Flight of Dreams (34 page)

M
ax Zabel sighs with relief—the hardest part of landing is over—and then he feels an almost imperceptible shudder. It is different from the normal shifts and tugs that accompany landing. The convulsion in the floor beneath him is not right. It is not normal. Something has gone very wrong.

Max looks up. He's not certain anyone else has felt it. But the expressions on his fellow crewmen's faces show that they have, in fact, noticed the tremor. There is a pause. A shudder. Then a singular, unending vibration that he can feel first in the soles of his feet and then throughout his entire body. The control car shakes with it. Rattles. Hums. Glass convulses in its frame. There's a buzzing, spinning ghost of a noise at first that morphs into something far more terrifying within seconds. The palms of Max's hands tingle with the reverberation as he presses them into the windowsill. And then he hears the thing he doesn't realize he has been waiting for: a muffled explosion.

T
he ground is so close Gertrud can almost touch it. Sixty feet below and a startling green from the May rain. Leonhard grabs her hand and squeezes it reassuringly as they lean over the observation windows in the starboard lounge.

“Almost there,” he whispers, and she lets out a long, calming breath. Her desire to be on the ground once again is profound, almost reckless.

The ground crew runs onto the field below them to grab the landing lines, and she can feel a slight tug as the ship goes taut. The ground begins to rise, faster now. And it is then that she turns to her husband with relief and gratitude. She is confused for one second when he does not return the smile but rather straightens and then steps away from the window, pulling her with him.

Gertrud is about to ask what is wrong, but the ship has gone unnaturally quiet, as though holding its breath. She can sense the terror coiling in her husband's body. It's written there in his eyes, and when his hand tightens on her she feels the dread herself.

It's a moment, nothing more, that they stand there frozen. But it's enough.

There is a dull report behind them, no louder than the sound of a beer bottle being opened or a paper bag behind popped. The noise comes from behind, somewhere in the bowels of the ship.

And then chaos.

E
milie lays the borrowed clothes on Matilde Doehner's bed. She cannot wear them. She cannot go with the family to Mexico. She cannot leave Max. Emilie has known this all along, somewhere deep down. But she is afraid of what it means to love again. This surrendering of her heart and the vulnerability it requires of her is so much harder the second time around. It was easy when she was young and innocent, when she had never been broken. Now she knows what it is to suffer loss. Now she knows what it means to have her heart ripped from her soul. To be dislocated.

And this time she chooses, knowing that it could happen again. Emilie chooses Max. What is faith if not this? Matilde will be disappointed, of course. But she is a woman. And she will understand.

Having made her decision, Emilie is at peace. She reaches for the door and something shifts. She sees her own trembling but she isn't afraid. She isn't shaking. This quiver comes not from within but from without. Everything trembles. The walls. The floor. Her own body. She feels it in the air and in the balls of her feet. It rises up and through her.

She feels herself lifted. Thrown. Catapulted backward into the hard edge of the berth. Emilie hears her head hit with a crack so loud her teeth throb. She feels the flair of pain at her scalp, along her hairline. She feels it acutely, and then she's slipping into darkness. Then there is silence. There is nothing.

W
erner sets the last plate in the cabinet above the banquette and steps back with a triumphant grin. But this feeling is gone before he has taken a step toward the door. Werner Franz is rendered a child quickly and completely when he hears the explosion. He is frightened by what he hopes—in the single moment he has left for hope—is a crack of thunder.

And then the air surrounding Werner splinters. It isn't just the floor or the walls or some shudder within the structure like yesterday morning on the catwalk. It sounds as though the
Hindenburg
is tearing itself apart at the seams. The cupboard doors fly open and all the dishes that Werner so carefully washed and dried and put away only moments ago come sliding out and crash to the floor, where they shatter into wicked little pieces. He stands there, mute and dumb and bewildered, even as the floor tilts away behind him. To Werner, the explosion sounds like breaking glass. It will sound like that for as long as he has the capacity to remember it.

