Lost Signals (36 page)

“Go
 
!” Sepp pulled the pistol from his waistband and tossed it to her across the mattress.

Elsa picked it up and pulled the slide back to chamber the first round before she climbed onto the fire escape. As she flew down the ladder, hand-over-hand on rusty rungs, she lost sight of Alex as he walked toward the alley across the street. He moved in a rigid, deliberate manner—a dowsing rod pulled firmly toward water.

She dropped to the sidewalk and pushed through the protestors toward the alley. People yelled, fists raised. Rocks and bottles arced over the crowd. None took notice of the armed woman who pushed through them.

Elsa elbowed and shouldered her way onto the opposite side of the road.

Halfway across the street, she looked at her flat one last time, hoping to see Sepp follow her down the ladder. But, the rapid gunfire continued—a staccato chatter that strobed in the window like a flickering flashlight. A deafening blast blew shards of Alex’s bedroom window out onto the crowd. Dust and loose sheets of paper followed the glass into the street like leaves dropping in autumn.

Her heart dropped in her chest. The gun almost slipped from her grasp as she stared at the ravaged flat.

Sepp.

He couldn’t have survived that.

An errant elbow thrown by a protester knocked hard into her kidney and jostled her.

Get Alex
. She could hear his voice in her head despite the chaos.

Elsa turned and continued through the packed crowd.

An armored car followed the ranks of police. The steel vehicle was topped with a water cannon. A helmeted police officer blasted a group of protestors that slipped through the cordon with high-powered bursts of water.

The alleyway stood cloaked in darkness. Steam hissed from a distant pipe, which added a dream-like haze farther down the path where her son disappeared. Deep in the gloom, thuds and grunts echoed from behind a dumpster.

Elsa’s palm was sweaty against the pistol grip, and the waffled handgrip dug into her skin. The alley, a path she had walked down countless times in daylight, stood unrecognizable in the darkness.

A stygian portal into nothingness.

Alex was only getting farther away, so she bit back her fear and jogged into the alleyway.

The hot steam burned her nostrils and sweat poured down her face, but she passed through the cloud in a few strides. Behind the dumpster, a group of boys surrounded a homeless man lying on the ground.

The boys, all Alex’s age, took turns kicking the vagrant. Each one delivered a swift kick to the man’s head or ribs. He lay on the wet concrete, sprawled like a discarded rag doll—oblivious, by then, to the onslaught.

Elsa paused, wanting to pull the boys away from them.

A gust of hot wind blew past carrying rubbish deeper into the alley, as well as one of Alex’s numbered sheets that had blown out the flat window in the explosion. She picked back up to a jog around the boys, who were oblivious to everything but the infliction of pain.

As she passed them, she did a double take and then a quick halt. One of the boys, a skinny kid with a head full of curly, blond hair, stood with his back to Elsa.

“Willi
 
?”

The boy turned to her. His freckled face was slack, and his narrowed eyes were like tiny, burning coals. Willi was no longer the smiling boy who offered a “Tag, Frau Dietrich,” whenever he saw her.

Elsa backed away, deeper into the alley, as the other boys turned to face her.

They advanced in slow, automated steps.

She turned and ran into the shadows.

The boys stood shoulder-to-shoulder and watched her, then turned back to the unconscious man. Beyond the steamy backdrop near the head of the alley, the gunshots and yells of the protest had faded.

Pale orange lights high up on both sides of the alley lit Elsa’s way. She ran around the garbage and potholes that littered the asphalt. Political posters lined the chipped brick walls—Communists, Fascists, Nazis, all represented on curled broadsides that featured rifles, sickles, swastikas, and promises of better futures.

The main alley ended at a fenced-off loading dock. Two smaller spurs continued left and right—too narrow for vehicles and almost completely devoid of light. Cardboard boxes, trashcans, and other nebulous shapes lined both sides.

“Alex
 
!” Her cry echoed.

A clang of steel and the harsh meow of a street cat. The mangy animal scurried into the light of the main alley as it tore past Elsa.

“Alex
 
!”

A burnt-orange halogen lamp ticked overhead.

