Richter's gaze was all that was needed to prevent the lieutenant from offering any more opinions. Before he could respond to defend himself, he heard a shout from one of the men. It came from Fähnrich Immanuel Zimmer, the ensign just beneath Harald in rank.
“Commander! We've found something!”
Richter walked to meet the man, his coat billowing behind him. The other men followed, climbing down the path a few paces at the rear.
“What is it?”
“It looks like he's been here. We found a cave, of sorts.”
“But he's not here now?”
“No, Commander. But the inside... well, you have to see this for yourself. If he's sick, then... well, I'd say he's beyond recovery.”
“What do you mean? Explain yourself.”
“There are things inside,” Zimmer said. He looked ashen. “There are bodies. Animal bodies. They're mutilated.”
“Then, perhaps Kriege is further along than we thought. I would not expect anyone who was as far gone as your Captain Smit to be worth saving. We don't know what kinds of things they're capable of. It's why we must all be careful, yes?”
The man looked at him and stuttered, but only for a moment. “Yes, Commander. Of course.”
Ahead of him, Harald watched as the pair made their way to the edge of the mountains and paused at the rocks. It was difficult to see, but as his eyes adjusted, he could make out a hole in the side of the rock face. It was more than big enough for a man.
Taking a torch from one of his men, Richter ducked inside. Behind him, Metzger and Seiler held back, undecided. No one noticed that the last member of their group, young Hans, had disappeared.
5
From the shadows, the boy watched as they wandered through the Thinking Place. He wanted to shout at them, to scream at them, to make them leave, but he couldn't. He had to hide.
“My God,” said the lieutenant. “What the hell is this place?”
They were sifting through his things with looks disgust. They didn't understand, and he couldn't make them.
Ensign Zimmer stopped in front of Hans Junior. He grabbed the seal around the midsection and tried to lift, but little Hans wouldn't budge. His insides were dry now, gluing him to the pole. After a few seconds, the man let him go, and Junior slipped back down onto the anus spike.
On the other side of the cavern, Dietrich was going over his collection of bird parts. The lieutenant pulled one off of its string and tossed it into a corner, revolted. Hans shook with rage; it had taken him hours to string up the heads and the beaks, and here this man was, tearing one down just because he could.
Next to Dietrich, however, was none other than Boris. He had never showed Boris his Thinking Place and wondered what he would do. At least he was being respectful. Not like Dietrich. Not like the others.
The Gestapo agent made his way to the wall of birds, and a look of recognition dawned on his face. He saw the orange beak and knew it for what it was. He and Hans had spent all day laying a trap for that penguin, and when it had blown, he had been the one to pick the beak out of the pile of guts. When the commander started doing inspections, Boris had given it back to Hans for safe keeping, and now, here it was.
It was almost a shame, really. The beak didn't have a name (it was just a beak, after all), and Boris seemed oblivious to the real personalities in the room. Lucas and Friedricke sat patiently while Boris ignored them. He even ignored Jesus, the black bird that Hans had found amongst the Slimy Things. Jesus was still pinned to the wall, one of Hans's prize trophies. Most of his other friends were just animals, but Jesus was... well, he was black, wasn't he?
A black Jesus, Hans thought, and had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing. As he moved, he felt the weight of the package in his coat. It was annoying to have, but too late to put it back. Dietrich looked over his shoulder, and Hans tensed and quieted. His mother had never found his Thinking Place at home, and even though his new mothers and fathers had found this one, he had no intention of being discovered along with it.
“How many do you think he's killed?” Metzger asked.
“Dozens,” the lieutenant said. “Maybe a hundred, I don't know. What do you think, Seiler?”
Boris shrugged. He was beginning to look a little green in the face.
Hans wondered what this could mean. Certainly, Boris wasn't having the best reaction. The best reaction (and one Hans often had himself), was to feel your thing get stiff in your pants, and to feel yourself want to smile. Boris didn't look like either one of those things was happening. He looked, if anything, like he didn't want to be here.
“I'd say at least a hundred,” Zimmer said, looking around. “I never would have known the old guy had it in him. He must have been busy.”
“He's not himself,” the lieutenant retorted.
“I'll say.”
“And we would be wise not to forget it.”
All four men spun as a pair of hands clapped the air. It was Commander Richter, circling back around after doing his own inspection.
“You actually believe Kriege did this?”
“What?”
“I wouldn't expect you two louts to figure it out, but you, Lieutenant. I'm disappointed in you.”
Dietrich's back was to Hans, but the boy could feel the man's unease. Hans wondered if he would hit the commander, the way he had done to Hans when he was peeing on the bunker. But no, he remembered you were only supposed to hit soldiers underneath of you. Not commanders, and especially not the Schutzstaffel.
“What?” the lieutenant asked.
The commander pointed to Lucas. “That head has been here at least a week. So have most of these specimens. Given the stains on the walls, I'd say we have a collector here who has been at it for quite some time.”
Zimmer looked around, confused. “You mean Kriege was infected a week ago?”
