Metal Man

by Ben Stevens

  Schroder stood beside his creation, looking across at the soldiers and the five men and women. Then he looked at the entrance into the camp, which the rail track beside the road led into. (The road itself ended in a square-shaped block of cement just outside.)

  There was a large courtyard inside, surrounded by a number of low buildings, many partially or almost completely destroyed.

  Some of the scarecrows in their striped uniforms were shuffling slowly around, their eyes fixed on the snow- and ice-covered ground, as though searching for something… Seemingly oblivious to the soldiers and their captives stood just outside the camp, or the titanium-armored machine of destruction that had just emerged from the rear of an extremely large military lorry…

  ‘We are going inside – there,’ Schroder told the Metal Man hesitantly, pointing.

  Again, the Metal Man inclined its head slightly, holding its huge gun.

  ‘If those soldiers standing over there try to stop us – destroy them,’ said Schroder then.

  The Metal Man looked over at the group stood on the outside of one barbed-wire fence.

  The soldiers stared back, one of the men pointing.

  ‘Do you understand?’ demanded Schroder.

  The Metal Man continued to stare.

  ‘Do you understand?’ repeated Schroder, worry beginning to sound in his voice.

  Another moment’s uncertainty – and then the Metal Man nodded.

  Schroder was less than reassured by this; but there was no choice other than to proceed. To try and find his mother in what Schroder realized now really was – as Reinhardt had said – a hell.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  23

  The sight of the buildings behind the barbed wire fences stirred a feeling within him. Similar to the one he experienced whenever he recalled the man he now knew was called Ackermann.

  But why did he dislike – hate – this man so greatly?

  Always there was a sensation of… something sudden and – sharp, when he remembered Ackermann.

  Yes; that was the word.

  Sharp.

  And then blood and -

  Pain?

  Another new word. But he could not approximate any type of feeling to go with this word.

  And why should he think of these words like pain and blood, when he was so different from other men? More akin to a machine, in fact. He’d heard himself being called this. A ‘Metal Man’: a man constructed from something other than flesh, bone and blood.

  Machines did not bleed or feel this…

  Pain.

  But there were more mental flashes, coming all the time now. Images; glimpses of… short scenes…

  A burning building, a women screaming, a man who was – sick – lying in a bed…

  A voice in his ear – Ackermann’s voice…

  The something sharp and sudden. And the pain…

  And back in the present: these buildings – of wood and metal. Strange people stood against the barbed-wire fences. Gaunt and shaven-headed. Men and women. A few children. Too few children.

  As he noticed them the feeling of revulsion disappeared, and instead he felt –

  Sadness? Pity? Compassion? (Another new word.)

  He recognized that they were – captives – of this place he instinctively hated on sight. A place vaguely similar to the other, where the woman had screamed and the baby had cried. The sounds that had stopped him from doing as he’d been ordered.

  From doing what he somehow sensed was…

  Wrong.

  And then that feeling almost of satisfaction when he’d grabbed one man around the neck – the man who’d been trying to take the crying baby away from the woman – and had applied the slightest pressure…

  And the order to desist from Ackermann; obeyed even though everything within him had pleaded for him…

  For him to continue – to kill this beast…

  And back in the present: four men dressed as that man had been, stood by the long fence which ran all around this – place. Next to them a group of five men and women.

  But he took renewed notice of the soldiers. He recognized them; one in particular – a broad, open face, the man stocky in build…

  That warm feeling again. A sense of familiarity and – something else. Something much more than familiarity. And again, this feeling stirring the flash of that woman who was now holding the baby.

  A – photo. Yes, that was what he was picturing. But he couldn’t remember – names, or – anything else. About the smiling woman or the baby. And this was something that made him feel sadder that he thought possible, staring out at a world which now had that

  +

  exactly in its centre…

  He was approaching those four soldiers, his maker by his side. The one whose commands he was to obey above anyone else’s. The soldiers had walked forwards slightly, leaving the five men and women stood behind them. By the barbed-wire fence. He saw now that those emaciated men and women who were stood behind this fence were shrinking back, as though they feared –

  Him?

  But they had nothing to fear – he felt only these strange feelings of sadness and compassion and pity for them…

  But now there was talking. Between his maker and these soldiers. He picked up some of the words.

  ‘… do not try and stop me…’ his maker was saying.

  ‘… this camp… nothing to do with us…’ returned the flat-faced soldier, for whom he felt this curious warmth.

  For this man – and the other three soldiers.

  ‘…I am going inside…’ declared his master –

  But he’d stopped listening. Couldn’t stop staring at this flat-faced man with the sandy… blonde… hair and beard. This man…

  His name…

  Think.

