The Nazis had made a wise choice in placing the bomb. The archive room was a steel vault, built specifically as a resource and documentation area. It was protected by a massive metal door, which when sealed, provided a near hermetic enclosure. No fire, explosive projectile, or even allied bombing could penetrate the structure from the outside once the door had been sealed. Under normal conditions, the massive door hung with precision on a balanced frame. But in the event of an intrusion, or any unauthorized entry within the GGRC, a lockdown sequence could be initiated by the staff, sealing the vault. It was the perfect location for their monolithic bomb.
From within the sealed room, the explosion’s destructive energy would then be enhanced ten-fold. The ensuing pressure wave would not only blow apart the complex, but everything within a fifty- meter proximity. As intended, the purging protocol would be a devastating success. Nothing would remain of the GGRC nor any evidence of the regime who had both created and unleashed its vehemence upon children.
Ruthanne shook her head dubiously. Either she was simply too drawn out to feel optimistic, or she had rethought their odds, none of which were good. “Suppose they change their plans?” she questioned. “They might proceed in an entirely different direction, and nullify all which we have learned.” She paused, and frowned. “I don’t think I can do another session, Zenny.”
“You won’t have to,” her brother replied, confidently. “They are Nazis. They don’t change their plans. You know this better than anyone.”
She sighed ominously.
“You need to sleep now, little sister,” he urged. “We’ll come up with something, just you wait and see.” He moved to her side and sat next to her.
She shrugged her shoulders blankly. Her face remained expressionless as she stared hesitantly at the hard surface they called, cot.
“Tell you what. How about you rest your head against my shoulder for a while and try to sleep. I’ll be your pillow.” He smiled a confident grin.
She forced a smile and sat with her head to her brother’s shoulder.
Soon, although the night air roared and the ground trembled with the approaching Allies, sleep was the victor, as both youths soon succumbed to it. And for a few short hours, they were able to dream . . . dream of freedom.
Chapter 6:
The tap, tap, tap came as an unknown and frightening noise. The children had long since identified every creak, popm and snap that came to them in their shadowy world. The looming concrete hallways often produced a gamut of odd noises, mostly due to shifting ground, temperature, or moisture in the air. But this new sound had brought Zen instantly out of his slumber. The boy knew instinctively that something foreign had wrenched him from his sleep, and unlike the past, it had not been a nightmare.
He scrambled to the door and pushed his eye to the spherical opening.
Ruthanne, who had also been awakened, moved in close behind him, edging carefully along the wall before settling in at his side. “Did you hear it?” she whispered.
“Yes. I mean . . . I think I did.”
Zen had a keen sense that something was afoot and on the prowl, but what was it? What was different about all these strange noises? And why did the sensation feel wrong, like an icy breeze, bringing a feeling of apprehension? It teetered on the edge of frightening, and both Zen and Ruthanne struggled to make sense of it. Then, as if a switch went off in Zen’s head, it came to him, and he knew what to call it. It was disorder, chaos. What was the word? It was panic! The clinic was under siege!
“It has begun, Ruthy.”
There were shouts, orders of commands and instructions. Some rambled out, making no sense at all. Others came in a harsh assault of human gibberish that filled the dark spaces of the passageways—heavy footsteps from Nazi boots scurrying here and there; cell doors clanging open and shut; guard dogs barking incessantly. Then, above all other sounds, an explosive noise clamored nearby, drowning out all others like thunder above the rap of rain, a distant pop, pop, pop. And Zen shivered, remembering that noise from the camps!
“A machine gun!” he cried. He instinctively threw a protective hand behind him and carefully moved Ruthanne firmly from the door to the wall.
“Zen!” cried out Ruthy as the rap of the machinegun fire brought terror to her countenance. She moved like a cat, hugging up against the wall as tightly as she could. “Are they Nazi guns or Allied!” Her glazed eyes blinked wide and she craned her head side to side in a bird-like fashion.
