Jenny Plague-Bringer(78)
“This test is concluded,” Dr. Wichtmann announced when the S.S. men had left the lab. “We will study the results and design more for you tomorrow. Leave now and return to your room.”
* * *
Juliana scrubbed and scrubbed herself in one of the four sinks in the bath area on her hall, but she couldn’t quite erase the taint of red from her hands. The animals’ dying shrieks kept echoing inside her skull, tormenting her. She didn’t know if she’d ever felt so horrible or hated herself so much.
She wanted to simply curl up on her bed and speak to no one, but she learned that every evening during the week, the girls had to meet in the community room for “culture hour,” to be led by Alise, since she was their hall fuehrer.
Alise sat on the deep, comfortable couch in the girls’ community room, flanked by Roza, the Polish girl with the large braids, and Vilja, the Swedish girl so ghostly-pale she seemed on the verge of fading out of existence. The three of them had also made chocolate cookies and an apple-cider punch in the community room’s small kitchen corner, and these now sat on the card table in the middle of the room.
The three blond girls formed a kind of clique, from which Juliana’s roommate Mia seemed excluded. Evelina, the short, dark Slavic girl, was all but ignored by the group. She sat in a chair in the corner, while Juliana and Mia sat in rocking chairs next to each other. Juliana thought it was silly to have cliques based on hair color, but that almost seemed to be the idea. In that case, Juliana and her long black locks properly belonged with Evelina instead of Mia.
“First, some good news,” Alise announced. “We will no longer be herded into the mess hall with everyone else. Instead, we subjects will have a private dining room on our own level! They’ll send the food down by dumbwaiter, and we’ll just send our dishes back up.”
“It’s because of her, isn’t it?” Roza looked at Juliana, with a smile that wasn’t particularly friendly. “They’re scared of her. They don’t want to get contaminated.”
“Roza, let’s try something original and be nice to the new girl,” Alise said, touching Roza’s arm. The look in Roza’s eyes immediately softened, and she turned to gaze lovingly at Alise.
“If you want,” Roza breathed.
“Good. Now, Juliana, since you’re new, allow me to explain cultural hour, my favorite hour of the day,” Alise told her. “It is my job to instruct you in German language and history, so we can all speak and understand each other better. We also study proper female arts, such as sewing...” She indicated the sewing machines. “Or we read from the great German writers, or listen to true German music.”
“That sounds fun,” Juliana said. She didn’t mind learning history, and she liked the idea of learning a new language, especially if there were cookies involved.
“I knew you would like it!” Alise said. “You should begin by learning your German numbers. Do you know any yet?”
Juliana shook her head.
“It’s easy.” Alise held up one finger at a time as she said, “Eins, zwei, drei...”
“Eins, zwei, drei...” Juliana repeated, as did all the other girls in the room except for Evelina. The small Slavic girl just watched them with a distant frown.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ward, his assistants Avery and Buchanan, and Tommy hitched a ride on a military plane hauling crates of supplies bound for U.S. Army installations in Schweinfurt, Germany. From there, they rode north in a helicopter, toward the research center in the Harz mountains.
“There it is.” Ward pointed down through the window. “What do you say, Tommy?”
Tommy looked, and Ward could have laughed as his face fell. The old base didn’t look like much—a few sunken concrete pillboxes and rattling ventilation wells in a weedy yard enclosed by a high brick wall and rusty coils of wire.
“What are we doing out here?” Tommy asked.
“Just what I told you, testing and training.”
“At the town dump?” Tommy asked.
“It doesn’t look interesting at all, does it?” Ward asked. “Certainly not worth a second look if you happen to notice it by airplane or satellite. Just old World War II ruins surrounded by chainlink, with signs warning about hazardous conditions inside, just in case any hikers or campers stumble their way up here. We’re in the middle of a national park, so nobody lives nearby.”
The helicopter dropped them down inside the brick wall, onto a helipad painted to blend with the dirt and weeds around it. Ward instructed the pilot to refuel immediately, and then he led Tommy away from the helicopter and toward one of the old concrete buildings.