The Aeschylus (22 page)

And yet.

It didn't feel like the truth. It didn't feel
right
.

“Vy, your radio still shot to shit?”

Christian put a hand to his ear and nodded. Still no ear-to-ear communication, not even short range. It wasn't the platform after all.
It's those things
, he thought. Here, on the middle of the island, they were still hamstrung.

Totally. Fucking. Strange.

Both Vy and the girl were staring at him, and he realized he'd been zoning. Jesus, it was time to go. He'd brought them all of the way out here with no way to get word back. He'd assumed the radios would start working once they had distanced themselves from The Aeschylus, but that had been a mistake.

“We're leaving.” He looked at Christian. “Did you find somewhere that might be of use?”

“It looks like they kept prisoners here. The prisoners' bunker locks from the outside.”

Mason grinned. Maybe not everything was bad luck.

The girl looked flustered. “So that's it? We're giving up? We're just going back? Sorry guys, we couldn't find your entire staff? You're acting like you don't care. Do you know that?” She was beginning to get that look in her eyes, the one that politicians had when they were listening to every word you said, but it just wasn't getting through. He didn't have to guess where
she got it. And that look, as irritating as it was, would make the next five minutes a little easier.

“Just get your ass out the door, honey.”

“We're going to find them. We have to. I'm not giving up on those people.” And then, more quietly, “I'm not giving up on my father.”

When she turned, that's when Mason grabbed her by the hair and yanked back so hard her feet slipped out from under her.

The Island:

January, 1939

As
The Adalgisa
drifted towards the dock, Harald counted fifteen or twenty workers processing the morning's catch. A host of whale carcasses were being flensed and stripped even as new ones rolled in. A pair of men stood over one of the bodies, drilling into it with an enormous steel instrument. Another pair wheeled a dumpster full of viscera out of a warehouse door and towards the ocean. As if to scare trespassers, the single, enormous head of a sperm whale hung at the foot of the pier like a cannibal's trophy.

He heard a pair of boots and turned to see Jan egress from the wheelhouse. The man stopped next to the lieutenant and gazed over the landscape, as silent as always.

“The infrastructure is already in place,” Harald said. “These men can work here for weeks at a time. It's extraordinary, isn't it?”

The other man wrinkled his nose. “I worked in a slaughterhouse once when I was a teenager. I didn't care for it.”

Harald stared at him a moment, wondering what the hell that had to do with anything, but he let it go. After what he felt was an appropriate pause, he said, “Are the prisoners coming?”

“I can get them.”

“Yes. Yes, why don't you do that?”

Up the pier, he saw two figures appear from a side path and begin walking towards the boat. They were regular German army, and they were a welcome sight. The man in the lead raised a hand to his head in salute. Only, he wasn't a man at all, but a boy. He couldn't be older than eighteen or nineteen, his face covered with pimples. Harald could see the outline of a handmade crucifix hanging on his chest. The cross and the boy both radiated bucolic charm.

“Welcome to the island, sir,” he said.

“It's good to see a friendly face. What's your name, soldier?”

“Metzger, sir. Sergeant Linus Metzger. The man with me here is Doctor Gloeckner. We thought it would be prudent to bring him in case you had any difficulties on the journey. Did you?”

Harald paused, but only for the briefest of moments. “We lost two men en route, including our captain. Both men, I'm afraid, were buried at sea. The rest of us made it safely. I don't think we'll be needing a physician, at least not until we've had a chance to settle in.”

The two newcomers exchanged a glance but didn't offer protest.

“The effort is appreciated, nonetheless. Tell me, who do I have to thank for the reception?”

After a moment, the doctor spoke. Harald saw he was an older gentleman, his skin as cracked and wrinkled as white sandpaper. “Well sir, the S.S. has been put in charge. The commander, he just arrived a few days ahead of you.”

“What's his name, this commander?”

“Haven't you been briefed?”

“My orders were given as need-to-know.” The men looked at one another again, and Harald felt his irritation rise. “For God's sake, man. What's his name?”

