The prisoner was Thorgils, keeper of the dogs and the dispenser of the somnambulistic doses of myx.
Jones instinctively slowed his stride, trying his best to catch wind of what the strange man was saying without having to join the group itself.
What he finally heard startled him.
“We will rise from here,” Thorgils was saying, through bites of his own meal. “We will all ascend. Into the sky. We will be saved from this life. We will die and then be reborn. It’s just a matter of time.”
Suddenly Jones wasn’t hungry anymore. There was an eerie feeling in the air as Thorgils’s squeaky, broken English wafted over the crowd and bounced off the nearby walls.
“We will rise,” he was saying again. “We will all be out of here soon.”
Jones couldn’t believe it. The man was preaching blasphemy as far as the prison authorities were concerned. Yet there were two hooded Death Skull soldiers standing nearby, if not directly listening to Thorgils’s rambling. They probably didn’t speak English, yet they were at the very least letting him continue.
“And once we arise,” Thorgils went on, “I will be your King.”
Jones now began working his way away from the gathering. Thorgils was obviously dipping heavily into his bag of myx and the last thing Jones wanted was to get caught along with that group once the Skulls realized what the fallen Norse leader was babbling about.
He returned to his station and cleaned out his soup can, watching as the Skulls finally began moving through the courtyard ordering prisoners back to work after the short five-minute break. He went back to chiseling the huge belt buckle, but the bizarre little scene began to gnaw at him. It was just a matter of time before someone in the prison administration realized what was going on with the unstable Thorgils and his stash of myx. When they did, they were likely to execute the Norseman on the spot. This would be a lucky turn of events, as far as Jones was concerned. The alternative would be if the Skulls decided to take Thorgils to their headquarters and interrogate him first before putting him to death.
And if that happened, Jones knew that he’d be in serious trouble. As the man who had given them the ODs of myx, Thorgils knew many secrets about him.
Jones felt the heat of the sun finally touch his forehead and bare chest. The last of the shadows were gone. He could now look forward to being baked by the brutal sun for the next five hours.
Sweat and grime returning with full intensity, he quickened the pace of his chiseling. At the same time, he tried to formulate a plan about what to do with Thorgils.
The Reichstag, five miles away
Mike Fitzgerald walked across his vast bedchamber and turned the air conditioner down to low power.
“The last thing I need now is to catch a chill,” he thought aloud, walking back across the room and collapsing back onto his enormous satin pillow packed feather bed.
His head was aching, his stomach was grumbling, and he had developed a slight shaking of the hands. He wasn’t surprised that he was in such a condition. To say that he had lived the last two weeks in a state of high anxiety was a gross understatement.
Sure, he’d been immersed in forced extravagance inside the Reichstag’s special guests’ suite—eating the finest food, drinking the finest wines, wearing the finest silk clerical garb. But despite his opulent surroundings, he had endured nothing but a bad case of nerves in that time.
One big question had been answered: It was obvious to him now that all of the healing and raising from the dead stuff was actually part of some incredibly elaborate scheme concocted by the United Americans. The encounter with Frost had proven this point.
But why formulate such an ambitiously far-out ruse? This answer too came easily to Fitz. He was savvy enough to know that the whole scenario of providing him with a messianic image had obviously been constructed to get him here. Inside the supreme headquarters of the fascist occupying forces, he was close to the seat of Nazi power, close to the shadowy Amerikafuhrer himself. But what exactly was the next part for him to play? And who would tell him? And when? These questions were not so easily answered. But as a good officer and professional soldier, Fitz knew it was his duty to continue to go along with the charade and await further instructions.
Still it was this not knowing that had kept his psyche frayed for the past fourteen days.
About half that time, he’d spent at the side of the First Governor at a myriad of public displays. Sitting on the man’s right, just as the fifteen-year-old girl prodigy was sitting on his left, it outwardly appeared that the First Governor immensely enjoyed soaking up the apparently never ending adulation heaped on him by the scores of occupying Fourth Reich soldiers.
Yet despite appearances, Fitz knew better. It was obvious to him that the First Governor was becoming more unbalanced as the days went by. They had appeared at more than two dozen official functions in the past fourteen days—state dinners, parades and nearly daily political rallies. But for the most part, the First Governor had simply sat and smiled. He quickly lost interest during the elaborate proceedings staged in his honor and spent most of the time staring off into space, trying to think the Big Thoughts.
On those occasions that he did speak, it was to ask Fitz about the moral implications of even his tiniest acts. By bathing every day, wasn’t he wasting water needed by others? Wasn’t it immoral to eat an egg because it meant taking an offspring away from its chicken mother? Was it not in opposition to Nature for men to fly in airplanes? After all, had he been meant to fly, man would have sprouted wings.
Fitz had learned quickly under fire to nod his head to each question and then give the First Governor a distinctly vague answer, which the Fourth Reich officer always seemed to enjoy interpreting. It was clear that he had come to regard Fitz not only as his personal resurrector, but also as his spiritual conscience, a bizarre concept for a man once known for his systematic brutality.
