The Living Death

by Nick Carter

  "May I say something in my own way?" I asked. She nodded, her eyes soft. I leaned forward and kissed her gently. Her lips only parted for a moment, enough for a brief reply.

  "Thank you for everything, Emilie," I said quietly. She understood and said nothing, except for the gratitude in her eyes. "You are as good as you are lovely, Emilie Grutska," I said, meaning every damn word of it.

  I lay quietly in the darkness again, but this time I didn't fall asleep. I waited, far into the night, making certain they were both fast asleep. I slipped from the cot, dressed in the work pants and shirt I found in the corner along with my papers and Hugo, who I carefully strapped into place on my forearm. The leg still giving me plenty of pain, I carefully opened the trap door, found there was a small scatter rug over it which I carefully replaced, and made my way from the house. It was my way of saying thank you.

  VII

  I watched the dawn come up from my perch in the hayloft of the barn. From it, reached by a side ladder, I had a clear view of the house, most of the pasture and a deep ravine to the left, all through the two open doors. I'd noted the gleaming four-bladed disk plow standing in a corner of the barn, opposite the cow stalls. Every step up the ladder had sent tearing pains up my leg, and I'd been happy to lie hidden in the hay of the loft, letting the pain subside. As dawn rose, I closed my eyes and dropped off to sleep again. Pain, I concluded, is a great narcotic. The sounds of movement below awoke me and I peeked out to see Gerda letting the cows out to pasture. I gazed out the wide, open doorway and saw Emilie emerge from the house to scan the pasture slowly, her eyes covering every inch of the field. I knew what she was looking for — a sign of me. She had found me gone. I had no doubts that she'd understand.

  Gerda finished hurrying the cows into the pasture and left. I turned over on my back and rested some more. I wanted to give the leg all the help I could. I'd be needing it soon enough. A scream almost made me sit bolt upright. I rolled over on my stomach and peered out the barn doors. I saw Vanuskin and his crew, all six of them. Two of them were holding Emilie and as I watched, Vanuskin slapped her again across the face, using the back of his hand. Emilie cried out again. Another of the Russians was holding Gerda by the arm. Then I saw what Vanuskin held in his other hand, a bundle of blood-soaked cloths. I put the picture together at once. They'd been snooping around and found the cloths Emilie had used to bandage my leg. She had put them into the garbage pile, probably, instead of burning them. I cursed myself for not having thought to tell her.

  "Where is he, bitch?" I heard Vanuskin snarl. He was furious. He'd probably been catching hell from Moscow for letting me get away and now he had his first, real opening.

  "Strip her and tie her to that tree," Vanuskin ordered one of his men, pointing to a young oak nearby. While Gerda gasped, they ripped the clothes from Emilie and she was dragged to the tree and tied to it. Her face had grown scarlet in shame and embarrassment as she stood helplessly naked. She had, as I'd guessed, a full-blown figure, heavy by American standards, but properly proportioned, large, heavy hips balancing the heavy breasts and legs that were shapely enough. Like her face, it was an old-fashioned kind of figure, girlish and womanly together. I saw one of the Russian heavyweights take off his leather belt at Vanuskin's direction. The Russian drew back his arm and lashed out with the belt. It slammed across Emilie's stomach, and she screamed in pain. A red welt appeared instantly over her white skin.

  "That was only a sample," Vanuskin said. "Where is he? Where have you hidden him?"

  "He's not here," Emilie spit out. "I don't know anything about him." Vanuskin signaled with a flick of his finger. The Russian with the belt stepped forward and swung again. He followed it with another and then another, beating the woman with a sadistic pleasure. I watched, teeth clenched in anger, as Emilie's white skin became a mass of ugly red welts and bruises. She screamed constantly now. Vanuskin ordered a halt and I saw Emilie's head fall forward, her body quivering in sobs.

  "You are ready to talk now?" he demanded, pulling her head back by the hair. Emilie looked at Gerda, who had stood still in the Russian's grip, transfixed by horror and fear, her cheeks tear-stained.

