Volk

by David Nickle

  He stepped forward. The cigarette, finished, dropped through the mist onto solid ground.

  “She is fuelled,” said Desrosiers, “and loaded. The weather reports—”

  “—are good. That’s good to hear.” Jason approached the tail of the aircraft, and ran his fingers along its duralumin fuselage as he approached the forward hatch. Jason had crewed a Latécoère once before, although not as pilot. The chance to fly this one, fresh from the factory floor, was more than half the reason he’d taken this job. Zimmermann went ahead of him and ducked under the engine, and Jason reached to open the hatch. Desrosiers put a hand on his arm to stop him for a moment.

  “M. Desrosiers?”

  He smiled, weakly. “Oh, let us drop the formalities this morning.”

  “Emile?”

  “Jason.” Emile Desrosiers turned Jason to face him, hands clasped on both shoulders. “You will always have my gratitude, for your heroism. You know that?”

  “All right,” said Jason, and then, in French: “Yes, Emile. I know that.”

  “Good. I will, I am afraid, not be joining you out this morning. There are four passengers you will be carrying, and so no room for me.”

  “Your plane seats eight,” said Jason. Desrosiers shrugged, and repeated:

  “No room.”

  That took Jason aback. The plan had been that Desrosiers would be along for the ride, to take care of all the formalities at Algiers. He had the language and, more importantly, the relationships. Jason didn’t have the sense that Zimmermann had any of those things. He thought again, as he had the night before, and just as crazily, about walking away.

  Desrosiers picked up on Jason’s instinct, and told him not to worry, and then, in English: “Everything is in order. Do not fear. The men on the plane are my associates. They will take care of everything at the appropriate time; you are in good hands.”

  “They’re already on the plane?” Jason peered back at the dark windows along the fuselage. Desrosiers nodded.

  “Most of them.”

  “Early risers,” said Jason. Zimmermann ducked back from the mist beneath the engine. He had somewhere found a torch that cut through the mist like a spear made from light. He flicked it off. “Is everything all right?”

  “We got passengers,” said Jason.

  “Is that so?”

  “That’s so.”

  “I hope they are not fat,” said Zimmermann, and he laughed sharply.

  There were three of them who did not speak—they had settled into the wicker seats that were installed along the inside of the fuselage, forward of a stack of canvas bags. It was hard to even see them as Jason stuck his head in: just three hunched shadows in the dark of the passenger compartment. One of them was snoring.

  The fourth arrived after Jason had settled in the cockpit, and he came up to say hello as they were preparing for takeoff. His name was Aguillard and he was a physician. Jason guessed him to be in his fifties. He had soft features, a rim of brown-grey hair around a bald head. He spoke to him in English.

  “I am told that you flew in the war,” he said.

  “Yes sir,” said Jason.

  “You were very good at it,” said Aguillard, to which Jason shrugged, and nodded. Aguillard smiled. “I suppose you would not be here today, if it were otherwise.”

  “No,” said Jason, “I guess not.”

  Aguillard laughed at that, and turned in the narrow space to find his seat. That was fine with Jason. The ground fog had nearly burned off, and in a half hour, they’d be in the air. A few hours after that, high over the Mediterranean. Let Doctor Aguillard talk with his companions all that time, thought Jason, and let the pilots alone.

  It was a little less than a half hour by the time Zimmermann joined Jason in the cockpit and the ground crew pulled the blocks from under the landing gear. The sky had cleared as well as the ground—the only clouds were formed in a high herringbone, pink with the early light. Jason took a breath, and almost of their own accord his fingertips found the cigarette burn beneath his jaw. It was healing, but still hurt when he pressed. He kept the pressure on as the aircraft gathered speed, and he dug in hard enough to draw a tear, as the landing gear bounced once and twice on the hard-packed turf. He finally put both hands on the controls only as the Latécoère took to the air and climbed over the roofs of the empty houses ringing the Orly airfield.

