by Ryder Stacy
“Slow down,” Smith 679 screamed out through a small cardboard megaphone he always carried with him. He could see the foaming green and purple scummed swamp just a few hundred yards ahead. There was protective concrete stopgate about five feet from the edge but all he needed was for the fools to go too fast and slam right through. His private room, his real food—scraps from the officer’s canteen—all would be gone. His life he cared little about, it was the privileges, the power over the others. That was his only purpose, his only reason for life.
The slaves stopped pushing and ran alongside the gradually slowing death car, reaching out with extended hands when it grew closer to the swamp and pulling back now, trying to stop the great load of carcasses. They eased the freight in so the car stopped just a foot from the concrete embankment.
“Excellent, excellent,” Smith 679 said, jumping from the truck with as much of a smile as his greedy rodentlike face could exhibit. All his worries of losing his “wealth” vanished like clouds of a thunderstorm blown away—at least for today.
He walked over to the swamp and looked in. It seemed all right today. Sometimes it bubbled and seemed to almost writhe with releasing gasses and decomposing matter. Every bit of waste that the fort produced was dumped here—from the bodies to the rotting food of the officers to the excrement, used chemicals, and by-products of their science and production labs. It stretched on for miles, thick as pea soup but never smooth, always covered with a surface of thick, bubbling foam with the tops of things dumped in recently still poking through from place to place—the roof of a wrecked car, a leg . . . God knew how deep the thing was—but so far, at least, it seemed to be able to swallow everything they could give it. Only strange narrow black-barked trees with red leaves and purple vines running down their trunks seemed able to grow in the foulness. They stood every fifty, hundred feet or so in little groves of ten or twenty, rising right out from under the impenetrable green oily muck below them.
“Okay—dump ’em!” Smith 679 yelled out, walking the ten feet over to the railroad car. The men formed a line and walked down to the side of the car, each one in turn spearing the closest body on the flatbed on the tip of his long, curved pitchfork. Each man hoisted the thing with all his upper-body strength so that he was holding it almost upright some four or five feet straight over his head, and walked with lurching steps toward the edge of the swamp where he let the pitchfork fall forward so that the body splashed into the thick slime and disappeared instantly beneath the surface.
Rockson’s fork tore into a frail-looking elderly man with a long silver beard. The man’s naked body looked almost child-like without hair. He couldn’t have lasted very long in a Nazi workgang, Rockson thought to himself as he lifted it overhead and walked over to the bank. He let the man fall down and watched with a tightening sensation in his stomach as the body, that rigor mortis piece of nothing that had once been a man with a real life, was disposed of like the most wretched piece of refuse. He vowed to wreak revenge for all the dead right then and there. Somehow, he, whoever the hell he was, would make the murderers pay—in blood. And he also knew, whoever he was, that he was the kind of man who would do what he vowed.
His next corpse must have been ten days old, as it seemed ready to come apart at the proverbial seams of the shoulder and thigh at any moment. Rockson hefted it carefully, but as he jerked it overhead one of the legs fell off and landed on his shoulder, flopping onto the ground with a slapping dead sound. Rock watched the limbless body plunge into the green swamp and then, with a look of infinite disgust, speared the chalk-white leg with dark green veins running along each side and hefted it over into the muck. It had just hit the foam and slid in, when Rock felt himself grow faint. Voices, images, crashing in his head. He couldn’t understand them, but they hurt—burning like shrapnel ripping through his skull. He felt himself falling, falling, being pulled toward a cacophonous chorus of madness. Suddenly an arm was pulling him. Rock opened his eyes and looked up into the grimy face of the friendly slave he had talked to behind the railroad car.
“Mister you was almost just dead,” the man said, pulling Rock back, and letting him go, as he saw the man could stand on his own. “You was halfway down into that swamp,” the slave continued with a half grin on his face, “eyes rolling up in your head and all. I just happened to be behind you and . . .”
“Thanks,” Rock said, with a smile. He owed his life to the man. “What’s your name?”
