Volk

by David Nickle

  “So I’m a murderess. There,” she said. “I said it.”

  Annie didn’t cry, but by the end of it, Ruth felt as though a crying jag was exactly what she’d witnessed.

  Annie Waggoner, formerly Rowe, who’d saved Ruth’s life twice—maybe three times—on the banks of the Kootenai River . . . one of the strongest women that Ruth had known, enduring utter and complete collapse.

  From that smile, her lips pulled into a pale line, sucked back over the tops of her teeth. Her eyes seemed to withdraw into their sockets too. She drew a breath in by degree, as though pulling her lungs with a winch. Her hands drew into tight fists on the table, either side of her plate, so tight they trembled.

  Those were the physical manifestations of Annie’s experience. But Ruth apprehended more than that . . . she thought she might have seen more than that. The light seemed to shift where it struck Annie’s face, shadows moving dimly across her brow as though the sun were occluded by fast-moving cloud. She seemed at once very old, and a child . . . or a young girl. Young Annie Rowe learning the trade of nursing, among the missionaries aiding the fallen women of Chicago. . . .

  All this passed in barely more than an instant and Ruth couldn’t really say that it ever had. But when it had passed, Annie seemed exhausted, and drained, and her mouth hung ever so slightly opened. Ruth reached over to touch Annie’s hand, which had opened from its fist and was now limp, and damp.

  “Did he try to hurt you?” she said, and Annie shook her head.

  “He just wanted to talk to Andrew,” she said. “About Jukes.” She looked at Ruth. “He was no threat at all.”

  “Then why?”

  Annie shook her head again.

  “He had it coming,” said Jason. He stood up and stepped around the chairs to kneel by Annie’s side. “He helped make Eliada. He had a part in all that business. I know he had it coming. I bet he all but told you to do that, didn’t he?”

  Annie looked at Jason, and for a moment it seemed as though she would fall apart again. But she offered up that same awful, trembling smile—and said: “That’s right. That’s just what he said.”

  And that was it for Annie Waggoner for the day, and as far as Jason was concerned it should have been how it went for all of them. There were beds, up on the top floor of the farmhouse, and given as they’d all walked through the night, Jason said they should all at least get a bit of sleep.

  Annie was the only one to take Jason up on his advice, and they helped her up the two flights of stairs, to a suite of attic rooms. They would each have a room—small, tidy with a decent mattress, a tiny window low on the wall below the eves . . . But Ruth and Albert both demurred for the moment.

  “I never take coffee before bed,” said Albert, and Ruth agreed that she wouldn’t sleep either. Albert said he would stay outside Annie’s door, if it was acceptable for him to smoke.

  Jason said sure and suggested they all move to the sitting area by the west windows. Albert shook his head no.

  “I will be all right,” said Albert. “Why don’t you two spend some time together? Without me lurking about. You can talk about your ‘wounded souls,’ yes?” He laughed at his own joke. “Leave me be,” he said. “Madame Waggoner bears watching over . . . given everything. But I will be all right.”

  Four

  “How was Crete?”

  They’d found their way to the front porch of the farmhouse, looking out over the meadow, and both leaned on it, peering across it to the hills beyond.

  “It’s not much changed,” said Ruth, “since we were there.”

  Jason nodded. “Didn’t think it would be. Crete’s been a quiet place since old King Minos’s days.”

  Ruth laughed.

  “Not that quiet,” she said. “I couldn’t get our villa. Not at first. An English family was finishing their holiday there and the ‘blighters’ wouldn’t budge.” Jason laughed at that. Ruth continued: “So I was nearly two weeks in a dreadful little room in Sitia before I could persuade the owner to let it to me.”

  “Is it still Evangelos?”

  “Indeed,” said Ruth. “Evangelos and Ariadnh. I am sorry to say they didn’t remember me.”

  “That’s fine,” said Jason. “We kept to ourselves, as I recall. And it was a very long time ago.”

  “Not that long,” said Ruth. “Just twelve years.”

  “Thirteen,” said Jason.

