Made Men (10 page)

A tunnel beneath the Berlin Wall, April
4
^th
, 1962, 11:08
PM
.

H
is twin turned the
lock. It was the first door of four beneath Wolfgang Bähr’s apartment building.

Identical
to the one upon their old cage, the thick metal was designed to withstand years
of use in damp tunnels, engineered to keep people in rather than out. With a
rust-caked lock and hinges, it took both twins to shoulder the thing open. A
decaying person lay inside, a human-shaped
husk
afloat
a press of ooze like a lily pad. The pool of her fluids had evaporated slowly,
the edges defined by the brown iron deposits. Gracefully, a scaffold of mold
grew from her liquefied parts, reaching for the system of ropes and pulleys
that hovered above the corpse. As her tissues had softened, it appeared her
bound parts gave way. Long dead by that time, her dried remains landed in a
state of gruesome repose beneath the device. Optimistic, the mold filaments,
arrested in growth by finite resources, appeared as fragile and special as
hair-thin crystals in a deep, uncharted limestone cave. The skin on her skull
was black, her nose sunk even with her cheeks. She appeared, Ryker thought, to
be clothed, but it was her skin—loosely draped leather hanging on dry,
tired bone.

The sink in the room didn’t drip … what
had that been like? How had she told time?
What
did Wolfgang want with her?

A familiar green.
The room was
obviously an extension of their program. Ryker opened the small door on the
rear wall. Here, too, sat a large cabinet. Tired of locks, he looped a hand
through one handle, hopped his feet onto the doors, and hauled back.
Screeching, the thin metal gave and buckled open.

The extra caloric intake had increased
his strength twofold.

A
small suitcase lay on one shelf: a change of clothing for a man inside,
assorted documents, and more bundles of paper money held together with crisp
paper belts. Other shelves were cluttered with glass bottles of liquid, labels
age-yellowed.

Ether. Chloroform. Acetone. Bleach.

Ryker
removed a journal and sat to flip through the pages.
His brother had found a small wooden box.
Pictures depicting ugliness were organized inside.

This was what he’d wanted with her.

Ryker
marked a page of the journal with oil, passed it to his twin, then filled a
bottle of brown glass with chloroform to put inside the oiled bag with the
Luger and teargas. Done reading, Rickard made a deep whistle from his
sub-glottal tube then added the journal. They closed the door to the small room
behind them, skirting the pool of settled remains.

The
second door in the tunnel wouldn’t budge. Taking turns with the key, they
agreed, despite the matching color marks, it was stuck.
T
he third opened easily. Flicking the switch
inside, Ryker was struck with the cleanliness of the room. It contained a writing
desk and a stylish leather couch. A rug padded the crude concrete beneath and a
wooden door led to a separate shower and toilet. Towels hung above a functional
but small electric heater.

Wooden
crates held wine, others canned food. Two contained ammunition. Extinguishing
the lights, they locked the door.

The
last had two locks which none of their keys fit, so the twins continued around
the narrow bend to where the tunnel turned to clay, ascending the ladder.
Hearing nothing human in the room above, only the hum of equipment, Ryker swung
open the trapdoor.

O
nce outside, they moved quickly. East of the
wall, it was darker at night. A resource-based electric delineation that also
seemed symbolic.
Their ears swiveled to investigate small
noises as they moved in the shadows
,
each bible-clad
foot fell softly
.

In the dark they were not boys. They
were feral
.

Canvasing,
cataloging the terrain with the coordination of earth-bound bats, the small
German-born creatures scouted. They read signs and memorized landmarks. Low,
dark, and swift, they went unnoticed by soldiers and police alike. That late,
the men were weary, pacing and smoking to stay awake.

They
paused to investigate a rustling sound that came from beneath a grate.

Shifting bodies.

Prone,
they peered into the pile of litter ten feet down. A piece of cardboard
undulated with slight mammalian movement.

Children.

Older than themselves.
Ryker heard two of
them breathing. A ladder beneath the grate led to a pile of detritus the
children hid beneath.

“Someone
is up there,” whispered a girl.

“Hold
as still as you can” a boy answered. “Take shallow breaths. If you see light,
hold your breath and be still.”

Waiting,
listening, time passed. The
stone walls
of the storm
drain reflected uneasy sounds—shifting rubble and impatient
breaths—to them through the grate. The gray metal latticework appeared
too heavy for normal children and a noxious smell—methane—bubbled
up from the sewer.

“Whoever
it was is gone. I don’t hear anything now.”

The girl.

“Shush.
We don’t know that.”

The boy.

“I’m
going to look,” she announced.

“Hold
still and try to sleep,” he hissed back.

“I
won’t. I can’t sleep if I don’t know. I’m going to look.”

“Don’t.”

“Mom
would.”

“That’s
why she’s gone. She took risks. We can’t.”

“I’m
hungry.”

“We
will figure it out in the morning.”

“At
least it was warm in the church.”

“We
aren’t going back. You know what they do. We saw it.”

“We
can’t live like this.”

“I
won’t live like that.”

“I’m
looking.”

The
boy sighed. “If you must, but be quiet.”

“I
will.”

The
cardboard shifted. A freckled girl of about seven—upswept nose, grimy
dress—blinked up at them then froze, then pulled the cardboard back over
her face. Her whispers were breathy and panicked.

“Two
boys are up there. Little boys. They saw me.”

“Ridiculous.
You are seeing things.” The cardboard moved.

“Don’t.
Please.”