“Tom 72,” he said, then leaned forward, relaxing. “Real name’s Calvin Windbinder.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Windbinder. I’m afraid I don’t even know my real name, so for the moment just call me Joe 113.”
“Well you watch out mister. Life ain’t worth a lip of soggy spit around here. They’d just as soon watch you go in as not. Even the other slaves. Me—I guess I ain’t given up on being a human being yet. No matter how bad things are.” He turned and headed back to the line of body movers, carrying the long blood-spattered pitchfork loosely in one hand. Rock stepped back from the endless miles of green swamp and scanned it with his keen eyes. The voices—very dim and moving off. What the hell were they? Why could he hear them and no one else? Nothing made sense to him. He was a stranger even in his own flesh.
Eight
Rona had the hood removed from her eyes only after she was hustled into a car and taken to an immense building several miles away. The air conditioning inside hit her like a brick. It was hot and moist outside, but inside arcticly cool. Only high officers would have such costly temperature controls. She looked around. She was in a marble hall, the foyer to the cylindrical-shaped building above her. The walls were covered with swastikas and a huge banner with Hitler’s face.
There were footsteps coming down a flight of stairs ahead—it was the man who had bought her, walking with another even higher-ranked German, an ugly scarred man with a black eyepatch over one eye, a strange covering that seemed to be made of multifaceted glass.
“Ah yes, I see,” the eye-patched Nazi said to his second-in-command, “you have not lied, she is quite beautiful indeed.” He put his hand on her chin and turned her face this way and that. “Such fine classical features—like an ancient Aryan goddess. Yes, yes, we must check her.” He turned to the guard to his right. “Kurt, bring the templates up to my office.” The man clicked his heels and rushed off. The guards hustled Rona along behind the Nazi high commander, over to the elevator and then up to a plush office suite on the 9th floor. “There,” the eye-patched German told her to sit on a red velvet sofa. She glared at him, but was glad to rest and sat down.
He seemed to be nervous as he sat several feet away and kept staring at her with a peculiar expression on his hard face. She looked about the room to avoid his steel gaze. There was of course, the picture of Hitler lit with its own track lighting. The Führer was dressed as a Teutonic knight in shiny armor, astride a strong Germanic-looking steed. Behind him cities burned and beneath the horse’s front hooves, someone with a long nose and money falling from a purse—was being crushed—a Jew, no doubt. The usual Nazi bullshit, she thought as she scanned the rest of the room.
There were immense oil paintings depicting stars, galaxies, and a number of astrological symbols. Yes, she remembered that the Nazis were deeply into the movement of the stars, as Hitler had been. Deeply into the forces of destiny and the collective racial unconscious. Ideas like reincarnation, predestination, racial memory—all these were accepted by the Germans in some twisted sort of way. In the way that the Iron Cross was used by them—a symbol of Christ—but perverted, twisted. They knew nothing of real spirituality, the way of inwardness, the way of meditation. Instead they had chosen a pseudo-religious Nazi religion of purity that justified their genocide against the Jews, the gypsies, the Buddhists—anyone who didn’t fit the Nazi mold.
She turned to the largest illuminated oil painting on the wall to her left and gasped. A tuxedoed Adolph was sitting in a Victorian chair, calm, in control, fatherly. And half-l
ying at his feet was Eva Braun. Not the mousey Eva Braun, Hitler’s mistress, that Rona had seen old file photos of in Century City’s archives, but a greatly idealized, perfect Eva Braun. She had reddish-blonde locks down to her bare very ample breasts—breasts with tiny pink nipples. Eva sat absolutely naked, long-leggedly stretched out looking up at her man, the Führer. Rona realized that Eva’s face reminded her not of the real Eva Braun but of someone else. Then she nearly gasped—it was her own face. And that full body, strong and big-boned, yet graceful, sexual like a cat—it was Rona’s!
No wonder the Nazi officer was looking at her so strangely. He sat under the portrait every day, daydreaming, thinking of the glorious German past.
“Please be comfortable,” the German suddenly spoke up. “What is your name?”