“Both! I think. Now get down beside your cot!” he ordered. “Lay flat and be still!”
She obeyed unquestionably.
Zen moved cautiously again to the door. For some time, the darkened corridors were as they had always been. But when the hour passed with no sign of the guard-patrol, a security-check never missed in nearly three years, Zen knew that something was wrong.
The harsh, war-driven sounds of havoc had abated, and for a time Zen and Ruthanne feared that the allied forces had simply moved on, deciding that a genetic research facility was not a prize worth risking their lives for, at least not while there were German strongholds awaiting their approach beyond this insignificant farming community. But then, all at once, Zen saw an odd dance of shadows expanding on the passageway wall. Soon, the eerie apparition expanded as the sound of boots reverberated against the cement.
A Nazi guard suddenly rounded the hallway.
Zen recognized him as one of the senior ranking watchmen assigned to the clinic. The husky man had sweat rolling off his puffy cheeks and forehead, his flushed face was drawn and desperate as he approached, panting like a mad dog. His rifle was arrowed cautiously forward as though anticipating an attack at any moment.
“Please! Tell us what is happening!” Zen shouted.
There was no response.
Zen tried a again. “Please!—”
No response.
The guard was nearly upon them now, his breathing loud and asthmatic.
“Hey!” Zen shouted and kicked the door. The kick rattled the metal barricade with a loud boom, catching the Nazi just as he passed. The man wheeled, cursed, then drew his rifle up in a quick arch. Without missing a stride, he fired the weapon directly at the cell door.
Zen barely had time to leap to one side as a loud retort slammed against the metal entry. A spray of fragments and chipped paint flew in a mist from a new hole which gouged outward in a circular row of hot, smoldering teeth.
The guard continued his retreat down the passageway in an unabated clamor of footsteps and vocal obscenities still spewing from his mouth.
Zen stood frozen, his back pushed so tightly to the interior wall that he could have made an indent in the hardened concrete. His eyes shot quickly to Ruthanne.
The girl was not injured by the bullet’s debris, but her chest was heaving in and out and she was bleached with fear.
“Well,” he finally said in a shaken voice. “Now we have two peep holes in the door.”
Ruthanne swallowed hard. “Why did you kick the door!” she scolded.
“I don’t know why,” Zen spluttered. “Sorry, Ruthy.”
“Well,” she managed, a hint of color returning. “Whatever the reason, don’t do it again. We don’t want that.”
Zen snorted slightly, still reeling from his boldness. “No worries there, Ruthy girl. I’m a quick study.” He moved to her side and gave her a reassuring hug. “But, hey. We’re alright, aren’t we.”
She sighed. “I suppose.”
When Zen was certain the soldier would not return, he took up courage and once again stepped cautiously to the door. The chaos, so prevalent earlier, had vanished. Now things were as quiet as a graveyard. Only the intermittent pop of a distant firearm discharging somewhere outside the clinic, pierced the smothering silence.
Zen decided to attempt another try at contacting anyone who might still be in the complex. As he took in air for his shout, he prayed it would be an Allied soldier, and not a Nazi, that heard him. “Is anyone there!” he shouted.
He waited in apprehension, but only the echo of his voice returned.
He breathed deep and prepared another holler. But then he thought he heard something. Zen’s eyebrows rose and he tossed a hopeful face at Ruthanne. Now they both held their breath and listed intently.
A faint reply, barely a whisper, drifted down the long, dark passageway.
“Zen! Can you hear me?” came the far away voice, chasing his own echo back from a distant corridor.
Zen tossed an excited glance at his sister and pushed his ear to the door.
Somewhere from within the unfriendly passageways came the nostalgic, familiar voice. It was Eli! Eli had been moved to their level!
“It’s Eli!” said Zen, launching into a smile. He pushed his lips to one of the holes in the door and shouted as loudly as he could. “Eli! Yes! I can hear you! Are you alright?”