“No, you fool,” Dietrich snapped. “He's saying Kriege didn't do it all.” His voice had a newfound certainty in it. He was looking at Boris, and Boris's face said everything. For being good at his job and all that, his friend wasn't good at keeping secrets himself. Hans didn't blame him; he wasn't good at it either.
“All this time,” Richter said, “we had a little freelance artist. We had someone who thought he could go into restricted space, right in the danger zone of the crater, and have some fun. Now I have a pretty good idea of who that someone could be, don't you, Lieutenant?”
Could he mean Hans? The boy shivered. He did not like the commander, not one bit.
“Yes sir,” Dietrich said quietly.
“And you had no idea this was happening?”
“None.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Richter knocked the hat off of the lieutenant's head. “I was considering promoting you, of letting you grow into that hat, Lieutenant. Now, I'm thinking of busting you down to head cook. For all your talents, you're blind to the things right under your nose.”
From the shadows, Hans could feel the rage seeping off of the lieutenant. He could feel the redness and shame on his face. And though he was scared now, scared of what their words could mean, this gave him some pleasure. Not the same kind of pleasure he got from making friends, but a mean kind of pleasure.
Zimmer shifted. “What now?”
The commander took one more stroll around the room. When he got to the wall of birdies, he ripped one of the heads off and stared at it. Hans prayed for his friend—James was his name, little James—to be friendly to the commander. He should be friendly to save himself, but he wasn't. He must have looked at the commander with spite, because really, he could only be nice to Hans. Hans was the one who brought him here and friended him and fed him and pet him.
Richter tossed James to the floor. “Burn it. All of it.”
At first, Hans thought he hadn't heard right. Then he gasped, realizing what this meant. His Thinking Place, done for! All of his friends, all of his work. He had been holding out hope that eventually, the men would leave. They woul
d go away and forget about old Hans, and then Hans could come back and sit. And think. And be with his friends again.
Burn it!
They were going to destroy it! And maybe they would destroy Hans, too. Toss him into the fire and watch him burn. Burn him and all of his friends.
He put his hands to his temples, feeling water squeeze out of his eyes. He wanted to shout, but he knew he couldn't. He simply sank to the floor and huddled. The package in his coat clunked heavily against the dirt.
“Lieutenant, you and Zimmer clean this up. Inform me when it's done,” Richter said.
Dietrich and Zimmer went about with their smashing. They tore the animals from their poles, removed the wire from the walls, and gathered the bodies in a pile. It would not be long before it was ash.
Hans couldn't watch. He pulled himself together and snuck out of the cave, slinking through the darkness so as not to be seen. He had always been so careful coming in, and here he was sneaking out for the first time.
And the last time.
That brought more water to his eyes. He didn't want it to be there, it made him feel like a sissy, but it was all he could do to keep from breaking down completely. He could deal with being hit. He could deal with being laughed at. That was all right. He'd been putting up with that since he was a little kid. But not his friends. There was no reason to take James and Lucas and Friedricke and Hans Junior and all of them away. Not when he was the one to blame.
Outside, the night air had never felt so cold. He could see the torches dancing around the perimeter of the crater like fireflies. With all of the hubbub, he wouldn't be missed. He supposed he could find new friends. He could make a new home. It would be hard if he couldn't sleep at the base any more, but maybe he could sneak back and get some of his things. He still had the bulge under his coat too, and that might come in handy. Hans didn't know how he would use it yet, but he knew it wouldn't be on any more penguin experiments.
Maybe he would get revenge. He stopped and thought about it. Yes, revenge! That sounded good.
“Revenge,” he said.
Isn't that what you were supposed to do when someone hurt your friends?
Down below, the torches went on dancing. The men would be out there for hours, still looking for old, crazy Kriege.
They would never find him.
6
With the dirty work done, Harald stepped outside of the cave to get some fresh air. He left the actual fire-building to Zimmer, and he had no desire to stare at the mutilated bodies any longer than necessary. Good God. His urge to return home, usually so distant and abstract, became a thundering, pounding need. He was disgusted, both with the men, and with himself for being so bloody ignorant. So let Zimmer deal with the blood.
Though he didn't yet know it, this was to be his saving grace.
A minute after Immanuel Zimmer doused the corpses and threw a match, the heat became so intense that it spread to the corners of the room. While the ensign was smart enough to stay out of the smoke and the heat, the remaining explosives Private Wägner kept buried in the cave, having no sentience or mind of their own, were not. The explosive ordnance, the gunpowder, and the collection of Model-24 grenades heated. And sparked. And blew.
With no warning whatsoever, the cave behind Lieutenant Harald Dietrich erupted in a ball of thunder. Harald was blown to the edge of the crater, rock shrapnel raining down behind him. The entire cave collapsed in a mass of dust and debris. Zimmer—along with Friedricke, Lucas, Hans Junior, and Jesus—was simply obliterated.
Chapter 19: Nightfall
The Island:
Present Day
1
The four figures rose from the water in the light of the dying sun. Mason knew its passage marked the birth of the winter season, but none of them would live to see it. He crawled up the beach like a spider, only regaining his full height when his boots hit solid ground. He felt taller somehow, leaner. It was as if every part of him that was not muscle and bone was being burned away.
