The Aeschylus (27 page)

Harald tore the letter into pieces and cast it out into empty space. What would he tell Kaminski? Would he lie? Mieke could always tell when he was lying, and that was usually over insignificant things. “Harry, you're blushing!” she'd said the first time he'd made an excuse for being late. “You're cute when you blush, but you can't lie to me. Right?” She'd laughed, and she'd kissed him.

“And so your wife is probably dead,” he said, tasting the way it sounded. “She never made it to the camp, which means she either died in transit, was abused horribly by the soldiers at the dock and discarded, or has become unreachable within the system. How about that?”

Saying it made it sound like hyperbole, even if it wasn't. But
in saying it once, he knew he could never say it again. He would avoid the subject if it ever came up, as it surely would if he continued his visits with the man's daughter.

That was another headache. Their meetings were becoming increasingly difficult under the scrutiny of the commander. Why Richter took an interest, he didn't know. It was not as if Harald shared any connection with the girl. It was simply a matter of gathering information, an inside source into—

An explosion rocked his train of thought, and Harald ducked, thinking he was under attack. Then he looked beyond the north wall and spotted the source. The hunting duo were at it again. The slow kid Hans Wägner was drilling holes into patches of ice, and Seiler was dropping a live grenade into each one. They were running like school kids, drunk as lords, laughing as the ice blew to smithereens and an army of dead fish floated to the surface.

For whatever odd reason, the
Gestapo
agent had latched himself onto the kid. Boredom, perhaps, had become its own devil. The commander certainly had no use for either one of them, and the days here were long. Every so often, the two of them would drink and hunt and use whatever living thing they could find as target practice. Seiler was the brains (
God help us
, Harald thought), and Hans was the worker. They could spend hours rigging up animal traps or drilling holes in the ice like psychopaths.
Maybe that's the attraction
, he thought.
Sheer psychopathic behavior
. Hans, being young and dim-witted, had an excuse. Seiler did not. In the absence of structure and true work—the work that allowed him to hunt people—he needed an outlet.

It was getting worse by the day. Seiler had begun keeping trophies in his room.
Trophies
of the animals he and the retard had killed. Just in the past week, he had collected the skull of a sea leopard and the beak of a penguin. This latter had been the product of an all-day expedition in which Boris and Hans had replaced one of the bird's eggs with an explosive ordnance. They'd waited hours until the thing returned and settled its
belly over it before setting it off. Amidst the pile of guts and parts that followed, the beak was the only thing left intact. Seiler hadn't been able to recount the story without laughing.

Christ. Jan was ready to murder him in his sleep.

Harald himself was sleeping little these days, and when he did, he found himself dreaming of the pit. His dreams were getting worse, and was it any wonder?

It had to stop. Richter was becoming anxious with respect to Kaminski, and a single incident within his unit could set him off.

The pair began to walk back towards the main gates, their hunting done for the day. They began to deviate before they got to the barracks, the kid leading them towards the prisoners' bunker.

“What the hell?” Harald went to the tower ladder and began to descend, sensing someone was about to have a bad day, and it wouldn't be him.

The boy stumbled up to the bunker and unzipped his pants.

“What are you doing?” Seiler asked. The fat man put one hand against the wall for support, but he was clearly amused.

By way of response, Hans began to piss, his yellow stream splashing into the steps beneath the bunker door.

Harald paced towards them. This was too far.
Too goddamned far
.

The boy sang, “
Männer umschwirr'n mich, Wie Motten um das Lich
,” but that was as far as he got. Harald grabbed the back of his head and smacked it into the side of the bunker. The kid dropped face down in his own piss, unconscious. Harald hadn't hit him very hard, but Hans was halfway there from the liquor.

“This ends today. No more pranks. No more hunting outside of the walls.”

Seiler stumbled. “We were just having fun, Lieutenant. Fun is allowed.”

“The commander has ordered no more foolishness. If he catches you, he will have both of our heads on a platter. Do you understand me?”

“Yes but... he is not here now.”