Through it all, Fitz silently prayed that they would not come upon a legitimately injured or dead person—an accident victim or a sudden heart attack, someone not in on the plan—which the First Governor would want him to cure.
It hadn’t happened yet. But just how long could the balancing act go on?
A knock at the door brought a message from the First Governor’s aide-de-camp.
Fitz was to suit up in his best priestly garments and be escorted to the front door of the Reichstag. He was to ride in yet another parade, this one to celebrate the halfway point being reached in the construction of the Amerikafuhrer’s one hundred fifty-foot wedding present statue of Adolph Hitler.
Once again, Fitz, the young girl, and the First Governor himself would be the guests of honor.
Chapter Twenty-four
Downtown Fuhrerstadt
IT TOOK ONLY A half hour for the thousands of slave workers to file out of their factories and line up along the main parade route.
Many of the workers knew their assigned spots by heart. It had become a habit of their drudgery, this never ending cycle of orchestrated praise for those who kept them in chains. Walking to a particular place on a particular curb on the main avenue in slow, measured, sullen steps, they would stand silent and still until it was time to mechanically wave their small Nazi flags at the passing dignitaries. Then it would be the march back to the hellish factories again until it was time for the next parade.
Not everyone in the crowd were slave laborers. Hundreds of special riot-trained NS also lined the parade route, and a small army of undercover police always roamed the crowd. There was also a scattering of sputniks. Though mostly ill fed and ill clothed, the parade police would always yank one or two of these yet to be arrested people out of the crowd and place them in front of everyone at the curbside. This was by orders of the parade marshals who thought it wise that the parade honorees see more than just drab faces of the city’s slave work force.
And this is what happened to the man named Itchy.
It had taken him nearly three weeks to walk to this pla
ce, the very heart of America’s Nazi Empire. He’d arrived a changed man. Accustomed to being either stuffed inside a fighter jet killing innocents on behalf of his air pirate squadron or getting all drugged up and sexually assaulting young girls, Itchy’s frightful encounter with the flying light on the tracks near Gary had altered his life forever. The intense beam had opened his eyes, both literally and figuratively. It had made him see not what he really was—he knew he was a murdering, sexually bent criminal who just happened to know how to fly a jet fighter—but what he could be. It told him he could change. It told him that he could make a difference. It told him to forget the old evil ways of New Chicago and divert instead to Fuhrerstadt, where perhaps he could change things.
And just as the beam of light had opened his eyes, the long journey through the countryside to Fuhrerstadt had opened his soul.
Lying in a field at night, he would stare up at the stars and weep openly at their beauty. In the day, he would frequently stop to admire a babbling brook or a bird’s nest or a clutch of wild flowers and revel in their majestic simplicity. Far from being a wanton murderer now, he treated every person he met with the same reverential politeness. He had worked for his meals along the way, chopping wood, gathering food, even helping to paint a house for an elderly couple. With each act of his kindness, he was rewarded tenfold inside.
But his new life, and he truly did feel born again, had not blinded him to all the evil in the world. Rather it quite simply explained it to him: Men were the cause of all the misery and suffering on the planet. There is nothing inherently evil in any animal or plant or fish. It was the humans who caused it all. And some definitely more than others. Of this he was sure; simply because he used to be one of them.
With his rebirth came a new grasp of common sense. It was a smart man who realized the human world was inherently evil. It was an ignorant man who allowed himself to be victimized by it. For if one did, then it would prevent him from spreading the news of the enlightenment and joy he had received.
He had been inside the city only a few hours when he saw the parade route begin to form. (He took the fact that he was able to walk past the many checkpoints uninhibited as yet another instance of his newfound spiritual luck.) And now, he had been suddenly plucked from the crowd of thousands to be given this “place of honor,” along the parade route.
It was yet another sign.
From his unobstructed vantage point he could see the first rows of the leadoff marching band coming his way through the canyon of skyscrapers which lined Fuhrerstadt’s main boulevard. The sounds of their blaring brass horns soon reached his ears. Within a minute they were upon him, trumpets, trombones and drums, all played by impeccably uniformed, goose-stepping soldiers.
Next came several units of NS scout cars, personnel carriers and main battle tanks, their crews looking all business in their highly starched combat fatigues. After the vehicles came at least a thousand NS infantrymen, marching with their bayonet equipped rifles held out in front of them in a display of choreographed hostility.
Finally came the vehicle bearing the guests of honor. Itchy thought it was an odd mix sitting in the back of this open-roofed car: on one side was a young girl in a white dress who seemed more intent on her drawing pad and crayons than the thousands of people rotely cheering her; on the other was a priest, splendidly dressed, yet looking oddly out-of-place.
Between them was a thin man in a white uniform covered with medals, ribbons, gold stars and swastikas. Quite unlike the other two, this man was beaming. He was waving, pointing, laughing at the crowds, almost as if he was convinced they were actually enjoying seeing him.
“Perfect,” Itchy whispered to himself, reaching for his gun.
Fitz was never quite sure how it happened.
One moment he was riding along in the touring car, his rear end killing him from the hard seat, trying his best to avert the glazed-over eyes of the slave workers. In the next, all hell had broken loose.
