by Jeremy Bates
Chapter 45
PASCAL
The pain! It started in Pascal’s gut and blazed outward. His eyes bulged, but he couldn’t see anything. He gasped for breath, felt hands on him, holding him upright. He looked ahead and saw a flaming ball of fire and smelled singed hair and burned flesh. Then, next to the fire, a blurry face—the thing he’d bumped into when he’d turned around, the thing that had…what? He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember anything after turning around.
Pascal realized his arms were pinned behind his back. His wrists were being handcuffed. No—being released, it turned out, because a moment later his arms flopped free. The thing before him shoved the scrolled end of a femur at his chest. It said something, though he couldn’t understand what. Everything was happening in a fog, a dream state. It shoved the bone at him again and again until he took it.
His vision began to focus, and beyond the thing he noticed a number of other grotesque horrors. And beyond them, standing in the shadows, Will.
Pascal screamed his name.
Chapter 46
DANIÈLE
Danièle couldn’t bear to watch, but she couldn’t turn away either. The zombie-man with the torch, the leader as far as she could tell, handed Pascal a bone, then accepted another bone from a female, then the mob formed a loose circle around Pascal and him.
They were going to fight.
Pascal realized this too. He stopped shouting for Will to help him and backed away from the leader and begged to be left alone.
The leader roared and attacked with his bone. Pascal, usually nimble and athletic, stumbled awkwardly out of the way, tripped, and fell to his rear.
The leader pressed the attack and swung the bone in a downward arc. Pascal raised his bone horizontally in both hands, deflecting the blow. He scrambled to his feet and attempted to flee. Those gathered in the circle spun him around and shoved him back into the fray.
Before Pascal could regain his coordination, the leader slammed the bone across his back, knocking him to his knees. Choking on tears, Pascal tried to crawl away. The leader reared up behind him and raised his bone in the air.
“Pascal!” Danièle cried.
He spotted her for the first time. A myriad of emotions shimmered across his eyes in that brief moment. Fear, confusion, anger, anguish. And worst of all, what she would never be able to forget—heartbreak, of the kind when you know you will never see someone you love again.
The knobby end of the leader’s bone struck Pascal on the top of the skull with a sharp, liquid crack. His face went slack. He fell flat to his chest.
Danièle bent over and vomited.
Chapter 47
Jesus Christ, there was nothing left of Pascal’s head. There was nothing left of his head. That fucking torchbearer had bashed it over and over again until it dissolved into a messy puddle of gunk. Nevertheless, I didn’t have long to reflect on this, because the torchbearer—Jaundice, I thought of him as after seeing those yellow eyes—pointed the bloody, brain-speckled femur at me and barked an order. An elderly male moved behind me, sprung the shackles from around my wrists, and pushed me into the circle.
Jaundice kicked Pascal’s bone-weapon toward me with his bare foot. I didn’t want to pick it up. If I did, I would be accepting his challenge. Then again, if I didn’t, he would likely kill me anyway.
I retrieved the femur and choked it like a baseball bat. I considered using it to bash my way through the circle and make a run for it. But I had no headlamp, no flashlight, no torch. I wouldn’t make it twenty feet in the blackness before I was caught again.
Still, what chance of survival did I have if I held my ground and fought? I was bigger and stronger than Jaundice, but he seemed to be experienced at this bone fighting or whatever it was. The blows he landed against Pascal had been swift and sure. Also, even if I defeated him, what then? There were another eleven of them. No way I could take them all out.
Jaundice approached me warily, his bloodied femur in one hand, the torch in the other. The flame spit and licked. The ring of spectators were shaking their bones in the air and hooting and hollering like a troop of monkeys. This was obviously prime entertainment for them.
Jaundice roared and lunged, feigning with the femur while jabbing the torch at me. I dodged right, felt the heat of the whooshing flame on my face, and chopped Jaundice’s extended forearm with my bone. He barked and dropped the torch. I was already swinging the bone again, this time at his head, but he parried, countered, and whacked me in the side.
