The Only Thing to Fear

by Caroline Tung Richmond

  Years ago, Zara’s father had been one of these soldiers, too. She didn’t know much about him, aside from the fact that he had filed for an immediate transfer once the girl he had been secretly seeing — Zara’s mother — told him she was pregnant.

  One of the soldiers caught Zara’s eye, but she swiftly looked across the street. When she was little and didn’t know any better, she had wandered up to a Japanese captain and asked if he knew her father, Corporal Tanaka. The soldier had taken one look at Zara and said, Why would I know anything about your father or his trash? When he started laughing, she had run away, tears swimming down her cheeks. She realized then how her father must have viewed her. Trash. Litter. Garbage to be thrown away, just as he had thrown away her mom.

  “You all right? You’re pale.” Uncle Red looped an arm around her shoulder.

  Zara shrugged and sank against him, his hug reminding her that not everyone had abandoned her. As much as Uncle Red frustrated her, as much as she wanted to box his ears sometimes, he was the only father she had known and the only one she needed.

  As they neared the town center, they zigzagged through the crowd of farmers in their sweat-soaked shirts and the iron miners in their dusty coveralls, who had been let out early for the announcement. Zara followed her uncle into a wide, bricked courtyard, commonly known as the square. The Greenfield Courthouse lay ahead of them, a centuries-old building that had once been the pride of the town, with its white pillars and handsome bell tower. But now it was used for official Nazi business, complete with a portrait of Führer Dieter hanging above its doors. Everyone was expected to salute the painting whenever they walked under it, and Zara had always done so obediently, but that didn’t stop her belly from twisting every time. She hated looking into Dieter’s plump face and his ridiculous rectangle of a mustache, the same mustache that his great-grandfather had favored.

  “Where’s the painting of Reichsmarschall Faust?” Uncle Red said. He nodded to the blank space next to the Führer’s portrait where a likeness of Reichsmarschall Faust, the cousin of the Führer and the head commander of the Territories, usually hung.

  “Maybe they’re putting up a new one.”

  “Maybe,” Uncle Red said, although his eyes narrowed and he didn’t look convinced.

  Zara pushed deeper into the crowd, murmuring a quick “Pardon me” to the German housewives she bumped into. As usual, the Hausfrauen were dressed in the latest fashions from Berlin: leather riding boots, wide-legged trousers, and delicate blouses patterned with tiny silver swastikas. The women had brought their broods along for the show: stair-step children with cornhusk hair. Since the war, the Nazis had encouraged women to bear large families to spread the Aryan line, and now it was a common sight to see a German mother with five, six, or seven children in tow. They reminded Zara of her neighbor’s brood mares: popping out child after child until their bodies could take no more.

  “Redmond! Over here!”

  Zara’s head swiveled to find Mrs. Talley, a dear family friend and another member of the Alliance, waving a wrinkled hand in their direction. The old woman stood at the far corner of the square with her gray hair tucked into a bun and a red shawl draped around her shoulders. She leaned against a lamppost to relieve her aching right hip. Uncle Red threaded toward her.

  “Hello, my sweet girl.” Mrs. Talley greeted Zara with a warm hug and a peck on the cheek, a ritual left over from when Zara was little. “You wouldn’t happen to know what this is all about, would you?”

  “I thought it could be the Soviets, but he shot that idea down,” said Zara, gesturing at her uncle.

  Uncle Red tensed. “Let’s keep our voices down.”

  Mrs. Talley only smiled. “It’s all right. I’m sure no one heard us with all of this chatter around us.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to be careful,” said Uncle Red, staring straight at Zara.

  Zara folded her arms, but she nodded. Her uncle’s paranoia often chewed on her last nerve, but she couldn’t exactly begrudge him for it. After all, he had weathered his share of Nazi interrogations because his father — Zara’s grandfather — had been imprisoned for possessing an Alliance pamphlet. The Nazis had sent Louis St. James straight to a labor camp, where he succumbed to pneumonia six months later. Not long after his death, the Nazis started sniffing around the St. James farm more and more, although that hadn’t stopped Zara’s mother and Uncle Red from joining the Alliance.

  The crowd hushed as three armored SUVs rolled down the street from Fort Goering. Rising on her tiptoes, Zara watched the vehicles stop. A dozen soldiers spilled out from their doors, including Sentinel Achen. Seeing him again made Zara grimace, wishing she could scrub her skin clean.

