Chapter Four -

Chapter Four

The traveler and the girl burst into the camp in a quiet gasp of air. The traveler glances around. He sees barbed wire and fences everywhere. He notes several guard towers and some low brick buildings on the horizon. Some kind of prison? Ah well. He turns, and sees a metal shed nearby, with a shadow that’s out of sight of the towers, and begins to walk towards it, warm greasy smells rising up from the bags in his hands.

He gets to the shed and sits down. He suddenly realizes that the French girl isn’t with him. She’s still standing on the spot they’d appeared on, now covered with a hundred severed stalks of dead grass. She’s looking around, eyes damp. She looks at him.

“Oh god. We’re here.”

He stares at her, and then waves her over impatiently, pointing to the guard towers. She seems to snap out of it, and rushes over to him. She’s staring around wide-eyed.

“J'ai entendu des rumeurs. Je pensais qu'ils étaient couchés.”

She turned to look at him, as he tore one of the paper bags open.

“Do you know what they do here?”

He shrugs, and takes a bite out of the hamburger. The taste of warm meat, cheese, bun washes over his mouth. He sinks back into the dirt, eyes closed, just savoring the taste. She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. He sighs heavily, swallows, and opens his eyes to see what she’s doing. She’s staring off into the distance, where a thick plume of smoke is erupting from a low brick building. Something is blowing past her face. Snow. Warm snowflakes settle on his face, his coat. Only snow isn’t warm, and this wasn’t snow. He coughs, and holds out his hand. A handful of ashes collect in his palm.

Almost pleasantly, as though in a dream, the French girl is talking.

“Birkenau,” she says.

He shrugs. The word means nothing to him. The whole field has taken on a surreal aspect, a snowstorm in summer. Somewhere, off in the distant, a hard alarm rings, and people begin to pour out into the fenced off areas. They were uniformly gray people, dirty people. A prison for the poor? The traveler is about to ask what’s going on, and then he remembers the banana milkshake. He tears off a piece of burger for the dog, and drops it. The dog snaps it up. He pulls out the banana milkshake, takes the lid off, and takes a long pull.

He just sits there for a moment, savoring the taste. He starts to cry. He is the happiest he has been in three months.

“It’s the simple things in life you treasure,” he says to nobody in particular.

He opens his eyes, and sees that the mass of grey people is encroaching upon them. He catches a nasty smell, and suddenly realizes that the building they’re behind is a toilet, and all of these people want to use it. He turns to the French girl, and pushes a paper bag towards her. She doesn’t even look at it. There are tear lines on her face. She won’t stop staring at the crowd of people.

He pushes the bag towards her more insistently.

“French girl. Snap out of it. I don’t know what’s going on, and honestly it doesn’t matter. I don’t have a lot of catfood left, and you need to eat something substantial or else you’re going to pass out from hunger, and I’m going to have to carry you.”

She spits, and steps away from him. She sits back against the shed with a thump that draws a small crowd of the gray people around the back of the shed to stare at them. They’re dressed in a stunning mishmash of clothes, many of them grand in their day, now bleached and dirtied into the same tired grey wrappings. He catches a glimpse at some of the faces, and sees the dead eyes, the sunken cheeks, pale skin. These people are starving. Why are these people starving? Germany’s economy is bad, sure, but even with the war it’s not this bad.

He shakes himself, and realizes that these people might well kill him for his food. He gropes in his pocket for his berretta, and turns to shield the food. He takes another bite of the hamburger. There are ashes on it. He turns slowly to look at them, mouth full, their flat eyes looking at him without even a shred of curiosity. They probably don’t even know that it’s food. He swallows slowly. He takes another bite, chews it slowly. There’s no taste to it all, just ashes. God damn it. He sighs.

He drops the half-finished hamburger into the bag, puts the lid back on the milkshake, and pushes it into the hands of the nearest woman.

“Here.”

As he watches, the woman, who has a deeply lined, almost comical face with large ears, sticks her hand hesitantly into the bag, pulls out a french fry, and eats it. The others gather around. A hundred nibbles and sips later, and all the food is gone. They stand for a moment longer, and then disperse. The traveler and the girl and the dog are alone behind the shed. The traveler stands up, suddenly.

“Well fuck this.”

He stomps towards a nearby fence.