I swung wildly. He jumped backward. He swung just as wildly. I jumped backward.
Then someone shoved me from behind. I stumbled forward. Instinct told me to veer right to avoid crashing into Jaundice. That’s what Pascal did—and got the bone across his back that knocked him to his knees. So instead I careened straight into Jaundice. He swung his bone, but I had closed the distance between us too quickly, and there was no power behind the blow. The femur bounced off my shoulder. I threw my arms around him and dragged him to the ground, landing on top of him.
I released the bone-weapon, and with my left hand I grabbed Jaundice around the throat, pressing down with all of my weight, trying to crush his windpipe. With my other hand I formed a fist and hammered him in the face again and again and again. I was yelling and crazed and trying to smash his skull open like he had done to Pascal.
I would have done this too had I not been pulled off him. I struggled against the hands grappling me, but there were too many. Nails raked my flesh as they dragged me away and pinned me to the ground.
Then, amazingly, Jaundice rose to his feet. Blood painted most of his face red, and his mouth hung open and askew with several teeth now missing. He probed his unhinged jaw tentatively, tried pushing it closed. It fell dumbly open again.
He issued a strangled wail, picked up his bone-weapon, and lurched over to stand above me. His yellow eyes blazed.
I bucked and squirmed and got a leg free. I kicked one of the fuckers holding me, a female, in the face, and another in the ear. But as soon as they fell away, others replaced them and secured my leg again.
Jaundice placed a foot on my chest, and even though his mouth hung open in an obtuse oval, I was sure he was smiling.
He raised the femur.
Chapter 48
ZOLAN
When Zolan had first begun trolling the red light districts of Paris, he’d known nothing about how they operated. The first night he strolled into a brothel that seemed fair enough. He bought a cocktail for the girl he was sitting with, a friendly twenty-five year old from Cambodia, and told her he wanted to hire her services. When she told him four hundred for everything, he knew he was in a tourist scam and said no thanks. Before he could leave, however, a gorilla of a bouncer handed him the bill: four hundred fifty euros for a beer and a cocktail. He asked the hooker if her offer was still good, which it was. So four hundred fifty for two drinks, or fifty bucks less for two drinks and a fuck—it wasn’t a hard decision.
Zolan was no longer so naïve. Now he knew the red light districts in and out. He knew every corner of every boulevard, every speakeasy brothel, what they charged, who worked where, and who worked on the side.
Last night he had been with Sonia, a pretty Czech girl with the face of a sixteen year old and the body of a lingerie model. She was from a top shelf brothel hidden in plain sight in the middle of Pigalle. She’d been slutty and fearless with soft hands and a willing tongue, just how he liked them.
He’d been thinking about Sonia and the hall of fame fuck all the way back from the surface, but stopped as soon as he entered the Great Hall.
Something had happened in his absence.
Usually Odo would be lying on his piss-stained mattress, staring at nothing in that stupid way of his. Franz would be fussing over his Hot Wheels collection, organizing the cars into neat piles only to reorganize them into different ones. If Hanns and Jörg and Karl weren’t out patrolling the tunnels, they would be lurking here somewhere, pissing
the hell out of all the others. In contrast, only Nora was present, wandering aimlessly at the far end of the room, picking at the scabs on her breasts. Zolan didn’t bother asking her where everyone else was; she had the mental aptitude of a two year old.
Then, distantly, he heard shouting. It came from the Dungeon.
Fucking Hanns, he thought immediately. Had to be Hanns. He was always acting up, causing mischief. The other day he hid several of Franz’s Hot Wheels. The two of them nearly killed each other in the ensuing fight, and it took hours to get everyone to settle down again.
So what had he done this time?
As Zolan moved through the tunnel system, the shouting crystalized, and there was a frenzied mania to it the likes of which he had never heard.
What the fuck was going on?