“I want everything in top shape. I want this foolishness stopped.”

The fat man pointed. “You... you cannot order me.”

Ah, and finally the predictable defiance. “I give the goddamned orders around here!” Harald shouted. “I will not have the grunts pissing on things! Further, I will not have you wasting explosives on fish. If Richter finds out they are not being used for live drills, there
will
be repercussions.”

“We can say we needed them for target practice,” Seiler said sulkily, but he looked different. Maybe some of this was getting through.

“Enough. Take him,” Harald said, pointing at the boy. “For God's sake, pull him out of his own piss and get him cleaned up. I don't care what you do until tomorrow morning as long as I don't hear about it, and as long as it doesn't involve our prisoners. Do you understand?”

Seiler nodded. He knelt and began gathering the boy from the ground.

“Good. Make sure he understands when he wakes up.”

He walked off, leaving the pair of them to sort it out amongst themselves. He felt flushed, his heart racing from the confrontation. Harald never questioned himself when dealing with the men though. It was the one time when he allowed his instincts to rule, and so far, they'd served him well.

The only thing left to do was have a word with Kaminski. There would be no more excuses, not from the prisoners, and not from his men. Richter was getting too impatient.

When Harald arrived at the laboratory, the men had already gone home for the evening. Is this how they expected to get things done? Perhaps they just needed the proper motivation. That, certainly, would be the attitude of the commander.

Perhaps he was right.

Harald squatted next to the largest cage and looked at the tentacle growing inside. Predictably, it sensed him, and it
opened. A small creature climbed out of the folds as if being birthed. The lieutenant took a step back, then found himself leaning closer. The creature was a bird, a tern with a wounded wing Ettore had found on the grounds. It was a small thing, frail and pulsing black.

Then the thing screeched and launched itself at the glass. It smashed into it full force, reset, and then hurled itself again. In moments, the glass was smeared red. When it had crippled itself, the bird thing crawled as close as it could and began snapping its beak. Harald had no doubt that it wouldn't stop until it was dead.

Carefully, he reached up and began to undo the top of the cage. “Methods,” he said to himself. “You want effective methods, Commander? Maybe we should teach Kaminski to stop leaving his things unattended.”

The bird could do no damage by itself, that was clear. Of course, the good lieutenant had no idea the real danger was not in the bird, but in what it carried.

Leaving the top undone, he walked out of the lab and out of the bunker, feeling a little better for the mischief. On the way out, he bumped past Kriege and berated the man to watch where he was going.

The boy stumbled into the cave, holding his jaw. He hurt, but he knew that he would be better soon. His Thinking Place always made him feel better.

Always.

He had discovered the place some time ago, and now it was simply
his
. He had thought about showing his new friend Boris, but he was glad now that he hadn't. Boris had not protected him from the lieutenant. He could still feel the bruise on his forehead. He could still taste the nasty on his lips. The
lieutenant had hit him while he was peeing, and that wasn't fair.

Hans liked peeing outside. There had been a time when he had trouble hitting the bowl as a child. “If you don't quit making that mess in here, Hans, I'm going to cut that thing off!” his mother had yelled. That had made him mad. She had no right to make fun of his thing, even if he did miss the bowl. He always cleaned up his mess.

Some time later, he had sneaked into his mother's room while she was away at the night shift and peed in her bed. That had been fun, even if she caught him when he tried it a second time. Even if she burned him down there so he wouldn't do it again.

Maybe that was all right, because when his thing healed, he peed better than ever. He had no problem hitting the bowl. Peeing outside just felt good, so he did it when he could. It was especially good when you were
sauced
on whiskey or bourbon. He liked to get
sauced
. It helped pass the time. And
passing the time
was something he had done a lot of growing up, with his mom gone. On the night shift.

His room at home had been small, but he been able to fashion a Thinking Place in his closet. It was where he kept all of his friends. When he went to the army, he had wrapped the Thinking Place in a sack and buried it outside; he knew his mother would not understand if she found it. When he came back, he would dig it up and have it again. At first, it had been very hard without it, and he had been afraid he would never have another. There was no privacy in the army. Go
here
with the unit, and go
there
with the unit, and
sleep
with the unit in a hundred bunks all side by side.

