“That’s it,” Gabriel said, “we’re almost there—”
He heard a rustling in the undergrowth beside them. With a falling heart, he turned halfway around to face it. If it was another Tasmanian tiger, or god forbid one of those birds…
But when Millie, balancing on one leg, used the butt end of the spear to push aside a screen of leaves, Gabriel saw it hadn’t been an animal making the noise. Crouched low to the ground, her half-strung beads clutched tightly between her hands, was the young girl from the village.
“Oh, god,” Gabriel said. He looked back toward the village. The top of the tall central building was still in view, and as he watched, it crumpled inward.
He thought of the two unconscious guards he’d left behind on the floor. He thought of the old women by the well, who’d disappeared to who knew where. He thought of the pitiful sufferers in the men’s tent. Even if Gabriel and Millie made it to the plane, even if Rue managed to get them off the ground, there’d be no shortage of death in this valley.
Not this one, too.
“Come on,” he said to the girl, knowing she couldn’t understand a word. She shrank away from him.
“Millie, you do it. Talk to her.”
“I don’t speak their—”
“Just talk, you goddamn horse whisperer,” Gabriel said, and Millie steeled himself, forced the pain off his face and out of his voice, and began talking to the girl, low and soft, his words a trickle of sweet, slow molasses. “Come here, beautiful, it’s okay, we’re not gonna hurt you, you’ll be okay—but you’ve got to come with us, that’s it, come here…”
Gabriel looked back at the village again. The central building was completely gone, and a hot wind had started to blow in their direction, rattling the branches of the trees.
“Come on, Millie,” Gabriel whispered. “Now or never.”
The girl had crept forward. She was within reach. “I can’t carry her and walk,” Millie said.
“Put her on your back,” Gabriel said.
“Honey, don’t run, I’m gonna pick you up, you understand me?” He made a lifting gesture with his arm. “Up, okay? It’ll be fine, just trust me.” Gabriel looked in the girl’s eyes. She seemed a bit less frightened, or at least he told himself she did.
“Now, Millie. Now.”
With one sweep of his arm, Millie lifted the girl off her feet and tossed her onto his back. She squealed with momentary terror, but he kept talking to her, and when he let go of her skinny waist she didn’t jump off. Instead, she wrapped her legs around his thick neck and took fistfuls of his hair in both little hands.
“That’s great, honey,” Millie said, “now we’re going for a ride.”And sweeping the spear out in front of him, he resumed his lurching forward march, Gabriel running alongside him, keeping him up.
The hot wind pursued them, gaining strength. It felt like it had reached gale force by the time they finally broke out into the clearing where the plane stood. A loud buzz of exclamations arose from the crowd of women when they saw Millie and Gabriel stagger into view with the wind at their back. Rue looked up. She was crouched on the plane’s wing, twisting a wrench in the innards of the fuselage, but she leapt down and ran to them, pushing taller bodies out of the way till she was at Millie’s other side and could grab him around the waist.
Looking down, Gabriel saw that one of Rue’s small bare feet was wrapped with bloody barkcloth.
“Jesus,” Gabriel said.
“Don’t worry,” Rue said. “It’s not my clutch foot.”
She steered them toward the open ramp at the rear of the plane.
“Have you got it working?” Gabriel asked.
“Like a charm,” Rue said. “A cranky, leaky, rusty, sixty-five-year-old charm.”
“Well, you’ve got five minutes to get us in the air,” Gabriel said.
Rue’s face couldn’t properly be said ever to go pale, but she blanched all the same. “Five minutes…?”
“Fünf minuten,” Gabriel said. “Not a minuten more.”
The women crowded all around them fell silent then, and stepped to either side. In the gap that opened up, Anika came forward. She had a vintage Luger in her hand, the German pistol aimed directly at Millie’s gut. Apparently Groener’s notebook hadn’t been the only artifact of the Third Reich left around here.
“Lady, move,” Millie said. To which Gabriel added, “If you don’t let us up that ramp, Anika, we’ll all die.”
Her grip on the gun didn’t waver.
“The Untergang machine,” Gabriel said, then started over. “Unterg. Unterg has been activated. Turned on. Made angry. Look.” He pointed back toward the trees, which were waving wildly in the wind. “Your main building—it’s gone. Gone. Everything will be gone a few minutes from now. Everything—you, me, everything, if you don’t let us get on this plane. If you don’t let us take you away on the Father Bird.”
“We cannot…ride the Father Bird,”Anika said. “It is forbidden.” But Gabriel saw her looking past him, over his shoulder, toward the village, and thought maybe he heard a bit of uncertainty in her voice.
“We have to go,” he said. “Now, or everyone you care about will die. You and all your people. We can save you, but only if we go right now.”
The girl, who was still sitting on Millie’s shoulders, picked this moment to speak up.
Gabriel couldn’t understand what she said in her piping little soprano voice; perhaps something about how they’d picked her up and brought her safely out of the forest. Perhaps something else entirely. But at the end of it, Anika’s hand slowly descended.
“It is forbidden,” she said, unhappily.
“First time for everything,” Rue said and steered Millie up the ramp with her.
Gabriel stayed at its foot a moment longer. “Tell them to get on board as quickly as they can. Up there.” He pointed at the plane’s interior. “We’re leaving in four minutes, with them or without them.” Anika repeated the instructions to the throng of women and they began rushing up the ramp. Gabriel went ahead of them and pointed them to seats on padded benches against each wall. He opened a set of ancient supply lockers along the walls, one by one, disgorging parkas, blankets, and assorted other cold weather gear.
“Do we have enough fuel to make it to the nearest station?” Gabriel asked.
“Barely,” Rue replied from the cockpit. “We’ll be flying on fumes and Hail Marys.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“It’s an I’ll do my best.”
It would have to do.
Gabriel returned to his search of the cavernous hollow interior of the plane. He found stacks of tanned furs, skins of water, and baskets of desiccated fruit and dried meat—decades of offerings to the Father Bird, no doubt. He also found a complement of flight suits that had lain untouched for over sixty years.
“Anika, is everyone on board?” Gabriel said.
The older woman looked from face to face, tallying the confused and anxious women sitting half naked on the benches, and nodded. “All in.”
“Tell them to bundle up in those furs,” Gabriel told her, as he began pulling on one of the flight suits. “You too. You have no idea how cold it is where we’re going.”
Anika looked at Gabriel as if he’d lost his mind but did as he requested.
“Millie,” Gabriel said, tossing him the largest of the suits. The big man was seated sprawled across the floor beside the cockpit. “Put some clothes on.” Gabriel threw the smallest of the flight suits through the open door of the cockpit. “Rue, when are you going to start those engines?”
There was a growling sputter and cough before he finished getting the words out, and looking through the cockpit windows he saw the antique propellers struggling into motion like old men getting out of bed. The stench of thick smoky exhaust was overwhelming.