  The soldiers fanned around a long stage that had been erected on the eastern edge of the square, rising six feet above the ground. Behind the stage, a large white screen the size of a movie theater display had been assembled for the broadcast.

  A Nazi officer stepped out of the last SUV and the soldiers snapped to attention; Zara’s mouth screwed tight at the sight of him. It was Colonel Eckhart, the commanding officer of Fort Goering, marching onto the stage with his silver hair slicked back and his boots gleaming like a mirror. A bleached-white smile occupied his face, the same smile he wore whenever he ordered a public beating or an execution. At the sight of that grin, Zara fought off a scowl. Colonel Eckhart may have possessed the good looks of a Munich cinema star, but his heart was black as tar underneath. He had no problem ordering his soldiers to kill communists, Jews, or homosexuals. Not that there were many of them left nowadays. The Nazis had exterminated an untold number of “undesirables” during the postwar cleansings, and any survivors had learned to live in hiding long ago. But as much as the Colonel enjoyed killing a Soviet sympathizer or a closeted homosexual, nothing made him happier than catching an Alliance rebel — his personal favorite.

  “Citizens of Greenfield!” Colonel Eckhart held up a megaphone, and his tenor voice blared like a ringmaster welcoming a fresh group of onlookers. His right arm snapped up. “Heil Hitler! Sieg heil!”

  The crowd returned the salute. “Sieg heil!” they chanted, a popular rallying cry. Hail victory.

  “I am pleased today to bring you a message from our beloved leader, Führer Dieter Hitler. Without further ado.” The Colonel motioned toward the white screen and nodded at one of his soldiers, whose hands fluttered over a box of controls.

  A few seconds ticked by before the broadcast began. A Nazi flag waved against a bright blue sky, accompanied by a cheery recording of the Nazi national anthem. When the music ended on a high F note, the flag was replaced with a live feed of the Führer, who sat behind a heavy oak desk in his Berlin palace. Behind him, the floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of the Berlin skyline, filled with hundred-floor condominiums and shiny skyscrapers that boasted of the city’s wealth.

  The Führer was dressed in full military regalia, even though he had never stepped foot on a battlefield. He wore a trim olive-green uniform with broad epaulets on each shoulder and a blinding array of medals hung over his breast pocket. To the right of him, Dieter’s beautiful wife, Anke, and their nine-year-old son, Johann, smiled at the camera, their pale hair combed to perfection. They were the picture of the idyllic Aryan family, but that picture was incomplete. At their Parisian summer home four years earlier, Dieter and Anke’s twin girls had been killed in a bombing attack orchestrated by French rebels. Dieter and Johann had escaped unharmed, but Anke had been in a coma for a month and was now rumored to be barren.

  Zara’s gaze drifted to the back of the screen, her eyes drawn to the four soldiers lined up behind the Führer. The Corps of Four. A shiver wormed its way down her spine. All four of them were Dual Anomalies, the rarest of Anomalies who possessed not one but two powers, caused by a genetic glitch that the Nazi scientists couldn’t re-create in their laboratories. Only a few dozen were known worldwide, and they were all extensively trained in the art of killing. Zara had no doubt that they could d
estroy her in a hundred different ways, each one more gruesome than the next.

  The camera panned briefly over the Corps’ faces. Zara could never remember their names, but she certainly remembered their abilities. At the very left stood the Medic, who could absorb his patients’ pain and mend flesh wounds with a brush of his hand. To his right, there was the Mind Controller, who could plant ideas in people’s thoughts and knock people unconscious with a flick of the wrist. Then there was the Protector — the youngest of the four, who wore her platinum hair in two plaits — who could conjure fireballs from her fingertips and hurl icicles from her palms. Last, there was the Monster, standing over seven feet tall, who could withstand bullets with his impenetrable skin and strangle an eighteen-hand stallion with his super-strength. Apparently, he wrestled grizzly bears for training.

  Zara shivered again. With the Corps of Four at his side, it was no wonder the Führer had survived multiple assassination attempts over the past fifteen years. Only a year ago, an unnamed group — rumored to be financed by the Soviets — had tried to bomb Dieter’s limousine, but the Monster had pushed the vehicle to safety while the Protector burnt the terrorists to a char. As long as the Corps was nearby, Dieter was practically invincible.

