Smoked Havoc

by Rupert Harker

  I ceased my struggling and lay still, trying to take in my surroundings. A steady stream of heated air wafted across me from an overhead vent, but the gurney was cold against my naked back, and I was clammy from fear and misery.

  I was not alone. By my side, a soldier leant over a strange contraption, fronted by dials and switches and, at one end, a dark cylinder rotating upon a spindle. From the other side of the device there protruded a thick bundle of cables, bound together with wire, and terminating somewhere at the top of my head. The device hummed and hissed, vibrating gently upon its casters.

  The room was otherwise bare apart from my gurney, a metal trolley covered by a green sheet, and a pair of metal sinks against the far wall. The walls were of white tile, stained in places, and dark at the bottom where they met the tiled floor.

  I squinted against the glare of the strip lights, and noticed that there was a cine-camera attached to the upper part of the wall, a detached, impartial witness to my subjection, but that was not all; around the upper perimeter of the room, there appeared to be a viewing gallery, and I drew in a fearful gasp as I realised that I had a sizeable audience. The lights made it impossible to discern any detail of the faces, but here and there, I saw the glint of light upon spectacles, and the red glow of cigarette tips. They sat in silence, the only noises in the room the buzz of the overhead lights, the rumbling of the machine and the hum of the ventilation system.

  The room smelled overpoweringly of bleach, obviously doused liberally upon the floor to mask some other odour, but despite the chlorine which burned my nose and throat, I could still discern something else, rotten meat or soiled clothing; something I could not place.

  Suddenly, the double doors behind my head swung open, and I was buffeted by a freezing draught. I strained to look, but was unable to see who had entered.

  “Isaak.”

  A soft male voice spoke my name. He leaned over me, and I stared into an upside-down, broad, smiling face, with dark hair and thick eyebrows.

  “Isaak,” he repeated. “Bist du bereit? (Are you ready?)”

  “Wo bin ich? (Where am I?)” I cried, my voice shrill and afraid. “Wo ist mein Bruder? (Where is my brother?) Wo ist Jakob?”

  He stroked my cheek tenderly, and his latex surgical glove felt dry and sticky against my skin.

  “Sei nicht ängstlich, Isaak. Bald werden Sie mit Jakob sein.

  (Do not be afraid, Isaak. You will be with Jakob soon.)”

  *

  Without warning, I was back in the warehouse. Schwarzkröte squatted before me, wide eyed and tremulous.

  “What was it?” he insisted. “What did you see?”

  “Mengele,” I gasped. “Josef Mengele. The Angel of Death.”

  “What did he do? What did he say?”

  “Nothing. I was only there for a few seconds.”

  Schwarzkröte tutted disappointedly.

  “Then it is time for the second cylinder.”

  “Please, no,” I begged, but it was no use, and I watched with morbid horror as he lifted the wooden playing arm and removed the wax cylinder. He carefully replaced the cylinder in the cardboard carton, then removed the second cylinder and placed it upon the spindle. With the flick of a switch, the cylinder was set in motion, and the arm lowered. The needle scratched and hopped into the groove, and I was gone once more.

  *

  I was still strapped to the metal gurney. To my right stood a tall female nurse, draped in a surgical gown, with rubber gloves to her wrists, and holding a metal bowl containing a brown, watery substance. She smelled of vanilla and talcum powder, and it reminded me of kindergarden.

  Dr Mengele was at my left. He whistled cheerfully as he drew aside the green cloth from the trolley, unveiling two metal trays filled with steel instruments; scalpels, forceps, saws, retractors and the like. All familiar to me now, of course, but to a child, just a shiny collection of bizarre metal shapes, yet even the child that I had become knew that these shapes were something unnatural, something to be feared, a source of pain and injury.

  I whined and struggled, but my protests were unnoticed, and the nurse stood by impassively, watching as Mengele inspected the surgical instruments, finally selecting a scalpel and a curved pair of toothed forceps.

  “Sollte ich den Patienten vorzubereiten, Herr Doctor? (Should I prepare the patient, Doctor?)”

  Mengele signalled the affirmative with a grunt and a nod of the head.

