In Mud and Fog

All there was, for miles and miles around was the fog. The thick pearlescent fog, rolling in from parts unknown, billowing down through the husks of abandoned cars and cracked roads. This all transpired in that fog although the details are vague and ill defined, hazy against a sea of maybes and supposes. These days whether it was smoke or fog was hard to tell; the war had made such distinctions imperceptible.

Two figures appeared in the haze, trotting over the crest of a hill, these wet, mud slicked hills, grass poking out vainly through the slurry of mud that had formed in the frost. The figures were following a trail marked only by deeper sludge than anywhere else and balding grass. A tall younger one gazed around and a shorter older one carried a heavy leather bag, a valise.

Igner and Faber followed this trail.

Silence.

“Who do you think will find us first? The Russians or the Americans?” asked Igner.

“Hard to say” muttered Faber

“Hard to say how?”

“Depends which direction we’re going”

“So we’re lost?” Igner sounded annoyed, clipped quick speech.

“No. We’re still going the right way, just…depends on who will be there when we get there”

“This is all too cold, wet. We should have stayed” Igner remarked, shivering in the frost.

“And then what?” asked Faber idly.

“I…don’t know. I don’t have a suggestion, just making an observation” Igner pushed his styled blonde hair out of his face, grimacing in disgust as the mud began to fleck onto his pants. Brown eyes swiveling, focused on a distant spot on the horizon as he walked in line with Faber.

Faber’s arms ached and he transferred the heavy valise his other hand.

“I can carry that for a bit if you want, you know” Igner reached for the bag. Faber pulled his hand away carefully.

“No, it’s fine. You keep a look out, someone might try to take this”

The path curved a way through the bare grassy hills, rounding knolls and cutting ridges, arcs, a brown line to the future. They tried to move quickly, Igner edging ahead with nothing to slow him down. Faber stared at the back of his suit jacket.

The fog billowed and swirled.

Mud sloshed in through the holes in Faber’s shoes. Each step, it flooded in, sucking back each time he lifted. Squelching, slimy thick brown bubbling against his rotting socks, trapped beneath his heel, remains dribbling out through the crust rimmed cracks of failing leather. It clung to everything, the lighter watery mud flecked up on to his face. The mud flowed in, stuck, sloshed out. In, out. He felt it between his toes, trapped in the crevices and joints of his digits.

Faber wished he’d brought boots. Igner had. But Igner was also wearing a suit and tie, both of which were getting a sheen of dampness across the shoulders and flanks. Faber’s arms ached, readjusting his hands on the sharp Bakelite handle of the valise. Faber’s coat kept him warm.

The wind blew up, biting his cheeks and eyes with a stinging wetness, grass flying up as they held fast against the gust. Igner looked back at Faber as it died down.

“Um…do you want me to hold it for a while?”

“You’ve already asked that Igner”

“Mhm” no response to that one “It’s an offer”

Faber stared at his feet as they sloshed forward, ending up ankle deep in grime at times. His leather loafers were falling apart, the hole in his sole was beginning to widen and let in more and more of the mud. He knew it would happen, these shoes had been through so much with him.

He imagined meeting the Americans, guns at the ready as the two handed over the Valise, trying in broken English to explain their importance. Faber thought the Americans would take them more readily. But in his mind, the Americans blew them down, spinning them with bullets into mud below. The blonde hair, blue eyes and big white smiles, laughing as he sunk into the mud...

As Faber walked, stepping without thinking, all he could see now were the rockets. He remembered how they explode with fire and smoke, lifting off into the sky like a firework. A firework which would land somewhere in London and explode, colourful big explosions. He began to imagine possibilities. He saw the last rocket explode on the launch pad, rocket fuel booming and blasting outwards in orange clouds of whipping flame and he saw himself running forward to grab Overseer and pull him back. A heroic, chivalrous part of his mind replaced Overseer with Madam Kleiner, the stocking and skirted woman he’d met at Mittelwerk during his tenure. She was always quiet and shy. She was in front of the rocket now and he stepped to her, pulling her away from the blast and into an access hallway, free from the fires. He imagined it again. The rocket exploded again and again on the launchpad, throwing the workers and indentured slaves to and fro like paper dolls, burning them just as quick too, heat and heat and raging pure heat.

