Panacea

by Brad Murray

  “Sir?” said Wicker.

  Josef looked him over, studied his face, and laughed. “Never mind, Wicker.”

  Josef blew smoke out of his nostrils and leaned over the railing of the porch of the Communications Building. He stared into the darkness where the Alps rose in the south, thinking of the village of Frommberg that was situated just on the other side. He thought of the Hoffman family, who owned the market, and of the Richter’s, whose children would often play with Viktor and Martha in the village park. He wondered how many of Frommberg’s children had mothers who were too stubborn or scared to leave. He wondered how many of Frommberg’s children would live to see another sunrise. As if on cue, a faint mortar blast echoed through the valley.

  “Our discussion earlier,” said Josef quietly. “I have made a decision.”

  “Yes?” said Wicker eagerly.

  Josef calmly blew smoke through his nostrils and took his time to enjoy another deep inhale.

  “I accept your proposal. I will abandon my post at Haasburg and leave with my family. You will remain at Haasberg to complete your duty. You will liquidate this camp expeditiously. And just as importantly, you will eliminate any evidence – documents, papers, identifying marks of any kind of our personal presence at this camp. After you’ve completed these orders, you will abandon the camp and retreat to Berlin.”

  Josef stopped gazing at the mountain in the distance and turned to Wicker. The look in his eyes was intimidating, menacing. Wicker swallowed hard.

  “These are my men, Wicker. You will lead them as I would. I choose you to do so, because you are my only option, though I fear you are too power-hungry and malicious. Do not think of this as a promotion. Do not let this power go to your head. You will do precisely as I have ordered and nothing more. If the situation calls upon you to make a decision outside of this specific protocol, their safety and well-being will be your primary consideration.”

  Wicker’s teeth clenched, his jaw tightened and his face flushed. Josef’s words were pointed and humiliating. Wicker could feel the fury boiling inside of him and the pressure rising. His fists clenched, a dark yearning to slit Josef’s throat filled his mind. But Wicker willed himself to suppress his wrath - something that had been an issue his entire life.

  Wicker stood erect and forced himself to salute. “I will start at once, Sir,” said Wicker.

  “No. Not yet. You will drive me home after I meet with Dr. Wagner.”

  ***

  The boy had just turned eight years old. But he had no mother to bake to him a cake. She had died two years earlier when the Nazis coldly killed her in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. He had no father to offer him a birthday present. He had been beaten to death by a German soldier several months earlier. He had no sister to play with. She had been shot in the back of the head, just feet away from where he had been standing. The only “family” he had remaining were the fellow prisoners with which he shared a roof at Haasburg concentration camp. He’d been at Haasburg for five months, but for the past ten days the medical building had been his residence.

  He’d been hand-selected by Dr. Wagner himself.

  The boy had somehow grown accustomed to death. He’d developed an emotional callus to it, the body’s way of protecting itself – just like the physical calluses he’d developed on his hands and feet from the brutal working conditions at the camp. Being an orphan, it was only natural that he was taken under the wing of many a well-meaning fellow prisoner. But inevitably, they would die - sooner or later. He had learned to wall off his feelings, the mind protecting itself as those around him were beaten, killed, tortured, or simply succumbed to starvation and disease. He coped with death by helping others combat it; whether it be by sneaking into soldiers’ barracks and stealing medicine, or by pocketing bits of food to feed the starving.

  The soldiers were attuned to the boy’s activities, but they looked the other way, as long as his indiscretions didn’t become too severe. They had developed a peculiar sort of fondness for him. They’d even coined a nickname, one that stuck so well that even Dr. Wagner used it. “Superjunge,” or “Superboy.” It was as fitting a nickname as any – he really did seem to possess some sort of superpower, like Superman or the Green Lantern from the American comic books. “Superjunge” had some sort of invisible shield that protected him. He was invulnerable to disease, impervious to the inevitable physical drain that came with the deprivation of food. While every other prisoner was wrought was typhus, or shriveling to a bag of bones from starvation, the boy was perfectly healthy. In fact, he was in better condition than the great majority of the German guards who reigned over him. His eyes were bright and white and, despite the fact he gave much of his own rations away, he was anything but skin-and-bones. He possessed a vigor and vitality that just didn’t fit the place. He was wholly inexplicable.

