Blackbone

by George Simpson

  “Pardon?” Gilman walked beside her in the dark, up the slope from the barracks to headquarters. The air had a biting chill. Spotlights swept the compound below them and illuminated the hillside.

  “You know what I mean, Major. Your medical officer did all the talking, but he was asking your questions.”

  “Was he?”

  “Don’t play innocent. He knows Yazir, indeed. I doubt he ever heard the name before.”

  “You think Borden’s a fake? Not an amateur at all?”

  “He probably boned up on it this afternoon.”

  “I see. In our camp library, I suppose. We do have liberal borrowing privileges, but our stock is rather limited.”

  “Then you coached him.”

  “In a field about which I know nothing.”

  She whirled angrily. “I don’t care if you’re both experts. You’ve got something going on in this camp. You should be looking into that—not harassing me! I’m here to help!”

  “Nobody’s harassing you. And I don’t need your help. The weather is going to change tomorrow. There could be snow, probably a storm. If that happens, they tell me the roads become impassable. Then we just have to sit until it stops. Nothing gets in; no one gets out. Now, I have no intention of keeping an unwanted guest. So first thing tomorrow, I’m going to have my adjutant contact the State Department and work up the ladder until he finds someone who knows you. Borden can call Columbia University and track down this Mock-mood Yazeer. And I will personally call the Metropolitan in New York. If you’re not on the level, it’s bye-bye so long. Whatever you won’t tell me is either top secret or ridiculously silly, so you better come clean by tomorrow morning.”

  “You said twenty-four hours.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  Gilman left her at the stairway to her quarters and called back, “Nice gown, though! Makes you look like Rita Hayworth!”

  Some of her anger melted. She watched him go across to the MP barracks.

  Alone, she looked down at the compound, wondering about Kirst. The djinn was a night creature. Last night someone was murdered. How much more would have to happen before Gilman was ready to listen?

  Gebhard lay on his bunk in the dark with the blankets hugged around his neck because he could no longer stand his own stench. Images stirred in his mind: the tight steamy quarters of his old U-boat, the sweat streaming off his body when the diesels were running, sticky shirts, greasy stubble... then he saw the locked shower hut, the pipes and spouts spurting water, the spray washing the sweat and grime off his skin....

  He sat up. Everyone else was asleep. Gebhard looked over at Kirst. He was on his side facing the wall, motionless. Gebhard swung his legs over and stood up in his long underwear. He grabbed a towel from the shelf by the door and slipped into the corridor.

  Behind him Kirst stirred.

  Gebhard stepped outside, threw the towel around his shoulders, then jumped off the stoop and started running. Dodging the searchlights and keeping to the shadows, he made it to the shower hut and flattened himself against a corner. He shook from the cold. He waited for the beam to sweep past his corner, then he slipped around the side to the furnace.

  He fumbled with the valves. Luckily, when they closed the showers, they hadn’t shut the pilot off. The furnace roared to life. Gebhard looked around, worried that the noise might attract a sentry. There were none in sight.

  He waited for the light to pass again, then scuttled around the hut to the window. He reached under the hut to the little ledge in the foundation where he had hidden the spoon that morning. He found it, grasped it tightly with the bowl end in his palm, then he began prying the window out of the jamb.

  In a moment, it eased out. The light came back. Gebhard dove under the foundation and lay still till it passed. About to get up again, he heard something and stopped. He turned and peered under the foundation. At first he saw nothing, then he thought he saw a black shape dart by on the other side. It disappeared. Gebhard waited, convinced it was one of the sentries, and he’d been spotted. But nothing happened. He heard the muffled roar of the furnace, but no one came to look. It was cold on the ground. He wanted that shower, so he rolled out, stood up, and opened the window. He grabbed the ledge and hauled himself up, then squeezed through and dropped inside.

  He pulled the window closed, then stood up in the dark. It was quiet in the shower hut. He could hear the furnace but that was all. Water dripped somewhere. Gebhard smiled and hung his towel on a hook.