He saw the flash from the gun barrel first. Once. Twice. Three times. The man behind the pistol was smiling oddly as he pumped three bullets into the chest of the First Governor. The next thing Fitz knew, the Fourth Reich officer was grabbing his throat and finding his hands covered in blood.
“What … what has happened?” he cried out.
The man with the gun was immediately shot. More than six members of the NS security forces emptied their guns into him, firing at the twitching body long after it was lifeless. The stunned factory workers nearby were frozen in place, not quite believing what they were seeing. Soon the street was mobbed with security people. So much so, the driver of the touring car had a hard time moving through the crowd and away from the shooting scene.
“Turn back!” someone was yelling. “Go to the hospital!”
But it was too late. Even the two doctors who had jumped from their ever near surgical van onto the back of the car moments before it sped away knew that the First Governor was mortally wounded.
The young girl was in a state of shock, and Fitz was not much better. He found himself cradling the Nazi officer in his lap, his vestments quickly soaking in the man’s blood.
Fitz couldn’t help but look into the dying man’s eyes. His lips were trembling as they went white.
“Please, Father …” the First Governor gasped, looking up at Fitz with teary, pleading eyes. “Please save me …”
Fitz turned to stone. His worst fear had come true, but not in any way he could have imagined it.
Now he could only stare back down at the dying man and say: “I can’t …”
Chapter Twenty-five
Dragon’s Mouth Prison
THORGILS PICKED A SMALL piece of dirty straw from his beard and tossed it aside.
“Can you see the flames?” he asked the crowd of fifty inmates standing in front and slightly below him. “Did you hear the gunshots?”
“I can see the fire!” one prisoner yelled back. “Right over the top of the wall.”
“I can too!” another cried. “Look—fire. And smoke. On the other side of the wall!”
Soon more than half the crowd was jabbering and pointing to the faint glow at the top of the prison east wall, many claiming that they could actually see flames and billowing smoke.
Thorgils smiled and took in a deep breath. For the first time in a long time the air did not smell of dirty hay and dog urine.
“I have told you, my friends,” he continued, steadying himself on his creaky makeshift speaking platform. “I have told you that we will be plucked from here, haven’t I? We will all ascend. We shall all rise up! If you see the fire, then you see light.”
Hidden in the shadows about fifty feet away from the gathering, General Dave Jones was shaking his head in disbelief. “What a bunch of crap,” he whispered.
Undeniably, he could see a slight glint of sparkling light just at the far edge of the east wall. But it certainly wasn’t anything to get so excited about. And true, there had been the sounds of gunfire earlier in the day. But Jones was certain that it had to do with another big parade the Nazis had staged around noontime. An event he was sure had happened because the food truck was later than usual in arriving, and the stiff wagons were held up at the main gate by the Skulls presumably until the traffic out on the main boulevard was cleared.
Still Jones was very worried. The fact that the myx-addicted Thorgils could whip up the crowd of prisoners on such small pretenses and convince them that some kind of salvation was in the offing, was highly troubling. The dog man had been preaching nonstop now for several days, beginning with the short meetings at the noon meal, to long disconnected dissertations once the Skulls locked them all in at night.
And just as Thorgils’s ramblings grew, so did his crowd. Jones was astonished how many people chose to sit and listen to his nonsense about “rising up” instead of getting as much sleep in the little time allotted to them.
All this meant trouble and as a military man, Jones knew he had to do something about i
t.
He’d been putting off any thoughts of escaping from the prison himself, not with nearly two thousand five hundred United American officers being held just beyond the next wall. Twelve, plus Frost, had escaped via Thorgils’s myx potion, and he’d hoped until recently that more would be able to follow. For him to leave now seemed akin to a captain jumping from his sinking ship.
But on the other hand, when the Skulls finally decided to put an end to Thorgils’s prophet fantasy—and it was just a matter of time—then the elaborate and dangerous escape system set up on the outside would most likely be compromised. He was sure that the Skulls could crack Thorgils like an egg. And when they did, he was just as sure that he would tell them everything. Then, the Skulls would come looking for him, and quite possibly begin reprisals against the rest of the prison’s UA population.
So earlier that day, Jones had decided it was time to get out.
But he wasn’t going alone.
It was close to 4 AM before Thorgils brought his revival meeting to a close.
As the crowd dispersed, he took offerings of extra bread and water from his congregation and made his way back to his cage inside the kennel.
Jones was waiting for him there.
“We’re going on a trip,” Jones told him. “You and me. We’re eating the last of your stuff and getting out. Do you understand?”
Thorgils, his fragile psyche already battered and reeling, was speechless.
“But why?” was all he could offer.
Jones didn’t answer him right away. Instead he pulled out the slim razor sharp sliver of metal he’d been fashioning into a knife for the past few weeks and pointed it at Thorgils’s throat.
“Get your stuff,” he ordered the man, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the dogs. “One way or another, you’re going out of here in a bag.”
Mass graveyard No. 1, 24 hours later
It was raining.
The intense heat of the day had cooked the early evening clouds to a boil and a torrential thunder and lightning storm was the result.
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