“She wants her blanket,” said Liv.
The debris tore his trousers, gouged his knees. Window glass sliced his fingers. When he hurled the bricks aside, they landed with a crash and tinkle, oddly high-pitched for such heavy things. More bricks. More crashing.
He found a rhythm. Lift, hurl, crash. Blood and dust caked his hands. Lift. Hurl. Crash.
“Raybould.”
He couldn't spare Liv more than a glance. A trio of rescue men had joined her: one old, one pudgy, one pale. Good. More hands.
“Raybould,” she said again, less quietly this time.
They stood there, watching. Why weren't they helping him? He wrestled a length of timber from the wreckage. It perforated his hands with splinters.
Footsteps crunched through the debris. A hand rested heavily on his shoulder.
“It's over, son.”
Marsh tossed aside another piece of timber.
The rescue man crouched beside Marsh and squeezed his shoulder. “That's our job,” he said. “There's nothing you can do.”
Marsh's fingers wrapped themselves around something solid, a brick or piece of masonry. Lift. Hurl. Crash.
The hand on his shoulder moved to his elbow and tugged. “Why don't you come with me. We'll get you some food.”
Marsh's fist closed around the corner of a brick.
“Come,” said the rescue man, standing up. “It's over.”
“Nobody fucking tells me to abandon my daughter.”
“What's that?” The rescue man leaned forward. “Why don't you stop for a moment so I can hear you better?”
Marsh launched to his feet as he spun. He put all his weight, all his rage, behind the thing in his fist.
It connected with the corner of the rescue man's mouth. Marsh felt something crack and give way. The man toppled backwards. His helmet clattered down a pile of debris. Marsh dropped the thing in his hand and leapt on him.
“I said nobody—” His fist connected again. “—fucking tells me—” Now the other fist. “—to abandon my
A pair of arms wrapped around his waist and lifted. But Marsh's rage had been uncorked. He thrashed. He threw his head back, connecting with something that made a soft
“Oof ...” The third man grunted, but didn't loosen his grip. He outweighed Marsh by a considerable margin, and so was able to pull him away.
The pain in Marsh's twisted shoulder and his lacerated hands became cracks in the dike restraining something immense and black. He didn't want to feel it, but it flooded through his defenses.
“Nobody ... ,” he panted. He sat in the mud because the words were too heavy. “Tells me ... Oh, God, Agnes. Where are you?” The last came out as a sob.
He looked to the man he'd hit. He appeared to be in his mid-sixties. Spittle and blood trailed from his lips. His mouth was dark red. The pale fellow crouched beside him, helped him up with one hand as he pressed a handkerchief to his nose with the other.
Mud seeped through Marsh's trousers. Cold. Wet. He wished the cold would seep into his heart and numb him.
“We sent her away,” said Liv.
She was sitting on what had been the front stoop of somebody's home. Marsh pulled himself up and joined her.
The rescue men gathered up their fallen companion. The man with the bloodied nose took one arm over his shoulders, and the pudgy man took the other. They limped away, casting glares and curses in Marsh's direction.
“Why did we send her away?” asked Liv, shivering.
Marsh draped an arm across her shoulders. She pulled away. They cried.
Night fell. The stars came out. Liv shivered again.
“You tried to send me away, too,” she said.
ten
The machine shop was a loud place. Klaus worked alone in an isolated corner, far in the back. Building incubators he could handle; the rest of the new construction projects left him feeling ill. He hated to think about the ovens.
He didn't realize somebody had approached him until the tip of the spanner turned orange. Wisps of smoke spiraled up from the blackened pinewood beneath the bolt he'd been tightening. Klaus dropped the tool when heat came surging down the handle into his hand. It slapped the floor like a dollop of taffy.
“Did I get your attention?”
Klaus turned, sucking at the new blisters on his palm. Reinhardt stood behind him, looking slightly amused.
“Haven't they sent you to Africa yet?”
“Not yet.”
The stink of melted linoleum emanated from where Klaus had dropped the tool. It glowed a dark red-black color as it sank into the floor. Klaus grabbed a pair of tongs from an adjacent workbench and dumped the spanner into a water barrel, creating clouds of steam.
“You could have yelled,” said Klaus. “Or tapped my shoulder.”
“And risk startling you?” Reinhardt shook his head. “That could have been dangerous. You're very jumpy.”
“Dangerous to whom, me or you?”
“I had your well-being in mind,” said Reinhardt. “Do try to be gracious about it.”
Klaus fished the spanner from the barrel. The handle had warped, and the jaws had sagged out of true. Reinhardt's stunt had reduced it to so much mangled steel.
Klaus said, “You've ruined it.”
“I'll melt it down if they wish to recast it.”
“What do you want? I'm busy.”
“Pabst wants to see us,” said Reinhardt.
“You and me? Now? Why?”
“I presume he wants to discuss the doctor's plan.”
“What plan is this?” asked Klaus, sucking at the burns on his palm again.
Reinhardt put on a wholly unconvincing show of forgetfulness. “Oh, of course, this is the first you've heard of it. The doctor mentioned it over breakfast.”
“What ever this entails,” he said, “I hope it doesn't delay your deployment. That would be a shame.” Klaus used a clean rag to wipe the metal-and-sweat smell from his hands. It ripped the blisters open.