When he arrived at the entrance to the Dungeon, Zolan saw everything at once. That cataphile he had run into earlier—Macaroni—pinned to the ground by Jörg and Karl and all the others. The quiet cataphile, Chess, lying a few feet away, his head a pulpy mess. Beyond them, the beautiful cataphile, Stork Girl, screaming hysterically. Zolan didn’t immediately see the chatty cataphile, Roast Beef, but he didn’t have time to wonder about this because Hanns, standing tall above Macaroni, raised his bone in the air.
“Hanns!” Zolan commanded. “Halt!”
Hanns spun around, his eyes wide with surprise.
“Tut das nicht!” Zolan said. “Schlecht!”
Hanns threw his head back and howled in fury. He glared at Macaroni, then at Zolan, then at Macaroni again, and Zolan knew he wasn’t going to obey him.
He rushed forward as Hanns swung the bone. Macaroni jerked his head at the last moment, and the blow careened off his skull. Zolan shoved Hanns clear before he could attempt a second blow, shouting at him to leave the room, disbanding the crowd. He glanced again at Chess’s lifeless body, then turned his attention to Stork Girl. Her face was streaked with tears, and she held a knuckled fist to her mouth. She seemed too emotional to speak, so Zolan said in French, “I warned you not to go searching for that video camera.”
Her eyes rolled to the whites, and she fainted.
Chapter 49
DANIÈLE
The room could have been mistaken for a prince’s study—a very perverse prince—for despite the abundance of crimson drapery and silk pillows and turn-of-the-century furnishings and aged tomes scattered about, the walls were constructed—no, decorated—with bones. Tibias and femurs and humeri and others were affixed to every inch of available space, the geometrical handiwork punctuated here and there by staring skulls. The macabre display was lit by red candles burning in a half dozen different wrought-iron candelabras.
Danièle knew she must have fainted earlier, because when she’d opened her eyes a minute ago, she had been in this seat, Zolan crouched before her, patting her cheek.
Zolan the bum.
Zolan the drunk.
Zolan, Zolan, Zolan.
How could he possibly be behind all this—whatever this was?
A swath of fabric moved to her right, and Zolan emerged from a connecting room. He was dressed exactly as he had been in the Bunker, with the green bandana, olive fatigue jacket, and black T-shirt. He offered her the glass of water he had gone to fetch and sat nonchalantly on one corner of the adjacent desk, smiling hesitantly at her.
“Drink,” he said in French. “It will make you feel better, and we have a lot to talk about.”
Danièle didn’t want to accept the water. She didn’t want anything from Zolan, but her throat was parched, and she couldn’t resist.
Her wrists, she realized belatedly, were no longer manacled behind her back. They were wrapped in white cotton gauze, tinged red with blood from the abrasions beneath. Smears of petroleum jelly covered the nicks and cuts on her hands. Her right arm was sore to move, the skin bruised purple along the forearm, but she no longer believed it was fractured.
She took the glass and sipped. The water was divine! She gulped the rest back and wiped her mouth with her hand.
“Would you like more?” Zolan asked her.
Danièle set the glass on the desk and shook her head.
“I want to begin with an apology,” he said. “Your friend, I’m sorry about what happened.”
Pascal! Poor Pascal. She wanted to feel anger, but she only felt empty—empty and frightened and hopelessly confused. “He is dead,” she stated monotonously.
“If I were here earlier, it would not have happened—”
“Where is Will?”
“Macaroni?”
Tears sprung to Danièle’s eyes. Had she only recently nicknamed him that? How could their fortunes have changed so dramatically in such a short amount of time? “Yes…him,” she managed. “Where is he? Is he alive—?”
“He is fine. He is resting.”
Relief washed through her. “And Rob?”
“Roast Beef, yes. He is resting also.”
“You keep saying ‘resting.’” She frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
“They are breathing fine.”
“But they are unconscious?”
“Yes.”
“They need medical attention.”
“They’ll come around.”
