Apparatus 33 by Lawston Pettymore (bearly read books TXT) 📕

“Let us pass.”

Todtenhausen looked towards the exit that he surmised Zerrissen intended to egress from, then he thought a moment, “What are your intentions with the children, Herr Zerrissen?”

Zerrissen ignored the question, taking us all a step forward. Geronimo growled softly, but with unmistakable menace.

“Do you hope to trade them to the Russians for safe passage? They’re just outside you know. They probably even hear us if their microphones are still attached. I understand they like little children even more than their vodka or whale blubber.”

I alerted at the scene Todtenhausen had just painted. Did the Russians eat children? Was the need of human currency the motive for Sister Kathe’s urgent abduction of Pyotr? Only years later would I find out otherwise. Oh, how I wish Pyotr’s demise had been as banal.

“Where’s Pyotr? Where did you take him?” I asked out loud pretending not to be afraid of either Todtenhausen or Geronimo. I am not certain whether I could rise to save Pyotr even if Todtenhausen had given me a straight answer. And for my cowardice, I paid every day for the rest of my life, and the entire planet is paying for it now as well.

Todtenhausen broke into a smile of a man with a dark secret and looked at me as would an avuncular uncle. “Oh, you must be Nicolaus. Yes. You are eerily identical. Is it true what Mengele predicted about you? Would you even know yet?” There was a pause, as if he were reviewing some film in his head. I did not understand the question, nor had I any idea who this Mengele could be. Was it about the polio Pyotr and I supposedly had, but for which we had no symptoms?

Todtenhausen sensed my confusion at the question. “No? Don’t know? Oh well. Anyway, you mustn’t think we would trade your brother to the Russians. He is far too valuable to the Reich for that. He is in there. In the Cupola room. Your brother is going on a very important mission.”

As I parsed his words, this being the first mention of any kind of “mission”, a loud hissing sound compounded with mechanical grinding of metal, like a massive door being winched open, came from the direction of the Cupola room, prompting Todtenhausen to consult his pocket watch. “Very soon now. He will be famous someday. You should be proud. Perhaps we will find a more lasting use for you also…” His voice, menacing, trailed off through a smile. Not the kind of smile of a kindly uncle. The smile of a thief contemplating an easily robbed grave.

Zerrissen’s grip on my hand tightened. Smudged and greasy as it was, my face, not to mention my prolonged stare at the corpse on the floor, made my thoughts transparent. Geronimo had forgotten about us and had begun gnawing on Gorgass’ fingers, becoming the first mammal in Die Kuppel to consume fresh meat in weeks. Todtenhausen guessed my thoughts and smiled as Gorgass’ finger bones snapped in Geronimo’s powerful jaws. The dog was not leaving anything behind, especially the bone marrow.

“Oh! You’re wondering about poor Gorgass here. Preferred to kill himself rather than be captured by the Soviets I suppose. Sister Kathe was just performing last rites.” Zerrissen tried to cover Halina’s eyes, but he was no match for her curiosity. No one was or ever would be, though many men will try.

Kathe choked. Not a choke-back-tears choke, but the stifling-a-laugh choke. Evidently, removing the watch, wallet, a pocket-sized reference book with the word “WERMUT11” in traditional Teutonic typeface on it, and what looked like a passport from the freshly dead was part of last rites ritual. I was never Catholic, but I was always surrounded by Catholics, and I recognized the symbol on the passport in Sister Kathe’s hands, which she handed over to Todtenhausen with a bit of a flourish. It was the symbol of the Vatican, which I learned soon after made this a highly valuable passport. It was perhaps the most valuable kind of identification document in Europe at the time.

We must have only been a meter or so from the surface, only concrete separating us from the Russians and from calamity. We were so close in fact, that we could hear the detonator mechanism click before the explosion of the munition rung the interior of that corridor like a bell, a ring that persisted in our ears, making any further debate or conversation impossible.

The smell of gunpower subsided, and was replaced by one more pleasant. “Smell that?” Todtenhausen asked no one, finger in the air. “That’s bread,” he said with another prolonged, noisy sniff. “They’re baking bread for their borscht and they’re deliberately venting the aromas down here to us. The cruel bastards are well-feed cruel bastards.” We all paused for a moment to ponder such delicious luxury. Naturally, I contemplated whether the borscht for their bread was made of human child meat.

The flashing of ceiling lights, accompanied by a cracking buzz and a shower of sparks, increased, signaling that the power was about to fail on this level as well. It was the last gasp, the death rattle of Die Kuppel.

The dynamic between the two parties—Zerrissen, Halina, and myself being one, and the dead Gorgass, Sister Kathe, Geronimo, and Todtenhausen being the other—changed. Priorities shifted. A look of urgency crossed Todtenhausen’s face, the first time he ever showed despair, verging on loss of control.

Staring at the ceiling to estimate how much light remained, Zerrissen turned our party around and walked away from Todtenhausen and the scene of death, seeking a safer exit of which Die Kuppel was rumored to have several. They were all hidden, and not all of them were known even to scientists like Zerrissen.

Todtenhausen called out after us, “They won’t help you, you know. They’ll fuck the children, then they’ll fuck you. Russians will fuck anything. They’ll probably fuck poor Gorgass here when they finally break