  And Dr. Wagner and Josef wanted to know why.

  The boy looked down at the bandage covering a small section of his forearm. In the past ten days, he’d lost count of the number of times a needle had punctured his skin. Dr. Wagner told him he was giving him “medicine” but the boy didn’t believe it. He wasn’t sick. And, he had watched as others in the row of beds next to him had received the same needle pricks. They only seemed to get sicker. He could feel the eyes of the camp upon him wherever he went – whether it was from the Nazi guards or from his fellow prisoners. Though he didn’t feel special, the boy knew he was different than the other prisoners. All he wanted to do was survive, to blend into the crowd and avoid attention. Standing out in a concentration camp would get you killed; even a boy of eight recognized that.

  He had tried over recent weeks to feign sickness, to move about lethargically like the other prisoners and cough in the presence of the guards. But they saw right through it.

  “Good try, Superjunge,” laughed one of the guards, shoving the boy from behind. “You must practice your acting skills!”

  The boy sat up in his bed and scanned up and down the narrow corridor running the length of the room for the white coats. The coast was clear. There were twenty beds in this room, ten on each wall. He knew because he had counted. He knew because he had taken it upon himself to know every single one of his fellow patients. He checked their condition, offered them water or comfort or a breadcrumb left over from a meal he purposely hadn’t finished.

  “Aneta,” he whispered to the little girl in the bed next to him. She stirred only slightly and moaned softly. “Aneta, wake up.”

  She didn’t move.

  The boy leaned over her, placing his hand on her forehead. She felt as if there was a campfire blazing from under her skin. He knew from experience it was only a matter of time before Aneta was gone. She was ten years old and, like him, lost both parents at the hands of the Nazis. The pair had much in common and had become fast friends from their nightly bedside whisper-chats. Aneta had been brought to the medical building about a week prior to his arrival. She was to receive “special treatment” by Dr. Wagner, as it was explained to her. On her first day, Dr. Wagner took blood from her arm and then injected her with “a really long needle.” Since then, her health had deteriorated with every passing day. The boy watched as, day after day, Dr. Wagner and his team poked and prodded her, took more blood, and made notes on their clipboards. And each day they poked and prodded him along with each of the occupants of the other eighteen beds.

  They were strictly forbidden from leaving their beds without permission from one of the white coats. But this meant little to the boy. He roamed the building at night, sneaking out of the confines of his room to explore and scavenge for food. There were others located in separate rooms in the building. He could hear their moans and often their screams through the walls. There were five rooms in all - counting his own - each with twenty beds. The two rooms in proximity to his own were indistinguishable from each other, with twenty patients lying in twenty beds in various stages of deterioration. However, the other two rooms were entirely different. In one, ten sets of identic
al twins slumbered on large mattresses; each set paired together. The twins represented a great range of ages; from toddler to elderly.

  Soft, haunting moans and disturbing, muted cries floated around him in the dark, seemingly from all corners of the building. The little boy’s heart raced as he tiptoed forward. He entered the final room in the row – the one that was most terrifying of all. But he forced himself forward, for this was the room where he had found food and medicine on previous scavenges. He imagined the ghosts of those who had died here before were hovering above him, and that demons were hiding in the darkness waiting to pounce. The room was backlit by slivers of silver moonlight straining through the cracks between the curtains and window panes on the far wall. The boy gulped.

  There it was - what he came to explore.

  Just under the dull light of one of the windows, in the furthest corner of the room, lay a large metal tank. There was something foreboding about it, something that whispered to him to stay away. But he’d already searched the rest of the room in previous visits; the tank offered promise. He had to check. He needed to for them.