At that moment, a third man appeared at the end of the pier. Tall and fit, he was decked from head to toe in
Schutzstaffel
black, his blond-gray hair slicked back with tonic. He walked towards them with the cold ease of a snake, his
boots gliding along the deck. He stopped just in front of Jan. “Your name?”

“It's an honor, sir. My name is Sergeant Ja—”

“You will assume a straight posture when you address me, Sergeant.”

Jan straightened, looking flustered. “Sergeant Jan Eichmann. I am at your service, sir.”

“And you are the new lieutenant?” the man asked, turning.

“
Oberleutnant
Harald Dietrich, sir.” Harald had so many questions, but they all seemed to tumble up and stick in his throat. It wasn't the time to ask them yet, in any case.

The man continued to stare at the pair of them, giving every mole, every crevice, every line of their faces scrutiny. At last, he nodded as if satisfied. “My name is
Höhere S.S. und Polizeiführer Schutzstaffel
Commander Cornelius Richter, and I am in charge here. Welcome to the new colony, gentlemen. Welcome to New Swabia.”

Dominik huddled next to the girls in the back of the half-track. They were on their way inland now, his thoughts of freedom a distant memory. For all his feelings of helplessness, however, the island was still a wonder. The air carried a thousand bizarre smells. A thick mist hung in the sky, viscous and ethereal. Dominik looked to the ground and saw intermittent growths of saxicolous greenery sprouting from the gravel, as large and strange as everything else. His stomach growled, and he wondered if any of it would be edible. He thought not.

As they passed beyond an outcropping, a trio of dark birds passed overhead. They fluttered over them and landed on the water, squawking and fidgeting in foreign bird tongues. The girls, who had been quiet since their arrival, perked up. Zofia stood and looked over the edge of the truck, gawking at the bright blue eyes and the strange orange markings on their
beaks.
There should be dozens
, Dominik thought,
but they are so few. Where are the rest?

“Sit down,” Jan said from across the truck.

Dominik grabbed Zofia around the waist. “Go on, honey. Sit down.”

“But I'm watching.”

“Sit. It's dangerous.”

Lucja sighed. “Are we there yet?”

“Probably not much longer,” Ari said without conviction.

“This driving service is quite the treatment though,” Dominik said, trying to lighten the mood. “Do you think they'll have a feast prepared?”

“I certainly hope so. I could use some tea.”

The half-track turned back towards the center of the island and passed underneath what looked like a rocky bridge. Then, as Dominik stared at it, he realized it was too regular, too
fleshy
. He traced its origins down the rocks and then stopped, unable to believe what he was seeing.

Ari's mouth hung open. “What the... ?”

Zofia threw herself into Dominik's arms. “Papa!”

Over the side of the truck, the road dropped into the largest crater Dominik had ever seen. Its gaping mouth led straight into the bowels of the earth, swallowing the sunlight around it. Out of that blackness he saw, for the first time, the things that would one day devour The Aeschylus. Like Kate, he tried to classify them and found he could only think of them as tentacles.
Impossible
, he thought, but that was what they were. They stretched and grew from the edges of the hole like fingers, creeping up through the landscape and encircling the mountains beyond. Like the chasm, they were enormous, though he had no grasp of how far they would grow and how dangerous they would one day become. Dominik tried to imagine what could be at the bottom of that hole and couldn't. It might very well go to the core of the earth.

He felt his shirt against his chest and realized he had begun to sweat. Just as he thought he might scream, the path veered away from the crater, and the half-track turned. It bounced
happily over a few ruts and then continued through the valley towards their camp, leaving the chasm behind.

As they got closer, he could see that it wasn't a camp they were headed to at all, but a fortress. The walls formed a protective semi-circle around it, metal fence wrapped between. Dominik saw the barbed wire and the watch towers, the men with guns, the jagged rocks that poked and pushed over the barriers on all sides. Just beyond those barriers, he knew there was nothing but the open, unforgiving sea.

The most terrible thing, however, was not the impregnability of their destination, but the fact that the great chasm was within view of the front gate. Whatever he and Ari had imagined as their purpose, they had been wrong. It gave him an awful feeling. It was as if the journey across the Atlantic, as trying as it had been, would be easy compared to what came next.

