinosaur with a fritz helmet on the ten.

The wallet had some ID cards, random shit. And a black and white photo of what I presumed to be a girl dinosaur with a scarf in front of a big building with a volcano in the background, with palm trees. Good Christ, Helga Velociraptor on the homefront. This isn’t helping, I realized. I stuffed the wallet in my pocket.

“Ramirez, where’s the Leutnant’s shit?”

Ramirez pointed to another pile. On top was a leather satchel. I opened that, saw maps and dispatches. The dispatches looked like they were typed with a drunk typewriter, the lines of text wiggled up and down across the page. I stuffed them back in and slung the satchel over my shoulder. Someone would want to see that.

***

“Subcommandante?” Richardson asked.

“What!”

“I found a big shiny thing,” the private said.

“All is proceeding as I have foreseen.” My men looked at me with new-found awe. I walked over and grabbed the scope from Richardson. He pointed down valley, north and maybe 200 m below our level.

And, yes, there it was. A big shiny, sparkly round thing shitting out dinosaurs and Wehrmacht hardware like an assistent crack addict cranking out babies hoping for the welfare moneyz.

“Peters! You play with models and faggoty shit. Tell me what this is.”

Peters trained his eyes through the scope. “Looks like Panzer IVs lining up below the shiny thingy. Aah, further down there’s some Panzerkampfwagen VIB’s… Sweet, Tiger II’s! Those were the best tanks of the war! There’s some FlaK auf Fahrgestell Panzerkampfwagens, and some Sonderkraftfahrzeug 250’s… Holy shit, they’ve got a Landkreuzer P.1000! They never built any of those…

I smacked him in the head. “Translate, nerd!”

“Sorry, sergeant. They’ve got a few dozen tanks, mostly Panzer IVs, good tanks; and a sprinkling of Tiger IIs, arguably the best tank of the war. They’ve got some tracked anti-air, some half tracks for infantry, and some VW jeeps. Not a whole lot yet, but…”

I nodded and waved him silent. Not much now, but the longer the gate is open, the more comes through. Pretty standard, really.

“Gather round!” I ordered. My squad shuffled forward. “The dinosaur Nazi menace is coming through a gate, which Richardson here has helpfully located.”

“I have a plan.”

***

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