  It seemed suddenly to matter more than anything else that he remember this soldier’s name. So many of the images which were flashing up now seemed to relate to this man – and the three others.

  He –

  An ‘M’ – the name started with an ‘M’.

  …

  ‘Mayer,’ said the Metal Man at once.

  24

  ‘Wait…’ gasped Mayer. ‘Wait just one damn minute…’

  ‘You… you can talk…’ gasped Schroder, staring sideways at his creation.

  Then he shook his head, remembering what he’d come here to do. He couldn’t allow for any distractions. None at all.

  ‘I am going into this camp to find my mother,’ he informed the soldiers. ‘Don’t try and stop me – the Metal Man is under my command, and I have ordered him to destroy you if you try and interfere!’

  ‘But this… thing – it just said my name!’ declared Mayer angrily. He stepped in front of Schroder, blocking his path.

  At once the Metal Man aimed its gigantic weapon – more like a cannon than a gun – towards the soldier.

  Mayer stared defiantly up at its black goggle eyes.

  ‘So you just said my name – and now what? You plan to shoot me?’ he demanded, the words escaping his mouth almost before he’d even thought of them.

  The black goggle eyes stared down at Mayer, above the grill-like ‘mouth’.

  ‘Weber,’ said the Metal Man again. His voice was like that which you’d hear coming from a radio, late at night. Distant, dispassionate, the speaker wholly anonymous.

  Then, suddenly –

  ‘Move your ass.’

  Mayer staggered back slightly, exchanging an incredulous glance with Bach, Amsel and Weber.

  ‘Brucker?’ he gasped, staring back at the Metal Man.

  Ignoring what was taking place between the Metal Man and the four SS soldiers, Schroder stepped determinedly forwards. He walked towards the entrance into this camp, alongside the railway track. Over this entrance was a huge wrought-iron sign, curved in shape, which read –

  Germany Needs Your Arms.

  Schroder heard his creation walking just behind him and to one side. His personal b
odyguard – at least for now. He – it – knew at least one of these soldiers’ names; had even just spoken in the customarily crude manner of the fighting man…

  Were the parts of the brain Schroder had used, from the anonymous donor who’d been stabbed to death, now somehow ‘activating’ and taking over the mechanical side of his creation…?

  Then, once again, Schroder disregarded this particular puzzle. His mission now: to locate his mother. Nothing else was important.

  *

  Stood behind the strange little man with the bowtie and the glasses, who was walking alongside the Metal Man into the sprawling camp, the four soldiers consulted among themselves.

  ‘I was sure… it had to be Brucker,’ said Mayer, although his voice was now tinged with doubt.

  ‘We were sat beside Brucker’s body a good couple of hours,’ reminded Bach, as Amsel and Weber nodded. ‘He was… dead – we all saw that.’

  ‘I know, but – what that… that thing just said,’ queried Mayer. ‘What the hell is it, in any case? A man? A machine? And now – what? It can speak?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Weber thoughtfully. ‘Anymore than I know who that little guy is who’s walking beside it. He looks – well, he looks Jewish to me.’

  ‘He said the Metal Man is ‘under my command’,’ noted Amsel. ‘What does that mean, exactly – that he made it? A Jew built this wonder-toy for the Third Reich?’

  ‘I’m going in after it,’ declared Mayer suddenly. ‘It said my name – how did it know that? Whatever it is, I’ve got to find out…’

  ‘This place… I know it’s bad, and God knows what these people inside have suffered,’ began Bach – and something in his voice now made the other three soldiers look silently at him. ‘But – remember… There’re four of us, with only limited ammunition. These people inside are going to be looking to rip us – as German SS soldiers – limb from limb, the slightest chance they get. And that’s before the Ruskies even get here…’

  ‘Bach’s got a point,’ said Weber quietly. ‘As SS men, we don’t want to end up as prisoners of the Russians. Better we just die fighting; or else get back into Germany as soon as we can.’

  ‘I hear you,’ returned Mayer, his jaw firm, ‘but I’ve got to know…’

  ‘Okay…’ sighed Weber. He turned back and called across to the man named Arnold –

  ‘We’re going into this camp for a short while! You can stay here, or come with us…’

  For a few moments, Arnold first interpreted what had been said into Polish and then the group of five men and women briefly chattered among themselves. They held their outer clothing tight against their bodies in defense against the cold, and looked with stark, fearful eyes in the direction of the camp.

  But when Arnold replied, he said –

  ‘We want to come in with you.’

  Weber shrugged.