“Do you want me to hold the valise for a while?”

Faber shook his head back to the present here and now, the cold, the mud, the wind. And he shook his head again. The handle of the valise drew blood from his hand, white bone plastic mixing with copper coloured blood.

The mud bubbled into his shoes. And out. The fog rolled in.

“Mhm. No, I’m here”

A lone dark titan stood tall in the fog as a blurred indistinct sign: there was more than hills. A lone oak, weedy and weak, this was the first thing the two had seen in days that wasn’t grass or mud. They both felt this was as good a place as any to set up a camp. It was dry under the tree, something which Faber took to be a godsend: a world without damp? Impossible.

As he set down the valise and took to gathering sticks and grass for a fire, Faber felt Igner’s eyes flicker upon his back. He felt their weight moving across his neck, his shoulders, his hands and then disappear. Faber knew he was looking at the valise now and weighing the odds on a successful escape with it.

---

“I’ve never travelled much but strangely, I’ve always enjoyed where I go” said Igner as he poked the fire with a stick, a half smile on his face. A crazy sort of one, delirium thought Faber.

The cold night was inky black, shifting fog catching the light in waves. Faber sat aside the fire, between him and Igner were flames. The valise sat between them, brown dirty leather glimmering in the light. Igner stared at it

"Do you think they’ll take us? Given what’s in there?” Faber asked, trying to draw a response.

Igner nodded “They will, I mean if they don’t-” and the sentence hung in the air unfinished.

The valise held blueprints, schematics detailing intake valves, rocket thrusters, fins, flaps, radio signal input, all for a single revolutionary rocket: V2. With these pivotal plans lay sketches, photographs, transcripts, notes, books, momentos of people long disappeared. The valise was their only hope of escape, their bodies were simple addendums to this single chance of-

KRACK…Shots rang out in the cold air. Echoing shots off in the distance, rebounding clanks in the distant fog of the presumed riflemen’s batteries. KRACK, krackkrackkrack, barks of angry metal hounds as they tore the life out some poor sod. Igner bolted to his feet, Faber was halfway up when the sounds faded…

“Do we keep moving?” Igner asked and Faber held his stooped stance. Igner laughed nervously “…even if we did, its pure blackness out there”.

They sat back down. The sound had come from everywhere, bouncing around them in surround. Faber felt an anxious rope in his stomach beginning to bounce and twist itself a knot, so he pulled an object from the valise.

“How many bullets?” Igner nodded towards the small black gun.

“Two bullets left now”

Silent. Both knew what uses the bullets could have for both of them

Faber nodded in response to nothing. “I don’t even know if I’d do it. I don’t know if I’d have the guts to do it.” Faber wondered if it took guts to do something like that in the first place: opting out of life. Igner shifted his weight and poked the fire again.

“Faber?” Faber made a noise that he’d heard Igner “…we’re two smart men. We’re rocket scientists…” Igner said aloud, and Faber nodded, reassuring his own intelligence. He wasn’t stupid, he didn’t get into this mess of his volition.

“So Faber, I’m wondering, about your way of living you said a few days ago-“

“The creed”

“Creed, yes. I’ve been thinking on it, when we walk – there’s not much to think about – and it’s gotten me thinking. Let me ask you something…that creed, what good is it? The idea that we’re capable of more and…” Igner struggled to voice it “Faber, if these things you believe in…lead you to here and these dead ends, why keep believing in them?”

KRACK KRACK Krack-rack-ack-ck-k-k…k…bouncing across the hills, skipping on the tips of the hills and whooshing through the grass, noise rolling around like the earth was tasting it.

Silence. Igner broke the silence.

“What do you think happened to the rest?”

“The other scientists? From Mittelwerk?” Faber responded, Igner shrugged.

“Them, sure, but the country. Who’s in charge? Fuhrer still alive?”

They hadn’t heard anything for two weeks. They had all run from the burning collapsing bunkers and factories, fleeing a hive after Von Braun had defected.

Faber laughed “Could be that the war is over. Or maybe Germany pulled a trump, secret weapon, in our favor now”

Igner gave a laugh “Good one, sure”

Silence. Igner broke it again.