  The nurse placed the bowl between my feet and withdrew a rag, wrung out the excess fluid, and began to smear my front with the watery brown liquid. I had cuts and grazes on my arms and legs, and the liquid burned. I recognised the smell of iodine solution; my mother had used it on me and Jakob when we fell and grazed our knees.

  I missed my mother. I hadn’t seen her since I had arrived at this place. The doctor promised that I was going to see my brother. Perhaps I would see my mother again too.

  *

  “Please,” I whispered, tears streaming down my face. “Please don’t make him relive this barbarity.”

  “What is happening?” Schwarzkröte could barely contain himself. He leant over me, a hand on each shoulder, staring intently into my face. “What is he doing now?” he insisted, but I clamped my mouth tight and shook my head in mute protest.

  “Please answer, Doctor,” he muttered softly.

  “No.”

  He straightened up and sighed deeply.

  “Your knife please, Clara.” Clara reached into her boot and withdrew a short-bladed knife. She handed it to her father, and he held it before my face, turning it so that the light glinted from its edge.

  “Dr Harker. May I call you Rupert?”

  “No, you may not.”

  “Very well, Dr Harker. Please do not force me to cut the answer from you. You know what I am capable of.”

  I stared at the knife for a few seconds, but I had little choice.

  “There was a nurse,” I mumbled. “She was washing me down with iodine solution. They are going to perform an operation.”

  “Indeed they are, Doctor. Indeed they are.” He retreated to the Archive, returning a few moments later with the photographs that had so curdled my stomach a few minutes before. “Look,” he hissed, holding the photographs before me in turn, “see what he has in store for you,” but mercifully I could see little, my eyelids were swollen and my vision misted from crying.

  He cast the pictures aside and sidled up to the infernal device, removed the wax cylinder, which he returned to its box, and selected the next in the sequence.

  “Not to worry, doctor. Only four more to go.”

  He fitted the new cylinder to its spindle, set it in motion and lowered the needle.

  *

  I was brown with iodine from chin to toe, and Dr Mengele was ready to proceed. He rested the scalpel blade against my right collar bone.

  “Kolleginnen und Kollegen (colleagues),” he announced to the gallery, “wir werden durch Öffnung des Thorax starten (we will start by opening the thorax).”

  So keen was the blade, that I felt no pain with the first cut, just the warmth of the blood running down my chest and sides and pooling in the gurney beneath my back.

  “Krankenschwester. Gib mir die Knochenfräser (Nurse. Pass me the bone-cutters).”

  *

  Each memory was no more than a few seconds, but I shall remember the pain, fear and hopelessness of each of those seconds until my dying day, yet I swear to you, dear reader, never shall I speak of them again.

  But I spoke of them then.

  Schwarzkröte hung upon my every word while, under threat of torture and death, I related every sordid detail of Isaak’s torment.

  “That was the last one, I’m afraid.” Schwarzkröte removed the sixth and final cylinder from its spindle. “What shall we have next? Suffocation in the gas chambers? Immersion in liquid nitrogen?”

  Before I could signal my disapproval, there came to our ears confused shouting from the other end of the warehouse, and
as Schwarzkröte raised his head to look, the wax cylinder shattered into a dozen pieces in his hands.

  *

  26. Crossfire

  Sebastian Schwarzkröte stood motionless for a few seconds, staring with incomprehension at the pieces of hard wax scattered about his feet, until a nearby volley of automatic gunfire shook him from his stupor.

  The guard to my left was struck in the chest and neck by sniper fire, and collapsed gurgling at my feet. With a cry of rage, Clara liberated her fallen comrade’s AK47 and charged away towards the warehouse entrance to engage the enemy.

  Bullets pinged and whined as they flew about us, ricocheting from the Apple of Eden’s steel walls, and for the first time, a look of insecurity and uncertainty flitted across Schwarzkröte’s features.

  “The machine,” he cried. He tore the helmet from my head and hurriedly disconnected the cables from the power supply. Keeping low, he pushed the machine with as much speed as he could muster over to the Apple of Eden, and then disappeared inside, pulling the door to behind him.