  The crowd fell into an empty silence as the Führer sat forward in his leather chair. No one dared make a sound.

  “Greetings, my citizens,” Dieter said in German. His voice boomed as strong as his father, Anselm’s, who had ruled the Nazi Empire for a decade before succumbing to a cancer that his doctors couldn’t treat. “It is not often that I address my subjects in the Territories, but today is a fortunate one, for I bring good tidings to you.”

  The camera panned out as Dieter’s wife and the Corps of Four broke into polite applause. Even Johann clapped his chubby hands together, eliciting a proud smile from his mother.

  So young and so brainwashed, Zara thought. If Molly were here, they would glance at each other and resist the urge to roll their eyes.

  “After three years of service, Reichsmarschall Faust, the commander of the Eastern American Territories, is entering retirement. We wish him well.” Dieter’s words were flat and rough as sandpaper, as if he didn’t wish Faust well at all.

  Zara’s eyes flickered toward her uncle. This move made little sense. Reichsmarschall Faust was only in his early fifties, far too early to retire. Besides, Faust had been eager to command the Territories ever since he and Dieter had graduated from military school together. Why would he give up this plum assignment after only a few years? And why was this good news?

  Dieter continued, “Now, as for who will oversee the Territories in Reichsmarschall Faust’s absence, I have appointed General Emmerich Baldur to the job.” He appeared much sunnier as he motioned off-camera. A second later, a barrel-chested man walked onto the screen, his beard neatly trimmed and his chin tipped high in that arrogant Nazi way. “General Baldur, soon to be Reichsmarschall Baldur, has spent twelve years in the North African Colonies, overseeing our troops there. Prior to that, he also served in the French Territorial State and the British Isles.”

  General Baldur stepped forward, a nicotine-stained smile glowing from beneath his mustache. He saluted the Führer with a heady “Heil Hitler!”

  Dieter nodded and looked back at the camera. “Reichsmarschall Baldur will arrive in the Territories tomorrow. To my subjects there, I ask that you give him a warm welcome. Guten Tag.”

  The feed returned to the waving Nazi flag, and Zara blinked at the movie screen. That was it? The entire announcement had lasted mere minutes. The Führer could easily have presented this news in the papers, but he had called a worldwide broadcast instead. Zara wondered if there was something happening behind the scenes. Why hadn’t Faust attended the announcement? Had he and the Führer had a falling-out? Maybe the Alliance knew more about this. She’d have to nudge her uncle to ask them for details.

  As the screen fell dark, Colonel Eckhart swept back onto the stage and clapped his hands furiously, forcing everyone else to follow suit. The miners merely tapped their hands together, but the Hausfrauen gave a rousing bout of applause, as if Adolf Hitler himself had risen from his crypt.

  “Long live the Führer! Long live General Baldur!” Colonel Eckhart said into his megaphone.

  The masses echoed back the chant, but Zara heard one voice shouting something else entirely.

  “Long live the murderer! Long live the slaughterer of children!”

  Zara went still. Did that person want a death sentence? Her gaze snaked through the square until she found the man saying such treasonous things, and she cringed when she found him — it was old Mr. Kerry, one of her neighbors. He was sympathetic to the Alliance, although he had never joined. However, his two sons had, but they perished in Mission Metzger nine years ago, an Alliance attack that had sought to take over Fort Metzger in central Maryland and steal its long-range missiles. But the mission had ended in misery. Tens of thousands of rebels were killed, including Mrs. Talley’s husband and Zara’s mother. Their lives were lost thanks to a cunning Nazi major who had tortured an Alliance rebel until she revealed the secret mission plans. After the battle was over, the major had been promoted and given command of his own fort. He now stood on the stage in front of Zara — Major Eckhart. Colonel Eckhart to be exact.

  “Long live Dieter Hitler, the great oppressor!” Mr. Kerry slurred. He had perched himself by the courthouse entrance, waving his arms over his head. The people standing near him hurried down the steps, hoping to distance themselves.

  “That poor man,” Mrs. Talley whispered. “I delivered both of his sons.”

  “He’s been drinking again,” Zara murmured. “He has no idea what he’s saying.”

  “There’s nothing we can do for him now,” Uncle Red said grimly.