“Did you ever see any of the Allied propaganda?”

“No, you’d be caught dead with that”

“I did, saw it in a house near the factory one night. This girl-” Igner wasn’t supposed to say that, the sexual escapades of the scientists with the local women had been frowned upon and he realized it, holding his sentence a second “This girl, collected it. All the posters and fliers. The ones about Hitler in particular”

“What’d they say?”

“Usual stuff, monster, tyrant. But given our situation right now…do you think maybe…it was true?” Igner was probing Faber for answers, trying to gauge something.

Krack-rack-rack-KRACK-KRACK double shots now, the edge of the first dulled by the sudden spike of the second as it bounced through the fog.

“He was just a man” Faber responded.

“Just”

Faber shrugged “A man is a man. There’s hundreds of them. Everyone of them is Hitler and none of them are"

Igner stared out into darkness “Could we have done what he did? You know, posters talking about…well…camps and all. I mean, what makes men do what they do? I…”

“We did what we did. Whether or not that’s good or not, people will decide” The fire sparked and flared “I don’t know if we could have done what he did Igner, but trust your own eyes: after this, anyone is capable of anything”

---

The next morning began like all the other before it; fog or smoke rolling in and the mud quivering underfoot as the squelching, dirty march began.

“What day is it?” asked Faber

“Why?”

“Trying to keep track of time”

“Hm. Wouldn’t know.” Igner idly replied. They fell silent save for the popping and sucking of the mud.

The trail came to a fence, carved of rotting brown wood and slick with moss, mildew and damp. Igner theorised the fence could lead to a farmhouse nearby, somewhere to get dry and warm. Faber didn’t have any energy to offer alternatives, his limbs felt a kind of dull heat, the only warmth left in his damp, mud crusted body. They followed the fence, their pants flecked with specks of brown and their boots thoroughly caked. Far off in the fields to the north, gunshots could be heard echoing and bouncing across the slime and suck. The fog broke allowing Igner to gaze to the sky and see a dim pale sun, like a fading eye.

“Morning. Lots of time today to find that farmhouse” Igner seemed cheerful, a clear goal always made him like that. Even back at Mittelwerk thought Faber. Time enough today, time on the clock, time.

Faber wondered what happened to men when they run out of time. He wondered where men go when they run out of years, places and people. He wondered if this was the end of simple men and he felt a type of blind panic rear up like a spooked horse straining to flee; was his fate already decided by someone else, the people at the end of the journey? When would Igner turn on him as he knew Igner would? The boy was waiting for the chance to do Faber in, Faber felt that certainty in his bones, radiating that dull old heat. The battery of American guns mowing them down with their offering, all blonde hair and white teeth.

The fog rolled in as though being pumped by some infernal machine, the mud seeped through and he faded back to months before. He didn’t trust Igner now as much as had at Mittelwerk. As they had been moved from factory to factory and the rockets had become propaganda instead of weapon, he’d begun to trust Igner less and less. To Faber, Igner was a man stuck between two different kinds of cowardice; the first a kind of fear that if the world would change, he’d have no place in the new one. The second kind was a fear that he’d be on the losing side of history. Faber gripped the valise tight in his hands as it bumped against his knobbly knees. The wind whipped up hard, pouring through the gaps in the stitching with precision unknown to man.

“Do you want me to hold it for a while Faber?”

Faber felt old despite his youth and his hands continued to bleed.

Faber didn’t know what would become of him; what becomes of any man. His mind drifting in wet soggy fever, he wondered what happens to anyone as they get dragged kicking and screaming through time. Faber wondered what happens now: when sense is sparse and the expectations flood in and form into something that he no longer understood. All that made sense to him was the past, the rocket factory of Mittelwerk and even those memories were beginning to collapse and rot, peeling away and covered in brown sticky mud.

Mittelwerk: There was the Overseer, in charge of engineering and construction of the V2 program, vengeance from upon high. Faber had admired the slow careful movement of the Overseer. Slow like the strongest things are, buttoned up in dark stiff leather and combat boots he checked carefully. He made do with less, worked harder. He’d brought Faber an assistant: Igner.