“To me,” he said. Even his voice had changed. It was slick, serpentine.
His men slipped quietly from the water and came to stand beside him on the beach. Their skin had become splotchy, covered in those bruises that were not quite bruises. He could see the stuff had webbed through his own forearms, lacing up his skin with a varicose intensity.
Of course it had.
They had stood on the deck of The Aeschylus and inhaled the spores of the burning Carrion for the better part of an hour. Every one of them had been wounded, and so every one of them was changing. That didn't matter now, because that same damnation had saved them. It had saved them from the waters, and it had given them strength.
In some strange way, he felt he had come home. The tentacles curled about the hills above them, whispering to him in the back of his mind.
He turned to his men. There would be no speeches this time, no final words of do or die. They were here for one purpose, and it would be foremost in their minds until their minds were no more. They would need to get a lay of the land first. He thought they would start at the docks. AJ would have landed there, and they would be searching for the McCreedy woman. His old pal surely could not know she lay safely tucked behind a locked door at the base. After he took care of his old understudy, Mason thought he might have another go at her. There was no point in keeping her locked away now. They could all have fun with her, if they wanted. It was a nice thought, if it was to be their final act. Her cries would be a welcome and lustful thing.
All of this, he sensed, his men understood.
Without a word, he began walking up the shore. They would take the high ground, and they would search.
They would seek.
And they would kill.
2
When AJ stepped from the bunker, he was decked out in full black, his pants buttoned and his shirt tucked. A pair of jackboots had replaced his shit-kickers, a gun belt looped around his waist. He adjusted his cuffs and ran a hand through his damp hair, now returned to its normal fiery hue. “What do you think? Handsome?”
Kate was sitting on the ground, Indian-style. “No, creepy.”
“They had a choice of regular army or S.S. I figured I'd go all out.”
“How does it fit?”
“A little tight in the shoulders, but I'll manage.”
“I found something while you were in there.”
“Oh yeah? Just a sec.” He ducked back inside and returned with a pair of infantry rifles. He placed them on the ground, then checked the gun in his belt. Kate didn't remember the name for it, but it was one of those German war pistols you always saw in movies, the ones with the skinny barrels.
“Hurry up,” she said.
The two bodies in the supply bunker were not the only ones unaffected by the fungus. Kate had discovered a third man, this one crushed under the weight of the ceiling inside of the collapsed basement. Knowing that The Carrion hadn't wanted them after they had expired was comforting, in a way, but she was never going to get used to the sight of someone who had died in agony.
“Grisly,” AJ said when he saw it. “Is this what you wanted to show me?”
“No, look at this.”
The fallen supports had created a ramp, and Kate navigated down them, balancing herself with her hands. If the man in the hole had still been alive, she would have been adding to his misery. At the bottom, she jumped to the floor and walked over to a huge, metal cylinder. It spanned the height of the basement, touching what remained of the ceiling in the corner. Half a dozen tubes and ducts ran off of it, most of them broken. She pointed to a stain on the floor, a large splotch where one of the tubes had been shorn off.
“What is that?”
“You can't see it, but there are cages here. There's glass. It's weird, but I think they were using this stuff to kill it.”
“The Carrion?”
“The tentacles. I know how it sounds, but I just have a feeling.”
“If these things have been her
e for that long, I wouldn't be surprised. You think it's acid?”
“I don't know, but I bet he does.” She pointed to the skeleton on the ground. Its skin was yellow, preserved in the cold but sallowed by the years.
“Do you want to ask him?”
She picked a red notebook off of a nearby table.
“What is that?”
“A diary. It's in German, but—”
“But you can read it,” he finished.
“Yeah.”
“I knew that privileged upbringing of yours would come in handy.”
“Don't be an asshole. It might tell us something.”
“All right, bring it up. I want to show you something.”
When she had started exploring the basement, she thought he'd be a bit more respectful. There was a past here, a history. It meant something, and not just because The Carrion had claimed them.
She was about to go back up when she remembered one more thing. She picked it up off the ground and slung it over her shoulder, treading more carefully up the ramp. AJ grabbed her at the top and helped her over the final step.
“What is that, a coat?”
“You said you wanted to go all out.”
He held it out in front of him, looked at her uncertainly, then slipped one arm into a sleeve. She helped him with the other, getting the thing all of the way around his shoulders. Somehow, it seemed like it belonged.
“How do I look?”
“Significantly less prole-ish.”
“I don't know what that means.”
“Good. Now what did you want to show me?”
He walked back over to the supply bunker and grabbed one of the rifles off of the ground. “I want to teach you to shoot one of these.”
“Those things? You can't be serious.”
He looked at her, his eyes grim. “If we have any more trouble, we may have to use them. I don't know if I'd trust Gideon with one, but I'd trust you. Will you take it?”
“Do you know how old these are? You don't even know if they'll shoot.”
“They need to be cleaned, that's for sure. But there's some solvent back there, and I found some cloth. I'll need a screwdriver to remove the trigger guard, but I know you have one of those. It can be done.”
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