  He inched closer. The top of the tank was at eye level.

  Another couple of steps. The floorboard creaked raucously under his feet; his heart stopped.

  He held his breath and listened intently for footsteps. After a full minute of silence he was satisfied the white coats had not heard and resumed his mission. As he reached the edge of the tank, he rose up on his tiptoes to peer in. But the silver moonlight was not enough to make out what was inside. He reached his hand blindly into the blackness of the tank, unsure of what to expect. The tips of his fingers were met with an intense cold.

  Ice water.

  The boy exhaled; relieved. Maybe there was medicine inside, he thought. Sometimes they keep valuable items in ice. But to know for sure, he needed to see the contents of the tank. He cautiously reached for the curtain covering the window and pulled it back ever-so-slightly, welcoming in a few extra beams.

  As the light filtered in, he noticed a figure inside the tank, something big floating on the ice just in front of his nose. He couldn’t quite make it out. He strained with his right hand to open the curtain a little further while, reluctantly, reaching out with his left to touch the floating object. His fingers traced the surface of the object; it was hard, cold, frozen solid. He slid his fingertips across its surface, straining his eyes for details. There was a familiar texture to it, he could feel…hair.

  And then…a nose.

  And in that instant, when his fingers identified the object, his brain filled in the remaining details. And the dim light had become more than enough.

  A human face stared back at him, its eyes still open, the body floating.

  The boy gasped audibly and jumped backwards into a small table. The ruckus sounded like a freight train in the still of the night. The boy covered his mouth and tiptoed as quickly and silently as he could back to his room. He jumped into his bed, throwing the covers over his head, their weight a small comfort. He struggled to control his breathing, and his heart pounded so loudly he feared it would rouse the white coats. He wanted to scream but knew he couldn’t. He yearned for his mother more than ever, and wished she were alive to console him. But she, like the corpse in the tank, had been taken by the Nazis.

  Moments passed and he heard a door swing open from the far side of the building. Murmurred voices and varied footsteps approached quickly, and he recognized Dr. Wagner amongst them. Three men entered the room and stopped at the foot of his bed. Dr. Wagner wore his usual white coat, and the two others wore the uniform of the SS. He had been around the SS enough to be able to distinguish amongst the rank-and-file. But the taller and elder of the two was a rank the boy had not seen before.

  His mind raced. Why was a man of such importance staring down at him so intently? Perhaps he was here to punish him for sneaking around and finding the dead body in the ice tank. The boy turned his gaze to the younger of the two. He gasped, his heart stopped and his stomach dropped. He recognized this man. He hated this man.

  ***

  Josef, Wicker, and Dr. Wagner examined the boy in his bed. He stared at Wicker with narrow, intense eyes. Wicker noticed the glare and returned it, as if to say “watch yourself boy, I can end you.” Josef moved from the foot to the side of the bed, getting a closer look at the one they called “Superjunge.”

  “With all due respect, Sir, what are we doing here?” asked Wicker. He was annoyed by the fact they were wasting time staring at an insignificant little rat boy rather than fulfilling the mission of liquidating the camp.

  “Don’t we have more important things to do?”

  Josef regarded Wicker for a moment.

  “This requires your full attention right now, Wicker,” said Josef. “Dr. Wagner, would you please explain what you have discovered about this boy?”

  Dr. Wagner was champing at the bit to explain to anyone who would listen about his findings. He fidgeted excitedly and ran his hand over his balding head. “Where to begin,” he said. “I guess we can start with the camp guards. They first noticed his unique traits. They are the ones who began calling him ‘Superjunge.’ And, they are the ones who brought him to my attention.”

  “Superjunge?” said a puzzled Wicker. “He is nothing but a boy, and a dirty Jew boy at that.”

  “Hold your tongue until Dr. Wagner is finished,” cautioned Josef. Wicker grimaced, once again finding the need to hold back his anger.