  Jason took another breath and let it out slowly. The burn on his neck throbbed, but the pain of it was quickly receding. And for the first time since he’d woken up, he didn’t feel the need for another cigarette. Whether on his neck or in his mouth. The controls of this new plane were pleasingly responsive as he guided it through a long, slow bank to a southwesterly bearing, watching as the ground below transformed to farmers’ fields lined with tufts of windbreak trees and laneways. Paris herself—she was beyond his vision now . . . and with her the stink and the clattering noise, the disappointment. There had been a time, when Jason was very young, where cities like New York, Chicago . . . Paris . . . were a dream . . . mountains, he’d imagined, of brick and steel and light.

  But they were also a nightmare. Who wants to be stuck on a mountain, after all?

  Jason glanced over at Albert Zimmermann—who’d seemed eager enough to get off this mountain as they drove from Paris. His Austrian co-pilot might have been smiling, but it might’ve also been a grimace of concentration. He was busying himself, marking his chart with pencil-lead as he read the compass.

  Jason glanced at the altimeter. Soon, they would level off—and whatever cities they crossed would be far beneath their wings, and he need not look at any of them . . . just the sky, and the distant horizon.

  Zimmermann looked up from the chart, then at the compass. He leaned across the cockpit, and said in Jason’s ear: “Wrong direction.” He tapped the bulb of the compass. “Southeast.”

  Jason shook his head. “Algiers is south.”

  “A change of plans,” said Zimmermann. “Passengers want to make a stop first.”

  The pain at Jason’s throat flared, and even as it burned he felt ice along his nerves.

  “What in hell does that mean?” he said.

  Zimmermann smiled and shrugged. “Doctor Aguillard gave me a new heading before takeoff.”

  “Where?”

  “Southeast,” repeated Zimmermann. “When we are levelled off I will show you on the chart.”

  Jason shook his head. “We’ll change course once I’ve talked to Aguillard. He ought to’ve told me.” And when Zimmermann shrugged again, Jason snapped: “You should’ve told me—” . . . you Goddamned Kraut, Jason nearly added.

  He might as well have said it. Zimmermann drew back, his eyes narrowing. Zimmermann didn’t say anything even as Jason levelled the Latécoère and unbuckled his harness.

  “South,” he said to Zimmermann as he handed over the controls, and snatched the chart from his lap. “Until I say otherwise.”

  Many years ago, as a boy, Jason had contemplated murder. The anger had come in consequence of fear, and at the time, he’d finally recognized them as conjoined. But for a while, Jason had thought about killing . . . a man saying he was a doctor, and a woman saying she was a nurse . . . both who’d lied and betrayed him, egregiously.

  Jason was not that angry this time—not by a long shot—but he recognized the flavour of the feeling. The last time he’d let it get the better of him was the last time he’d flown for Imperial, and that’d ended badly. He did his best to push it down as he climbed down from the cockpit into the passenger compartment.

  He found the men in their seats. Aguillard was in conversation with one situated in the first seat in front of him on the port side, while the two were distracted to starboard, looking out the windows and down at the French countryside beneath them. Jason didn’t bother to wait for a break in the conversation.

  “What is this?” he asked, showing Aguillard the chart. Aguillard blinked at it.

  “Ah yes,” he said. “Our new destination.
There should be sufficient fuel, yes? It is not nearly as far as Algiers.”

  “M. Desrosiers set a flight plan. He needs the plane in Algiers.”

  “M. Desrosiers’ beautiful aircraft will arrive in Algiers. We shall even top it off with fuel when we land.” Aguillard took the chart and laid it out in front of Jason, with the morning sunlight coming in through his window illuminating the markings.

  It was the first time that Jason had actually taken a serious look at it. It was a map depicting France and Switzerland and a slice of Austria and Bavaria. It was there, in Bavaria, that Zimmermann had placed his mark.

  “There’s nothing there,” said Jason.

  “Au contraire,” said Aguillard. “There is a landing strip suitable to the Latécoère’s needs. There is a farmhouse and buildings. There is fuel. There is, not far from there . . .” His voice trailed off and he shared a glance with his companion, who nodded at the unspoken command, and climbed out of his seat.

  “You ought to’ve spoken to me about this,” said Jason.