“No,” she whispered. The crushing loneliness was something she’d dreaded for years. “Alex
 
!”

She waited, listening to only her frantic heart beating a tattoo in her ears.

To the left spur, footsteps crunched over gravel and glass.

“Alex
 
?”

A black form appeared in the gloom, the same height and thin build of her son. She took a few tentative steps toward the approaching figure. Her heart sped up, hope hammering at her sternum.

Her shoulders slumped when the outline coalesced into that of a girl. A ponytail swung behind her as she walked purposely down the alley toward Elsa.

Elsa moved toward her. “Did you pass a boy back there
 
?”

The girl slowed. She looked at Elsa as if the question were a challenge. Her eyes held the same robotic contempt as Willi’s.

Elsa backed away. “Hello
 
? Did you see anyone else
 
?”

Behind her, gunshots echoed down the steamy path. The fighting had carried into the alleyways.

The girl’s head jerked in the direction of the battle, a predator who sniffed more worthy prey. She trotted down the main street, leaving Elsa forgotten and alone at the T-intersection.

Elsa headed in the direction where the girl emerged.

Graffiti decorated the dank, dripping walls. A swastika headlined with TOTET DIE JUDEN, the rushed spray-painted text dried in mid-drip. A Kilroy nose over a fence. Farther on, a skull and crossbones with the caption FM’LATGH GOF’NN—only the skull was bulbous and alien.

The strange block letters of the last display caused her to slow as she examined them. She had a working knowledge of most languages spoken in West Berlin, but those words were unlike any she’d ever seen.

She felt countless unseen eyes probing and observing as if she were laid out on a morgue slab for all the universe to flay and dissect. Her flesh raised in pale bumps up her arms and shoulders.

She spun in a circle, gun raised, but was alone in the steamy alley.

Farther down, a gravelly voice punctuated the night.

Elsa lowered her gun and continued.

The access road led to another intersecting alley—a right turn to another major road, and a straight shot deeper into the darkness. A sign was posted on the corner over a few overflowing dumpsters and garbage cans.

POLIZEI

It was the service entrance and back doors of the police station Sepp and his friends had planned to attack.

A homeless man stood in the shadows, hunched over a large section of grating at the base of the building, some kind of basement or maintenance hatch. The man held the grating open—swung up against the building—while someone climbed out of the opening.

One child, a boy. Followed by another.

The two children walked down the alley toward her.

Elsa gave them a wide berth. Their empty eyes and slack faces gave her the same creeping dread she’d felt while reading the strange language. They walked by with barely a glance.

She ran up to the homeless man, gun aimed at him.

The old man—in baggy, dirty clothes and bare feet—watched her approach with no alarm at the brandished firearm. He still held the grating up against the building. A stone stairwell faded into the darkness after three steps.

“What are they doing down there
 
?” Elsa motioned with the gun at the stairs. “Did a boy come through here a few minutes ago
 
?”

The vagrant’s hollow eyes looked as if they’d been pushed deep into black clay. Sun-worn crevasses lined his jowls, the corner of his mouth, and his dirty forehead. “Many boys and girls pass through here.” He smiled, dried lips like slugs pulled across his face.

A roach crawled over the threadbare shoulder of his jacket and up his neck to his thin-lipped mouth. A thin, ribbon-like tongue pulled the armored pest into his mouth. The bug crunched as his jaw worked it around.

Elsa’s stomach turned and the gun wavered.

The bum lunged forward and the grating crashed down. He grabbed at the gun, but she fired off an errant shot into his thigh. The gunshot hammered through the narrow alley like the opening salvo of Armageddon.

Without a cry or grunt, the man dropped to the ground.

The ragged bullet hole in the thigh of the man’s trousers did not bleed. A gurgling chuckle escape from his throat, as if forcing its way out of a backed-up commode.

Through his growling laugh, he continued. “Go home and go to sleep. Azathoth, on his black throne, will—”

“Where’s my fucking son
 
!” Elsa cut him off with a second shot between his muddy, sunken eyes.

His head snapped back and bounced off the concrete with a hollow thump. His lips parted, drooling black ropes from the corner of his mouth.

