“Sit down,” Jan said from across the truck.
Dominik grabbed Zofia around the waist. “Go on, honey. Sit down.”
“But I'm watching.”
“Sit. It's dangerous.”
Lucja sighed. “Are we there yet?”
“Probably not much longer,” Ari said without conviction.
“This driving service is quite the treatment though,” Dominik said, trying to lighten the mood. “Do you think they'll have a feast prepared?”
“I certainly hope so. I could use some tea.”
The half-track turned back towards the center of the island and passed underneath what looked like a rocky bridge. Then, as Dominik stared at it, he realized it was too regular, too fleshy. He traced its origins down the rocks and then stopped, unable to believe what he was seeing.
Ari's mouth hung open. “What the…?”
Zofia threw herself into Dominik's arms. “Papa!”
Over the side of the truck, the road dropped into the largest crater Dominik had ever seen. Its gaping mouth led straight into the bowels of the earth, swallowing the sunlight around it. Out of that blackness he saw, for the first time, the things that would one day devour The Aeschylus. Like Kate, he tried to classify them and found he could only think of them as tentacles. Impossible, he thought, but that was what they were. They stretched and grew from the edges of the hole like fingers, creeping up through the landscape and encircling the mountains beyond. Like the chasm, they were enormous, though he had no grasp of how far they would grow and how dangerous they would one day become. Dominik tried to imagine what could be at the bottom of that hole and couldn't. It might very well go to the core of the earth.
He felt his shirt against his chest and realized he had begun to sweat. Just as he thought he might scream, the path veered away from the crater, and the half-track turned. It bounced happily over a few ruts and then continued through the valley towards their camp, leaving the chasm behind.
As they got closer, he could see that it wasn't a camp they were headed to at all, but a fortress. The walls formed a protective semi-circle around it, metal fence wrapped between. Dominik saw the barbed wire and the watch towers, the men with guns, the jagged rocks that poked and pushed over the barriers on all sides. Just beyond those barriers, he knew there was nothing but the open, unforgiving sea.
The most terrible thing, however, was not the impregnability of their destination, but the fact that the great chasm was within view of the front gate. Whatever he and Ari had imagined as their purpose, they had been wrong. It gave him an awful feeling. It was as if the journey across the Atlantic, as trying as it had been, would be easy compared to what came next.
The half-track stopped at the front gate, and another soldier waved them through.
3
Harald looked over his shoulder and watched Dominik being escorted to his new home. A pair of burly-looking youths had a hold of each arm, practically dragging him across the dirt. That was good; Harald didn't trust Kaminski in the open, not any more. Ari and his daughters weren't far behind, being herded off of the half-track like cattle.
“Walk with me,” Richter said. “I'd like you to meet the other prisoners.”
“Other prisoners?”
“The unskilled labor, as I think of them. This way.”
Harald followed his commander in silence, passing beneath an arch of the monstrous growths Doctor Grey would one day call The Carrion. But where Dominik saw danger, Harald saw only wonderment. This place was unlike anything he had imagined.
“I'd also like to meet the men,” he said. “The soldiers.”
“You know that it's twenty-one thirty?”
Harald looked up, still unused to the perpetuity of gray sunlight. “Ah, excuse me, sir. I'd forgotten. We've been at sea for quite some time.”
“No. By all means, meet with them. We need someone to keep them on their guard. Your predecessor will not be doing it, certainly.”
“My predecessor?”
“Captain Smit,” Richter said, stopping at the edge of the crater. “You did hear what happened to him?”
“No sir, I—”
Richter laughed, and for the first time, Harald felt vaguely unsettled. “You needn't worry about it then, Lieutenant. You'll have enough things to worry about without putting stock in ghost stories.”
“Ghost stories?”
“The men here are a rather superstitious lot. It's nothing you need concern yourself with. So meet them, and see for yourself. Just excuse me if I don't join you. My duties will stretch on into the night.”
A shout echoed from around the corner, and Harald turned to see a gaggle of emaciated figures near the edge of the pit. An S.S. youth stood above them, yelling orders from over top of a rifle. Harald observed with some fascination that the prisoner closest to the drop had a rope tied around his waist, and the others were lowering him into the deep. The spelunker looked half naked and starved.
The commander began walking around the edge towards them, laughing—laughing—as the men strained and heaved with their bony arms. “Lower! Put him lower, you animals!”
The four prisoners, all of whom were seated, barely looked up. It was all they could do to keep the rope in their hands. Richter began to prod one of them with his foot.
“Do you think we should move against Kaminski now?” he called.
It took Harald a moment to realize the question had been directed at him. “Move against him?”
“Yes. Do you think he has the moxie to do the job straight away?”
“What do you mean?”
“You're playing coy with me, Lieutenant. Do you think he can do the job we have set for him without using any leverage?” The man's tone was light, but Harald had no doubt of its sincerity.
“Yes sir, I think he can do it.”
“Very well,” he said noncommittally. “I will trust your judgment, Lieutenant.”
“Yes sir.”
“You don't approve?” Richter asked, reading the other man's expression. “We could always torture him, if his daughters won't do.”
A dozen retorts skipped through his brain, none of which would endear him to his new host. “You know best, sir.”
“That I do, Lieutenant, that I do! The human body is a resilient thing. I've seen it survive many things. You can beat it, burn it, cut off it's limbs… hell, you can cut off its balls and it will find a way to survive.” He stopped then, looking down at the prisoner who was dangling at the end of the rope.
The man had begun to whimper. “Please. Don't lower me any more! There's something down here! I can feel it!”
When Harald looked down, he saw the darkness of the pit had a kind of volume to it. The way the light fell, the shadow became complete just under the man's thighs. He appeared half in, half out of the darkness.
“What's down there?” Richter asked.
“I don't know! I don't know! There's something moving!”
“Well, if you can't tell me what it is, that's no good to us,” the commander said. Then, to the prisoners, “Lower him a little further.”
When they didn't respond, Richter went to the man at the front of the brigade, withdrew a small knife, then pressed it into the man's neck. It was a warning gesture, but it still drew blood. All four prisoners began to lower the rope.
The man on the end cried out, begging them to stop, but by the time they did, he was invisible. The shadows had overtaken him.
“He is very prideful, you know,” Harald said, his voice trailing off as he watched.
“Who?”
“Kaminski. He's very prideful. If we hurt one of his girls, I'm not sure what he would do.”