The Devouring Read online

  “What the hell is this, Rosa?” Mila asked.

  “Your tourist disguise! You will blend in, and the police won’t even give you a second look!” She explained, clearly proud of herself.

  Mila took a moment to think about it. He decided she was right. At the train station, tourists blended in like chameleons on tree branches. He grabbed the loot and put it on as Rosa called a tourist over for a palm reading. “Wait, did you steal this?” he asked. But Rosa was already busy telling some woman that she saw something interesting in her future.

  The day passed slowly. Mila wished he could be on the subway lines. He actually liked to sing, and he was the best in the group. On a good day, he could belt out a few show tunes, a Motown classic, and a Disney song and come home with his pockets full of tips. Instead, he just sat in the whisper corner while Rosa did what he felt was a cheap trick. She’d come over to the corner, listen to someone’s conversation until she learned a few choice things about them, then walk over and pretend she’d read the tourist’s mind. She usually got at least a euro or two.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Rosa said, knowing Mila didn’t approve. “Think of it as a magic trick. Gadje pay hundreds to see some magician pull a bird out of his butt. Trust me. They’re going to go back to America and tell all their friends how they met a real Gypsy witch in Europe.”

  “Yeah, well I just don’t like hustling people like that,” Mila said.

  “Oh really? Is that why you made me teach you how to pick a lock?” Rosa asked.

  “We were just kids, and you’re just jealous because I’m better than you now,” Mila snapped.

  “Oh yeah? Well, unlike you I don’t need a key fob. I can pick a lock with a simple hair pin,” Rosa retorted.

  Mila rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you learn to tell fortunes by using your intuition, like Nasta?” Mila asked.

  “You really believe in that?” said Rosa.

  “Sometimes.”

  “I dunno,” Rosa said. “Maybe some of our people have ‘the gifts’ as Nasta calls them. But I sure don’t, and I’ve gotta make a living somehow.”

  Finally, night had fallen on Berlin. The train station was nearly deserted, and all of the shops had been closed for at least two hours. Fortunately, no police had bothered Mila. The money Rosa gave to him, the most they had ever made in a day at the station, was enough to last a week, maybe more. Turns out Mila’s intuition helped him pick out the most generous tourists in Berlin. He had hardly used the whisper corner.

  Maybe things aren’t so bad, Mila thought. “You sure you’re okay being on the metro alone?” he asked Rosa as she stepped aboard the U5 line.

  “I told you I wasn’t getting back on that bike,” Rosa answered. “Look, you know I can’t attend the kris, so don’t let my grandfather be too harsh on you tonight.”

  “Uncle Merikano? Ah don’t worry about him. He’s a pussy cat,” joked Mila as the doors to the U5 closed.

  Mila headed toward the escalators to the main exit, where his bike was chained outside. As he stepped on the escalator, he turned and spotted Jack and Casey exiting a newly arrived train, looking exhausted but still holding hands. Halfway up the escalator, Mila noticed Simon, with five of his friends from Romania, coming down the opposite side, eyeing Jack and Casey. Instinctively, Mila knew what Simon was going to do, and now he had his gang to help him.

  “Simon! No! Stop!” Mila yelled. He jumped the divide between the escalators and ran after Simon and his friends. The gang hurtled to the bottom of the escalators, then peeled left, toward Jack and Casey.

  By the time Mila caught up with them, Simon and his gang already had Jack and Casey surrounded. He tried to reach Simon, but two of the others grabbed him and restrained him. He struggled with all his might to get loose, but he couldn’t.

  “Give me your bag, your coat, and your jewelry,” Simon demanded, leering at Casey.

  The Americans stood near the entrance to the subway tunnel, with their backs to the edge of the platform. The train tracks were seven feet below.

  Jack stepped in front of Casey. “No,” he said firmly.

  “Do as I say, and I promise you won’t get hurt,” growled Simon. “Make things hard for me, and I’ll make things hard for you. Either way, I get your stuff.”

  “Leave her alone,” said Jack, holding his ground.

  Simon punched him in the stomach. Jack moaned and bent forward, knocking Casey backward. One of her feet slipped over the edge of the platform. She screamed and grabbed hold of Jack’s jacket to regain her footing.