Eli and his twin sister, Ellen, had been brought to the GGRC clinic from the Auschwitz camp just days after Zen and Ruthanne had arrived. At Auschwitz, the twin siblings had already seen some of the worst deeds that man could engender and were frail and sick-ridden when the transfer had taken place. Because they were twins, the doctors at the clinic were keenly interested in them.
An Auschwitz doctor by the name of Mengele had even visited the GGRC on several occasions. He had sent documents to accompany the pair from Auschwitz, and was interested in their progress, as the administration had stated it. But Mengele’s interest in the two siblings was both evil and self-serving. He was as void of compassion as he was cruel, and was interested only in the results stemming from the volley of harsh experiments planned for the youths. His attentiveness, if any, was that of a pack of coyotes honing in on the squeal of a wounded animal.
Eli and Ellen had somehow survived, and now, like the other five children, were praying for a miracle; for a chance at freedom.
“Is Ellen with you?” Zen shouted back. He hoped that the administration had moved all of the children to his floor. Perhaps even to a single cell on their sub-level. His heart began to race with excitement!
From the beginning, and even amid the diminutive optimism of the rescue, a dark damper had laid dormant in Zen’s mind, rising on occasion like crocodile eyes in a swim hole: the awful reality that even if he and Ruthanne could somehow free themselves, how would they ever find the other children in the clinic’s labyrinth in time to get them out before the bomb detonated? Most of the building’s infrastructure was still an unknown black box to Zen, and the Nazi officials had been extremely diligent in keeping it that way. Only this floor, sub-level one, was known to him—this concrete catacomb which had been his only home for nearly three years, and which the guards had sardonically coined, the meat block.
Sub-level One was a maze of dark passageways with guard-kiosks attached at each end. These, in turn, were each manned by a minimum of two guards who were responsible for all activity on their block. It was an effective arrangement.
When the clinic had been opened that first terrible year, fifty children had filled its hive, and each kiosk had been manned by six SS guards. Over time however, when the numbers had been reduced to just seven, the surviving youths were placed at secluded locations, intentionally sequestered and distanced from each other.
Zen had been fearful for his young comrades since that time, his apprehension increasing ten-fold the last few days. The clinic’s mercenaries had become increasingly aggressive and even more cruel with the pending invasion. Zen had struggled with the growing dread that his friends—his fellow young captives—might already have been killed. Eli’s voice, then, came heaven-sent, and the very sound of it brought a spark of courage to his heart.
Ruthanne’s stretched face came to life at the sound of Eli’s voice. “Eli!” she cried, pushing up against her brother. “Is it really him!”
“Sssh! He’s shouting again.”
“Mary and Morty are also with us, but we do not know about Jacob!” continued Eli’s faint reply. “Is Ruthanne with you, Zen! Are you both well!”
“Oh Zenny! It is him!”
“I know, I know. Now sit back away from the door,” he cautioned.
Ruthanne grumbled, but slid slightly to one side.
Zen put his lips to the hole. “Yes, Eli! Ruthanne and I are fine, but,”—he paused—“Eli! We must get free! We must leave now!”
There was no reply for a time.
Then Eli’s voice returned, his tone touched in uncertainty. “But we will soon be free, Zen. The Allies have come!”
Zen moaned in frustration and banged his head against the door in a hollow thud. He almost wished now that he and Ruthanne had never found out about the explosive trap, the bomb which even now, might be activated and counting down the minutes of life left to all of them. At least in Eli’s ignorance, he sounds happy, thought Zen. For the first time since the entrapment at the clinic, there was optimism in his young friend’s voice. To hear it brought a suppressed joy to his heart. And why not? For the others, the Red Army had chased away the hated Nazis, and in so doing had given them a chance at freedom. But for Zen and Ruthanne there was no euphoric hope. Theirs was a knowledge of a ticking death.
