“This way!” he yells and grabs Leonhard’s sleeve.
This bizarre, pristine stranger leads them toward a limousine that idles at the edge of the field. The car was meant to ferry the passengers from the landing area to the hangar, but it’s being used as an ambulance instead.
The man opens the car door and motions them to get inside, but a wild, desperate voice screams at him from within.
“There’s no more room in here! Go away!” It is female. German. Deranged.
Gertrud braves one glance and sees Matilde Doehner crouched in the otherwise empty vehicle, a badly burned son tucked beneath each arm. She is a fierce, feral lioness protecting her children.
THE NAVIGATOR
Hangar No. 1, the closest structure to the wreck, has been set up as a makeshift infirmary. It was a spontaneous decision made by whatever rescuer pulled the first broken body from the airship. A matter of practicality. Less distance to drag, carry, pull the wounded.
No, Max thinks, as he limps toward the hangar, not everyone within is wounded. That word implies survival. And he knows that some of the people he has seen being carted through the wide, gaping doors no longer exist on this side of eternity.
Max does not know how long he sat there in the field. He only knows that it was damp, because of either the rain or the water ballasts, and that he couldn’t move or think or function. He simply sat, hunched over, head lolling to the side as the ship consumed itself.
No one should have survived. And yet here they are, wandering around like scattered sheep after a storm. Passengers. Crew members. Ground crew. Reporters. Spectators. All here in the field together. All of them disoriented. All of them horrified. And there are cars zooming about. Not just military jeeps but civilian cars as well, ferrying the survivors hither and yon. Who the hell can tell where anyone is in this mess?
Max has never had to think about setting one foot in front of the other before. He has never had to give his body specific, simple instructions. But he does now. And it seems an age before he reaches the hangar and stumbles inside.
Someone yells for help, then wraps a blanket around his shoulders. Asks a series of nonsensical questions in English. Who cares what year it is or what his name is or who the president is?
“Where is Emilie?” He croaks the question out. Coughs.
The overly talkative, curious stranger shoves a cup of water into his hands. Urges him to drink. And he does, marveling at the miraculous properties of water. The coolness. The wetness. The perfect satiating waterness of it.
It takes only a moment for the stranger to assess that the worst damage Max has suffered is shock. He’s led to a cot that immediately collapses the moment he puts his weight on it. He’s yanked to his feet, as though this is his error and not the fault of poor assembly. He wanders away while the man tries to make the cot sturdy enough to hold his weight.
The hangar is huge, almost twice the size of the Hindenburg, and is filled with cots and bedrolls and people shouting, wandering through its cavernous belly. People lie everywhere. Others stand in groups talking in hushed whispers. Doctors call for help. Nurses rush from one victim to the next, substituting busyness for help because really, there is nothing that can be done for most of them.
Max picks an end—it doesn’t matter which one—and begins to work his way down the row of cots. He stops. Looks. Searches the ruined faces. And at every bedside he asks one question: “Emilie?”
THE JOURNALIST
It’s a hangar. She knows that much. And it has been turned into an infirmary. There are people sprawled across cots and on the floor. There are people running around and shouting directions. A handful of young, fresh-faced girls in white nurse uniforms look on, horror-stricken.
Someone has found a chair for Gertrud and she sits still and quiet, watching Colonel Erdmann dying at her feet. Leonhard has gone to get help for her hand, but she has lost sight of him. A priest stands ten feet away giving last rites to a crew member. The priest has been going down the line, attending these men by order of who is closest to dying.
“My shoes are too tight,” Erdmann says.
His skin is singed black in patches. Portions of his clothing are burned off and others are melted to his skin.
“My shoes are too tight.” He says it again, and Gertrud realizes that he is speaking to her. His single functioning eye is fixed on her, and she can no more refuse him than she could leave the Doehner boys behind.
Gertrud slides off the chair and onto her knees. The concrete floor is hard and cool and oddly soothing. She carefully unties the colonel’s boots and slips them off. She pulls off his socks as well and lays her hands on his feet to comfort him. They are the only part of his body not covered with lethal burns. He trembles a bit at her touch but does not complain.
“Dorothea.” It’s the barest whisper of a word.