“My real name is for my friends only,” the Freefighter replied coldly. A decanter was rolled over to her on a serving table by one of Von Reisling’s underlings.
“Care for some sherry? Perhaps some schnapps?” he asked, trying to sound his most civilized.
“Nein,” she snarled.
“German? Very good. How much do you speak, beautiful woman?” She let him have a string of insults. The German language hypnotapes, the Freefighters had listened to in Century City before the battle of Forrester Valley had been quite efficient. The eye-patched officer reddened noticably.
“So fluent . . . and so vile . . . but you interest me.” Von Reisling stood up, admiring her figure, long and lean yet so full.
“Guard, have the skull templates arrived?”
“Jawohl, mein commandant,” the soldier replied, handing over the device, designed by the Germans to measure racial characteristics. Von Reisling took them and then ordered the soldier out.
“Remove yourself, but first check her ankle and hand restraints. This woman appears to be problematic.” The guard checked the cuffs and left, closing the door behind him.
“My name is Von Reisling. General Von Reisling. Perhaps you have heard of me?” the German officer asked.
“Why should I have?” Rona answered coldly.
“I am in charge of this area of the U.S.S.A. As a matter of fact, it has been ceded to me. This is to be the seat of the Fourth Reich—the new Germany.” He opened his desk and took out a long sharp dagger and approached her. “Relax,” he said with a dark smile, “I only wish to remove your garments. These silly clothes will have to be cut off. A woman like you should be seen fully to be appreciated. I will arrange proper dress for you later.” He began cutting off her sheer clothing and she couldn’t do a thing to stop him. He took his time, pausing and half gasping as he sliced away the red halter top. The fullness of her white tipped breasts came free.
“Such a wonderful roundness,” he said. “Like a German goddess.” He reached out to touch her, squeezing the flesh fruits between his icy fingers. “Ah, let us see the rest,” he said with a hoarse whisper, drawing back. He continued to cut away at her garments which fell to her feet, until the only thing she had on were the sparkling red high heel shoes. He stood up and admired her.
Then he walked over to the desk to the pile of labelled templates—cutout profiles of the “Ideal Aryan Woman.” He picked up the first one, carefully placed it against her silhouette.
“Hmm, not quite—but that’s type six, the lowest. Let’s skip to number three.” Still it didn’t match. There was one last template left and he fitted it against her face—and gasped. “Eva Braun,” he cried out. “You are the reincarnation of Eva Braun!” He stepped back from her, a mixture of seething desire and fear on his pale face.
Rona suddenly had a hunch. If she was a goddess, then he was a mere mortal. Perhaps she could use it to her advantage.
“Yes, I am Eva Braun, Hitler’s wife whom he married just before shooting himself—and me—in the Berlin bunker in 1945. How dare you treat me like this!” she spat out. “I have put up with your stupid insults, your coarseness long enough.” She glared at him„ trying to work some of the ESP thought-influencing that Rock had shown her, trying to reach into the German’s mind to make him fear her.
“Now, kneel before me, cur. Properly show your respect.” Von Reisling grew white, his one good eye fixed like glue to her glaring green eyes that were so dominant, so . . . He fell to his high booted knees, and crawled the distance to her along the floor. It’s working, Rona thought, though even she was amazed at how well.
“Now, show your respect,” she commanded. The Nazi leader began licking the fronts of her high heels, then her ankles.
“Just the shoes, insolent one,” she demanded in as haughty a tone as she could muster.
“Yes, my goddess, yes. Just to kiss your shoes. Yes, yes . . .” She let him grovel and slobber at her feet for a while while she tried to think of what to do next.
Within hours Rona was unbound, bathed in milk and dressed in a golden robe, classical Greek style as Eva Braun wore in many of the idealized paintings of her. She was given silk slippers and two handmaidens and taken to a vast, white-draped room on the top floor of the cylindrical building that was Von Resling’s headquarters. From her barred window she surveyed the city of Goerringrad, only six months old but growing in leaps and bounds as money was poured in from Vassily in Moscow. Down and to her left she saw the slave market where she had been sold just hours before. Now she was here, in a palace, a living goddess, to be worshipped. Fate handed out strange surprises. If she could just somehow use her position to find Rockson, to kill these Nazi swine. But she felt suddenly achingly tired and lay her red tresses on the satin pillows of her bed. The two maids came and tucked her in, and then sat near her, watching as the goddess slept.
