The Cold Dead

In the winter of 1944, Siberia was a frozen hell, a place where the wind carried the kind of cold that could kill a man faster than a bullet. The war had stretched its claws into every corner of the globe, but nobody expected it to reach this far north, this far into the wasteland. The American 32nd Infantry Division, a battle-hardened outfit fresh from the Pacific, had been air-dropped into the taiga on a mission so classified even their CO, Colonel Amos Reed, didn’t know the full scope. All they knew was the order: secure a remote Soviet research outpost codenamed "Voron’s Nest" and destroy whatever they found.

Private Tommy Callahan, a wiry kid from Brooklyn with a mouth too big for his own good, trudged through knee-deep snow, his M1 Garand slung over his shoulder. “This is bullshit,” he muttered, breath fogging in the air. “Krauts are getting their asses kicked in Berlin. Why the hell we chasin’ ghosts in Siberia?”

“Shut it, Callahan,” growled Sergeant Malone, a grizzled vet who’d seen too many kids like Tommy die. “You’ll know when you need to know. Keep movin’.”

The outpost came into view at dusk—a squat, concrete bunker half-buried in snow, surrounded by barbed wire and abandoned Soviet trucks. The place looked dead, but something about it made the hairs on Tommy’s neck stand up. The wind carried a faint, guttural moan, like a wounded animal, but there was nothing alive out here. Or so they thought.

Inside, the bunker was a slaughterhouse. Blood smeared the walls, frozen in crimson streaks. Soviet scientists in white coats lay torn apart, their faces locked in screams. Malone’s flashlight swept over a steel door at the far end, marked with a swastika and runes Tommy didn’t recognize. “What the hell’s that?” he whispered.

“Trouble,” Malone said, gripping his Thompson tighter.

Before anyone could stop him, Private Diaz, the squad’s demo man, cracked the door open. A blast of frigid air hit them, carrying a stench like rotting meat and gunpowder. Beyond the door was a lab—vials of glowing green liquid, surgical tables, and a dozen metal coffins wired to generators. One of them was open. Empty.

“Fall back!” Malone barked, but it was too late.

The first one came from the shadows—a skeletal figure in a tattered SS uniform, its eyes glowing the same sickly green as the vials. Its jaw hung slack, teeth jagged, and it moved fast, too fast for something that looked dead. It lunged at Diaz, tearing into his throat before he could scream. Gunfire erupted, the squad unloading everything they had. Bullets ripped through the thing, but it kept coming, clawing and snarling until Malone put a .45 slug through its skull. It dropped, twitching, then went still.

“Jesus Christ,” Tommy gasped, hands shaking. “What was that?”

“Kraut science,” Malone spat. “They’ve been playin’ with shit they shouldn’t.”

More moans echoed from the lab. The other coffins were opening.

The squad barely made it out of the bunker, dragging Diaz’s body as the Nazi zombies—rotting SS officers reanimated by some unholy serum—poured after them. The things didn’t feel pain, didn’t tire, and didn’t die easy. Headshots worked, but you had to be precise, and in the dark, with snow blinding them, that was a tall order.

Colonel Reed rallied the men outside, setting up a perimeter around the bunker. “We hold here!” he roared. “Whatever those things are, they don’t leave this valley!”

The night became a nightmare of blood and fire. The zombies attacked in waves, some crawling through the snow, others sprinting like wolves. Tommy saw one in an officer’s coat, its face half-gone, barking orders in guttural German as it swung a rusted Luger. The Americans fought back with rifles, grenades, and flamethrowers, the latter turning the creatures into shrieking torches that kept staggering forward until they collapsed.

By dawn, the squad was down to half its strength. Tommy, Malone, and a handful of others held the line at a frozen riverbank, ammo running low. The zombies kept coming, their numbers seemingly endless. Reed, bleeding from a gash on his arm, made the call. “We blow the bunker. Diaz’s charges are still in there. We end this now.”

Getting back inside was suicide, but Malone volunteered, dragging Tommy with him. “You’re fast, kid. Keep up.” They fought their way through, Tommy’s heart pounding as he blasted a zombie’s head off point-blank. Malone set the charges while Tommy covered him, the moans growing louder as more of the things closed in.

They didn’t make it out.

The explosion shook the valley, a fireball swallowing the bunker and every zombie inside. The shockwave knocked Reed and the survivors flat, but when the smoke cleared, the moans were gone. The outpost was a crater, the threat buried under tons of ice and stone.

Reed stood, staring at the wreckage. “Malone. Callahan. Damn fine soldiers.”

The official report called it a gas leak, a tragic accident. The 32nd was shipped back to the Pacific, and Voron’s Nest was erased from the maps. But the survivors never forgot the cold, or the glowing eyes, or the truth about what the Nazis had unleashed in that frozen wasteland. And sometimes, in the dead of night, they swore they could still hear the moans on the wind.