  In his haste, he had discarded Clara’s knife.

  “Fairfax,” I shouted. “The knife.”

  “I see it, Rupert.” Urban-Smith shuffled along the floor until he was able to grasp the knife, and then, with no small difficulty, he succeeded in climbing to his feet. He came round behind me and placed the handle of the knife in my hands.

  “Hold it firm, Rupert,” he instructed, and knelt down with his back to me, manoeuvring himself until his plastic restraints were against the knife’s blade. A few seconds later, he gave a harsh bark of triumph, and the world tilted forty-five degrees as he tipped my chair backwards and dragged me over to the side of the warehouse, away from the thickest of the gunfire, before going to work on my own bonds with the knife.

  “Rupert,” he said as he worked the blade to and fro, “I have a plan, but I require your assistance.” There was a tug and a sharp pain, and my wrists were free. He placed the knife in my hands, and I began sawing at the plastic ties that held my ankles against the chair legs.

  “What do you need, Fairfax?”

  “When I give you my signal, you must ensure that the door to the Apple of Eden is closed, and that you are a safe distance from it. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” I confirmed, rising from my chair. “What is the signal?” but he had already gone, moving quickly towards the other end of the warehouse, crouching low and keeping to the shadows.

  Schwarzkröte’s guards had spread across the warehouse, taking cover behind the various crates, shelves and containers, trading shots with their attackers. I could see Clara amongst them, shouting orders and gesticulating wildly to her comrades.

  As I watched, a small projectile sailed in through the open warehouse door, trailing smoke. It rolled across the floor with a clatter, then lay still, belching a great plume of white smoke, forcing the guards to fall back to take cover deeper within the warehouse.

  I turned to locate Schwarzkröte, but he had snuck up upon me unawares, and as I turned, he caught me a hard blow across the cheek. I fell to all fours, stunned.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I cannot allow you to leave.” He knelt beside me and wrapped his arm around my neck in a stranglehold. “While Mr Urban-Smith was in my possession, you were still of use, collateral in case he decided to escape, but as he has decided to abandon you to your fate, I am afraid that you are no longer of value.”

  Schwarzkröte was a large, powerful man, and although he was twice my age, he was stronger than I, and would have held me at a significant disadvantage were it not for two factors.

  Firstly, I was furious beyond reason. That this man was responsible for the orchestration and organisation of murder, mayhem and criminal activity on a massive scale was condemnation enough, but my anger reached beyond that. It was by his hand that I had felt Isaak’s pain and anguish. I had seen it through Isaak’s eyes, felt it through his skin, tasted his misery within my own soul, and now Isaak’s fury lived within me too, and both of us held Schwarzkröte to account. For the first time in my life, I wanted another dead.

  Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, I still had Clara’s knife gripped in my fist, and with a cry, I forced my arm backwards, plunging the blade deep into Schwarzkröte’s thigh.

  He howled with pain and surprise as I twisted the blade free and struck again. He threw himself to the side to be out of range of my attack, and sprawled upon his back, whining. I came up into a crouch and, knife held before me, launched myself towards him, but I could not have timed it worse.

  Schwarzkröte was attempting to escape me by pushing himself backwards with his uninjured leg. As I sprang, he lost purchase and fell backwards. His flailing foot caught me beneath the chin and sent me sprawling in one direction and the knife in the other.

  We clambered to our feet to face each other. Schwarzkröte was limping badly, and he eyed me warily as we circled one another, looking for an opening to attack. The air was filled with shouts and the chatter of gunfire, but through my eyes, there was just me and Saxon Schwarzkröte, and the rest of the World just fell away.

  With a roar, I ran at him and leapt, arms outstretched at his middle. He stumbled backwards, but did not fall, and as I grasped for purchase to unbalance him, he clubbed me upon the back of the neck with his meaty hands. He raised his arm to strike me again, but I balled my hand into a fist and pounded him as hard as I could between the legs, once, twice, three times until he could take no more, and threw me away from him. He stood hunched, gasping and clutching at his injured groin.