  “That’s right. Thirteen.”

  It was after the Armistice.

  Jason had been writing to Ruth, more or less regularly for nearly a year before that, and Ruth had been writing back more regularly than that. At first the letters from Jason had been platonic, jaunty in their tone. He made a joke that the other fellows in the squadron had sweethearts they wrote to, and he didn’t want to feel left out. And he hoped that Ruth was well, and he’d been thinking of her, and he thought she ought to know. Ruth had been thinking of Jason too, but she also took care to make her letters back seem just as carefree as his. She told him rather more about business than was interesting——and made jokes about how flying a biplane over No Man’s Land was nothing compared to keeping one’s fortune intact in No-Ladies-Allowed America.

  By the time the war was finished, Jason—improbably to his mind still among the living—found the letters had taken an altogether different tone. Ruth was the one who suggested that they meet in Crete, and Jason wrote back to say he’d be there.

  And on the appointed day, he was there. They were both there, thirteen years ago.

  “It was lonely this time,” said Ruth, “without you. I thought you would come. From your letter. I thought you would come.”

  “I thought I would too,” said Jason. “I’m sorry, Ruth. Things took a turn after I sent that letter.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “You were trying to save me. You did save me. I was nearly captured you know. In Frankfurt!”

  “Really?”

  “You would have been proud of me. I crashed a car!”

  Jason smiled, turned so his right hip leaned on the railing and crossed his arms.

  “You don’t say.”

  “It’s not that difficult, car-crashing,” said Ruth, and Jason laughed and agreed.

  “I hope Zimmermann treated you right,” he said.

  “He did.”

  They were quiet a moment. “Do you have a cigarette by any chance?” asked Ruth.

  Jason shook his head. “All out,” he said.

  “Wine? Whiskey? Opium?”

  He shook his head at each and laughed at the last.

  “What,” said Ruth levelly, “has happened to you?”

  “I guess it’s a change, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” said Ruth. “You look younger . . . maybe not than when we first met—” when they first parted, at the other farm, the Thorn farm “—but from Crete. Younger . . . maybe stronger.”

  Jason smiled at that, but it was a different sort of smile. “That’d be strong,” he said. “You were—”

  “What’s happened to you?”

  “What happened? Well. I spent some time here. With Orlok.”

  “With a Juke.”

  “No,” said Jason. “I told you, it’s dead. I’m talking about Orlok. His people.”

  “Who aren’t here either.” Ruth reached over and put her hand on his. He turned palm up and curled his fingers with hers.

  “I am so much better,” he said, and looked right into her eyes. “And you will be too.”

  They walked together down the steps and out into the meadow. The grass was ankle high, still green from the recent rain but not likely much longer before the winter came. Jason held Ruth’s hand tight as they walked.

  “You remember when we parted?”

  “Which time?”

  “I guess I owe you an apology for both times.” Jason looked down at their feet. “First time . . . well I was a boy. Lost my ma, not more than two months earlier. And then . . . well, Germaine Frost . . . the Eliada business . . . Mister J
uke. After all that . . . I just wasn’t strong enough.”

  They looked down toward the road, and beyond it: the faint line of the Isar River, which would soon enough take to Wallgau and Munich and the rest of the wide world.

  “Crete now. That was something different.”

  “It was.”

  “Not entirely though.” Jason looked at her. “You remember when we met? The very first time?”

  “On the riverboat.”

  “That’s right. Heading in to Eliada. You commented on my name.”

  “Thistledown.”

  “Thistledown. You knew all about my pa—Jack Thistledown. Infamous gunfighter. Good eye. Strong arm. Could hold his liquor. Well, until he couldn’t . . . But you didn’t know about that part. As far as you could tell, he was a great hero. Like old Theseus. Or Heracles for that matter. I always thought that was half the reason you took a liking to me. I don’t know if I ever told you how bad that offended me.”

  Ruth started to apologize and Jason stopped her.

  “I’m not offended anymore. But we had another talk—years later, in Crete. You remember the one?”