  Eckmann slept fitfully. The sedatives weren’t working, and no one had thought to increase the dosage. Borden had been back a couple of times today, but Eckmann had appeared docile, still in shock. Now he tossed about on the cot and his eyes popped open. He stared at the door, a dim outline in the gloom. A single bare bulb illuminated the corridor outside but was too far away to cast much light into his tiny cell. Eckmann thought he saw a shadow move at the base of the door—the guard going past?—but he heard no footsteps. Then the shadow vanished.

  He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep. He started thinking of Frieda. Beautiful, sexy, buxom Frieda, with her long blond braids and eager smile.... Beautiful unfaithful Frieda! He pounded the pillow. But she wouldn’t go away. She loomed against his closed eyelids, pursed her lips and leaned forward to kiss him, but it wasn’t him she kissed. It was Schliebert. Frieda’s beautiful breasts pillowed on Schliebert’s chest, and Schliebert torched her hungrily—

  Eckmann woke with a sob. Frieda was gone. He stared at the barred window and sniffled. He caught the scent of her perfume, long-forgotten but pungent now, as if she were in the room with him. He looked around.

  Something rustled at the foot of the bed. Eckmann sat still, listening.

  A rat?

  Of course there would be rats in solitary, put there by the Americans—by Hopkins.

  Eckmann’s nose wrinkled. The smell was getting stronger—sweet and musky—filling the cell. He gagged on it, then he looked up and saw a figure standing in the darkness at the end of his cot. A female figure wearing a sheer negligee that stirred over her curves. Delicate hands were flattened against her hips. Eckmann watched, fascinated, as she shifted her weight to one leg. Her belly moved back, she thrust out her hips and rocked back and forth.

  Eckmann closed his eyes to make her go away but, when he opened them again, she was still there.

  Her face moved out of shadow: shiny, white, with a slash of red across each lip, teeth showing, eyes bright and smoky with lust. Her hair was long and blond and braided.

  Frieda.

  Eckmann blinked and rubbed his eyes. The apparition wouldn’t go away. Frieda’s hips kept moving. She licked her lips, ran the tip of her tongue under her teeth and grinned. Her fingers clawed the negligee upward, exposing knee then thigh. Her movements became an insistent undulation.

  Eckmann wanted her. “Frieda,” he said.

  She leaned over. Her breasts swayed beneath the negligee.

  “Frieda, please...” Eckmann’s voice broke. The tears came. “Why were you unfaithful?”

  Frieda’s knee came down on the end of the cot. Eckmann squirreled backward. Frieda yanked the negligee up. Eckmann stared at her smooth white flesh. He wanted it.

  “I trusted you! Your letters! Frieda, how could you?”

  She threw herself on the cot. Her eyes gleamed wickedly. She crawled toward him. He shrank against the cell wall, curling his legs up. He wanted her, but he was scared.

  “Frieda, no...”

  She sat on her legs and skinned off the negligee. She was naked underneath. She drew the material across his body. Eckmann quivered at the wispy touch. He watched her eyes as she lifted her breasts, one plump globe in each hand, selling lust not love. Eckmann didn’t want lust. He wanted his innocent darling Frieda, not this grotesque amoral animal....

  She descended on him, pulling at him, urgently tugging at his clothing, nipping his flesh. She pressed his hand to her bosom and rubbed his palm over her nipples. They were h
ard. Eckmann moaned. Heat flooded into his crotch. He felt a potency growing that he had never before experienced with his darling Frieda....

  She soothed him, the back of one hand against his cheek, stroking gently, the other tearing at his trousers. Her eyes were distended with erotic need, her nipples swollen and forcing themselves between his lips. Eckmann groaned and all fear left him. He sank into the sensual bath of her embrace, murmuring her name, letting her tear off his clothes. Then he was helping, flinging them aside. Her hand closed on the stiff, engorged center of him. Then she turned completely around and straddled him. Her mouth sucked him in deeply and hotly. Eckmann trembled with excitement and reached for her hips, pulling her down. His mouth closed on the hot wet center of her. Her movements quickened. She devoured him wolfishly. Everything she did demonstrated a wealth of whorish knowledge—

  Schliebert, Schliebert. Frieda with Schliebert, riding him.

