Todd Pliss - American Reich

Linda, having slid off the heavy manhole slab, lowered her body rapidly into the ground.

“I’m in, Wayne,” she said with just enough volume necessary for her partner to hear.

Wayne crawled out from underneath the vehicle on its dark side. The searchlight stayed fixed on the Beetle. Wayne ran to the manhole. He entered its opening and slid the manhole cover back in its proper place just in time for Gestapo vehicles to pull up.

Linda led her partner through the network of numerous drainage tunnels that made up the dreary, almost lightless, extensive sewer system of New Berlin City. It was a sewer system that had been newly built in the late 1940s after the old, American one had been destroyed in the war. The population of a city of rats called it home. Wayne and Linda came upon a large crevice, with a diameter wide enough to accommodate an average sized human, in the muddled, rocky ground. Linda got down on her hands and knees and, in a creeping motion, began to move through the crack.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Wayne asked. He was feeling claustrophobic.

“I practically grew up here,” Linda said, her voice muffled since her head was already on the far side of the crevice.

Wayne unwillingly crawled into the hole, also. Halfway through it, he became stuck. “I can’t move anymore,” he fretted.

“Suck in your gut,” Linda advised.

“It is sucked in,” Wayne said frustrated.

Linda gripped each of his calloused hands. When she pulled on them hard, the pain in Wayne’s right shoulder intensified. He wiggled his torso, the minute amount that he could, against the hard surface that surrounded him. Linda pulled harder. He broke free of the crevice’s clutch.

They stood on a dilapidated platform in what was once a part of the famous New York City subway system. An aged Metropolitan Transit Authority train, at least half a century old, laid in silence on its tracks, partly covered in rubble. Human skeletons, wearing their outdated clothes from a bygone year, littered the area. A newsstand, once an outlet of free press and free speech, sat unguarded. A dusty sign, which had so often greeted freshly arriving passengers, hung from the ceiling by a lone wire and read: 26TH STREET.

Wayne took a good, hard look at the scene before him and had to hold back his tears. Witnessing the subway in its current, sorry state, he felt a bizarre sensation of isolation and loneliness come over him as he stood where he had so many times previously in his life during the afternoon rush hours, mobbed by strangers.

“You know,” he said, “it’s ironic. I was never really crazy about New York the way some people were. I always complained about the noise, the crowds, and the crime. But now I would give anything to be able to stand in a crowd of New Yorkers watching the Macy’s Day Parade. Hell, I’d even sit through a Yankees game.”

Wayne picked up a yellowed edition of the New York Times. He read from its front page, “As a result of Germany’s continually devastating attacks on U.S. military bases, including the site where the United States allegedly had the atomic bomb in development, the United States is trying to maintain some form of defense around the country while the Japanese continue to conquer more lands in the East.” He looked at the date of the newspaper. “March 30th, 1947.” Wayne threw down the paper. “Can you believe that this is all my fault, Linda? Can you believe what I have done?”

“Let’s keep moving, Wayne.”

“Linda, do you really believe my story? I know that you said you did, and I couldn’t have gotten this far without your help, but it’s odd. Why do you believe me? Or are you just humoring me?”

“Let’s walk a little more, Wayne. Then we’ll talk.”

Wayne stuck his hand in his pocket and ran his fingers along the vial of crystals. It gave him some comfort, at least.

Linda jumped down onto the rusted railroad tracks. Wayne followed close behind as she skirted around part of the caved-in roof and continued down the dark, endless tracks. Wayne remained silent, and in a near state of shock, as they proceeded through the war ravaged subterranean world. They climbed over a derailed Long Island Railroad train car. They moved onto a platform, passing a sign that read: UNION STATION. Wayne observed one skeleton “resting” against a wall with a cup in one bony hand beside it a cardboard sign that pleaded to passersby: BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A DIME?

As they inched along on scaffolding above a station stop, Linda slipped. Wayne, feeling as dead as all of the skeletons he had been observing, helped her up. They crawled through a subway tunnel, barely passable due to the twisted wreckage of it rubble. Hardest of all for Wayne, was walking through a train that had the skeletal remains of a full batch of passengers intact on it. Most wore the business suits that they had on when the “big one” dropped.

Wayne thought of all the people that he knew who routinely used public transportation to get back and forth from work and school. A cold shiver shot up his spinal cord. On the train, a poster with a picture of a white bearded Uncle Sam advertised to the masses: BUY WAR BONDS, DO YOUR PART TO DEFEAT THE NAZIS.

They soon came to a small, enclosed area. Linda begun feeling around for something near the wall. Within a minute, she had found what she had been seeking — an old kerosene lamp. She lit it, shedding an eerie orange light on the tiny area “decorated” with the makeshift furniture of a couch made from train seats pushed together and an ancient mattress resting on the floor with a thin, blue blanket full of holes on it.

“Cozy little area,” Wayne said. He attempted, unsuccessfully, to lighten up the mood when he asked, “Did you do the interior design work yourself?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Linda replied in an earnest manner.

“Well, it’s nice enough,” Wayne said. It was nicer than Hollenburg anyway.

“Nice compared to the ghetto. I found this area down here by accident when I was a child; started crawling through pipes, the sewers, anywhere I could escape the ghetto. And then, one day I crawled through a sewer pipe and it kept on going and going, until I ended up down here.”

“Don’t the Germans know about this area?” Wayne sat down on the homemade couch.

“Most of them aren’t even old enough to remember the war. This place has long been forgotten. Probably considered by those who do remember it as just a casualty of the war. Let me have a look at your shoulder.”

Wayne, barely able to move his right arm without pain, slowly tugged his shirt off. The tissue around his shoulder had swelled considerably. Linda took her knife and sterilized the blade by holding it above the kerosene flame. Wayne, wincing at the sight of the cutting tool, queried his new doctor, “You ever do anything like this before?”

She answered, “I’ve done my share of treating wounds, delivering babies — you name it.” Linda started to cut the bullet out, making her patient flinch.

“So, what do you do around here?” Wayne asked attempting to occupy his mind with something other than the sharp pain he was experiencing in this shoulder area.

“I like to meditate. And read. I found a bunch of pre-war magazines and books down here. I like to read about how the world was before the war and about what it was like to live in a democracy. Also, it’s interesting to me to read about the different places around the world that I would’ve loved to have seen. But most of all, this has been a place to get away from the crowded ghetto and spend some time alone. Everybody needs that now and then, I think.” Linda made a deep cut in her patient’s shoulder. Wayne screamed.