  Ruth let go of Jason’s hand. “I remember the one where I told you I loved you.”

  “You did tell me that,” said Jason. “I haven’t forgotten that. Do you remember the hero talk?”

  “Hero talk? Do you mean when I told you you’d been a brave pilot, and how—”

  “You told me I was a hero,” said Jason. “More than a hero. You called me a superman. Told me I was unkillable.”

  “I think I called you a god,” said Ruth. “A God of the Air.”

  Jason grinned wryly. “That’s right.”

  “We were making love,” said Ruth.

  “I remember,” said Jason. “And you talked afterward, about the fine, unkillable babies we might make. Your stock and my own.”

  “It was just talk,” said Ruth. Jason reached over to take her hand and when she pulled away, he leaned farther and took hold of it.

  “Coming off that war, I didn’t see myself as a hero,” said Jason. “A God of the Air. I flew a biplane, and I was passing good at it. More than passing, I’ll give myself that. And I didn’t get killed. But back on the ground—and for many years on the ground, you have to understand—I felt more like my old pa, than I did any hero. Or good breeding stock, even. My pa . . . he wasn’t any of those things.”

  “So I offended you again.”

  “I took offence,” agreed Jason, then appeared to think about it and added: “Not offence. I took a scare. It scared me, that word did. Hero. You know that Germaine Frost used to call me that? Her hero?”

  “No,” said Ruth.

  “Well she did. She had reason, too—she’d opened up a jug of the Cave Germ in the town of Cracked Wheel, and it’d killed everybody there but me. So it made a kind of sense. I was immune. I was a hero. Eugenically speaking, that’s what I was.”

  “So you believed that I was like that awful woman?”

  “Your father was,” said Jason. “Nils Bergstrom was. You might just have been. To look at it another way, I wasn’t what all of you expected me to be. Not in the light I saw myself.”

  “You didn’t say any of that when you left.”

  “No,” said Jason, “I didn’t. I just left. And for years, got to work trying to prove myself right.”

  They stopped and looked back at the farmhouse. From where they stood, they had an excellent view of the mural on the front: the long snake-like dragon, the hero clad in mail, grasping it about the throat. It was still dreadful, Ruth thought.

  “But I was wrong,” said Jason.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Jason turned to Ruth, and took her hand in both hands.

  “You were right and I was wrong. That’s what Orlok has showed me. You see that painting up there? That’s what Orlok did to the Juke. Just took hold of it, and tore off its mouths and limbs until it died. Couldn’t stop him.”

  Ruth looked away—away from Jason and that painting—back at the long drive to the road.

  “And Orlok,” said Jason, “is my brother.”

  Ruth deliberately untangled Jason’s fingers from her own.

  “Where is your brother Orlok now, Jason?” she asked quietly. “Is he here right now?”

  “He’s not here.”

  “What about your other brothers and sisters?”

  “I got no others,” said Jason.

  Ruth turned to Jason.

  “I know that sometimes they can be hard—impossible—to see. Or to notice . . . Orlok’s people. I spent more than a day and a night, failing to notice your Catherine. Is she by any chance here now?”

  “No.”

  “Are any of them here now?”

  Jason looked around them.

  “None close by.”

  “But some are around. Within sight.”

  Jason nodded. “Some.”

  “Can you show me?”

  “Sure.” Jason pointed toward the fence. “See?” he said, and Ruth said, “Ah.” There were five pale figures, sitting in a row along the fence, looking away from them. “There,” said Jason, and pointed across the meadow to a shed. On the rooftop, two others, peering into the distance . . . toward Wallgau, and the Isar.

  “Is that all?”

  “All in sight.”

  “So there are others out of sight?”

  Jason shrugged.

  “Where is Orlok?”

  “He’s a bit farther off,” said Jason.

  “Where?”

  Jason stepped in front of her so she couldn’t look away. “Ruth, I am trying to tell you something important.”

  Ruth sighed. “Jason,” she said, “what you’re trying to tell me is that you’ve let the Juke affect—infect you.”