  Aguillard looked at Jason appraisingly. “No,” he said. “We could not risk it.”

  Aguillard’s companion drew himself to a not-very-impressive height, steadied himself, and took the chart from Aguillard, then headed forward. Jason shouted for him to stay in the cabin, but the man ignored him, and Aguillard put a firm hand on Jason’s forearm. He leaned close to Jason’s ear, and spoke very clearly.

  “You will not be travelling to Africa, Mr. Thistledown,” said Doctor Aguillard, and tapped the map with his forefinger. “You have an appointment here. You might have been tempted to cancel it, had you known, and that would have been to no one’s advantage.”

  The other two men had turned in their seats to face Jason and Aguillard. The morning sun and shadows shifted and turned in the cabin as the Latécoère corrected its course. Aguillard removed his hand, and with it motioned to his companions, and each of them nodded, and readied themselves, should Jason choose to do anything other than remain precisely where he stood.

  Two

  Of course Jason did try to get back to the cockpit and Aguillard’s two men did manage to stop him. It wasn’t much of a struggle. Jason stood up and shifted sideways to pull out of Aguillard’s grasp, and one of the men, a baby-faced blond man who was tall as Jason and thicker by a third, grabbed hold of Jason’s shoulder. Jason shifted again and broke free, but while he did, that first one’s friend got around him and blocked the ladder. He wore little round glasses that he didn’t bother to remove. He smiled and held both hands out and upturned, gesturing with his fingertips for Jason to come to him. Jason hesitated just long enough that the first fellow, the big one, could lay a hold from behind. Jason thought he might break it, but not without more of a fight than he wanted to have a couple thousand feet in the air. And he didn’t know what he’d do after that.

  So he just let himself be guided back to the seat. The pair withdrew to their own places.

  Aguillard leaned over the seat back, so he could speak in Jason’s ear. “Do not worry,” he said. “Herr Zimmermann is an excellent pilot. My friend is an adequate navigator. It should be just a few hours before we arrive. You can stay put that long, yes, Mr. Thistledown?”

  “My name’s Thorn,” said Jason. Aguillard made as not to hear him over the noise of the aircraft, clapped him on the shoulder, and sat back in his seat.

  “Stay put!” he shouted genially.

  Of course Jason would stay put. The Latécoère was on its way to 6,000 feet. Where would he go? Jason certainly had no allies if he wished to regain control of the aircraft—even Zimmermann had been more than happy to take Desrosiers’ property on an unscheduled side trip to Germany before Jason had come back, and had now done so against Jason’s orders. Desrosiers, for that matter, had not hesitated to abandon his plane and travel plans both.

  And then there was that business of Thistledown.

  That was a bad name. Bad to speak in general, and bad for these fellows to know.

  The name had belonged to a killer, a man named John Thistledown, who’d run with other men as bad as he, from Oregon country through to the Dakotas. John Thistledown was a good shot and he wasn’t shy about using that skill to kill men and women who crossed him. He did enough of that killing that people told stories about it, and he had an awful kind of fame for a while.

  He had stopped eventually, met a good woman and made a ’stead in Montana, and that was where he’d sired Jason. But though he may have stopped killing men, he kept doing awful things—and it’d taken his wife to put him down.

  Yet even in death . . . his name had brought more death to the farm, and the nearby town of Cracked Wheel . . . it had killed everybody there, and Jason’s mother too.

  And it had nearly doomed Jason, when Jason still used it for himself.

  That was one reason Jason Thistledown vanished, in the spring of 1911, in the freezing waters of the Kootenai River—and why the next time he’d been asked a surname, he’d said “Thorn.”

  Andrew Waggoner had thought it was a funny choice, given the tenuous relationship between the down off thistles and the thorns on some branches. But it was easier to remember that way. And it didn’t hurt that it was Lawrence Thorn and his family that’d first taken them in—when all of them arrived, on a disintegrating raft of mossy lumber and log, in such desperate need as they were.