Igner had found himself in Faber’s office and Faber saw some kind of glint in his eye: cruel, vindictive, ‘German resourcefulness’. Igner boasted about meeting Von Braun in Berlin, during the formation of the V2 program. A true German hero. Then Von Braun had disappeared in the dying days, when the fires of work and war had begun to fall into ember and all of a sudden they were all left with the realization: we are marooned here and no one is coming for us. The exploding rocket, the dying workers, the fire. Mittelwerk falls.

And so they had ran. Hurrying over the hills, heading for the titular safety of the rolling grassy humps, the valise bouncing against Faber’s knees, a rattling dull bumping of leather and metal joints. And so they now followed the fence, the arc of wood across curves of green. The hills had begun to smooth themselves out, creases in the green carpet lessening and hardening, mud forming into something else entirely. The land was burnt, stripped, naked and bare, utterly despoiled. Farms lay desolate and fallow, incapable of bearing food or fruit with each farmhouse more desolate than the last. The charred brown earth had clumped into gritty, dusty sods.

“There’s a farmhouse up here. See Faber, I was right about this” Igner said without turning around, sharply clipped voice and the tone raised Faber’s hairs on end. Igner walked ahead to scorn Faber as if to say; look how much younger I am, stronger, fitter and yet you deny me. Faber gripped the valise tighter and grimaced as it bit into the exposed flesh.

---

“I’m glad I found this place” Igner said idly, tracing a hand along the swollen floorboards “Maybe I should be navigator for a while”

Faber didn’t nod or respond. This was an attempt at a coup to take control, overthrowing the one in command; to take the valise and disappear into the blackness.

The fire sparked up; long abandoned furniture was used to start a fire inside the hollow stone stomach of the house. One of the stone walls had fallen into rubble long ago, revealing the black night beyond, the gloom amplifying the fire within. A lone tin of peaches had fed them, leading to a sickly acidic feeling in Faber’s stomach, sugar and sweetness mixing with stomach juices to create a bile so strong he felt at any moment he would vomit. Faber shifted on the hard wooden floor, he couldn’t afford to vomit now and waste food.

A distant screech and explosion. A rocket detonating. Igner turned to face the blackness while Faber stared at the valise between them. The soft smooth brown leather, creases running the length and girth of-

“I remember the engineers getting the news about the V2, going into space briefly. We had that party, remember that” said Igner.

“I do actually” Faber smiled and Igner laughed at his reaction

“I bet you remember that, you and Miss Klein eh? That was cute”

Faber paled at that “Kleiner…”

Igner knew he’d hit a mark and smirked “You know, if you put someone in a V2, they’d be able to see the world from up high. Wouldn’t survive though”

Silence. This time Faber broke it.

“We actually put someone in the rocket once”

“Oh. Did you really?”

Faber didn’t know if Igner was really ignorant or simply goading him into exposing an emotional vulnerability. He took the bait and cautiously entered the conversation, starting:

“One of the workers, at Mittelwerk. Some prisoner, jew or gypsy. We’d finished one of the rockets, looking at it sitting there ready to be dropped on some town in Britain and Overseer turned to me with this silly look on his face and he can barely hold in laughter. And he says ‘Eh, Faber? There’s a final bit of metal missing’ and I say ‘For the worker, he’s going in before launch and checking the radio’ and he’s laughing now and says ‘What if when he puts it in, we put the metal plate on and weld him inside?’ and he’s bent over, red faced, gasping. He’s already decided to do it.

‘As the worker climbed into the cone of the rocket, he was attaching the radio guidance and plugging it all in, checking if it worked alright. The other workers quickly put the plate on and he’s yelling, banging from the inside something in Polish or whatever and the workers were distressed, crying as they betrayed their friend. They welded the plate on, riveted it and in less than an hour, we launched it. Those rockets Igner, go high, higher than anything we’ve ever made before. We sent him so high you know…and…I wonder what he thought before he hit the ground”

Faber wondered that even at his age, he felt old, drawn and close minded. He knew less with each day than he did when he was young. The days have passed us by Faber thought, he was now old and he had not passed the torch but simply fallen into embers, travelling in the wind. He couldn’t keep speed, outpaced, outwitted, outnumbered and outgunned.