The half-track stopped at the front gate, and another soldier waved them through.

Harald looked over his shoulder and watched Dominik being escorted to his new home. A pair of burly-looking youths had a hold of each arm, practically dragging him across the dirt. That was good; Harald didn't trust Kaminski in the open, not any more. Ari and his daughters weren't far behind, being herded off of the half-track like cattle.

“Walk with me,” Richter said. “I'd like you to meet the other prisoners.”

“Other prisoners?”

“The unskilled labor, as I think of them. This way.”

Harald followed his commander in silence, passing beneath an arch of the monstrous growths Doctor Grey would one day call The Carrion. But where Dominik saw danger, Harald saw only wonderment. This place was unlike anything he had imagined.

“I'd also like to meet the men,” he said. “The soldiers.”

“You know that it's twenty-one thirty?”

Harald looked up, still unused to the perpetuity of gray sunlight. “Ah, excuse me, sir. I'd forgotten. We've been at sea for quite some time.”

“No. By all means, meet with them. We need someone to keep them on their guard. Your predecessor will not be doing it, certainly.”

“My predecessor?”

“Captain Smit,” Richter said, stopping at the edge of the crater. “You did hear what happened to him?”

“No sir, I—”

Richter laughed, and for the first time, Harald felt vaguely unsettled. “You needn't worry about it then, Lieutenant. You'll have enough things to worry about without putting stock in ghost stories.”

“Ghost stories?”

“The men here are a rather superstitious lot. It's nothing you need concern yourself with. So meet them, and see for yourself. Just excuse me if I don't join you. My duties will stretch on into the night.”

A shout echoed from around the corner, and Harald turned to see a gaggle of emaciated figures near the edge of the pit. An S.S. youth stood above them, yelling orders from over top of a rifle. Harald observed with some fascination that the prisoner closest to the drop had a rope tied around his waist, and the others were lowering him into the deep. The spelunker looked half naked and starved.

The commander began walking around the edge towards them, laughing—
laughing
—as the men strained and heaved with their bony arms. “Lower! Put him lower, you animals!”

The four prisoners, all of whom were seated, barely looked up. It was all they could do to keep the rope in their hands. Richter began to prod one of them with his foot.

“Do you think we should move against Kaminski now?” he called.

It took Harald a moment to realize the question had been directed at him. “Move against him?”

“Yes. Do you think he has the moxie to do the job straight away?”

“What do you mean?”

“You're playing coy with me, Lieutenant. Do you think he can do the job we have set for him without using any leverage?” The man's tone was light, but Harald had no doubt of its sincerity.

“Yes sir, I think he can do it.”

“Very well,” he said noncommittally. “I will trust your judgment, Lieutenant.”

“Yes sir.”

“You don't approve?” Richter asked, reading the other man's expression. “We could always torture
him
, if his daughters won't do.”

A dozen retorts skipped through his brain, none of which would endear him to his new host. “You know best, sir.”

“That I do, Lieutenant, that I do! The human body is a resilient thing. I've seen it survive many things. You can beat it, burn it, cut off it's limbs... hell, you can cut off its balls and it will find a way to survive.” He stopped then, looking down at the prisoner who was dangling at the end of the rope.

The man had begun to whimper. “Please. Don't lower me any more! There's something down here! I can feel it!”

When Harald looked down, he saw the darkness of the pit had a kind of volume to it. The way the light fell, the shadow became complete just under the man's thighs. He appeared half in, half out of the darkness.

“What's down there?” Richter asked.

“I don't know! I don't know! There's something moving!”

“Well, if you can't tell me what it is, that's no good to us,” the commander said. Then, to the prisoners, “Lower him a little further.”

When they didn't respond, Richter went to the man at the front of the brigade, withdrew a small knife, then pressed it into the man's neck. It was a warning gesture, but it still drew blood. All four prisoners began to lower the rope.

The man on the end cried out, begging them to stop, but by the time they did, he was invisible. The shadows had overtaken him.