  I sized up my adversary, with his great chest, powerful arms and long reach, and realised that there was no way that I could beat him in a fair fight; I needed a weapon, but the knife was nowhere to be seen.

  We both saw it at the same time; the chair to which I had been tied, pushed over against the wall. Schwarzkröte tried to reach for me as I sprinted for the chair, but he was at a disadvantage due to his thigh injury, and I scooped up the chair and brandished it triumphantly.

  That was when I heard it, the braying of a truck’s horn. Again and again it cried into the still night, and I looked around to see headlights moving at speed towards the warehouse entrance. I realised that this was Urban-Smith’s signal, and I recalled his parting words, ‘you must ensure that the door to the Apple of Eden is closed, and that you are a safe distance from it.’

  There was a colossal blow to the small of my back, and I fell forward with Schwarzkröte’s weight upon me. He grabbed me about my throat with his brawny forearm and pulled me in tight to his chest. I clawed and pawed at his arm, and tried to reach up to scratch at his eyes, but he merely batted my hands away.

  My heart pounded, my chest felt as tight as a drum and I was becoming light-headed. Panic rose within me, and all the while, the headlights bore down upon us. There were barely seconds left for me to reach the Apple.

  Schwarzkröte had one arm across my chest, pinning my arms at my sides, and the other about my throat. My vision was misting, and I had to act or resign myself to my fate. I turned my head to locate the Apple of Eden’s open doorway, and then I struck.

  I felt down the front of Schwarzkröte’s thigh until I found his wounds and, dropping my weight, thrust my fingers deep into the injury and pushed backwards from my knees. The change in my centre of gravity, coupled with the pain, caught him off guard. Together, we stumbled backwards, gaining speed until we hit the step at the entrance to the great steel chamber. We tripped and tumbled, landing together in a sprawl of tangled limbs, and I thrashed and lashed out with my fists and elbows to scrabble my way back to the doorway.

  The truck had reached the entrance to the warehouse, and dark figure scattered left and right to be clear from its path as it thundered onwards, lights blazing and horn sounding. As I reached the doorway to the Apple of Eden, a vice-like grip took me about the ankle.

  “No you don’t,” yelled Schwarzkröte, attempting to haul me back inside. “We shall die together.” I tur
ned around and looked into his leering face, twisted into a mask of hate and fury, with spittle about his jowls and his eyes burning with fervour.

  “Damn you!” I screamed. “Damn you to Hell!” I bent my knees and kicked out like a swimmer on a turn, catching him full in the face with both feet. His grip loosed for just a second, but it was enough, and I scrambled over the Apple of Eden’s threshold, kicking the door closed behind me. With a pneumatic hiss, the Apple of Eden sealed itself for the last time.

  The truck bore down upon me. Silhouetted in the glare of the headlights, a tall slender figure leapt clear from the open cab door and rolled away into the darkness. I scrambled to my feet and ran as fast as I could as eight tons of truck hurtled past me at thirty miles per hour and ploughed into the great steel chamber. With a great rending of metal, the front of the Apple of Eden folded inwards like tinfoil, the truck’s hood and cabin shattered, and the rear of the vehicle rose up into the air and hung there for a second.

  A huge roar emanated from the shattered steel vault as its one hundred kilograms of explosives lifted its roof and folded the remainder flat, hurling what remained of the truck across the warehouse. I was lifted bodily off of my feet by the blast, and carried several feet through the air, coming to rest between two stacks of wooden pallets as twisted fragments of metal and great wads of burning petrol fell about the warehouse, eliciting screams and igniting small fires throughout the length of the building.

  I lay for a while, my ears ringing and every muscle aching, but it seemed that I had escaped largely unscathed. Meanwhile, the battle raged on, with gunfire and small explosions all about, and it seemed like the correct opportunity to find Urban-Smith and beat a hasty retreat.

  As I pulled myself into an upright position, a hard blow struck me in the ribs, and I collapsed back to the floor. My assailant struck once more, and then once again, leaving me gasping and retching on my side upon the cold concrete floor.

  “You killed him!” Clara stood over me. Her voice was filled with rage and grief. “You killed my father.”