The French girl stands up, and shouts after him.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t fucking care. I’m getting out of this fucked up, dysfunctional country if I have to walk.”

He gets to the fence, and begins inspecting it for structural flaws. The dog paces behind him, whining for more hamburger. His foot sends little shivers of pain up his leg with every step. After a long silence, the French girl walks up and comes after him.

“Vous pourrez les sauver, tu sais. Quelques-uns. Deux. Trois.”

He turns and looks at her. He suddenly looks very sad, and very old. She realizes that he has grey in the stubble on his face.

“Which ones, French girl? Which ones do we take? Do we draw straws? And what about the rest? Do you know what starving people are capable of?”

She holds eye contact for a moment, and then turns and takes a step back.

“Je suis désolé. Au revoir.”

She takes another step back. The traveler looks at her.

“Don’t even. Do you know what they’ll do to you when they catch you?”

Another step.

“Come on. Stop it. I’ve got a good knife, and this is really shitty wire. I can have us out of this place inside ten minutes. You really want to die in this hellhole? What do you intend to accomplish?”

She turns to go. He can hear her footfalls on the dry ground. He turns to say something else, and then an area of ground to his right explodes in a plume of gravel and dust. There’s a crack of a sniper rifle.

The girl freezes like a rabbit under high-beams, glancing around. The traveler is already running for cover, chain-swearing under his breath.

“Goddamnfucksonofabitchwhyaretheyfuckingshootingatme?”

The dog is standing behind him. He picks it up, and tucks it into his coat. The girl is still there, scanning the horizon for the source of the noise. A wave of nausea hits him. He fights it down and shoots at her as loud as he can. He shakes himself. What’s going on with him?

“MOVE.”

She seems to suddenly realize that she’s under fire, and scuttles for the cover of the bathroom stall. He glances around. A group of starving prisoners are standing some distance away. They don’t seem overly concerned by the gunfire. He’s not entirely sure if that’s a good thing. He nods to the girl.

“Sur le compte de trois, se déplacer. Essayez de vous perdre dans la foule. Ils ne vont pas tuer les prisonniers. Eh bien, au moins, pas tous.”

She stares at him in naked disgust.

“Oh, nous sommes désormais utiliser des boucliers humains? Man, vous savez bien comment montrer à une fille un bon moment.”

He shakes his head. She doesn’t get it. She’s not living in reality. They are going to kill her. The watch on his wrist says they still have to hold out for fifteen more minutes. He turns, and whispers in a low voice.

“Se taire. Un, deux, trois ... Aller!”

He half drags her out from behind the shed, following a zigzag pattern to confuse the gunman in the tower. His foot aches with every step, and his breath catches in his chest. With any luck, his sniper rifle doesn’t have a decent scope. A slug impacts the ground a half an inch from his foot. Ah hell. A second later they’re in the crowd. He hears more shots, but they don’t come anywhere near him. The crowd seems to finally react to the gunfire, and begin to surge away from the open ground backwards the brick buildings. The traveler and the girl keep low and travel with them. As soon as they’re out of sight of the tower, the traveler turns towards a barbed wire fence. He can feel the blurry sensation under his feet. It’s early, but – yes- doable. He can get through the fence without cutting it. It’s probably aluminum wire, aluminum was always good. The girl, though – the girl would probably die in the attempt. The dog might make it, but as for the girl: no. He will need to find another way.

He unlocks the katana, and begins to cut. He breaks a few wires, and he and the girl squirm under. He hates to do this as it blunts the blade, but this is sheer necessity at work, and the blade can suffer. On the other side, he stomps on the wire to try to disguise the break, and nearly passes out from pain. Other foot next time. He felt bone rubbing that time, and a horrible wet feeling. He’s almost afraid to look at the foot. Later. Now, they run.

They dart between brick buildings through the compound, the thump of heavy boots never far behind. The traveler keeps his head down and just runs. He’s not confident of his ability to bullshit them. He really needs to learn German, if he can find a book. He keeps running, feet pounding on the ground. His breath is coming hard, and he feels dizzy and weak. What the hell is going on. After a moment, the traveler finds an unlocked door. He and the girl duck inside, shut the door, and stand against it, breathing hard, until the boots pass.

