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

before our fortunes had changed so drastically in just the hour since our egress. Having subsisted entirely on adrenaline, our bodies were in replenishment mode, metabolizing the sausages and the clean water. Thoughts of sleep crossed our minds for the first time in days. My thoughts wandered, going into a state of waking dream, during which I relived kindness of that Russian soldier, not much older than me, a pleasant thought intruded upon by the moments with Todtenhausen, his man-eating dog, and the odd statement he directed at me, “Would you even know yet?”

Who was this Dr. Mengele, and what had he predicted about me? Was he the handsome doctor on the train platform where Pyotr and I were separated from our parents, and taken to the Bunker for the following three years?

As I was pondering about whether I could trust Zerrissen enough to pose such questions to him, the ground began to shake as violently as when a Schwesterkriegerine shook the bed of a child sleeping past the morning shower alarm. Our circumstances changed again.

We looked at each other, our pupils dilated black with fright, each wondering if the other had an explanation for the quaking ground.

Then we saw it: a cloud, red as if angry, and in its center a column of fire, then steam, and dense, rust-colored smoke were rising from the direction we had just escaped.

Then we heard it. Not the usual boom of Russian munitions, but a constant roar. Louder and clearer each second. Flames flashed at the apex of the red tornado. Artemis’ arrow atop Zeus’ lightning bolt, the green- and brown-splotched shaft climbed into the gray, low hanging clouds, taking with it an unnaturally bright fire at its base. Did the Soviets blow something through the cupola high into the air? Did this volcanic explosion result from the contents of that Russian private’s other satchels?

Then a wave of heat, which was not unwelcome. Even at this distance, we could feel our cotton and wool clothes drying. Steam rose from our hair. We saw the forest behind us burn, pine trees exploding into flame, tossing smoking pinecones high into the air, the act of a tree aware of its own death, spreading its seeds far away from danger to possibly live another day, even as we were doing so ourselves. We had escaped the frying pan of Die Kuppel only to be trapped in a Polish forest on fire.

Glittery points of light, made visible in the muted sunlight of the depressive overcast spring sky, glowed like embers the size of wasps, each one popping into smaller ones, the size of fireflies, themselves finally popping into sparkles the size of gnats.

Then we smelled it, and it an acrid smell. It was not like any of the foul odors of the Bunker; this was different. Through the roar, Zerrissen yelled for us to soak our sleeves in the freezing water and hold them to our noses, and to stay away from anything that sparkled.

The black cloud grew skyward with an olive green and barnyard brown lance now emerging from its center, which spread out like a poisonous flower opening into a four-pointed star. The four petals fell back to earth, each tumbling downward as symmetrically as with as much grace as synchronized swimmers. The central lance, thinner, stripped of its petals, levitated higher, resembling at this distance a telegraph pole pushed by the fire below into the clouds. This creature, whatever it was, had shed its seed, like the pine trees in the holocaust, before being consumed in its own flames.

With the sound and fire subsiding, we picked ourselves up, and swept off the twigs, leaves, and other detritus of the Polish forest floor, and only to be confronted by a platoon of five soldiers in uniforms I did not recognize, who were also staring at what was left of the receding spectacle. Their helmets were askew with leather straps hanging down unbuckled, exposing unshaven, filthy faces their rifles raised, cocked, and aimed at Zerrissen, one eye on him, the other on the angry cloud drifting away behind us.

A soldier with two chevrons on his sleeve, his jaw in motion with something that could have been chewing gum, looked at us not with a smile, but not with a frown either. He spoke the first English I had heard in more than three years.

“Well, hello.” Then looking at the remaining sausages around my neck, he added, “Going on a picnic?”

Die Kuppel, 1934

As Ozymandias exhorted the mighty to look upon his works and despair, so did the Reich fully expect history to do when they surveyed the newly completed Die Kuppel.

Surreptitiously excavated under the Polish forest outside the village of Dubica Górna, its concrete corridors, laboratories, manufacturing lines, living quarters were laid out in the form of the German Iron Cross. Four progressively widening arms protruded 100 meters from a central rotunda thirty meters in diameter, its domed ceiling protruding only a few meters above the forest floor, carefully restored of natural camouflage of sticks, ivy, brush, and pine trees, as carefully woven together as a Jackson Pollack painting, most of which were real, a few of which were vents, instruments, antennas, and secret entrances in disguise.

As the influx of personnel became a topic of speculation in Dubica Górna, a cover story was concocted and circulated through the usual underground channels that a medical facility was being built to handle a disease scourging and crippling the children of Europe. Indeed, regular shipments of children, ages three to six, all with leg braces and the other impurities of the inferior races, were made conspicuous.

As the patient population increased, Die Kuppel directors, not overly concerned with their quality of life, begrudgingly acknowledged that a staff of governesses would better wrangle, feed, and otherwise care for whatever undesirable children of this age minimally required. The Catholic Church, never missing a chance that some of the children might grow up to tithe its coffers, and which was already cozy with