  “Simon! Please! Stop!” yelled Mila as he fought to get free of the two gang members holding him back.

  Jack was bent over in front of Simon, clutching his stomach. Simon had knocked the wind out of him, and he was struggling to breathe.

  “Move away from the girl!” Simon yelled. Jack just gasped for air and shook his head.

  Simon took another swing. Jack dodged it, but in doing so he stumbled backward into Casey.

  Casey fell from the platform.

  “No!” yelled Mila. The two guys holding him, surprised by Casey’s fall, loosened their grip. Mila took advantage of the moment and broke free. He jumped down onto the train tracks to help Casey.

  She was on the ground, grabbing her ankle.

  “Casey! Are you OK?” Mila asked. Above them on the platform, he could hear Simon and his gang shouting at Jack, demanding that he turn over his wallet.

  Casey looked up at Mila and nodded. “I landed on my feet,” she said. “My ankle hurts bad, but I don’t think it’s broken.”

  Jack jumped down onto the tracks.

  Simon jumped down after him, followed by one of his gang. Simon pulled a switchblade and lunged at them.

  “Simon! Are you crazy?” Mila said, stepping between Simon and the Americans.

  “Come on!” Jack said to Casey. “I need to get you out of here!” He lifted her to her feet, put her arm around his shoulders to support her weight, and walked her away from the two Gypsies, into the dark tunnel.

  “Put the knife away,” Mila said, keeping himself between Simon and the tunnel entrance.

  “Why are you siding with those rich gadje?” asked Simon. “You’re a Gypsy, Mila. They hate Gypsies!”

  Three of Simon’s gang were standing at the edge of the platform, yelling at him. “Let’s go, Simon! It’s not worth it!”

  Mila heard a whistle start to blow.

  At the sound, one of the gang members turned his head behind him, then turned back. “Cops are coming, Simon!” he shouted. He laid down on the platform and reached out his arm. “Come on! I’ll pull you up!”

  Simon turned and took hold of his hand, then scrambled up the side.

  The whistle continued to blow, getting closer and closer. Mila heard the police shouting. He couldn’t let the cops see him, especially with Simon. He needed to get out of sight until the situation blew over. He turned and looked into the tunnel, barely able to make out Jack and Casey standing in the shadows twenty feet down. He ran toward them.

  “Stay away from her!” yelled Jack, raising his fists as Mila approached.

  “Jack, stop!” yelled Casey. “That’s Mila, the one who was trying to help us.”

  Jack put his hands down. A moment later, Mila caught up with them.

  “You guys OK?” asked Mila.

  Casey was leaning against the wall for support. She nodded. “My ankle hurts like hell, but otherwise, yes, I’m fine.”

  “I’m really sorry about what happened back there,” said Mila.

  “Not your fault,” said Jack. “Thanks for the help.”

  Mila nodded.

  “Is it safe to go back?” Casey asked.

  Mila hesitated. “Yeah, you guys go ahead. I’m going to stay here for a while.”

  “Why?” asked Jack.

&n
bsp; Beeeep! The tunnel was filled with the sound of a loud whistle.

  They looked toward the station. Two pinpoints of light shone out from the tunnel on the other side of the platform. It was an approaching train.

  “That train is going to stop at the platform, right?” asked Casey, looking at Mila with wide eyes.

  “Probably,” said Mila, nervously.

  “Probably?” asked Jack.

  “I mean … unless it’s not a local,” answered Mila. To his horror, the two bright beams became larger and larger, brighter and brighter. The tracks at his feet began to shake. The train wasn’t slowing down.

  “Run!” he yelled.

  “We have to help her!” Jack shouted.

  “To hell with my ankle, Jack!” Casey yelled. “Run!” She turned and ran into the darkness. Mila and Jack immediately followed.

  The train came up on them fast. The lights bored into their backs and illuminated the path ahead. Beeeep! Beeeep! Mila heard the terrifying sound of the horn as the train came speeding up behind them, gaining quickly.

  Beeeeep!

  “Just run!” Jack shouted. “Don’t look back! Run!”

