Lineage(2)

“Begin disassembly. I will join you shortly.”

Without further hesitation, the younger man nodded and turned on his heel. His boot steps moved through the entry of the building and then onto the wooden stairs outside.

The officer sat motionless behind the desk, his face an immovable mask with two burning blue orbs above the long regal nose. After a moment, his right hand reached out and grasped the black telephone that sat on the far right edge of the desk. The gleaming buttons of his uniform cuff scraped lightly on the maps and pages of notes that sat before him.

He dialed and waited with the earpiece pressed tightly to the side of his head as he gazed out through the rafters of the office. The phone on the other end of the line rang twice before it was picked up, and a voice answered timidly.

“Gisela, it is time. I will be home before nightfall. Be ready.”

He hung the phone up without waiting for a response, and stood before the desk as he straightened the leather straps and belts on his uniform. He bent at the waist and drew out one of the desk’s lower drawers. The drawer’s opening yawned blackly, and his mind envisioned an open mouth as he stuck his hand into the darkness and retrieved what lay within.

A belt with many sheaths emerged from the inky shadows of the drawer and came into full view. Light fell and died on the blackened and stained wooden handles of the knives that sat snugly in their leather sheaths.

With a practiced motion, the officer swung the belt around his back and caught it on the opposite side. It buckled comfortably around his narrow waist, and he ran his hands over the ends of the handles that rested near his hips. Nearly a dozen blades hung from the belt as he deeply breathed the still air of the office one last time and adjusted the belt before stepping out from behind the desk.

His boots were polished to a black shine that reflected the dim rectangles of the windows, and his uniform swished as he strode across the floor of the room. When he reached the door to the outside, he paused and glanced back at the space with the solitary desk and the large red banner that hung above it. The black angles of the swastika stood out starkly from the bright red material around it. The man’s eyes took all of it in, and then with the movement of a person leaving a childhood home for the last time, he jerked the door open and stepped out into the wet grayness that blanketed the day.



The air, although dampened by the moisture that dropped steadily from the oppressive gunmetal sky, still held the ever-present black ash and acrid tang of burnt meat. But there was a change today—a vibration also hung in the air. It wasn’t necessarily electric in nature, but almost a precursor to a lightning strike, the air before a storm that was already in progress nearby. The vibration hung all around the many trucks that were being loaded hastily with food stores, ammunition, and every manner of weaponry. It hovered over the soldiers’ heads and made them turn and look to the sky to see the force that pressed down upon their shoulders. As they nervously gazed around, they noticed each other’s anxiety, which in turn made the pressure more palpable. The vibration swelled deep into the dark recesses of the long buildings with the many chimneys, and pushed the shambling, emaciated figures further in, adding to the prodding of the machine-gun barrels that brushed their sides and backs like cold reminders.

The man with the SS insignia on his collar walked briskly across the grounds, his hands in black leather gloves swinging at his sides. The soldiers that he passed glanced at him, their eyes darting to the belt and sheaths that hung from his waist. But they didn’t pause in their tasks. The work carried on as though the small army that tarried within the compound was a machine itself—the many minds operating as one when an order was given. Even on this day—so many days, and months, and years into the war—they still moved as one, a hive mind that plowed relentlessly on through the signs and signals of the end that was so near.

Gunshots rang out every so often paired with muffled cries. Sometimes keening or snippets of prayers drifted through the air, but were always cut short by the harsh bark of small-arms fire. A deep rumble shook the ground at different intervals, as though a drunken giant were stumbling aimlessly across the countryside several miles away. The whine of American, British, and German planes could also be heard as the battle that raged to the west began crawling across the rolling hills that were again turning white in the shadow of a recent thaw.

A soldier who was hurrying across the grounds with his head down, his arms folded protectively around a short-barreled machine gun, caught the officer’s eye. The officer recognized his block leader, his Blockwart, and called out to him. The soldier veered from his former course and stopped several feet away from the other man as the sleet continued to fall and began to build upon the already-soaked shoulders of his uniform.