  Eckmann panicked, remembering last night, remembering his unfaithful Frieda with that bastard Schliebert, and seeing in addition his beautiful darling Frieda with all the men she must have been with since their wedding, since he’d left. He fought those thoughts. He knew where they were leading, back to the truth that he had buried so deeply, the shame that he was so afraid of facing, that he had disguised so well in his thousand and one letters proclaiming love and devotion. He tried to get up. She kept him pinned down. His fear grew.

  He wriggled and struggled to escape her. He whimpered and begged. She held him and worked him, and the pressure rose to an unbearable peak. He felt himself reaching beyond his endurance, rushing toward a plateau he had never scaled before. His body whipped beneath hers in a frenzy of excitement. He quivered on the cot like jelly.

  She rose in front of him, gave him a wicked smile, then displayed what he had feared all along—his organ lying limp in her hand—the badge of his impotence—the trophy of his unconsummated wedding night—the shame of his failure with Frieda—

  As he screamed out her name in a terrified protest, she ripped the sheet out from under their bodies and held it out to him, a silent offering. He stared at it.

  The guard at the end of the hall started out of his midnight doze. He listened but heard nothing more. He didn’t bother to check.

  Gebhard let water run into his mouth and spill out. He ducked his head under the spray and shook his hair. Steam was building up in the tightly closed hut. Gebhard didn’t care. And if they caught him, so what? He felt wonderful—clean, revitalized, defiant. He spread his legs and took a piss. The yellow river washed down the sloping floor to the drain.

  Moving down the line of pipes, Gebhard reached up and turned on the other spouts. Within seconds every shower head was going full blast. The room was alive with spraying water, and steaming up fast. Mist swirled around him. He laughed and danced in it, grabbed imaginary beers off imaginary tables, downing them in wild flourishes.

  A tendril of black smoke seeped under the padlocked door and wafted upward. It curled and tested the lowering cloud of moisture. Then the rest of the nightform came in and mingled with the vapor, saturating it with darkness.

  Gebhard raised his imaginary stein to the heavens. His voice rang out, “Every god in his house, and every man in his shower! Give us this moment, and give us this power!” He held the back of his head and drank, then dropped the stein, stretched out his arms and prepared to let out a triumphant yell.

  It never escaped his lips.

  The sound was deafening, like a three-hundred-pound depth charge exploding in a tomb. The hut shook, and Gebhard was thrown to the floor. In shock, he looked around and saw the arch of an engine room overhead. He was naked on the deck. Rivets were popping around him. Walls of water slammed across the compartment, drenching the engines. The deck flooded quickly. Gebhard lay in a rising ocean, stunned and frightened. He heard voices yelling commands in German. A shadowy figure splashed by and nearly trampled him. Gebhard rolled. His bare ass hit the diesel casing and he screamed from the burn. He jumped up and looked around wildly, his mind screaming that this was impossible, but his eyes were telling him it was real.

  A second blast slammed the boat sideways and threw Gebhard into a tangle of other frightened men. More rivets gave way. The compartment was filling up. Down at the end he saw a hatch close and the latch drop. A wheel spun, trapping him.

  His worst dream was coming true. For an entire year of devoted, sweat-streaked service, he had avoided this, but now at last it had come—his moment, his final reckoning with God—

  Pipes burst, drenching a man behind him with oil. The engine sparked and the man erupted in flame.

  Gebhard charged away from him, toward the hatch. He hit his head on something and was spun around. The hull faded from sight. He reeled along the concrete floor, from shower to shower, under the sprays and out again, then his hand found the diesel casing. He shook his head to clear it. A stream of water hit his face. He tried to move out from under it, but his legs wouldn’t work. His head throbbed, and the water stung his eyes. He closed them and heard voices reverberating dankly off the hull. Ripping sounds. Metal shrieking, giving, breaking up. His head lolled under the spray. His mouth and nose filled up, and he gagged and choked. He managed to stumble away and open his eyes, but he couldn’t see: there was a misty darkness all around him.

  The lights had gone. The sub’s power was out. He could no longer hear the men or the diesels, only a throbbing rush from someplace, the hiss of water, the racketing splash as it pummeled the deck.

  Heart pounding, Gebhard reached out and felt nothing. He stumbled faster, his bare feet splashing. What’s making it so dark? He hit the wall full force and cracked his head.