Then, he had come to the island. His Thinking Place here was even better than the one he had at home. In fact, he wasn't sure he ever wanted to leave it, even if it meant his old sack had to stay buried in his back yard. Even if it meant he wouldn't see his momma again.

Sitting in the middle of the cave, he reached up to pet Hans Junior. Little Hans was his favorite, which is why he had given
him his own name. The little guy had stopped moving the day before, which made it all the better to pet him. He had been the biggest of the baby seals Hans had been able to find. It was very
difficult getting him onto the stake, but he had managed. Little Hans hadn't liked it when Hans had sawed off his flippers, but it made him easier to pet.

His other friends were dead too, but he didn't think they minded. They were so peaceful here, sitting in the dark, in the Thinking Place. With him.

By now, he had quite a collection. Hans Junior had three companions just like himself: Friedricke, Lucas, and Hellen. Well, maybe Lucas didn't count since he was just a head. And Friedricke, being the oldest, had started to crust and stink. At least there were no flies here. That was another reason this Thinking Place was better than the one at home.

He had birds, a whole row of them on a string. He had penguins, a sea leopard, and a weird-looking starfish he had pulled off of the shore. The centerpiece of the lot—aside from Hans Junior, of course—was a bird that was jet black and nearly featherless. He had found it by the chasm. His Thinking Place was, in fact, right outside the chasm.

The bird had been alive when he'd found it, and he had put it up with the others, driving a nail through its breast. He named it Jesus because it lasted so long. It lasted three days, struggling and screeching there against the rock. Hans had watched it for hours. Unlike the others, it didn't seem to tire and give up. It just beat its little wings and kicked and kicked until the third day, when it finally keeled over and died.

Hans had never been down into the laboratories at the base, but he thought maybe they had more birds like this one. He'd heard the Slimy Things in the crater had something to do with it. A lot of the soldiers were afraid of the Slimy Things, but not him. He'd almost touched one, once. When he first came to the crater, Hans remembered walking beneath one, reaching a finger up to stroke it. The flesh of the thing had parted just beyond the reach of his fingernail, revealing a cleft in the tissue. How strange it was. It looked like a man's thing, but it had
parted for him like a woman's. He had yanked his finger away, then. He remembered his mother telling him how dirty women's things were, and that they carried diseases. He wasn't afraid exactly, but he didn't want any diseases.

That cleft had been so strange. He wondered what would happen if he could plant an explosive in one of those things. Not a big boomer like a grenade, but something like a firecracker. He had collected quite a lot of explosives over the past few weeks. He was pretty sure no one would ever find them, either. They were buried beneath a group of loose rocks in the corner. Hans had done similar things when he had lived at home with his mother, and no one had ever found those. The explosives you could get in the army, however, were much better than the ones you could get as a kid. It made him giddy to think how much fun he could have.

Boris didn't know about the stash. Hans had only brought out little bits at a time, like when they'd made that penguin bomb. He was smart enough to know that Boris had certain rules, and stealing from the army might break one of those rules, even if it was in the name of good fun.

So far, he had only had fun with the animals. Maybe he would try people soon.

Yesterday aside, Boris had been a good person friend. Hans didn't have many person friends. Maybe they would pee together outside again, and Boris would let him see his thing. He'd been meaning to ask, but it always seemed to slip his mind. They had been getting
sauced
a lot.

Hans walked back to the entrance to the cave and stepped out into the open air. It was hard to tell how late it was, but he would have to get back soon.

Stepping up the path, he paused to climb over a hill so that he could see the crater. It never ceased to amaze. He put his toes over the gap and looked down into the darkness. Hans felt no fear. It was actually kind of inviting. Then, he heard a truck start up over by the base, and several men shouted over the whine of the engine. If it was getting busy, Zimmer might be looking for him. He'd have to go back.