Volk

by David Nickle

  “Suits me,” said Jason, and at that, Andrew Waggoner started to laugh. After a moment of that, Nurse Annie Rowe joined in. Jason kept a straight face until they were done, and Ruth—she just slept.

  Lawrence Thorn and his family were good to them, and helped where it was needed most: by providing a swept-out, scrubbed-down room with good morning light, for Andrew Waggoner and Annie Rowe to work on Ruth.

  Days before, they had all been at Eliada—where the creature that’d been named Mister Juke had taken over the hospital, and finally the sawmill at the middle of the town.

  Ruth Harper’s father was killed by it, along with the rest of the family, and Ruth—Ruth had been impregnated by the thing.

  It wasn’t truly impregnation. Doctor Waggoner said it was more like a parasitic infection.

  But impregnation or infection, the cure was the same: an abortion procedure, similar but not precisely the same as the procedure that Andrew had learned when he studied at the Paris Medical School. Andrew had attempted it once, on a hill girl, but she was sick, and Andrew was injured, and she had not survived.

  Andrew and Annie Rowe hadn’t contemplated imposing that cure on anyone else as they escaped from Eliada in the waters of the Kootenai River. They fled far enough downriver to escape the Juke’s effects, and finally stopped at an old trapper’s camp. But when Jason arrived with Ruth, fleeing on the very heels of the destruction of that town, Andrew saw that he’d have to attempt the procedure again—and that the camp where they were resting was no place to do it.

  So Jason went to work, and tore off the roof of the cabin, and with some rope he found and a couple of logs that had loosed downriver, did a barely adequate job constructing a raft for them all. And they set off, looking for exactly the situation that Lawrence Thorn and his homestead provided them: a clean, dry room with good light, and a host who would accept the things they would have to do there.

  “I pray to God your Negro knows what he’s doing,” Lawrence said to Jason, as the two of them sat on the bunkhouse stoop. It was the cleanest, brightest place on the farm—clean because it had largely been shut up since Lawrence and his pa had built it—when they had thoughts that the farm might become enough of a concern to justify hired hands. It never really had—but they’d kept it swept and bright, repairing the glass in the windows as needed.

  Andrew and Annie pronounced it fine, but they and Jason set to scrubbing it anyhow, with the help of Tom Thorn and his ma Susanna, while Lawrence hauled well water to the woodstove and then, once boiled, to the ever-more pristine bunkhouse.

  And then Jason and Lawrence sat outside, while Andrew and Annie got down to the procedure and Tom and Susanna went back to the house.

  “Doctor Waggoner isn’t my Negro,” said Jason. “He’s his own man, and he’s good at surgery. He learned his trade in Paris, France.”

  Lawrence huffed, squinting across the farmyard to their chicken coop. He was a tall man, lean-featured, and the years out here had carved themselves into the lines of his face.

  “I apologize,” said Lawrence. “But he seems hurt in one arm, and anyone doing a surgery needs both of them.”

  “That may be,” said Jason.

  Lawrence folded his hands together, and looked at Jason, nodding a little until Jason did the same.

  “I already prayed,” said Jason, “but I guess we can do that again.”

  It did not take long, and when they were finished, Lawrence spoke again. “Doctor Waggoner’s not your Negro. I am guessing that Miss Harper is your sweetheart, though.”

  “I’m guessing.”

  Lawrence smiled and patted Jason on the knee. “You know, a good surgeon makes all the difference. My wife fell ill three years back, and we were blessed to have a doctor living downriver. My mother now—there were no doctors out here in those days. If there were, she might’ve lived to see my wedding.”

  “How old were you when she passed?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “I was seventeen,” said Jason.

  “I’m sorry to hear,” said Lawrence, and looked at him with dawning realization. “You’re seventeen now, aren’t you?”

  Jason nodded through the tears, and Lawrence put an arm over his shoulders, and held him, and let him weep until it was done. Snuffling, Jason apologized, and thanked him.

  “Do you have any other family?”

  Jason wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “No,” he said. “Thought I did, but she turned out to be a liar. And a murderess.”

