The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

Dachau?” she asked loudly, hoping a passing veteran might overhear. Even if the US government had condoned his Nazi past, the soldiers who’d won the war would not.

“Allegedly killed, and if you speak of those false allegations to anyone, I’ll turn your files over to my new employer. Germ warfare has become one of the biggest threats to our national security. If I were to tell the government about you, this entire campus”—he arced his hand— “would become an army base dedicated to studying you. And dissecting you. In a theater operating room with dozens of observing scientists, each concocting new ways to extract your secrets. The rest of the time they’d keep you in a glass observation box—your home for eternity.”

Her fingers tightened on a trowel, which she’d instinctively pulled from the bucket.

He nodded at it. “At least while I’m in charge, you can keep your little hobby.”

“I don’t believe your lies.”

“The army’s recruiting the brightest minds to help our country shore up its defenses against the Commies. You don’t think they were eager to have me, given my alleged immunization experiments?”

Yearning to gouge out his eyes, she pressed the tool against her leg. Her body shook with rage for all the wrongs he’d committed against her; for everything he’d done to the concentration camp prisoners.

“Uncle Sam’s even paying for our housing, and they’ve set up a lab for me in Building Two Fifty-Seven. That’s their research facility on Plum Island, off of Long Island. It’s even got a storage room for ‘my’ files.” He grinned, showing those piercing white teeth. “I can’t let them down, now can I?”

“Certainly not,” she said, keeping her chin high, “or they might deport you.”

His ice-blue eyes narrowed. “Get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we’ll pick up where we left off. My work has progressed nicely, thanks to all the Juden who sacrificed for the cause. After all, sacrifice is the core tenet of this project. I learned that from my father.” He nodded and winked.

She scrambled to her feet to charge at him.

“Ulrich!” his wife called from the far side of the field.

Cora froze.

“Don’t you think we should be on our way?” the blonde asked with an almost imperceptible German accent. “It’s suppertime.”

“Yes, darling,” he called to her as he backed away from Cora.

Cora studied the gorgeous woman. “How can she stand to be with a monster?”

“Angelika—I call her Angela now—is a devoted Lutheran who believes that Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins,” Ulrich said, gazing at his wife, and Cora recognized genuine love in his expression. It sickened her.

“She’s been teaching Rollie the Bibles stories, in English, which will help him assimilate.”

A knot formed in Cora’s throat, and she looked away from Angela, now rubbing Rollie’s back as he continued to cling to her.

“Otto would be so pleased,” Ulrich added with a chuckle.

Refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her disgust, she kept a straight face. “Does she know about me?”

“Of course not. She thinks we’re living here while I teach microbiology at NYU.”

He turned and strolled toward his son, who broke free of his mother’s hold. They met halfway, and Ulrich scooped Rollie up and spun him. Giggling, with the sun shining upon them, they fell to the grass.

Against her will, Cora pictured little Emmett and Linnaeus, roughhousing as she watched with amusement from a nearby picnic blanket. Each would grab one of her arms, pulling her into a heap with them. Over the years she’d reworked their images into her perfect, imaginary family. One that would always remain beyond her reach.

And while she was destined to eternal and utter loneliness, here was Ulrich: wholly undeserving. And deliriously happy.

She dropped the trowel into the pail and hurried to the gardening shed, where her knives were once again rusting away.

Cora pried the floorboard free and removed the dirt-covered case. Before her, secured by loops she’d sewn in herself, ran four rows of tarnished surgical scalpels. She slid one from its lodging.

Surrounded by rakes, hoes, and potting jars, she raised the blade and vowed to drive him from the island. Alive or dead.

But, as she schemed, the memories of his cruelty broke through their sealed chambers, and her strength began to erode. Like the onset of a new disease, fear crept into her bones and raked her body with chills.

Her grip loosened; the knife fell to her feet.

On the floor of the shed, she curled into a ball, allowing the dread to overwhelm her.

Seventeen years later

July 1963

he chrrr of the physical plant died. With the throw of a lever, all power to Riverside had ceased. The Beatles song that had been blasting from the Emerson radio near the dock cut off at midrefrain and with it the commotion of the workers loading the ferry for its final departure.

“The Day” had come. Far too fast. Within an hour, everyone but Cora would be gone from this godforsaken island, and she would be left to endure on her own. Except for the promised assistance from the man who’d been torturing her since his return seventeen years ago. Those visits would simultaneously keep her alive and destroy her.

Sweat trickled down Cora’s forehead, and her blouse clung to her back. Beneath the late afternoon sun, the enclosed roof of the morgue was acting like an open-air oven. The rooms below had to be cooler, but even if she army-crawled to the stairwell, the door’s movement might give her away.

Riverside had sat dormant before, but only for brief periods. She’d survived those transitional times with food stockpiles and her victory garden. According to the recent gossip, this closure was permanent.

Cora shimmied to her eastern spy hole so she could see the silent physical plant across the street. Soon the ferry would leave, and she could refill her canteen at the cistern. That morning, the city had shut off the flow of clean water through a pipe beneath the river. The notion of drinking dirt and algae made her shudder, but at