One Thousand Years Read Online Free Page B

any sense. He decided it must be part of a dream. The black
man said nothing although he must have known his presence frustrated
McHenry's comprehension.
    The
junior Luftwaffe officer took the initiative. “You are on a
ship,” he said gently. He paused and looked at the doctor as
though looking for his approval. “It will not be easy for you
to accept this but you can consider us to be your friends. The
doctor tells me that you still have some healing to do. I promise
you it will be fast. You must lie still for a few minutes longer.”
    McHenry
took another deep breath and felt much better. He was becoming fully
alert. The black Nazi reminded him of Mike Jenkins, a student at
Tuskegee. Jenkins was sharp and had been training with them for a
few weeks until the Army decided he was just too big to be a pilot.
But these men were even bigger than Jenkins. A lot bigger.
    He
looked down and saw the metal box that enclosed his torso. There was
also a metal band strapped to one arm, and something on his head,
which he thought might be bandages of some sort. He couldn't see his
legs from the other side of the equipment but they felt free. He
stretched his legs as he looked around to examine the room. This was
a large room with two other beds like the one he was lying on. Each
bed had a large white panel on the wall behind it. He tilted his
neck back to look at the panel over his own bed, which wasn't blank
at all. It was brightly lit with lists of numbers and some German
writing in one corner, but most of the panel displayed what looked
like a brightly colored cartoon image of the inside of a human body.
His body? He stretched his free arm and the image on the screen
moved accordingly. Curiously, some of the numbers changed as well.
    McHenry
wondered if this could be an elaborate ruse intended to coerce
secrets out of him. The uniforms just seemed a little different from
the photos he had seen. Or they might be homemade renditions for
someone's strange idea of amusement. He looked back at the medical
screen behind him, and raised his arm again. Even the best white
hospitals didn't have this kind of equipment. Without waiting for an
answer, McHenry tried lifting himself out of the contraption but
quickly gave up struggling. He was firmly attached to the device.
    “Who
are you?” he finally asked, staring at the black Nazi. The
words came out easily this time.
    “You
have been through much,” the doctor said. “You suffered
from drowning, some broken bones, including your skull. The
treatments you received have been successful and we will be able to
remove the equipment in a few minutes.
I am Doktor Oberleutnant Evers.
This is Oberführer Mtubo;
and here is Leutnant Vinson.
Herr Vinson was one of the people who rescued you from the sea.”
    “Well,
thanks,” McHenry acknowledged sarcastically.
He couldn't feel that anything was broken.
He still didn't remember crashing but that, at least, sounded plausible.
More plausible than a black Nazi, anyway.
He thought through his briefings, trying to remember Nazi ranks,
and guessed an Oberführer to be something like the Nazi equivalent of a colonel.
    Oberführer Mtubo stepped to the side of the bed and stood
with his hands behind his back, looking down his nose at McHenry.
It was a smug pose, as smug as he would expect from any
Nazi in the movies. “This might have been easier for you if I
had waited until you were fully recovered. Even so, your mind would
still find this difficult to grasp. Simply put, we have come here
from your future.”
    “You're
saying that you're time travelers?” McHenry asked warily.
    “I
mean exactly that,” said Mtubo. “We went backward
through time. We left our home in the year 2968.”
    McHenry
said nothing, unsure which was easier to believe, time travel or a
black Nazi or the whole notion of a black officer seemingly in charge
of these other men. The black Nazi didn't even look old enough for
the rank he appeared to hold.
    “Consider
it this