  'Tell them nothing, my darling," Emilie shouted. "These are the land who killed your father."

  I saw the child suddenly tear her arm loose and twist away from the Russian's grab. She raced off, straight toward the barn.

  "Let her go," I heard Vanuskin order. "Well get what we want to know from her mother. Go to work on her again."

  Emilie's screams mingled with the heart-rending sobs of the child as she ran into the barn to stand for a moment almost directly below me, holding her hands to her ears, trying to shut out her mother's anguished screams. I'd have to act. Emilie wouldn't crack, there was steel-like determination behind that gentle exterior; but soon her lovely, full body would start to rip apart under the lash. She'd bear scars that time could never heal. I called to Gerda, who had run into one of the stalls to cower there. She looked up in astonishment.

  "Up here, Gerda" I whispered. "Come here, quickly." She scrambled up the ladder, eyes wide. Desperate moments bring desperate plans. I had been studying the ravine I'd noticed to the left. It was about ten feet deep and not more than eighteen feet across, I guessed. That was fine. The tighter the fit the better. It ran about fifty feet or more.

  "We're going to save your mama," I said to the child. "But I'll need your help. You've got to do exactly as I tell you, understand?"

  She listened intently, and we descended the ladder together, Emilie's screams had halted for a moment. They were questioning her again. I couldn't ignore the searing pain of my leg but hate made me disregard it. While Gerda raced out of the barn back to the house, I clambered aboard the tractor attached to the four-disc farrow plow. The Russian with the belt had his arm upraised to start beating Emilie again when the child raced onto the scene.

  "Stop it," she screamed. "I'll tell you where he is. He ran down into that ravine over there. He's hiding down there in it."

  Vanuskin's smile was triumphant. He started for the ravine at once, gun in hand. The rest of his crew followed at his heels. I waited while they clambered down the steep sides. I wanted to give them time to get deeper into the ravine. Then I put the tractor into gear and roared out of the barn. It jounced down the steep sides into the ravine, nearly toppling over on me. I turned the disc plows on high speed and their whirring, whirling motion set up a hum. Running the plow down the steep sides of the ravine didn't do it much good, I knew, but it was either a bent plow or a broken body. I figured Emilie would prefer the former. The Russians were racing through the ravine, spread out in a horizontal line, when the crash of the tractor coming into the ravine made them whirl as one. I set the tractor on high, lifted the whirling blades about a foot and a half from the ground, and locked them in place. I lay flat on the seat of the tractor, letting my legs hang down over the back of the seat. Reaching up with one hand, I steered the tractor more by instinct than sight. I heard the shower of bullets ping into the metal of the plow and the tractor, richocheting off the frame of the plow. Too late, Vanuskin and the others saw what was happening. They tried scrambling up the steep sides only to fall back again. The plow was on them now, the whirling steel disc blades humming with their circular motion. I felt the blades as they struck human flesh and bone, heard the cutting, crunching, grinding sound and listened to the terrible screams of men being cut into pieces. It was sickening and my hand was tempted to pull back the lever stopping the whirring blades, but I thought of a woman who died because she cared about the world, of a wonderful old man crawling across the floor, of eight brilliant minds reduced to idiocy.

  I lay flat and let the tractor go forward, pushing the whirling, circular blades before it. When there was silence, when the last of the broken screams had ended, I put the tractor into reverse and backed down the ravine. The blades had done their work. The scene ahead of me was not for the sensitive. I backed to the end of the ravine and climbed out.


  When I reached the house, Gerda had already untied her mother, thrown a robe over her and helped her into bed. Emilie's body was still quivering, still shaking, and her sobs filled the room as I entered. She looked up at me and fright was still fresh in her eyes.

  "It's over," I said. "They won t be back." I didn't need to say more. I sent Gerda to tend to the cows with orders to stay away from the ravine. Pulling the covers back from her, I let my eyes rove across Emilie's soft, full body, reddened with raised welts and ugly marks. She had her eyes closed but she reached out a hand and clasped my arm, I got towels, hot water, and bathed her tenderly with hot compresses. I kept her in bed and when Gerda returned later, I fixed dinner for us.