He is broken out of this stupor when the
Hindenburg
drops again sharply aft and he falls onto his haunches. Werner is aware of the broken china sliding across the floor toward him. He is aware of the raging, popping, explosive sounds that come from all directions now. And the screams—some distant and some in the next room—but the only thing the cabin boy can focus on is the door. It never occurs to him that he could go out the window. His only thought is of getting through the door. So he crawls and scrambles across the linoleum, grabbing onto table legs for balance and support. Once he has regained his balance, Werner throws himself toward the door, then down the corridor until he's through the security threshold and into the ship's cavity. The walkway is empty and, in the time it takes him to blink once, he understands why. A colossal, roiling fireball is rushing toward him, consuming everything in its wake.

T
he floor drops out from underneath them. First Leonhard and then Gertrud is hurled against the far wall. She can hear a woman scream in a cabin on the other side, a hard thump, and then nothing. The air rushes from Leonhard's lungs, and his rib cage heaves with a thin whistling sound. Gertrud is pinned to the wall by one of his arms as chairs, dishes, and fellow passengers tumble toward them. She can feel her husband thrashing beside her, trying to cover her body with his own. To protect her.

“Leonhard,” she breathes his name and nods toward the window where blooming clouds of flame have filled the sky. “It's on fire.”

M
ax does not see the fire at first. He notices the glow of it lighting the ground and the clouds and the eyes of the men who stare out the window beside him. But he takes no more than one breath before he sees it in the air around him as well. Everywhere. The sky is lit with it. And then all is chaos. Max knows that the other officers are screaming, cursing, and shouting orders, but he can do nothing but stand beside the window in awe.

The sky is liquid gold.

The sky is death.

He might have stayed there, gazing into his own doom, but the stern drops suddenly, pulling him backward. Max throws out his hands to catch himself on the rear wall of the navigation room as the ship tilts upward, until he is pressed flat against the wall, supported by his hands, as though lying on the floor.

Bedlam.

A man rolls past him shrieking and smashes against the rear wall of the control car. Bauer? He isn't sure. The contents previously on his chart table slide off and fly toward his face. He whips his head to the side just in time to avoid his nose being broken by the heavy leather-bound logbook. Pencils, pens, and instruments rain down around him and still the airship tilts ever upward.

So far the only thing he has heard are the panicked screams of his fellow crew members. But now the fire roars to life and becomes a ravenous beast consuming all other sound. It is hard to breathe. The air around him is ripped away, sucked toward the hungry flames.

Something snaps. Metallic and brittle. And then the bow drops and the ship is level for one protracted moment. The
Hindenburg
's spine has broken in half.

Max hears Commander Pruss bellow over the cacophony. A single word, “Jump!” and Max scrambles to obey.

T
here is a man beside Gertrud, but she cannot see his face. He is praying madly, frantically in German as the ship convulses around them. People scream. Colonel Erdmann loses his grip on the windowsill and slides away. Something flies through the air. A coffee cup? There's the smell of smoke and a strange ripping sound. A child bawls—the two Doehner boys hold on to the leg of a table, their little legs dangling in the air as their sister reaches for them. Gertrud's mind registers each of these things in turn, but it isn't until she sees the look of abject horror on Matilde Doehner's face that she has a cognizant thought of her own. This maternal fear strikes something deep and instinctual inside of her, and it rips through her soul like a prayer.
Oh God,
Gertrud thinks,
please let it end quickly.

W
erner windmills madly away from the fire as it thunders through the hydrogen cells above him. Roaring. Consuming. Eviscerating. It is not so much heat that he feels but an incineration of the air itself. His mouth is dry from the wild gulps of air he swallows in his attempt to flee.

Something snaps. There's a deafening metallic crunch and the ship's hull crashes to the ground. Werner is knocked off his feet. Thrown to his hands and knees. He tips forward, onto his chest, and slides toward the flames. He can do nothing but grab one of the ropes that line each side of the keel corridor to slow his descent into hell.

M
ax struggles onto the chart table but has little control over where his body goes as the room jerks and trembles and tilts around him. He is a pebble inside a can, tossed around at the whim of a belligerent child. Finally he kneels near the window, shoving the glass aside with fingers that are stiff with fear. The ground is twenty feet below—maybe fifteen—he can't accurately measure the distance with the fire and the smoke and the screams blurring his senses.