  “As you know, we conduct any number of medical experiments here. And we have been successful at developing a better understanding of the human system; how it fights disease, how poisons affect the body, how genetics play a role in the body’s defense system. Through our efforts, for example, we better understand how to prevent and treat hypothermia.”

  Wicker nodded his head. He’d helped with the hypothermia study numerous times by forcing many a rat into the tank of ice water. He was amazed at their resolve, their will to live. Many times it would take several hours of exposure to the ice water before the rat would die.

  Dr. Wagner continued. “We’ve experimented with a host of drugs to treat malaria, typhus, influenza, amongst others. We’ve learned a great deal that will help our soldiers in the field.”

  Dr. Wagner moved closer to the bed, looking down reverently at the boy. “What makes him so special is his reaction to disease, or lack of outward reaction I should say. With most subjects, we perform a one-time injection of malaria, as an example. We then chronicle the body’s reaction and test various medications, chemicals, and treatments to determine whether or not there are any general improvements versus the baseline condition of a typical untreated subject. In every single case, the subject exudes symptoms within days of injection. With the boy, he exudes no symptoms whatsoever. In fact, we’ve experimented on him with everything; we’ve injected him with every virus, disease, or malady we possess. Nothing appears to affect him. Not in the slightest.”

  Josef turned to Wicker. “Can you imagine the possibilities? Can you imagine what the Reich could do if we found a way to harness this? If we could create an army impervious to disease - unaffected by mustard gas?”

  “We are very early in our study of the boy,” cautioned Dr. Wagner. “It is premature to draw such conclusions. Much work remains, but the preliminary results are beyond exciting.”

  “Very true,” said Josef. “You are right to be cautious. But I have great faith in you, Dr. Wagner. I have the utmost confidence that you will unlock this boy’s secrets.”

  Wagner rested his chin in his hand. He studied the boy for several seconds before replying.

  “Thank you for your faith in me, Josef. But to be perfectly honest, I have my doubts. Perhaps if we could have studied his lineage…perhaps if we were able to experiment with members of his bloodline. We could have learned so much more; progressed with our findings so much more quickly. I fear I will not be in a position to honor the faith you have stored in me.”

  Dr. Wa
gner put both hands on his hips and huffed. “Tragically, we may not be able to fully understand his capabilities.”

  A hush came over the men. Finally, Wicker broke the silence.

  “Why not?” asked Wicker. “What is preventing you from being able to learn what you need to learn?”

  “Yes, why not? That’s an interesting question, Wicker” replied Josef. “The boy is particularly stubborn; strong-willed you might say. The problem is we do not know where he comes from. We do not know his name. And he most certainly will not tell us.”

  Wicker’s eyes gleamed, believing he now understood why he was brought to see the boy. “Leave him to me. I will make him speak and we will know his name within minutes,” said Wicker, scowling at the boy.

  Josef chuckled. “The last thing I would do is to leave the potential future of the Reich to you, Wicker. This boy will not be tortured; he is far too precious for that. Besides, we do know a little something about his heritage. Though he will not reveal his name or even the slightest hint as to where he comes from, he did offer us a story regarding the fate of his father and his older sister that you might find particularly interesting.”

  Wicker straightened, his eyebrows raised.

  “Let me paint you a picture of a particularly bitter winter morning, approximately six months ago. A train carrying a load of Jewish prisoners arrives at the gate of a small concentration camp far to our north. In one of the railcars, a man is holding his two young children, sheltering them from the piercing cold. The train stops and the door to the crowded railcar is pulled open. The man gets his first glimpse at what will be his new home. The guards begin barking orders, as guards are prone to do. ‘Form lines,’ the guards yell. But before the man can rise, a brash, impulsive guard grabs him by the neck and rips him from the arms of his children. He withdraws his pistol and bashes in the back of the man’s skull. But the guard doesn’t stop there, no. He continues by smashing the lifeless man’s face into the frozen ground again and again. And still, the guard is not done with his work. He grabs the dead man’s hysterical daughter. He strikes her in the face and fires a bullet into her head.”