Thin
and weary, the boy had seen perhaps nine hard years. He wore a horrified,
famished look and appeared dumbstruck and indecisive. The girl peeped out
again. For a moment, the four of them stared. The twins monitored the street
with their ears, listening for foot traffic.

Those
in the sewer jerked frightfully when Rickard broke the silence. “What do they
do to children in the church?”

T
hey found a can
opener and ate beans with their fingers. Rickard rinsed out a can and filled it
with water from the faucet that didn’t drip. Parched, the boy and the girl took
gulps, and the boy rose from the couch like a weary old man to refill the can,
seeming to scan the room for traps on his way to and from the sink. Ryker found
a corkscrew and opened a bottle of wine. He took a sip and passed it to
Rickard, who tilted the bottle to his lips then held it out to the little girl.
Ignoring the wine, she shoveled sweet, dripping beans from a can with her
fingers while the boy opened another, ramming fistfuls of corn in his mouth,
his suspicious eyes, never still, darted about the room.

The
girl was more confident. Shortly she’d found the shower, closing the door
behind her to bathe. Upon her return, her body looked clean, yet she wore the
same filthy clothes. Her brother wiped at his face at the sink, but left the
door open and burst from the bathroom quickly to check on his sister then
scanned the walls some more.

Having
found the wine, the small girl sipped, shivered, smiled, and sipped again. She
yelped when her brother yanked the bottle away from her, scowling and shaking
his head. “You know better.”

Rickard
brought the heater from the bathroom, and they all settled in to admire the
glow of the hot coil. After a time, the boy pulled the bottle to his nose and
sniffed then tipped the bottle lightly with a wary sidelong glance at his
rescuers. He inspected their clothes then their shoes and took another drink of
the sharp, red fluid. Like a tiny accountant, the
girl
stacked
cans of food into decorative pyramids, one corn, one beans, one
meat, then crawled, exhausted, back to the couch. Fumbling to open a can of
pork, her eyelids drooped. The cutting wheel had merely grazed the tin. Then
she was asleep. The heat and soft couch and her full stomach and wine were
enough. Face placid, she rested her head on her brother’s shoulder. The can
rolled, landing softly on the rug.

“They
interfere with the kids,” the boy whispered, watching his sister’s face. “I
think they have forever. The older kids learn to hurt, to…” he tried to think
of the right word “…to molest the youngest ones from the priests. It is
supposed to be an orphanage of sorts, but those who don’t bugger kids don’t try
to stop the ones who do. No one hides it. It’s a bad place.”

Ryker
slid from the couch and padded into the tunnel without comment.

“How
long were you there?” Rickard asked, his eyes on the coil.

“Two
weeks. They put us in rooms in a long hallway with a pretty nun. She played games
with everyone and read to us and took us to Mass. She answered questions and
cut our meat into little pieces like our mother. After a few days they moved us
to a different place.
A single, big room with no privacy and
bunks.
The older kids came for the younger ones, and the priests came
for whomever they wanted. We got out before it happened to us. One of the older
kids, a girl, told us whom to watch. She had something wrong with her, like she
was numb or something, but she tried to help us anyway.” He sunk into the
couch, but his eyes stayed wild. “During Mass, we snuck out. Climbed an old
staircase. Hid in a hot, stuffy old room without windows and got so thirsty,
but we were too afraid to go back. They looked for us, calling our names, but
we moved some things and hid behind them and stayed still and quiet. Then, when
the door opened, I thought they had found us, but a priest came in with one of
the new little kids—” The boy took a longer pull from the tall, green
bottle and seemed unable to go on, but then did. “We waited and it was over,
and we just hid and whispered, guessing what time it was. When it seemed like
night, we crept out and found an open window and jumped from the ledge into a
tree and climbed down.”

Ryker
had returned and held out a picture to the boy from the small box in the
tunnel’s first room—the one with the corpse inside.

“Is
this ‘molest?’”

H
is eyes welled with
tears. Hunching forward, feeling sick, the boy appeared to remember that his
shoulder was his sister’s pillow and forced himself back, swallowing hard. He
had questions too, but was exhausted and couldn't—or didn’t want
to—organize his thoughts into words. Blankly, he gazed at the dazzle of
red heat, the coil a hellish, inanimate serpent these odd boys had tamed to
warm his sister and him, at the very edge of freedom. Nodding, he let the
picture drop from his fingers.

Yes. That was what
molest
meant.

The
girl began to snore and thankful for the distraction, her brother eased her
flat on the couch then rolled her onto her side. Ryker whispered to his
brother.

“It’s
maladaptive.”

“Yes,”
Rickard agreed. “Pedophilia.”

They
studied the human children.

“What
is the benefit to society? Is each an outlier?”

Rickard
practiced shrugging. “Why do they hive in churches?”

Tilting
his head, Ryker sought a reasonable justification. “Ease of access?” He
sniffed. “It cannot be procreative. That one is unready to become gravid.”

“There
is a size mismatch also,” Rickard added.

Children were not meant for it.

Though
humans had wonderful tools, their hormones remained backward. No more advanced
than a bonobo.

Ryker
gazed at the photo in his hand as the girl’s brother adjusted his sister’s head
and smoothed hair from her face.

“Do
all adults practice molestation?”

The
boy blinked, seemingly stupefied by the question. “My parents didn’t. They kept
us safe.”

Outliers
.

Ryker
nodded, his eyes narrow. “Do you know the priest’s name? The one you saw from
hiding?”

Satisfied
that his sister was asleep, the child collapsed to the floor, his back against
the couch,
his
face in his hands. He answered
shamefully, through his fingers.