  "My time to play nurse," I said. I asked if there was a lake nearby other than the one I'd hit when I leaped out of the train. She said there was a river to the north, about ten miles, that ran swiftly through the mountains. After midnight, I took the Volkswagen panel truck and drove to the ravine. Using a shovel and a blanket, I loaded up the remains of the NKVD group, drove them to the river and dumped them in. It was a grisly business.

  I wanted a drink when I returned, just to let the fire burn away the taste in my mouth. I was surprised to find Emilie awake and sitting up in bed, waiting for me. At my question, she gestured to a cupboard where I found a bottle of kümmel. I poured two glasses and the strong flavor of the caraway seed was a welcome taste. I sat on the bed beside Emilie and, though she wore her nightgown, I could see that the redness and raised areas had subsided substantially. We finished our kummel and I felt her hand against my chest. Her face turned to me and she raised her lips. I kissed her, tenderly, gently. There was a quality about this woman that evoked tenderness.

  "Stay with me tonight, Nick," she whispered. "Just let me feel your body against mine. Please." I stroked her cheek and lifted the nightgown from her. I stripped and lay down beside her, tie softness of her skin a warm and pleasant sensation. She turned to me, one full, heavy breast falling upon my chest.

  "It has been long, so long, since I have lain with a man," Emilie said quietly. "I don't want you to make love to me. That would only open up passions and feelings I have long put aside. You will leave in a day or so. I know this. The hunger you would release would be too much for me to bear."

  I held her close and she moved her legs against mine. I could have made love to her. She was certainly lovely enough in her own girl-woman way and her body had its own fleshy sensuousness. But I only held her close.

  "Can you understand what I am saying, Nick?" she asked. "A man like you who can't afford to get involved with anyone."

  "You'd be surprised what I can understand if I try a little," I said softly, cradling her head in my arms. I held her quietly and she fell asleep in my arms, a wonderfully sweet woman waiting for the happiness she deserved, waiting for someone to bring it to her. I wasn't the one. She was so right about that. I could only bring her a moment, a moment that could hurt more than help over the long pull.

  When dawn came and the sun awoke us, she clung to me for a long moment and then quickly rose, grateful tenderness in her eyes.

  I left that night. She drove me to a nearby town where I caught a milk train that eventually would end up in Zurich. I had a lot of dirtiness ahead yet, a lot of answers to ferret out. All the real questions were still unanswered. How? Why? When?

  A man named Karl Krisst still lived untouched. We had a reckoning still due, though by now I imagined he was feeling secure again. Good. I liked that.

  VIII

  My first move in Zurich was to contact the AXE front there for financial arrangements for Middle Europe. I got enough money for new clothes and shoes. The dip in the lake had just about ruined every bit of paper currency I'd had on me. After making do with some ready-to-wear stuff, I debated whether to drop in on Karl-boy for a friendly visit. It could serve a purpose. It would reveal how surprised he was to see me, for one thing, and he might pull a boner or two. But then, I had an advantage now, why fritter it away? He had sicked his Russian friends on me and had heard nothing since. He'd figure they did their job. I decided to wait for dark and pay him a nocturnal visit.

  As darkness fell, I took a taxi out to the address I'd gotten and had the cab stop a block away. Krisst lived in a modest private house, and I was glad I'd taken the precaution of approaching on foot. I almost ran into him as he was leaving, just managing to duck behind a tree, feeling somewhat like a character out of an animated cartoon. I watched his roly-poly figure go down the street and once again noted, as he passed a few other people, that his roundness was deceptive. He was close to six feet. He appeared dressed for at least a dinner out, perhaps a night on the town. I gave his house a careful once-over, circling it on all four sides. The lights were out. He was, I was glad to see, a bachelor. The windows were low and provided the most inviting method of entrance. I tried the ones at the rear first, out of sight of strollers passing by. Surprisingly, they were unlocked, and in fifteen seconds I was inside the house. I closed the window after me. He had also thoughtfully equipped each room of the house with softly glowing night lights. Not very much illumination but enough for a cursory examination. The living room, bedroom and kitchen revealed nothing out of the ordinary. I found what appeared to be a small study leading from the living room, closed the door and switched on a lamp. It revealed nothing out of the usual, either. ISS correspondence and financial reports made up most of the papers on the desk. I flicked off the lamp and went out into the hallway where I saw a door and a flight of steps leading to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs I found a light switch.