Igner stared out into the blackness of the countryside. “This country is all mud now” he muttered “I can’t wait until I’m…”

A shriek in the darkness. A distant thudding boom blossomed into red fire, tinging the horizon as it looked like the sun was clawing its way back over the black boundary. KRACK KRACK, gunshots bounced over the horizon. Igner turned to Faber.

“There’s a possibility when we meet whoever we end up meeting that they don’t believe us and just kill us” he said.

Faber nodded and conceded “It’s a possibility, yes”

“Could it happen?”

“I think anything could happen now Igner, you could do anything right now”

Igner continued “Could you be killed?”

“I could, we could be both be killed. We could also live. You know that? We could live”

“Oh, I know that. Do you believe it?” Faber gave no response “Do you think you’ll live?”

The fire grew lower, all that flickered was red and weak yellow on pure lines of black. Black for miles around, closing in inch by inch. Igner pulled the coat over him in defense of the iciness that slipped through the gaps.

“You ever go to the cinema halls? Back in Berlin?” Igner asked Faber.

“Hm. Saw a few good ones, remember seeing Metropolis as a child.”

“How’d that one go?”

“Happy ending, everything goes alright in the end”

Igner smiled weakly. “Films are like that, unrealistic” and he signed “We’re smart, we’re rocket scientists, Faber. What are doing out here?”

“Surviving, or heading to a place where we can”

Igner’s voice turned ice now “I don’t know if it was the right choice, following you from burning Mittelwerk into…this?”

"I never said you had to follow me, you chose to. You want an answer to a question you don’t even understand. Be smart, we’re scientists, remember?” Faber put the last part with malice.

“We’re also men, at least I am”

“What are you saying Igner?” Faber sensed the chill in the air, hairs raising

“A man makes decisions and admits mistakes. You’ve given me a lot of philosophical half formed musings, I want you to make a decision. Fight back.” Igner waited, staring.

Fabers eyes looked into Igner’s blue “If you wanted someone who proved brawn over brains, you should have stayed back in Mittelwerk and burnt with the rest of them”

Igner nodded coldly, and turned away to face blackness. Faber saw the exploding rocket over and over, playing out in the corners of his eyes.

As they sat huddled around the tiny, dying fire, cracks of distant explosions, eruptions, bursts of vicious fire marked the glowing horizon. All was lit up, aflame, afire except them, two marked black silhouettes against a charcoal country. Later, Faber lay awake in the darkened husk of a house, ash clinging to walls. If life was a movie, he thought that his was some kind of twisted melodrama; the saddest thing he’d ever known.

---

Faber was yanked up out of sleep by Igner, who was whispering:

“The fog’s cleared” Faber must have looked confused at that “Yes, it's true. There’s a town just below the hill”

A long brown line of a road cut the vista diagonally, intersecting a black town, blocks of rotten colour against the scorched fields. Sulphurous glow from across the horizon, the moon and the sun shared the gunmetal sky. Central focus: A large dirt campground with trees beyond.

Silence. Igner broke it.

“We should leave the valise here, look for food. Maybe get a name of the town, find it on the map” and Faber nodded idly. Faber pushed the valise into the empty fireplace, ash rubbing onto his woolen coat. He turned back to Igner and silently pocketed the black shiny gun from the bag. They left and clambered down the hill towards town and the road.

An army truck bogged in the mud, had been torn apart by a hail of gunfire, the soldiers too. Shattered glass covered the road and they continued on entering into the town past piles of ash, wood and dirt.

“Disgusting. Russians?” and Faber considered the question he was asked.

“Possibly. Americans wouldn’t do that”

“I thought you said anyone could do anything” Igner smirked at his retort.

The town was charred and burnt, edges all dark and spiked black wood reaching for the skies above. ash swirling like demons in the breeze. They could sense a human presence moving through the hollow doorways and crawling beneath rotting floorboards. After days of isolation, Faber knew there was a human nearby. Blackened hollow eyes, dark pits, string for hair; Faber recoiled in sight of the flesh coloured skeletons peeking out through the doorways

In the town square, they found the villages picking at the dirt, looking for food. A distant rocket burst upon the sky and these huddled, emaciated masses lifted their heads to the sky, inhaling ash thick. Fire, ash, frost, the nose knew the difference of fog and mist, and the differences were in the acidic residue on the bristles.