  He stood against it, dazed and dizzy, trying to stay upright. His hand moved along the wall and felt his hook and the towel. He snatched the towel down but couldn’t hold on to it.

  It fell into the stream at his feet and was carried along toward the drain.

  Salty warm wetness flowed down Gebhard’s cheek and into his lips. He tasted blood and the knowledge made him weaker. He staggered after the towel, a white beacon in the dark, covering the drain. A pool of water was forming and backing up toward him. The room began to spin. Gebhard’s knees buckled. He collapsed into the water pooling around the plugged drain. He tried to move and couldn’t. All strength had gone out of him. The water slopped over his cheek, washed off some of the blood. It bubbled into his mouth.

  Gebhard screamed at himself to move, but his body wouldn’t cooperate.

  The blackness descended over him, embracing his body, devouring the fear and panic that drove his heart to its wildest contractions. His body was seized with violent pain. His jaws snapped open involuntarily. He couldn’t get his breath. Water flowed through his lips and filled his lungs. The djinn fed and fed and fed...

  Until there was nothing more.

  Seconds later, the nightform left the hut and flowed quickly across the chilled ground toward the back end of camp, toward the base of Blackbone Mountain and the mine shaft. Black tendrils whipped against the night air, lashed out in triumph, as the djinn felt power course through its essence. Power from fear. Even greater power from death. Power enough now to move mountains.

  In Hut 7, Mueller sat up and tried to figure out what had disturbed his sleep. Drawn to the window, he rubbed mist off the pane and peered out. Light swept the back end of the camp.

  There was something out there. Below the fence, around the caved-in part of the old mine shaft, blackness moved against the light. Then the light was gone.

  Mueller hesitated a moment, wondering if it was an animal. He turned and pulled on his boots then threw on his coat. That wouldn’t be warm enough: Mueller was sensitive to the cold. He wrapped himself up in his blanket and went out.

  Keeping to the shadows and out of the roving searchlights, Mueller passed the shower hut, ignoring the rush of the furnace and the faint sound of running water. He was intent on getting to the back fence. He went around the last hut and peered u
p the slope. Something was different about that tiny patch of terrain. He had stared at it so often, had seen it so frequently in his dreams, that he more than anyone else in the camp would know if something had changed. Something had.

  With mounting excitement, Mueller sprinted across the remaining ground. He reached the base of the slope and looked up. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Where before there had been a solid wall of rubble over the mine shaft entrance, now there was a gaping hole.

  Mueller scrambled up the slope. He flopped on the ground just beneath the hole as the spotlight swept toward him. He threw the blanket over his body and waited. The light passed.

  Mueller poked his head out and stared at the hole. It was better than he could have hoped for—large enough to crawl through! Gripping the edges of it, he pulled himself higher. He stuck his head and shoulders inside and whistled softly.

  There was an echo. The shaft was open.

  Cursing himself for not bringing a light, he withdrew and looked around. It wouldn’t do to be caught here now —not with the find of the century. Nor could he leave it as he’d found it. In the morning the MPs might spot it and dynamite it closed again. What to do? The blanket. The spotlight had moved right over Mueller’s blanket, which was olive drab, and almost matched the ground here. The sentry operating the light hadn’t noticed it.

  Mueller stuffed the blanket into the hole then climbed above it and, cupping his hands, pulled dirt down over it. When it was completely concealed, Mueller ran down the slope, turned, and looked back up.

  From this close, which was as close as the MPs ever got in daylight, the hole was invisible. So was the blanket. Mueller hurried back to Hut 7.

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow night!

  As soon as he was gone, the nightform wafted out of the hole, seeped around the blanket, and crept down the slope.

  Chapter 19

  Hopkins charged down the slope, buttoning his shirt, a coat slung over one arm, murder in his eye. He flew through the open gate, signaling two MPs to follow. Vinge was waiting at the shower hut. Hopkins paused to listen to the running water. A look of intense pleasure crossed his face. Someone had defied orders and was having himself a little midnight wash. Hopkins pulled the key and slipped it into the padlock. He ripped the lock off and kicked open the door.