  The light bathed a large, rectangular room paneled with soundproof wallboard. In the center of the room stood a laboratory table with a series of corked test tubes and neatly arranged vials. But it was the device lying on the table, partially disassembled, which caught my eye. A blueprint lay alongside it, and I felt my pulse quicken. I'd only seen two or three of them before, but I recognized it at once as a high-power compressed-air gun. It was one of the latest models, and suddenly tie lights were going on in my head. Compressed-air guns were the newest device for giving injections, eliminating the actual physical and the psychological pain of the hypodermic needle. The gun was pressed against the patient's skin and under extreme pressure, the injection itself, the very fluid, was shot directly through the skin into the veins. Under the extreme compression, the fluid itself became a jet-stream, a needle of fluid that penetrated painlessly and instantly. Except for one important fact, I was looking at the device that could shoot a poison or a virus or an electrical current into a man he wouldn't know it The one important fact was that the compressed-air injection guns I'd ever seen were like this one — big, heavy, unwieldly. The injection itself might be painless but you'd sure as hell notice someone using one of these things.

  I was studying the blueprint of the gun and wondering about a number of small figures that had obviously been noted in pencil on the diagram. I was concentrating on the blueprint, but nonetheless I suddenly noticed the hair on the back of my hand standing up. My never-fail, built-in alarm system told me I wasn't alone. I turned slowly, to see Krisst standing at the foot of the stairs, gun in hand. The round face was unsmiling and the little eyes were darting pinpoints of bright anger. I saw that he was in his stockinged feet which explained his silent approach. It was only a partial explanation, I found out.

  "I am surprised, I must admit," Karl Krisst said. "I am disappointed, too, in my Soviet friends. I thought they had done their job."

  "Don't be too hard on them," I answered. "They tried. I'm hard to get rid of, like a bad penny, you know."

  "You have also underestimated me," Krisst said, moving down to the floor, keeping the gun trained steadily on my belly. "You are no different than the rest of them in that respect. I have always been underestimated. I knew someone had entered my house the minute you went through the window. I have every window and door protected by an electric eye that sets off a small alarm, a buzzer, in a rece
iving unit I always carry with me. Of course, I didn't know it was you, Carter."

  "I was right then," I said. "You are the one behind it all. You use a compressed-air injection gun."

  Krisst smiled his usual unctuous smile. I was still unable to understand how he did it, though. There was no possible way he could have made use of such a big, clumsy device on Professor Caldone without my seeing it. I got my answer as he went on.

  "Of course, I don't use anything as large as that. You were studying my calculations on the blueprint as I came upon you. They are reductions. I've had the entire principle reduced to the size of a book of matches or a small cigarette lighter." He held up his hand and I saw the small, square object cupped in his palm. It made a tidy — and hideous — destruction machine.

  "You got him during the session at the beach," I said, realization suddenly flooding over me. The compressed-air injection gun had to be pressed directly against the persons skin. All that backslapping hid his special purpose.

  "Correct," he admitted. Reducing the unwieldly compressed-air injection gun was a piece of applied science that somehow didn't fit Krisst. I couldn't see him having that land of skill or knowledge.

  "Where'd you have the gun reduced in size?" I shot out.

  "An old friend right here in Switzerland," he said, his smile suddenly an evil, gloating thing. "He was a leading craftsman for the watch industry. You forget, miniaturization has been a part of our precision watchmaking for generations."