  Mila scanned the concrete walls for some kind of escape: a maintenance hatch, a sewer grate, anything to get them out of the path of the oncoming train, now almost at their heels. He spotted some sort of alcove—just a slight widening of the tunnel. No more than two feet deep, the space extended for perhaps two yards along the side of the tunnel.

  “There!” he shouted. He grabbed Jack’s arm and pulled them all toward the alcove.

  Bammm! The three of them slammed into the space and flattened their bodies against the rough stone. A heartbeat, maybe two, then woosh! The subway train flew past, just inches from their backs. The wind kicked up by the train pressed them against the wall. The entire space shook. The train’s rear lights made a disorienting strobe effect as it receded into the distance.

  As the three huddled together in the tiny space, Mila felt a shift beneath his feet. He glanced down and saw that they were standing not on the dirt and gravel that covered the rest of the tracks, but rather on a sheet of badly cracked concrete. To his horror, he realized the cracks were widening. A large chunk fell away beneath his feet, revealing blackness beneath. There was some sort of pit under them. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell how deep it went: it could have been as little as three feet down or as much as thirty.

  “Help!” Casey yelled. “I’m going to fall through!”

  Suddenly, the floor gave way, crumbling to nothing under their feet and sending them tumbling into the shadowy abyss below.

  V

  The Bunker

  Flick! A flame sprang to life from the lighter tool on Mila’s ingenious key fob. He held it up and tried to get his bearings. He could just barely make out the hole they’d fallen through. It was ten, maybe twelve feet above their heads.

  “Ow,” Casey groaned. Mila turned, holding out the flame. In the flickering yellow light, he could see Casey grimacing in pain as she lay amid the chunks of concrete and steel rebar that littered the floor. Jack moved to help her up. She slowly rose, struggling not to put pressure on her injured ankle, clinging to his arm, and cringing with each movement.

  “Is anything broken?” Mila asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re bleeding!” Jack exclaimed, staring at her right arm.

  Mila stepped toward them and held his lighter tool closer. Casey’s delicate sleeveless blouse revealed a deep, four-inch gash down the back of her upper arm. Blood had gushed out of the wound and was splashed all the way to her elbow.

  “I-I didn’t even feel it…” Casey stammered.

  “Hold this,” Mila said, passing the flickering light to Jack.

  Mila pulled off his shirt and pressed it against the wound for a few tense moments. The bleeding seemed to stop. In the camps, he’d seen milder cuts turn gangrenous, so he did his best to wipe away the dirt and dust that had mixed with Casey’s blood to form a sticky paste around the edges of the nasty gash. Finally, he bound the wound with his shirt, tying it as tightly as possible.

  Then, his hands still on her arm, Mila paused. He looked—really looked—at Casey. The light of the flame danced across her face, outlining every delicate curve. Her eyes reflected a bit of the light. To Mila, their deep blue seemed to shine like the eyes of an angel and yet he could sense some inner pain behind them.

  He slowly let go of her arm. Her brilliant eyes scanned downward. Was she admiring his now-naked torso? Years of football games had given him a lean, sculpted chest and firm washboard abs. But Casey was looking at something else entirely. “You’re hurt, too,” she told him gently.

  She pointed to Mila’s stomach. Glancing down, he realized he had a scrape of his own. But it was superficial: a shallow cut with hardly any blood.

  “I’ll be fine,” he assured her, looking straight into her deep, shining blue eyes. “It’s nothing.”

  “Um…where are we, do you think?” Jack awkwardly interrupted.

  “I dunno. A sewer, maybe? Or an old subway tunnel,” Mila guessed.

  “Let’s get some more light down here,” Casey suggested. She checked her pockets front and back, then repeated the check. “Are you kidding me?” she said with frustration. “I lost my phone.”

  Jack scanned the ground with the lighter tool, pushing chunks of concrete around with his foot. He bent over and poked at the rubble. “Whoa,” he said, his right hand closing around whatever he had spotted. He pulled the object toward him.

  “Did you find my phone?” Casey asked.

