Zombies: A Hunter's Guide Read online

  The story of the Nazi undead program begins in 1917 when a wounded German World War I veteran named Walter Nauhaus founded the Society of Thule.7 Based in Munich, the secret order devoted itself to the pursuit of necromantic knowledge. With the end of the Great War, the society expanded, adding new members from across Germany, including Adolf Hitler. Through subtle manipulations, Hitler and his supporters shifted the attention of most of the group away from occult rituals toward the idea of Aryan supremacy and melded the society with the German Workers’ Party.

  The Nazi expedition to Tibet.

  However, with the dissolution of the Society of Thule, Hitler founded a new group called “The Brotherhood of Death,” which included all of the foremost occultists from the old society. As Hitler rose to power in Germany, the brotherhood rose with him. Word leaked across the globe that necromancers everywhere would be safe and welcomed by the Nazis. By the mid-1930s, it is estimated that between thirty and forty practicing necromancers had joined the Nazi ranks, and at least three times that number of acolytes were in training.

  Thankfully, European necromancy was still suffering from the governmental offensives since the American Civil War. Huge amounts of knowledge had been lost. While a few sightings of early Nazi zombie experiments occurred in the 1930s, they were few and far between. The senior members of the Brotherhood knew they would have to look beyond the borders of Europe to regain this knowledge, and they pressed Hitler to organize an expedition to the Himalayas. Hitler, now busy with other matters, passed the request along to Heinrich Himmler, who in turn found his man in the SS officer, Ernst Schäfer. The young and popular Schäfer had already participated in two expeditions into Tibet, and he wanted to lead his own. A student of anthropology, Schäfer had no interest in necromancy and originally refused to take any such wizards on his team. However, after the tragic death of his wife in a hunting accident, Schäfer had a change of heart and allowed several members of the Brotherhood to accompany the mission.

  The expedition proved a tremendous success, for Nazi propaganda, for European anthropology, and for the necromancers of The Brotherhood of Death. There are no records of exactly what knowledge the Brotherhood obtained, but the expedition marked a turning point in their efforts. From 1939 onward, the Nazi undead program slowly gained strength and confidence. There are at least two recorded incidents of Polish villages being attacked by zombified Polish soldiers. In 1940, the Nazis unleashed a unit of armed and uniformed zombies called the Todesritter (or “Death Knights”) during their invasion of Denmark.

  The Crusader forces attacking Antioch, where they discovered the Spear of Longinus.

  While the Todesritter proved effective shock units, even the dozens of necromancers employed by the Nazis could not make a material difference in a war that would eventually involve millions. Hitler demanded a weapon that could sweep his enemies aside, especially the Russians. The Brotherhood, using the knowledge acquired in Tibet, realized the only way to produce such an army would be to overcome the monotheistic burial limitation, and the only hope of that lay in finding some of the ancient artifacts of the great religions. Thus the Nazis launched Operation Eklipse.

  While Eklipse saw many successes and failures, three missions stood far above the rest in importance. The first was the search for the Ark of the Covenant. The Nazis did briefly obtain the Ark, however American agents managed to recapture it before it could do any damage.8 The second was the search for Zulfiqar, the legendary sword of Muhammad, which ended in disaster when an entire German division fell prey to an ancient curse. The last was the mission to capture the Spear of Destiny, better known to Western readers as the Spear of Longinus – the holy lance that pierced the side of Jesus Christ as he hung on the cross. In 1941 a group of Fallschirmjäger (German paratroopers) recovered the lance from its hiding place in Antioch, and removed it back to Germany. With this lance, the necromancers of the Brotherhood believed that they could raise up the millions upon millions of dead who had been buried with Christian rites.

  We will likely never know the full story of the grim battle waged by the forces of the SAC:ST to recapture the spear, nor the names of the men and women who died ensuring it could never be used. All we really know is that for the next three years the spear was moved all over Germany, but everywhere the Nazis took it, Allied agents were waiting to pounce. The toll of these suicide missions must have stretched the SAC:ST to the limit, but in the end, it was enough. Hounded at every turn, the Brotherhood never had a chance to make use of the spear or its potential power. In 1945, elements of Patton’s armored forces recovered the spear, which was shipped back to the United States. Its current whereabouts are unknown.

  Without the Spear of Longinus, the necromancers never played a decisive role in World War II. That said, they still exacted a terrible price on the Allies. On the Eastern Front it is estimated that the Nazis created nearly a million zombies. Most of these were flung at the Russians during the German retreat to Berlin. At first, the Todesritter proved extremely effective against the conscripted and poorly motivated Russian troops. However, even for the dead, the laws of warfare still applied. The Nazi zombie hordes could never achieve complete victory without armored support, armor the Nazis just didn’t possess by that phase of the war. Despite the damage they inflicted, most of the Todesritter ended up ground beneath the treads of T-34 tanks.