  Death preceded that raft by two days. Corpses, bloated and blue, their clothing slick tatters, floated down the Kootenai from Idaho, and more than half went past the Thorn farm. By Lawrence Thorn’s firm order, not one of them got fished out. His boy Tom had spotted the first one—a lady, face down with her Sunday finery blooming around her like a swirl of pale algae. By the time Lawrence’d come to see, there were four others: two men, a Negro woman, and a corpse that’d encountered such obstacles that it was no longer possible to tell. The riverbank smelled worse than a privy.

  “Go back to the house,” Lawrence ordered him when Tom showed him. “This isn’t wholesome.”

  They weren’t wholesome, true enough. What Lawrence didn’t tell his boy was he feared they’d bring disease. Lawrence’s own father and mother had built the farm he owned in the very south of Alberta, and two seasons in, when he was but twelve years old, his mother had fallen ill and died. The dead folk in the river might’ve died like that, and might yet carry the sickness.

  So he sent the boy inside, found himself a stout branch, did the work of dislodging the corpses as they caught in the river’s edge—sending them onward downriver to whatever fate might have in store for them.

  The raft came after the main flow of corpses had passed the farm. It was in the afternoon, a grey day threatening rain, and old Lawrence Thorn was still at the riverbank with his branch. He was in a state of some melancholy by that point, wondering whether he was doing right or wrong. His own family might be protected, but what of the souls of those dead in the river that Lawrence had let pass by without so much as a prayer for their passage to Heaven, never mind a Christian burial? What about the farmsteads downstream? The Blackfoot reserves, for that matter? If the bodies carried sickness, wasn’t he just sending it onward?

  It was in this temper, as the afternoon sun began to lower over the western mountains, that he spied the raft, with passengers on it, rounding the gentle bend in the river. It sat too low in the water, and listed badly to the right, where a tall young man stood, trying to keep it steady with a branch about as big as Lawrence’s. A woman sat up at the opposite end of the vessel, cradling another woman’s head in her lap. In the middle, a Negro sat clutching something in his arms, looking unwell.

  A day prior, Lawrence might have had a mind to wave them all on, tell them to find somewhere else to put to ground. But—as he later explained to Jason, Dr. Andrew Waggoner, and Nurse Annie Rowe, over the sleeping form of Ruth Harper that evening—his aching conscience would no longer allow that choice.

  “Come here, let me help!” was what he did say, and the young man shoute
d back: “We sure can use some,” and guided the raft to the riverbank, where it came apart as soon as its bottom struck the round rocks there. Lawrence was amazed it had gotten them this far and said so; the raft was made of a wooden frame with four wooden planks nailed to it that looked as though they’d been through a couple of winters out of doors. They were weathered as barn board. By themselves they wouldn’t have floated, but for a pair of logs that’d been lashed to the bottom on either side with hemp rope, and lashed badly; the logs rolled and slipped at just a bit of tugging, and the frame cracked as the passengers stepped into the water.

  Lawrence kept his distance, and asked: “You look ill. So don’t come close. I’ve seen what’s come down the river.”

  The young man nodded and said something he had to repeat twice before Lawrence Thorn understood it: “Cave Germ,” he said. “We don’t have it. If we did, we’d be dead now like those other folk you saw.”

  “But you know about it.” He motioned for them to come up. The young man helped the two women off first—one of them was in such awful shape she nearly had to be carried, then laid out on a soft spot of ground—then went back and helped the Negro up. As he stood, Lawrence saw he was about as tall as the youth and the thing he was carrying was a black leather case, as he’d seen doctors carry when they came to call from the mission.

  “My name’s Jason,” he said. “This is Doctor Waggoner, and this here is Nurse Rowe, and this—” he ran a hand through the unconscious girl’s light brown hair “—this is Ruth Harper.”

  “Harper?” Lawrence frowned. “From the mill town upriver?”

  “That’s right,” said Jason. “From Eliada. But that place is gone now. It’s just us, and what you saw come down that river.”

  Lawrence stood and thought about that a moment. Gone. He didn’t have to speak for Jason to understand how he was mulling the implications of that statement.

  “My name’s Thorn,” said Lawrence. “You’re on my farm. If you’re from Eliada you should know you’ve left America.”