Dragon Sword by Mark London Williams

Author:Mark London Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science, baseball, dinosaurs, timetravel, father and son, ages 9 to 13, future adventure, midde grade
Publisher: Andrea Brown Literary Agency, Inc.

Chapter Thirteen

Thea: Hammer Cave

Early 1940s C.E.

We were escorted back across the ice to the island of Peenemünde, to the place Hannah and her companions were trying to escape — the Hammer Cave. It was actually a whole complex of caves linked together by tunnels.

Most of the occupants appeared to be slaves, and I could see why they’d risk their lives to leave: It was like Hades — mostly dark, and either chillingly cold or savagely hot, depending how close you were to the massive furnaces that burned in the center of the complex. There was a large network of metal roadways —“railways,” K’lion called them — leading toward the interior, where it appeared the main labor was to build “rockets,” long, tapered vessels intended for…exploration? Destruction?

Perhaps both.

As the self-propelled chariot, the “truck,” drove deeper into the cave, men, women, children, all in the barest rags, mostly skin and bones, listlessly stepped out of our way. Except for one older man, who couldn’t move fast enough. The truck knocked him down and drove over his leg.

We could hear the crunch of snapping bones as we left him behind.

Our captors — our “hosts”— didn’t even slow down.

But neither could any of the worker-slaves afford to stop and help him. Their faces were hollow and haunted; they may have been too worn-down to offer aid. Or to risk it. They all had numbers tattooed onto their arms, and I imagine they were carefully tracked.

Numbers. In this future, then, even having a name was an act of defiance.

Some of the slaves, the prisoners (or even, worst of all, the “guests,” as I heard one soldier joke about them), were forced to push or pull wagons along the railways, hauling heavy parts for the further construction of the rockets. Others worked on the tunnels themselves, digging farther into the earth to make this complex larger and, presumably, more useful for its masters.

But to what ultimate end?

When slaves grew fatigued, they were beaten or otherwise punished. We saw one young man get hit savagely in the stomach by one of the guards when he couldn’t keep lifting. He crumpled over, tried to throw up, then lay still.

For sustenance, they seemed to be given crusts of bread and thin soup. Twice I witnessed family members forcibly separated, in what appeared to be the processing of new captives.

On several occasions, K’lion was about to jump from the truck and help these poor souls, but I tugged his tail to communicate that he shouldn’t move. I knew they would harm my friend as well.

“Somebody tktt! has to rectify the bullying,” he whispered to me.

“I know.” The truck stopped, and our hosts gestured with their weapons that we were to walk the rest of the way.

Some of the slaves stared at K’lion as we passed, but most did not. Even their sense of wonder had been stripped from them.

We were eventually led toward quarters that seemed to be the working precincts of the military commanders. They certainly weren’t comfortable enough for actual living.

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