  Zara ached to do something anyway. Mr. Kerry was one of the few townspeople who never frowned at the color of her skin. He brought her soup when she was sick and had read her stories after her mother died, even though he was grieving for his own children, too. If she was standing near the courthouse, she could try to get him to quiet down before the Nazis saw him.

  But Colonel Eckhart had already spotted him. “Bring that man to me,” he shouted to Sentinel Achen.

  “Yes, sir,” the Sentinel said with that grin of his. It didn’t take long for him to fly to the steps and hoist Mr. Kerry back to the stage, where he shoved the old man onto his knees.

  Colonel Eckhart paced the stage, circling Mr. Kerry. “It appears you have a strong opinion of our Führer.” There was a lightness in his tone that made Zara cringe, like he was playing with his prey before he devoured it. “Our Führer is an ‘oppressor,’ I take it? Perhaps you forget about his charitable work in the Territories. Every month he provides food for the poor and orphaned, in case you’ve forgotten.” The Colonel’s nose scrunched as he glanced at Mr. Kerry’s vomit-stained shirt. “Or perhaps you’re angry that Dieter doesn’t offer free liquor?”

  The Nazi guards smirked, but Mr. Kerry’s shoulders shook with a sob. “He murdered my children. My sons!”

  “Oh? The Führer himself did such a thing? All the way from Berlin?”

  Laughter erupted from the German onlookers. Near the stage, a group of young Nazi cadets, their hair spiked with gel, sniggered like jackals and shouted names at Mr. Kerry. Only one of them didn’t participate in the heckling: a tall boy with a flop of messy blond curls, a couple of years older than Zara. He stood at the periphery of the group, his face blank.

  Zara squinted at him. Then frowned. It was Bastian Eckhart, the Colonel’s son. Rumor had it that he was a first-class snob, that his father’s high status had gone to his head. But apparently Bastian hadn’t inherited his father’s glee at shaming peasants, or Kleinbauern, as they were disdainfully called.

  “Scoff all you want, but America will rise again!” Mr. Kerry said. “You Nazis think you’ve trodden us down, but we’ll come for you one day. The Alliance will come for you!” He staggered to his feet
and tried to lunge at the Colonel, but the soldiers fell upon him.

  The first strike hit Mr. Kerry’s arm, smacking the bone with a skin-splitting crack. The second hit his head. Blood shot out of his nose, or maybe his mouth. Zara wasn’t sure. She had buried her face against her uncle’s shoulder, too sickened to watch. Mr. Kerry was a seventy-year-old man, but the Nazis were beating him like a piece of leather.

  Mrs. Talley curled a thin arm around Zara. “It’ll be over soon.”

  Not soon enough.

  Mr. Kerry lay in a bloody heap on the stage, whimpering. Colonel Eckhart finally looked satisfied. “Take him to the camp,” he said to his guards. They grabbed the old man by the arms and tossed him into the back of a truck.

  Zara’s fists knotted at her sides. She didn’t want to stand here doing nothing. Her mother would have done something, wouldn’t she? But there were Nazis all around her, in the square, on the streets.

  “Let this be a lesson to you Kleinbauern,” Colonel Eckhart said to the throng. “I will not tolerate — and Reichsmarschall Baldur will not tolerate — any defamation of our Führer. After everything he has done for us, is this the way we thank him?” He paused, but no one said a word. With a curt nod, he said, “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!”

  Zara gave a limp salute before the crowd broke apart, and they headed back to the truck. Mrs. Talley squeezed her hand, something that had always made Zara’s heart lighten, but she only felt heavy today. Around them, the Hausfrauen babbled about how handsome Johann was becoming while the cadets threw bottles at the SUV that was hauling Mr. Kerry away. Disgust rolled through Zara; she wanted to tear those bottles from them, but she forced her hands to remain at her sides.

  Stay calm, her uncle would tell her. You can’t cause a scene. But Zara was so sick of these beatings and those heckling cadets. She wanted to fight back. She was ready for it, like her mom had once been.

  But she couldn’t do a thing. Not when the Nazis had bullets and guns, not when they outnumbered her a hundred to one. If she tried to help Mr. Kerry, they would throw her into a camp — and maybe they’d beat her uncle and then make her watch him scream. She would expect nothing less from them.