Elsa peeked around the corner, toward the front end of the police station, far at the end of the alleyway. The gunshot appeared to have gone unnoticed among the other sounds of violence that filled the city. Policemen ran to and fro, preparing their sortie into the city.

Elsa picked the grating back up. She had to squat and then lift the heavy gate as if it were a barbell. Rusty rebar dug into her palms and tore her skin. With the grating pushed open against the wall, she walked down to the first step and peered into the gloom.

After seven steps, a bare passageway led straight under the police station.

She lowered the grating over her. It clanged shut, flush with the concrete. The seven steps terminated at a platform lit by burnt, flickering bulbs. The hallway continued under the police station’s foundation. Along the stone wall, more light fixtures lined the hall, their plastic covers burnt and stained the brown-yellow of a baby’s shit.

The rough-hewn stone wall resembled a castle bulwark. It sweated a slick coating and an incessant dripping echoed from somewhere along the hall. Her fingertips came back black and greasy after running her hand along the wall.

The air was wet and musty, like wet books in a forgotten basement.

The interval between each fixture was about six paces. Elsa hurried down the hall and after four fixtures, came to another set of stone stairs that descended deeper into the mantle of West Berlin.

As she stepped into that deeper level, faint music floated through the corridor.

Although so quiet it sounded like a melodic whisper, she knew the tune. It was the rhapsody she last heard in Alex’s closet. The one he’d spent so many hours huddled over while she sold herself nightly for the price of a loaf of bread.

The music grew louder, more distinct, as she continued, and it played with the clarity not available when heard through speakers.

It was clear enough to be the source of the broadcast.

Ahead, after she passed another eight fixtures, the hall ended.

Before her, lit in the ghostly orange light, stood a plain office door with a frosted glass window. Probably a thousand like them in West Berlin. Ten thousand. She tried to find comfort in the familiarity.

A brass plaque was tacked over the door.

‘SWEDISH RHAPSODY NO. 1’ STATION

The rhapsody played behind the door, along with a smattering of mumbles and whispers.

The girl’s voice picked up next—just feet away from where Elsa stood. The same voice Alex had transcribed into countless notebooks and sheaves of paper.

Achtung
 
!

Eins, Zwei, Sieben, Sieben, Sieben . . .

A shadow appeared behind the frosted glass.

The doorknob twisted.

Elsa threw herself against the wall. She sucked in hard to flatten herself against the stones like she was standing on a tenth-floor ledge.

The door opened outward, shielding her Elsa, and then closed.

A girl had walked out. Slim, blonde, with dusty jeans and a t-shirt—fresh off of any school playground. The girl shut the door behind her and walked down the hall. Her footfalls echoed over the dipping pipe, even after she disappeared up the first set of stairs that led to the street.

After the girl’s footsteps faded, Elsa adjusted her sweaty grip on the gun.

No use in waiting.

Elsa turned the knob. The door glided open on mercifully silent hinges.

She peeked in first, hand tight on the knob.

The room was as big as her flat bedroom, with the same stone walls and electric lights as the hall.

A desk-style console filled with lights, levers and buttons lined the wall opposite the door. The console was divided into different work stations, each possessing the same configuration of dials and levers and marked with different designations—FM, AM, SHORTWAVE, SATTELITE, PLASMA LASER, and a few others written in the strange language Elsa saw on the poster in the alley. The stations were crammed with switches and toggles, each like the cockpit of a jetliner. There were small monitors built into each console with foreign characters that scrolled across a flickering screen.

Someone sat in an office chair at the SHORTWAVE station, the high back blocking Elsa’s view of the occupant. Next to the chair, a conventional microphone jutted from one of the control panels. The person in the chair held a hand-crank music box up to the microphone with small, gray hands and turned the small crank to play the rhapsody over the airwaves.

On the other side, a ball of avocado-green light about the size of a peach floated in the air. Other dials and electrodes emitted the same sickly green hue, which made Elsa’s eyes flutter and her stomach queasy.

The gun—the useless hunk of steel and brass—almost slipped from her sweat-slicked hand.