  ‘Okay, then,’ he said.

  Quieter to Bach, Amsel and Mayer, he remarked –

  ‘I thought they’d want to stay outside.’

  ‘They probably think now they’ve got a little protection, so long as they stick with us,’ suggested Amsel.

  The four soldiers set off after the Metal Man and his creator, followed by the five Poles.

  25

  A foul, freezing wind blew through the camp. Long wooden huts with slightly sloping roofs, the windows caged. The train track ran into the camp and ended in an area of the inner courtyard that had a large platform on either side. Several tall steel poles with lights on top.

  By the end of the train track there was also a large, brick-built building, partially demolished. The towering chimney and its now-visible damaged, stunted twin, further inside the camp, dominated the horizon.

  The snow in the camp had been churned into a filthy, grey and yellow sludge. There was rubble and debris everywhere, and those shaven-headed, cadaverous inmates who shuffled silently around, their eyes fixed on the ground.

  Then one bent down, picking up a dented metal tin. Schroder understood that these inmates were scavenging for food, which was to be found lying in places around the camp. Perhaps dropped there by the guards who’d fled some time earlier. Or the camp stores since looted by the inmates…

  But the inmates were shrinking back at the appearance of the Metal Man. They were disappearing further inside the camp, hiding behind the huts and buildings.

  Schroder coughed, clearing his throat.

  Then he said loudly –

  ‘I am not here, with this machine, to hurt you! I am half-Jewish, and my mother is here. I only want to find her; her name is Schroder. She came here…’

  His voice paused, choked.

  ‘She came here over three years ago.’

  He wondered if anyone even understood what he was saying. This camp was in Poland, after all.

  But there were Germans here – of course there were. Stupid. Germans like his mother…

  ‘Are you hearing me?’ cried Schroder suddenly. He could sense rather than see the inmates creeping around the buildings near him, peering out at him and his creation with the gleaming, jet-black armor, its outsized hands holding that huge gun…

  A man stepped forwards. He had paper stuffed inside his wooden clogs. He held a ragged grey blanket like a cloak against him. His eyes were deep, staring out at Schroder from some personal well of horror.

  ‘Why you bring soldiers with you?’ he asked in heavily-accented German. He had only two teeth left; incisors that looked like fangs in his upper gum. ‘That why everyone hide. Me – I not care. I feel like dead already.’

  The man then motioned with a flick of his chin behind Schroder. The scientist turned around to see the four SS men cautiously advancing, followed by the five men and women who had the appearance of being peasants.

  ‘What are you doing?’ demanded Schroder of the soldier in front, who had a flat, open face.

  Before Mayer could reply, a woman appeared, holding a baby close against her breast. She approached the Metal Man, staring almost in wonder at it. Then she cried out something in her own tongue, turning back around to face the other, hidden inmates.

  They began, cautiously, to emerge.

  ‘She say that this… metal soldier of yours saved her baby. That it hurt another soldier who try to take the baby from her,’ explained the man with the fang-like teeth. ‘She say this metal soldier is a friend of the Jew, despite the swastika on its arm. That it not attack the Jew even when order to.’

  Schroder shook his head.

  ‘My mother – I want to find my mother,’ he insisted. ‘That is why I am here.’

  The man with the fang-like teeth pulled up one of the sleeves of his striped jacket, exposing the inside of his left forearm. There was a tattoo of five numbers, coming after the letter ‘B’.

  ‘You see that letter?’ hissed the man, coming closer to Schroder. His breath was poisonous, indicative of some rank, tumorous disease. ‘I come here over three year ago – as part of what is call ‘Shipment B’.

  ‘Everyone I arrive here with – many other Jew, and some gypsy, are now dead. I am longest living person here in this camp; most other been here not even a year; a few just one or two week, even. Three times in three year my name is chosen for selection – and three time, by sheer chance, I am in sick-bay, too ill even to walk. So three time I escape the gas chamber.’

  The man sighed, and began to cry quietly, almost without change of expression.

  ‘Am I lucky? I don’t know,’ he said then. ‘Maybe I think not.’

  ‘Gas chamber?’ whispered Schroder. ‘What do you…’

  He couldn’t finish, staring at the silently weeping man. His thoughts whirled. This man was the only person still surviving, out of those people who’d been transported to this camp over three years ago.

  So that meant his mother was –

  ‘Oh no, no,’ he stammered, tears beginning to prick at his own eyes. He stared over at the chimneys, one partially demolished, which arose out of a large, squat,
brick-built building.

  Two massive chimneys, designed and built for the purpose of emitting –

  Smoke.

  Gas chamber.