Zen sighed pensively. He turned to his sister. “It won’t do any good to tell Eli about the bomb—or any of them for that matter,” he whispered. “In their ignorance, they have hope. We can’t take that away from them.”
Ruthanne nodded dismally. “Of course we can’t.”
Zen touched a wisp of hair across her pale face and tenderly stroked it back from her forehead. “If we can’t find a way of getting out and freeing the others, then we will all die together. We must keep to our pledge, our code. It is all of us, or none.”
The sound of a barking dog suddenly came wafting down from somewhere around the bend. When the noise came again, Zen realized that the animal was moving down the passage toward them. He quickly cast his gaze to the hole and stared hard in the direction of the sound. Soon, the animal rounded the corner. It trotted cautiously toward their cell, sniffing at the air as it approached.
“Hey boy!” called Zen through the door. The dog froze and instantly bristled the hair on its back. It growled a deep-throated warning.
These animals, once gentle and submissive, had been cruelly trained to be aggressive toward the children. The canine had simply kicked into hostile mode, just as he had been taught.
“He’s alone!” said Zen. “They must have left the dogs. Hey boy!” he called softly, clicking his tongue. But the animal began to bark with more hostility than before.
“He’s just frightened,” replied Ruthanne, moving nearer. “Calling to him will just make him more violent. He’s been trained that way. Let me calm him.”
“It’s not worth your energy, Ruthy. Don’t bother.”
“It takes very little to calm the animals. Besides, it makes me feel better—to see them pleasant again.”
It was the words, calm him, that suddenly resounded in Zen’s head. And in the next seconds, a crazy idea came to him like a blast of cold air on a hot summer day. A desperate, impossible idea. “Ruthanne!” he shouted, grabbing his sister by her arm.
The child jolted slightly at the vigor of her brother’s sudden grasp and turned her milky eyes forward where she estimated his own gaze would be. Her face was blank with confusion and her eyes wide and uncomprehending.
“I have an idea!” he said, nearly bubbling over with enthusiasm.
Ruthanne returned a puzzled stare. “Okay,” she pushed the word guardedly out. “You frightened me.”
“I’m sorry. I just got excited. Now, I know this might sound a little crazy to you at first, but hear me out. It’s just crazy enough to work.” Zen’s eyes moved again to the door where the dog continued to linger, barking a barrage of yaps and growls. “Several months ago,” he began, “during the last relocation, when the guards were marching us down the north hallway, my blindfold had a small rip just above the right eye.”
“Yes, I remember. You told
me about that,” stated Ruthanne. “But you said you didn’t see anything useful. No calendars, documents, or schedules.”
“Yes. I know. But I did catch a glimpse of the guard-kiosk at the end of our block. The door was open and as we passed I got a quick look inside. I have retained a perfect mental image of it. The guard inside was reading a newspaper from Berlin. His body blocked most of it from my view, but I was able to see several articles on the inside, left page. I thought I might want to read them later, so I committed the entire page to memory. I’ve recalled and read them all several times since,” he paused, “I—”
“Zen,” Ruthanne interrupted with an annoying sigh. “Get to it!”
“Oh. Sorry, Ruthy.” He took another stretched breath, and continued. “Anyway, just below that newspaper was a panel with several switches on it. Most of them were for lighting, intercoms, venting, but there was one large faceplate with a button capped in red. Below were written instructions: Emergency Door Release. You see Ruthy? In the event of a fire, I assume. One button to electronically release all of the cell doors on our block!”
“Yes,” the child said, bewildered, “But there is no one here to push that button?”
Another pause.
“Yes there is. The dog.”
Ruthanne’s face scowled in a sudden look of disappointment. She shook her head and pulled away from him. “What are you saying, Zen?”
He followed after her, catching her by the hand. The tiny face gawked outward without focus or attachment. She knew where to look, where to set her eyes so that Zen’s own stare could meet hers, but she chose to push beyond him, to focus elsewhere and away from his odd notions.
Of Salt and Sand Page 7