Operation Vampire

Written by military historian and former editor of Mania comics/sf/fantasy magazine Steven G. Johnson.

Weird World War II

Sgt. Mick Murphy, a death-walker elf, and his recon company must save Allied troops from mass slaughter by Austrian vampires flooding out of a secret compound located in the Alps. Mick, his dwarf buddy Dave, and war-weary soldiers head up into the mountains to seek and destroy it.

They come across a mountain town where every single man, woman and child has been bitten and turned into a vampire. Skirting the area, the youngest GI steps on a mine. He will certainly die any second until Mick grabs him and hangs on, hauling him back up out of death. Mick can do that because his old man was an elf, able to walk between the worlds of life and death.

The company makes contact with primitive dwarves who believe, annoyingly, in tribal magic. They gift Mick with a crystal bomb which is supposed to explode when sunlight touches it. Moving on, they finally locate the vampire compound, a school for bloodsuckers, built around an old tower where the Old Ones sleep.

Mick sets up the crystal bomb to activate at dawn and hopefully blow the Old Ones up—when a coffin crashes open and a vampire springs out, shrieking like a gut-shot dog with a faceful of fangs. He’s absolutely unkillable; silver bullets—even wooden stakes—don’t bring him down. He’s un-dead and can’t be made dead again, so Mick uses his elf ability to haul the old vamp up from death where he dies from the trauma of his wounds.

The squad makes a quick exit just before dawn but are spotted and pinned down by machine guns. The crystal bomb goes off, blowing the castle apart. Will Mick and company make it out alive?