  “No. But look.” He stood up, and in his closed fist she saw a large metal spike. Nearly a foot long, it was caked with layers of filth. Years’ worth of oil, grease, dirt, and rust gave the object a mottled brown color. One end was flat, while the other came to a sharp point. Fresh blood covered the pointed end.

  “Jesus. This thing is dangerous,” Jack said. “I think we know what cut you. Is this a railroad spike?”

  “Who knows,” Mila said. “Just put it someplace where we won’t step on it.”

  Ignoring Mila, Jack examined the object under the lighter tool’s flame. The foot-long spike was oddly crafted. It had one pointed end and one flat end, shaped like a heptagon. Jack could just barely make out a swastika engraved on the seven-sided surface. He picked at the grimy coating of the spike with his fingernail, trying to see what was underneath. His efforts revealed a glimpse of something shiny.

  “I think this might be important,” Jack said. “It looks like an artifact.”

  “Whatever,” Mila said. “Put it away before it cuts somebody else.”

  Jack shot Mila an angry glance and laid the artifact up against the wall. He returned the lighter to Mila. Together, they resumed their search for the phone by feeling around the mud-covered concrete floor. Casey joined in, not straying too far thanks to her twisted ankle.

  In the mess on the ground, Mila found a stack of old newspapers. He’d started enough fires in the rusty barrels at camp to know what they were good for. He picked out three and rolled them up, then held one end to the lighter tool’s flame, creating a torch. “Here,” Mila said, offering the brightly burning torch to Casey. They looked into each other’s eyes across the flame.

  “Um,” Jack said, “let me get one?”

  Mila came out of his trance. “Sure, but they won’t last long,” he warned.

  The three held up the torches, and the pale-yellow light reached all corners of the space. The left side appeared to be caved in. A pile of large concrete blocks formed a crude slope running up to the ceiling. Mila noticed a couple of old desks and chairs lining the back wall. They looked sturdy. Maybe, Mila thought, they could be stacked to make a ladder…

  “Holy shit!” Jack clutched his head with one hand and stared at the far wall.

&
nbsp; Mila swiveled to see what was wrong. What he saw put a knot in his stomach. Emblazoned on the far-right wall was a giant Nazi flag. Even in semidarkness among chipped and peeling paint, the blood-red background and black swastika inside a glowing white circle vividly stood out.

  “That can’t be good,” Casey said.

  “Could this be …” Jack trailed off.

  “What?” Casey asked.

  “Could it be Hitler’s bunker?” Jack asked excitedly. “You know—his secret hideout during the siege of Berlin. Hitler hid there and eventually killed himself. My uncle told me all about it when I was a kid.”

  “Weird story to tell a kid,” said Casey curiously.

  “Not if your whole family served in the military,” said Jack. “My uncle was special ops. He was stationed here in Berlin during the Cold War. He told me the Russians tried to blow the bunker up, but the concrete was too thick, so they just built over it.”

  “Why didn’t they make it a museum?” Mila pried.

  “The Allies kept the location secret for years afterward,” responded Jack. “They didn’t want neo-Nazis turning it into a shrine.”

  “Whatever,” Mila said tersely. “Your imagination’s working overtime. Who cares about that shit? Help me move these desks.”

  Jack gave him another scowl. “So, you don’t care about the Nazis? Don’t you know they exterminated more than six million Jews? Women and little kids included?”

  Mila limped over and grabbed a corner of the desk. “Are you Jewish?” he asked Jack.

  Reluctantly, Jack grabbed the other corner. “No, I’m not, but that’s not the point,” he retorted.

  The two of them half lugged, half dragged the heavy desk to line up directly under the gap in the ceiling. Casey stood behind them, standing on one foot and listening.

  “The point is, those evil persecutors murdered millions of Roma—‘Gypsies’ to you—as well,” Mila said. “Did they teach you that in your American school? That we’re real people, not just a bunch of thieves? The Nazis weren’t the first you know! Gadje have been trying to wipe us out for a thousand years! Spain, Austria, they all tried to get rid of us! Not to mention that we were slaves in Romania for five hundred years! So, don’t you try to lecture me about extermination—my people lived it!” The words tumbled out of Mila till he stopped, out of breath.