  Previous page: Nazi zombies

  The largest concentration of Nazi zombie forces was deployed during the Kursk offensive in 1943. While primarily remembered as a tank battle, the Germans began their attack by unleashing several divisions of Todesritter against the Russian defenses. While these zombies created havoc in the first tier of the Russian fortifications, they soon became isolated and proved easy prey for a Russian armored counterattack. Casualties for these battles are nearly impossible to calculate as it is difficult to determine which soldiers were dead before the battle started.

  In the aftermath of the war, members of the Brotherhood were hunted down and executed. Since the exact composition of the group remains unknown, it is impossible to say whether or not they were all captured, but it seems clear that a majority were dead by 1947.

  The Nazi zombie program is the closest the earth has come to the dark days of prehistory, when necromantic zombies stalked the earth in vast armies. While the Russians did prove that modern technology has lessened this threat, it should not be ignored. The possibility that one of the ancient artifacts could be recovered and break the bonds of monotheism is a dark and sobering thought. Also, the idea of state-sponsored necromancy should continue to be seen as one of the most dangerous forms of weapons development on the planet.

  7 Thule was one of the great empires of prehistory. At its peak it contained all of Scandinavia and most of northern Germany. While all of the names of its rulers have been lost, there is an indication that it had only one great emperor, a liche who ruled for over 400 years.

  8 The US government has worked hard to keep all information pertaining to the Ark a secret. There is at least one famous account of the Nazi capture of the Ark that only got past the censors because it changed all of the names of those involved, and even moved the date to several years before the war.

  Revenants

  “It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally from their graves, and should wander about to the terror or destruction of the living … did not frequent examples, occurring in our own times, suffice to establish this fact.”

  William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum

  Revenants are one of the first classifications of zombie that can be positively identified in historical sources. The Vikings called them draug or draugr and often included them in their semimythical sagas. However, it is with the later English medieval writers William of Newburgh and Walter Map that the first documented revenant attacks can be found. For the undead that stalk these tales clearly show the individuality, the malignant intelligence, and most importantly, the overwhelming sens
e of purpose that define these zombies.

  Thankfully, due to their relative rarity and their individual nature, revenants do not offer the same level of threat to mankind posed by their more common cousins. That said, individually, revenants are far and away the most dangerous type of zombie, and their elimination should be left in the hands of trained professionals.

  CREATION

  Unlike every other form of zombie, revenants are not created through any identifiable external source. They are not magical, chemical, or viral, nor are they self-replicating. People who come into contact with a revenant have no chance of being infected or becoming undead (although “dead” is a likely outcome). Instead, the force that reanimates a revenant seems to come completely from within the deceased individual.9 This force, which is normally termed “drive” or “purpose,” is most often a single strong emotion or desire, the most common of which are anger and revenge.

  Revenants

  BEST METHOD OF PERMANENT ELIMINATION: INCINERATION

  While the creation process is not fully understood, the revenants’ drive makes them similar in nature to several forms of ethereal undead such as ghosts and wraiths, and like those spirits, revenants are often said to “haunt” an individual or location. This comparison should not be carried too far, however, because unlike ghosts, revenants are in no way bound to a specific local. Instead, their drive tends to lead them to specific places. In the case of revenge, revenants will hunt down their target, following wherever that target goes. Where the drive is a more general anger, revenants tend to stay in one location, their graveyard, their home, or the scene of a major life event.

  Less commonly, some revenants return from the dead in quest of a specific object. Termed “Rose Bud Syndrome” after the 1951 “Hearst Incident,” these zombies are no less deadly than ones motivated by anger or revenge, and will literally tear people in half if they come between them and their desire. There have been several cases where the object of a revenant’s drive has been a specific person, but do not be fooled into thinking that “love” ever plays a part in the makeup of any zombie. There has been no evidence of love or any other “good” emotion ever leading to the creation of a revenant.

  IDENTIFICATION AND THREAT

  In many ways, revenants do not fit the modern conception of the zombie, and for this reason they are often misidentified. At a distance, revenants are difficult to distinguish from the living. Although their movements are somewhat slow and mechanical, they are not outside human norms and are a far cry from shuffling gait of most other zombie varieties. Nor do most revenants display the hideous wounds that are common among horde zombies.

  RE-KILLING BILLY THE KID

  Undoubtedly the most famous revenant of modern times was William Bonney, better known by his alias, Billy the Kid. Born around the beginning of the American Civil War, Billy rose to prominence during the “Lincoln County War,” a bitter struggle between rival ranchers in New Mexico in 1877. During the fighting, Billy proved himself a remorseless killer, and in the years that followed, he traveled around the West working as a hired gun and gambler and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. Finally, in 1881, a sheriff named Pat Garrett shot Billy dead with a bullet to the brain, but the story doesn’t end there.

  A great mystery surrounds the last minutes of Billy the Kid’s life. For one, some claim that Pat Garrett and Billy were old friends, and, if true, it certainly helps explain what happened next. Billy was buried at Fort Sumner in New Mexico, but two weeks later a soldier from the Fort discovered a hole in Billy’s grave. Billy’s body was missing.