Max means to jump feetfirst, to control his fall, but the tail of the airship hits the ground and the control car jerks sideways. He goes out the window in a frantic tumble, his foot catching on the sill and his arms splayed. He tries to scream, but a scream requires breath and his lungs are filled with smoke; all he can see is the burning, coiling mass of searing grass and the fleeing ground crew. There is no one to catch him. There is nothing to break his fall. Max drops headfirst into the inferno below.

W
erner Franz prepares to be consumed. He can feel the heat now, so close that it singes his hair. He can smell the burning fabric and melting steel. His fingernails are hot. The boy closes his eyes. He wants to be a man, but he cannot find the courage to watch himself die.

But it is not fire that washes over him. It is water. And it is cold. It takes his breath away. The cabin boy gasps and sputters and cranes his neck to see a torrent rushing from the water ballast above the walkway forty feet in front of him. The impact of the ship hitting the ground has knocked it loose from its moorings, and the contents are cascading over the boy and down the walkway.

Sudden deliverance and bone-chilling cold return Werner to his senses, and he looks around frantically for a means of escape. There is only one option: go out the provisioning hatch to his right. Werner does not trust his trembling legs to carry him, so he crawls the six feet and kicks at the latch with the heel of his boot.

T
here is fire in the lounge. It licks the walls. It rakes its tongue across the floor. The flames are a liquid, spilling thing, and Gertrud feels the heat of it in her eyes as it crawls toward them. Dryness. Burning. A shudder that runs the length of the ship, pitching the floor forward and almost level again. This threat is all Leonhard needs to gain his composure.

“Through the windows!” It's not a scream or a shout but an order roared so loudly that every person in the lounge looks at him, blinks, and then scrambles toward the row of observation windows.

Leonhard drags her. Four long steps and they are at the glass and Leonhard shoves it aside. She can feel him bend beside her, one arm already looping beneath her knees. He plans to throw her out the window. But she sees Matilde Doehner wrestling her boys toward the window alone, as she reaches for her daughter with one hand. Irene stands there, stupefied, screaming for her father over and over and over until the crazed pitch of her voice rises above that of snapping metal and shattered glass. It is the sound of a breaking heart, and the look on Matilde's face alone could destroy Gertrud.

She wriggles out of Leonhard's arms. “We need to help them.”

They have to get out of the ship. She can see that written on his face. This might be their only chance. The windows are crowded with people waiting to jump, shoving one another out of the way. Smoke swirls across the floor in boiling waves and Gertrud can no longer see her shoes. Her ankles. Her calves.

The children are not hers, but they are children, no less innocent than Egon, and she cannot leave them to the fire any more than she would be able to leave her own son.

“Clear the window,” she tells Leonhard, then runs back to Matilde Doehner.

M
ax hits the ground—whether by miracle or willpower he isn't sure—roughly on his feet. But the impact sends him staggering forward wildly and he crashes onto his hands and knees, then farther forward onto his chin. He is stunned. His head is ringing. There is blood in his mouth and grass in his nose. He has bitten his tongue and the side of his cheek. He tastes iron and dread. With his arms pinned beneath him and his kneecaps throbbing, he can turn his head only a few inches to the side to see the entire flaming mass of the airship falling all around him. On top of him.

Max pitches forward. Rolls. Stumbles to his knees and then his feet, despite the fact that forty different places on his body are protesting the sudden movement.

He runs. And just as he does he can feel the middle of the ship hit the ground behind him. Sparks fall in a shower on his hair and his jacket and the toes of his shoes. One of them burns a deep black hole into the back of his hand. He feels it. He ignores it. He runs.

And then the ship does the impossible. It rebounds, driven back into the air a dozen or more feet by the impact of the landing wheel crashing into the ground. It is the only thing that stopped the structure from coming down on top of him. That extra twist he gave to lock the wheel in place. His thoroughness has given him the chance to stumble out from beneath the flaming debris.

Max's foot hits fresh soil and then the airship descends a second time. It shatters into ochre and flame.