  And thinking about Germaine Frost, and the people she worked with back in New York, he added: “You should know, that before long folks might come looking for us. Bad folks.”

  Lawrence slid away, and regarded Jason. “You on the run?”

  “Not from the law.”

  “Then—”

  “Who? The Cave Germ folks.” When Lawrence didn’t seem any less confused, Jason added: “Eugenics folks. They got me on a list, I reckon.”

  They didn’t get to talk about that more until much later, because that was when Nurse Rowe, covered in dark blood and chest heaving, threw open the door and called Jason inside.

  The Eugenics folks hadn’t come to the Thorn farm in 1911. But twenty years on, it looked as though they’d come to find Jason Thistledown in France.

  And they’d come to take him to Germany.

  It should have panicked Jason—all the fears and worries that had kept him awake the night prior, they should have all come back to him. But terror is a strange creature—fiercer in the dark hours of uncertainty, timid itself in the face of calamity, when it often retreated, leaving a cold space, a calm. As the Latécoère flew on, Jason let his mind wander as he peered out the window at the clouds below. They stretched below in a long, flat plain—a sea of clouds. Under that sea was another world—a part of France where he might have flown the Nieuport, where he might indeed have met Zimmermann . . . on another flight to Germany.

  He chanced a look behind him, where Aguillard sat—hoping that he might be dozing. Jason thought if he were, he might be able to get around and lay hold of him, strike a bargain with the other two men here and strap a parachute on, leap out the side of the plane. It was a mad plan—who knew what was beneath those clouds, really? But Aguillard smiled back at him, wide awake, erasing any notion of escape.

  “You need to smoke?” asked Aguillard. Jason did—fiercely—but he shook his head.

  “Well, you don’t mind if I do?”

  “Suit yourself,” said Jason as Aguillard opened a small silver case and pulled a cigarette from it. He held it between his lips and turned the case over. It contained a butane lighter in one end. Once the cigarette was lit, he pulled it from his mouth and offered it to Jason. A curl of smoke found Jason’s nose, and involuntarily, Jason drew it deep.

  “Come now,” he said. “You slept badly, and you badly need to smoke. I would offer you some whiskey, but I understand liquor is not your vice.”

  Jason took the cigarette.

  “It is a good thing you are not flying,” said Aguillard. “You are in no shape.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, no. You are not, really. The landing is not straightforward,” said Aguillard. “We have done the best we are able to accommodate a runway, but it is not much more than a field, and shorter than you might care for. I believe that Herr Zimmermann will be better suited.”

  “How’d you know about last night? You been watching me?”

  Aguillard pinched his own cigarette between his lips and held the case between two fingers, so he could clap, and laugh. “Not at all!” he said. “But I guessed it easily. It is good the Germans never captured you, Mr. Thistledown. You would have lost England the war.”

  “You keep calling me Thistledown.”

  “Yes, I do. It is your name.”

  Jason took another deep drag. He weighed some things—notably, his new job, with Emile Desrosiers, that had seemed such a lucky break . . . and now.

  “Was I ever going to Africa?�
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  Aguillard replaced the case in his jacket pocket and puffed his own cigarette.

  “You may yet,” he said, “if you do as you’re told.”

  They flew four hours and ten minutes altogether, and in that time, Jason smoked five more of Aguillard’s cigarettes, after a while feeling not ashamed at all. The tobacco was good, better than Jason was used to and nearly enough to make him well-disposed. But the tobacco, from Turkey said Aguillard, was all they talked about after that. Jason wasn’t going to give up anything else until he learned something new, so he decided that he’d just wait until they landed to do that, not trusting either Aguillard or—more particularly—himself with Aguillard.

  After the fourth cigarette, the plane fell below the cloud cover. Jason peered out his window. They were flying over a low, tree-covered mountain range. He kept watching as the ground levelled, turning to forest and farmland. They flew over a lake, wide and blue. A town passed beneath them, and then a larger town, and at that, Zimmermann—Jason guessed it was Zimmermann—turned the aircraft and there were mountains again. They descended more rapidly, turning east and then north, crossing a valley. Here, they were low enough that Jason could make out structures—maybe a chateau, or something like it, and in the valley’s middle . . .