“We should split up, find food”

Faber’s stomach rumbled and coerced him with an acidic twist. Igner pointed to the crusted remains of a clocktower, frozen in time. He’d take there, Faber would search the storehouse on the otherside of the square. For the first time in weeks, they split apart. He had barely been in the building a minute or two, turning over dusty propaganda, when a cry came up from the clock tower. He jogged over to find Igner…not there. An empty human lay on the floor

“Was there…was a man just here? Suit and…” Faber knew what the answer was.

The hollow frame turned, pointing with a shard of a finger to the large crack on the back wall.

“Your friend pushed me down, ran-“ but Faber was now running, on to the street, back to the farmhouse, the valise, to Igner.

As he crested the hill and tore into the farmhouse, it was gone. The valise. Faber shook with furious blinding anger, red angry tunnel vision. He turned wildly, spinning, and through the collapsed wall, spotted him. Igner dashing across the wide flat campgrounds for the safety of the black shadow forest on the far side. Faber started, sprinting, chasing, pursuit.

Breath flying in, out, furious hot lungs pumping and pumping desperately trying to make use of the sugary citrus left boiling to nothing in an empty stomach, mud flaking and flying off only to be replaced by new mud as he entered the campgrounds and found solid footing. And he ran, and he ran, and he ran.

He was feeling light headed in the sudden burst of energy, muscles Faber had thought long discarded coming to life. His life was in that valise, he had to be reunited with it, feeling harsh cutting Bakelite in his hands. As his hands, legs, all pumped, Faber saw the blood red grooves in his hands from holding the valise, the grooves that waited to be reunited with the edge that made it. Igner was pounding across the endless campgrounds, a black silhouette against a dying sun. Under a dying sun, under a killing moon, he ran for Igner and the life he was stealing from him.

Igner was taller but Faber was faster and he came up behind, Igner’s eyes white with panic and terror, spooked and unable to stop. He pounced, knocking them into a mud patch, sloshing up in gritty waves. Igner pushed Fabers face, Faber kicked back and they rolling in the it, seeping into exposed eyeballs and open cuts. Faber pulled the gun from his jacket, desperately clinging to it, hoping it was facing Igner and KRACK

---

…sound returned slowly, the whine dying down to a throbbing of the ear as Faber swayed to his feet. Igner lay there.

Silence.

Igner broke it, standing to his feet groggily, a thin red line on his fair blonde hair. Nicked, grazed. They stood to face each other across the slime and sludge, covered in shiny brown mud. There was the valise, bulging, brown and thoroughly shiny, orange now in the glorious light of the dying day, mud sliding down its tan surface.

Long dark shadows cast by a red sun, a giant blood spot sliding down a darkening wall. The campground appeared in shades of violence, black and red, like a painting Faber had once seen long ago in some distant gallery of mind. There stood Igner. They stared at each other, attempted anticipation of each other’s thoughts. Thoroughly unidentified with each other and yet as intimate as old lovers at the end of a spell.

“So…you know where I’ll go Igner?”

“Of course I do. You’ll go to west, to the Americans”

“Why?” Faber bluffed, weakly.

“You still think they’ll save us, believe that idea. Like a moth towards light”

“I could go elsewhere”

“You could. You won’t” Igner smirked

Silence between them. Bluff called. Cards folded. Endgame discussion

“I won’t let you take it. I’ll chase you Igner. I’ll chase and kill you. And if you don’t kill me, I’ll kill you.”

Igner stepped forward on the dusty campgrounds, the long shadow moving in sync. “You’ve got one bullet left, you’re starved and old and at a dead end, could you even do it and survive?”

“I’ve survived until now with principles”

“They haven’t done you much good. If your principles lead you to here and now, and I warned you, then you should have left them in the mud long ago”

"Igner..."

No formalities. All elegant cruelty. What makes men do what they do?

Faber pulled the gun up and

#fictions #historical #suspense #thriller #WWII #Nazi #competition