  For the next seventeen years, people all over the territory reported seeing Billy wandering the hills. On several occasions, posses were organized to search for the dead outlaw, and once an entire cavalry troop took up the chase. But the only thing any of them ever found were dead bodies, some shot, some torn apart. In 1908, Pat Garrett was murdered by a gunshot to the head. The authorities arrested a man named Jesse Brazel for the crime. During his trial, Brazel claimed to have witnessed Billy the Kid fire the fatal shot. The judge struck Brazel’s testimony from the record, but the jury took less than thirty minutes to find Brazel not guilty.

  On the same day that Brazel’s trial ended, the body of Billy the Kid was rediscovered in its grave. In 1940 the United States government erected a steel cage over Billy’s grave. On the governmental requisition form in the box labeled “reason for expenditure” are the words “just in case.” The most complete account of the second life of Billy the Kid can be found in the book Re-killing Billy the Kid by C. Upson.

  Photos of Billy the Kid’s grave as it looks today, still protected by its steel cage.

  All of that said, at close range few revenants will be mistaken for one of the living. Their skin is unnaturally pale, their blood having congealed and often pooled into their feet. This often leads to a tightening of the skin, most noticeable around the fingernails and mouth, giving the impression they have claws and fangs. The tongue and the inside of the mouth have usually turned black. However, it is the eyes that have received most attention in the various accounts of revenant attacks. Where most zombies have blank, lifeless eyes, the eyes of a revenant seem to burn with a malignant intelligence, almost appearing to glow in some accounts.

  These notable features have often caused revenants to be misidentified as vampires, a potentially deadly mistake. Revenants suffer from none of a vampire’s weaknesses. While revenants do tend to shun direct sunlight, it doesn’t cause them any ill effect. They can cross running water, eat garlic if they are so inclined, shrug off injuries from silver weapons, and even check themselves out in a mirror. Staking a revenant through the heart is likely to make it even angrier, but it won’t slow it down. There is some evidence that revenants have difficulty crossing thresholds into private or religious buildings, but there is no consistent agreement on this among scholars.

  The most important fact to note about revenants is that they are intelligent. They possess all of the knowledge they did in life, including specific skills and tool usage. While they may no longer possess the manual dexterity for origami, they can certainly pull the trigger of a gun, and, unlike necromantic zombies, revenants can both aim and reload. If a revenant commonly used weapons in its natural life, it will continue to do so in death and with only a slightly lessened ability.

  Death does, at least, seem to cost revenants some of their perception. Although significantly more alert than their brain-dead cousins, revenants generally suffer from poor vision, dulled hearing, and a complete lack of taste and smell. While this can, and certainly should be used to the advantage of those hunting a revenant, it can lead to overconfidence. Just because the zombie cannot see that well does not mean it can be fooled by simple tricks. Some revenants have shown a marked ability for sensing a trap and turning the tables on their hunters.

  Finally, revenants are able to speak. Due to dried throats and swollen tongues, they are often difficult to understand, however, with words coming out in a garbled rasp. While there is no point trying to reason with a revenant, it is often useful to try to understand what the zombie is saying, as it will likely give some indication of its motivation – information that can prove important in their destruction.

  PREVENTION AND ELIMINATION

  Revenants do not die easily. Whatever internal power brought them back to life will also keep them moving in the face of massive physical damage. There have been several cases of revenants being literally blown apart, and still the various parts struggled on.10 Like all undead, revenants do not feel pain, nor do they suffer trauma or shock. However, alone among zombie types, revenants do have a basic sense of self-preservation. They will “run away to fight another day” if they are badly outnumbered or suspect a trap, but only for as long as it takes them to regroup or regain the upper hand.

  Like necromantic zombies, revenants do not need brains, their own or anyone else’s. Many a novice zombie fighter has died after scoring a perfect zombie head shot on a
revenant. In fact, guns are nearly useless against a revenant, unless the shooter can manage to completely blow the head off the creature or saw through its neck with automatic fire.

  Decapitation remains a revenant’s only weak point, and even then it is not fatal. The removal or destruction of the head of a revenant causes a temporary paralysis in the creature. This will usually last for no more than a few minutes, after which time all of the pieces of the body will again reanimate. Depending on the revenant, some will continue to operate in multiple pieces, while others will attempt to gather their pieces back together. One account even has the revenant sewing his severed head back onto the stump of his neck.11

  There are only two ways to permanently stop a revenant. The first is appeasement. A revenant that has fulfilled its drive will eventually return to its grave and rest. Where the drive is in quest of a specific object, it is often best to just give the object to them. (After all, the irrational desire to possess it is what created the revenant in the first place.) Where a revenant is on a quest for blood, either for revenge or general anger, more drastic means must be used. To destroy a revenant, it must be totally obliterated. Certainly there are plenty of means to accomplish this – fire, acid, throwing them in volcanoes, and nuclear detonation all work, but rarely are these practical in the field. For that reason, experienced revenant hunters will either attempt to lure the target into some sort of holding cell or go for decapitation. Once decapitated, the creature can be bound in either chains or metal cable (rope is not strong enough), and then quickly transported to the nearest disposal facility, normally a crematorium.