  Jason couldn’t tell what it was at first. The structure looked like nothing so much as a marksman’s target, drawn in a large clearing around a fast-moving river. He squinted. Could it be fencing? Long, high circles of fences—concentrically placed around one another? The span of them would have been huge—the largest, at least hundreds of yards in the radius. Enmeshed within it, a low, sprawling structure . . . like a factory, a military compound . . . that pushed against the riverbank.

  Jason glanced over to Aguillard, who had been watching Jason as he pressed his face against the glass.

  “Oh yes,” said Aguillard, eyebrows raised, nodding, as though he could know Jason’s thoughts on the scope of the thing, and agreed.

  When Jason looked back, it was already gone, the aircraft cresting the peaks surrounding the valley, banking for what would be its final approach.

  “Best strap in,” said Aguillard. “It is not an ideal landing.”

  The aircraft flew low over sharp-tipped evergreens and lower across a meadow of tall grass and bright red wildflowers before the wheels touched down on a hard-packed pasture, where they bounced just once and finally rolled and stopped.

  “All right if I stand up?” Jason asked, and when Aguillard indicated that would be fine Jason got up and headed to the cockpit. Zimmermann and Aguillard’s man had unstrapped themselves and were climbing out of their seats. In front of them, the propeller was slowing its spin to a halt. Aguillard’s man slipped sideways past Jason, offered Jason’s old seat to him with a small smile. Zimmermann kept his eyes fixed on the instruments in front of him, so Jason reached over and waved his hand in front of him.

  “Hey!” said Jason, and Zimmermann looked at him, and Jason looked back. Was he in on this thing, whatever it was? He sure knew Jason Thorn’s service record before having even met him.

  Did he know Jason Thistledown’s? Had Aguillard told him all about that? Had Desrosiers?

  “Did you know about this?” Jason finally asked.

  “One does not argue with these fellows,” Zimmermann said softly. Zimmermann gestured out the cockpit, where in the distance, mountains climbed to snow-tipped peaks, and nearer, a big farmhouse squatted, two long balconies facing them. Men seemed to be milling about in front of the building—maybe a dozen of them. As Jason watched, he saw a group of five split off and head toward the plane.

  “What do you mean, ‘these fellows’?”

  Zimmermann pointed. “Do you recognize the uniform on those ones?”

  Jason squinted and shook his head. The fellows were dressed in brown, with black caps. “Been a long time since I was in the service.”

  “They are S.A.,” said Zimmermann quietly. “Hitler’s men.”

  “The Nazi leader.”

  Zimmermann nodded.

  “Your leader?” asked Jason. Zimmermann looked away at that. He started to say something, but Jason cut him off.

  “Don’t bother,” he said, and climbed out of the cockpit, and then out of the plane, where Aguillard waited for him with his three companions, waving cheerily at the five who jogged across the field to join them.

  Three

  Three of the five wore what must have been the S.A. uniform—high black boots, brown denim shirts, the swastika symbol on an armband—and had pistols and daggers holstered at their belts. Jason had read in a newspaper that many of these S.A. fellows—stormtroopers, they called themselves—were veterans of the Kaiser’s army. These three seemed about old enough to have fought in the war, but younger than Jason—too young to have fought in it for very long.

  The other two were older, and dressed far more casually. One, a square-faced man with a mop of greying hair swept over a tanned forehead, wore a high-collared wool sweater and black trousers. His companion was the smaller—he barely reached to the first’s shoulder—and balding, with glasses that clipped onto his nose. He wore a white shirt and a grey tweed vest that matched his trousers, tucked into high-topped hiking boots. With shorter legs and an ample gut, he came up behind the rest.

  As they approached, Aguillard told Jason their names, and Jason blinked at the one.

  “I once knew a Bergstrom,” said Jason.

  Aguillard nodded. “That would be Johannes’s elder brother. Nils, yes?”

  Jason didn’t say anything one way or another. Aguillard was baiting him; he could see that the fellow was almost enjoying it by the twinkle in his eye.

  “What’s the little fellow’s name again? Missed that,” he said instead.