But the news the next morning was sobering. Yes, she was Eva Braun, reincarnated goddess. They wouldn’t harm her. They would feed her, let her sleep, let her do anything, the gold-robed Nazi priest said, “anything except leave.” A living goddess was to be worshipped. She might spend the rest of her life comfortably, with perfumed servants, with ethereal gowns, untouched, a virgin. But she could never leave. Never.
All that day, high Nazi officers came to see her and fall at her feet. Von Reisling too, came twice, begging her to let him once again kiss her bare feet. She kicked him in the face when he tried. But her physical and verbal abuse of the Nazi ruler seemed to only increase his affections for her. For he had found—in his mind—the one, the perfect woman. And he wished to be punished by her.
The high priest came again that night, trying to get her to cooperate more with her new role as goddess incarnate, telling her what an honor it all was, and that she would come to realize how privileged she was, come to understand her obligations to the Reich. He gave her a picture of Hitler to sleep with—a three-dimensional picture of the short, mustached murderer with that constant stern look.
When the priest left, she spat on it and threw it into the corner where it split into pieces. Suddenly her new vocation as Nazi goddess didn’t seem to hold too many possibilities—it was a prison. A prison from which she might never escape.
Nine
Colonel Killov smirked as the nervous butler delivered him his vegetable juice laced with megavitamins. This butler was new—the old one, Georgi, had dropped a saucer on Killov’s lap the week before. Georgi did not survive the experimental intestinal transplant surgery performed on him that same night. This butler was truly Germanic looking. It would look good, when Von Reisling came, Killov thought, to show Aryan servants waiting upon me. To show the Nazi Commander that all men—even Nazi leaders—must bend to his will.
And why not, the KGB leader mused as he dismissed the pale faced butler with a wave of his heavily veined skeletal hand. I am a superman too. Perhaps I’ve lost some weight due to the obligations of my high office of late. He looked in the mirror and then quickly away as what he saw didn’t quite fit his concept of an Aryan god. The many pills he took to keep himself going had escalated over the last year until he was an addict, using as many as 30 different pills a day—ups, downs, tranqui
lizers, euphorics—he had lost count. His body had shrunken down to just under 90 pounds and his face had grown gaunt as a skull, hence the name “The Skull” had been given to him, by those who served under him—never of course, spoken to his face.
But if Killov was not the prettiest of those vying for power in the world of 2089 A.D., he was the most ruthless and clever—a master of double-dealing strategy. He had managed to make contact with the Supreme Nazi commander in the United Socialist States of America, Von Reisling, and convince him that Premier Vassily had never meant for the Nazi invasion to succeed, but to be wiped out here in the radioactive mountains of Colorado. And once he had planted the seed of doubt, of betrayal, in the German’s mind, he had been able to lure him over to his side—and along with him nearly 150,000 highly trained commandos. Just the kind of force that Killov could use to take on Premier Vassily, through his lackey, Zhabnov and the Red Army forces here in America. Von Reisling had hesitated for a time, but the stupid battle plans of Vassily had resulted in the destruction of nearly two-thirds of the proud German army and his panzer divisions. But once convinced, the eye-patched general was eager to have his remaining troops join Killov’s KGB Death Squads. He would throw in his lot with “The Skull” rather than go back to Germany defeated, a coward.
Killov called his helipilot Sarmonsky and ordered him to ready a flight to Goerringrad. Within minutes he was flying off from his Denver monolith, the KGB headquarters, and off to the newly built Nazi Fortress City of Goerringrad. He was impressed with the amount of construction they had been able to throw up in just months. If he could just tap that fanatic Nazi energy he could have the world.