  “Ruth—”

  “This isn’t real, Jason. You were right to begin with, and I was wrong. You’re not a hero—”

  “Ruth?”

  Ruth tilted her head to hear better.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  The sound of truck engines started to rise, and coming from behind a copse of trees, Ruth could see the first of them.

  Ruth pointed to the roadway.

  “What is that?” she said.

  It was . . . five . . . six . . . eight . . . eleven trucks, making their way in a line along the roadway, and the first was turning up the drive. As the others slowed, men poured from the backs of some of them, and then disappeared below the line of the fence.

  Jason froze, looking at them, and then tugged at Ruth’s arm. “Inside,” he said, and then led Ruth back to the house, keeping low until they reached the wall.

  “I didn’t expect it this soon,” said Jason as they made their way to the back of the house. “I wouldn’t have let you stay so long if I’d known. I’m sorry. I guess that fellow meant it when he said goodbye.”

  “What fellow?” asked Ruth, and Jason said: “Joe. Nazi fellow. Come from Berlin, by way of Munich.”

  “Munich—?” Ruth thought for just an instant, then nodded. “Of course.” The battle at Rottmannstraße wasn’t between communists and brownshirts. It was with Orlok’s people. And whatever they’d said publicly, whatever the Polizei reported, the brownshirts knew full well who’d killed their comrades.

  And they knew where they had come from.

  Ruth and Jason hurried around the house and inside, to the kitchen.

  He looked straight at the doorway to the front hall. “Where’s the rifle?”

  “What?”

  “The carbine—Zimmermann set it down there this morning. Remember?”

  Albert had done that, after Jason’d asked him to. And sure enough, it was gone. Jason shook his head in frustration, and opened up a drawer under the counter. He pulled out three boxes of ammunition, then hurried into the hall and picked a rifle.

  “Go upstairs,” said Jason, “find Zimmermann and Annie, and get them down here.” He pulled back the bolt and began stuffing bullets into
the magazine. “I’ll hold them off.”

  “With one rifle?”

  Jason looked at her. “Don’t worry. I can shoot. It’s in my blood.”

  Ruth shook her head in disbelief. “Give me some shotgun shells,” she said, and when he did, she hurried through the front hall, picked up the shotgun there, and loaded it as she hurried up the stairs.

  Albert Zimmermann’s rifle was gone. And so was he.

  Ruth only determined that after a thorough search of the rooms upstairs. Annie was asleep in her room when Ruth found her, and claimed that she had no idea what had happened to Albert . . . she’d been asleep the entire time, she said. But given Annie’s confession . . . Ruth kept the shotgun with her until they’d checked the last room.

  And even then, Ruth asked: “Did you harm Albert?”

  “Why would I do that?” Annie asked, and Ruth said: “Why did you kill Aguillard?”

  “I didn’t harm Albert,” said Annie. “I don’t know where he is if he’s not up here. Do you think that maybe it something the Juke would do?”

  “Make him do, you mean?” Ruth ran a hand through her hair. She thought about Jason. “It’s possible.”

  “We haven’t taken any precautions against it,” said Annie.

  “No,” said Ruth, “we haven’t.”

  Albert had run off. The carbine, Ruth recalled, was gone from downstairs. If Annie hadn’t harmed Albert—and she was inclined to think that she hadn’t—then there was a good chance he’d left, and grabbed that weapon on his way. Even if it had no ammunition . . . What was it he’d said?

  Bargaining power.

  “Is that gunfire?” asked Annie, and Ruth nodded. There were several cracks—they sounded like knots of wood bursting in the fire from the farmhouse.

  Ruth stepped over to the big window—close enough to peer out but not enough to make a target of herself. It gave a view of the meadow and the drive from the road.

  One of the trucks was stopped, just at the gate. The rest bunched up on the road behind it. That first was askew on the drive, as though it had just run off it, maybe slid halfway into a ditch. Two forms were lying on the ground next to it. At least two, and possibly more. Ruth didn’t dare get closer to the glass to find out.

  “We need to get downstairs,” she said. “We’re trapped up here.”