  “Doctor Plaut. Jürgen Plaut,” said Aguillard, and laughed. “The little fellow, eh? I must tell him about that. He won’t be pleased.”

  And then they were there, shaking hands all around, talking quickly in German to one another. Jason kept his hands in his pockets and listened. His German was good, but not so good he could keep up with chatter in a crowd. He picked out words and topics here and there: there was a checkpoint at a mountain pass, a fellow all of them knew that seemed to be recovering, but not well, and an excellent strudel that had been set out in the house across yonder field. Plaut kept his head down, but old Bergstrom looked at Jason steadily—like he was studying him, taking stock. If he were anything like his elder brother, thought Jason, that would be exactly what he was doing. Jason looked right back, and held on until old Johannes looked away.

  “It is all right,” said Bergstrom to one of the uniformed men—and that was when Jason noticed that the two of them had their hands on their holsters, and the third had drawn his weapon, a Luger automatic pistol. He hastily returned it to his belt. Jason stepped back, and as he did so, the man with the gun became very still, watching Jason like he was a rattlesnake.

  “All right,” Jason repeated, and showed his hands palm out, slowly. The fellow stood straighter, looked to Bergstrom and then Plaut, and finally dropped the gun back into its holster. He didn’t go so far as to fasten the cover.

  Jason lowered his hands to his side, but kept them from his pockets, as it dawned on him: all of these fellows in the uniforms, with the guns at their hips, who not only outgunned but outnumbered him too—they were afraid.

  “Let’s go to the farmhouse,” said Plaut, looking at Jason sidelong as he spoke with Aguillard. “The breeze off the mountain still has a chill to it, yes?”

  Jason hadn’t seen a farmhouse so large as this. It rose three storeys, and its walls were painted brightly, with Greek-style pillars drawn on each corner, and up top toward the peak, a mural that depicted something mythological; it looked to Jason like a dragon, fighting a man wearing old-fashioned mail armour. If they were in England, Jason would say St. George. Here, he was betting on Siegfried.

  They led Jason across a wide porch, where more of the uniformed men linge
red, leaning against railings and sitting on wooden chairs—through a large but simple kitchen walled in stained barn board and rimmed with a bench on the two outside walls—then down a hallway, its walls hung so close with antlers that it seemed like a forest pathway—and up two flights of stairs into a long sitting room that overlooked the meadow and the mountains beyond. Here, Jason was invited to sit, in one of three leather wing-backed chairs surrounding a low table made from a section of a huge tree. Bergstrom sat in the second, Aguillard in the third. Plaut stood. At some point along the way, the uniformed men had split away. Bergstrom crossed his arms over his chest and squinted at Jason.

  “How tall are you?” he asked, in English.

  “Six feet one inch,” said Jason. “You?”

  “Five foot and ten inches. Your weight?”

  “Twelve stone.” Jason raised his eyebrows in a question. “And you, sir?”

  Bergstrom patted his belly. “I am sixteen stone.”

  “You are being rude, Doctor Bergstrom,” interjected Plaut, in German. “Welcome our guest. Herr Aguillard tells us he is a smoker. Offer him tobacco.”

  Bergstrom shook his head. “It is unhealthful.”

  “It calms the nerves.” In English, Plaut said: “Tobacco?”

  “Yes,” Jason said. “Thank you. I would like my bag also. And directions to the nearest town. I can walk it.”

  Bergstrom shook his head. “You may have tobacco. But I am afraid I must insist that you remain here. Too many have gone to too much trouble to send you on your way so soon.” He stood and walked over to an armoire, from which he extracted a wooden case, stacked with cigarettes. As he returned and offered them to Jason, he continued talking.

  “You have matured well, Herr Thistledown. Your features are even, you are well-muscled for one not an athlete. Your skin is clear. Your hair full. Your teeth, in spite of your deplorable smoking habit, are white and clean. No one would guess that you are nearly forty years old.”

  “Siebenunddreißig,” said Plaut, and as Jason pulled a cigarette from the case and placed it between his lips, Plaut was there with a match. “Thirty-seven,” he repeated in English.