Max runs aft. Aft. Aft. He veers around the blazing purgatory toward the passenger decks. Emilie. That is all he can think of. Her name is scorched into his mind. He must find Emilie. He must. He will.
The base of the airship is on the ground and tilting badly, but that does not stop him from throwing his shoulder against the first section of glass that he can find. He expects it to shatter or explode or lacerate his arm, but it does none of these things. The glass leading into the observation deck beside the dining room simply crumbles and he finds himself staring up into the faces of two men and two women. Shell-shocked faces. Almost blank. None of these faces belong to Emilie, but he reaches his arms out nonetheless, pulls the people from the wreckage, shoves them forward. Away.
And then he hears the screams, pitched into the highest key possible by dread. The screams are his. He is calling her name.
“Emilie!”
THE STEWARDESS
Emilie hears Max calling her name. She hears the fear and the desperation, and it becomes her compass. Her true north. She turns, searching for it.
She cannot stand.
She cannot see.
She cannot breathe.
But she can hear him. She can hear him calling to her, and it is enough. Emilie crawls forward into the dark, swirling, strangling smoke.
Max.
Max.
Max.
She isn’t sure if she says his name out loud. If it is a whisper or a shout. But she calls it. From her heart if from nowhere else.
Hands, knees, one in front of the other. Emilie moves toward him.
“Max.”
THE CABIN BOY
Werner is alive. Wet and freezing and shaking so badly that he drops to the ground in an uncoordinated heap. But he is alive. He squeezes his eyes shut and waits for the pain. Because it is inevitable.
One minute. He can feel the heat of the burning ship rolling off the field.
Three minutes. This is when the screams really begin to bother him. Screams from within the ship. He can hear the terror and fear and pain of men caught in the flames. But there is something worse about the screams coming from every direction across the field. The spectators can do nothing but watch in horror as their friends and loved ones are consumed within the Hindenburg. They are watching people die. And they will live to remember it.
Five minutes.
He feels nothing more than a scratch on the palm of his hand where he caught himself. It’s not deep. But it stings. And this pain—insignificant though it is—is the thing that roots him to reality. It is the thing that convinces him that he isn’t dead.
THE JOURNALIST
Leonhard shoves her. A ruthless thrust to her back that sends Gertrud stumbling forward with a grunt and a curse. Her limbs sprawl and she hits the ground so hard that her vision blurs. The last thing she sees before the Hindenburg collapses and explodes into a cloud of sparks is Leonhard lying beside her in a heap of elbows and knees bent at unnatural angles.
They lie ten feet from a girder that glows so red she fears it will melt and the metal will spread toward them. Leonhard reaches out. Grabs her hand and gives it a tender squeeze. But pain rockets through her and she pulls away.
“You’re hurt.” Leonhard is on his knees now, inspecting the raw flesh of her palm.
“It’s not that bad.”
“It’s not good, Liebchen.”
A high-pitched keening begins somewhere near them as they scramble to their feet. A form stands in the flames on the other side of the structure, waving madly. Begging. A man, she thinks, desperate to find his way out of the inferno. She is frozen at the sound of his screams. Terrified. Appalled. But something wakens in Leonhard and he lurches forward with a demon-like urge toward self-destruction, like a moth driven into the flame.
It is Gertrud’s turn to save her husband. She calls to him once, twice. She begs him to stop, but he is compelled by the burning figure. Gertrud grabs his arm, her fingernails digging into the bare skin of his forearm, and she throws her weight backward, nearly sitting on the ground before she stops his forward momentum.
“No.” Her command is loud and clear and final. She will not let him go.
Leonhard stops and looks at her, startled. He reluctantly allows himself to be dragged away, the screams still ringing from a dozen places within the ship. Men. Women. Gertrud chooses not to think of Irene Doehner as they stumble away.
THE NAVIGATOR
Max can’t see anyone else inside the ship. Everything is consumed by flames. So he stumbles backward. Catches his heel on some plant with deep, sprawling roots.
“Fuck-bloody-fucking-hell-shit-damn-sonavabitch.” It’s a prayer. It’s a litany. It’s the cry of a heart that has found itself in hell and is begging God, not for release, but for the chance to free another.
“Where is she?”
“Where is she?”
“Where is she?”