“You are not a doctor!”
“I know you’re upset… What’s your name—your real name?”
Danièle considered not telling Zolan, but that would accomplish nothing. Her best chance of getting out of here alive, getting Will and Rob out alive too, was through cooperation, throwing herself at his mercy.
“Danièle,” she muttered. “My name is Danièle.” Hearing her voice so weak, so subservient, plunged her into despair. Her entire body began shaking.
“It’s okay,” Zolan told her. “You’re okay now. Your friends are okay—”
“Pascal is dead!” she said shrilly, and buried her face in her hands. She squeezed her eyes shut and succumbed to wracking sobs.
Gradually, however, the tightness in her chest lessened, and she got her breathing under control. She rubbed the tears from her cheek and saw that Zolan had lit a cigarette. Smoke swirled around his head in a bluish membrane. He was studying her in a way she didn’t like.
“Are you German?” she asked him.
“I am a French citizen,” he said.
“You spoke German to those…”
“My parents were German,” he said, nodding. “They taught the language to me. It is the only language my brothers and sisters understand.”
It took a moment for Danièle to clue in to his meaning. “Those things are your siblings?”
“Some, yes. Others are nieces and nephews. Others still, grandnephews and grandnieces.”
She shook her head and thought she might burst into sobs again. Instead she blurted, “What happened to them? Their lips and noses—did you do that?”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“Then who…?”
“My father,” Zolan said, shifting his weight on the desk as if to get comfortable.
“Your father?”
Zolan nodded. “He was a Waffen-SS Sturmbannführer in World War Two. He served as a senior intelligence officer in Paris, helped that lunatic Alois Brunner ship one hundred forty thousand Jews to the gas chambers, and had a hand in the execution of thirty SAS prisoners of war captured during Operation…Bulbasket, I believe they called it.” He tapped ash from the cigarette into the silver ashtray next to him. “Needless to say, after the Allied Forces liberated Paris, he had a high price on his head. Instead of trying to flee the city, as many SS personnel did, he and a handful of others went underground—literally. They gathered their families and whatever supplies they could carry, and they fled into the catacombs. The men surfaced every few nights to pilfer more supplies. Back then there were hundreds of different ways to enter—and exit—the catacombs. They could pop up in any part of the city they wanted and be gone again before anyone knew they were there.”
Zolan took a final drag of the cig
arette and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “Initially they planned to remain hidden for a few months,” he said. “By then, they thought, the Allies would be out of France, people would begin rebuilding their lives and the city, and fugitive Germans would be all but forgotten about. This, of course, was not the case, and by the time the Nuremberg Trials finished, they had been underground for roughly two years. Everyone but my father wanted to take a chance on escaping to Syria, or South America. When he realized he couldn’t convince the others to stay, he slit their throats while they slept, my mother’s too, sparing only the children, who he raised alongside myself. It was a precautionary measure. He had feared they would be captured and give up the location of the hideout.”
Danièle was listening to all this with a mixture of rapt attention and relief—the latter because the fact Zolan was sharing such information with her meant he likely wasn’t going to kill her. What was the point in educating only to execute?
“So you are telling me,” she said, with gathering composure, “that these people who attacked us, who killed Pascal, they are the descendants of Nazi war criminals?”
Zolan nodded.
“But surely your father could have left with the children at some point?”
“I agree. If he had wanted to.”
“Why wouldn’t he want to?”
“Because he had already begun to lose his mind. He didn’t tell me this, naturally. I was still a child then. But he kept a daily journal, which I have read many times. After the massacre, his entries devolved into a stream of consciousness. He would switch from topic to topic erratically, chronicle his day in one paragraph, go on a religious or political rant in the next. Soon the entries were nothing but illegible scribbles. Living underground in constant fear of discovery, isolated from society, lacking intellectual companionship, never seeing the sun…” Zolan shrugged. “I am not surprised he went crazy. I’m not surprised any of them went crazy.”