He turns, and investigates the space he now finds himself in. It’s a large brick building. Surprisingly clean, looks almost medical. Two large rectangular tanks sit against one wall. At the other end, there’s a desk, and two large tables, separated by a sheet of stainless steel. A man lies on one of the tables, bathed in light the color of a torch shown through clenched fingers. The traveler feels a sudden chill. Oh no. No. No no no.

He turns to look to his right. There are blocks of glass lined against the far wall. A dirty red figure is in the middle of the nearest one. It takes him a moment to realize what he's looking at: a silhouette of blood, a partially exploded human corpse fused into the glass. There are a dozen of these blocks laid against the far wall. A workbench lined with tesium lamps of various types is to his right.

The French girl is talking to him, but there just isn’t room right now. He walks across the room to the box, and opens the lid. There’s a man inside. His head is shaved, and he’s strapped down to a stretcher. There’s an oxygen tank, and a glass jar filled with dirty silver smoke, trailing up to a ventilator. Along the sides of the box, the Tesium light boxes are lined up, shining on his body. The traveler stares down as the man in the box takes another breath of aether and oxygen cocktail. He shudders. A patchwork of subcutaneous light spreads through his chest and, a second later, sparks spread through his major ventricles, pooling in his heart, and then go out. He gives a muffled scream. For a second, he nearly looks translucent. Then the light is gone, and he shudders back onto the stretcher with an audible whimper, and coughs up blood into the mask. After a long, long silence, he takes another breath, and the process begins again.

The traveler glanced towards the desk, rigged with a set of dials. A cooling cup of coffee sat on top of it. A stubbed out cigarette was still smoking in the ash tray. The traveler turned towards the door at the far end of the room. Open a crack. The traveler gropes in his pocket for the Beretta. The dog growls. The French girl speaks.

“What is this?”

He shakes his head.

“This? This – I don’t know. It’s not good, though. I think they’re trying to develop aether lamps. I wonder how they found out about QT.”

She stares at him.

“Never mind. Comes on, let’s see if we can’t break some stuff.”

He pulled the aether mask off the man in the box, removed a knife, and cut the leather straps off his body. The man makes no sign of moving, just lies there panting. The traveler systematically begins smashing the tesium lights, extinguishing the weird glow.

His hand slips under one of the lights, and the traveler’s face contorts in pain. Thick, pasty purple bruises spread across the skin, and blood wells under the nail beds, turning them an ugly redding black. His skin rips in several places. He gives a muffled scream, and jerks his hand back. With his right hand, he picks up a metal hammer from a workbench a few feet away, and awkwardly smashes the remaining lights, keeping his hands out of the light. He feels dizzy, and it’s not just from the hand. He has an awful, hot, sick sensation. He’s sure he’s running a fever.

The French girl stares at him.

“Holy shit. Qu'est-il arrivé à votre main?”

He shakes it off.

“Long story. Come on, éloignez-vous le masque, le, um, aether, est une chose mauvaise.”

She takes a step back. He holds his hand, tries to flex it. The bones aren’t broken, but the tissue damage is extensive. There are numb patches over a lot of it, and the bruises are getting darker. It looks like it was crushed by an industrial press. Well, can’t worry about that now. He loads the Beretta into his right hand, and aims as best he can at the door. It’s close now, very close. She turns, and looks back in the direction of the camp.

“Nous pouvions encore sauver quelques-uns. A few. Il est encore temps.”

But the bubble is already forming around him. He points the gun at the door and smiles at her sadly.

“No, we can’t.”

“Alors je suis désolé. Si vous ne partirez pas, je le ferai.”

She turns away from him and begins to walk towards the door. He stares after her, and watches the air around him start to go opaque. He says, quietly.

“Eh bien, alors je suis désolé aussi.”

And then he’s running. The door slams open behind him. He turns and fires three shots from the pistol. He doesn’t see if any of them hit. He’s on the French girl in three strides. As she starts to pass out the door, he tackles her and the bubble sizzles. A second later, they’re gone. The doctor in the corner, gut shot, stares down at a handful of blood for a long moment. He hears the boots of soldiers coming down the alley. He inspects the man on the table and the hole in the wall near the door. The doctor smiles and spits blood.

“Ich wußte es.”

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Sorry to anyone who actually read this. Getting the adds to target on a site like this is... challenging

Author's Note:
Here it is. Sorry the formatting's a bit wonky, and it's short. It's final's week and I really should be doing schoolwork.

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