Blood of Vipers (5 page)

Except when they arrived, the job was gone
and half the
other jobs in Utah coal country as well, throwing hundreds of
men into the soup
kitchen lines. Papa’s cousin himself had lost his job, but being
single, he
took the hobo route to return east and move back in with his
parents. The
Jamesons, on the other hand, had no money; they were stuck in
the dry hills of
Utah coal country, where the only work was the railroad or the
mines, and
neither was hiring.

One of Cal’s sharpest memories was a scrawny
kid in
elementary school showing him that if you tied a rock to the
inside of your
belt and cinched it up real tight you wouldn’t feel so hungry.
It helped pass
the morning until the free food the churches handed out at
lunch—a cup of
chicken broth from the Greek Orthodox and a peanut butter
sandwich from the
Mormons.

There were a lot of rocks under belts that
year. And the
next.

But that was what, a dozen years ago?
Eventually the mines
started hiring again and Papa got a job, first underground,
where he’d emerge
with a face like a minstrel in blackface, and then above ground
tallying
shipping tonnages. They were poor, but fed. Every other trouble
in Cal’s life
since then amounted to a minor annoyance or the usual soldierly
hardships of a
winning army, up until that point where he gave his Mustang a
dirt bath in a
German field.

“Cal?” Greta said. She still had her hand on
his wrist and
stared at him with those big blue eyes. Her lower lip trembled,
but there was
strength in her posture, and a determination in her eyes he
hadn’t seen before.
“You will not leave us to die.” It was more a statement than a
question.

“Fine. Let’s get back on that farm road.”

“That is no good. It ends at the millpond
four hundred
meters past the horse barn.”

“Can’t stay here or we’ll have commies or
Nazis on top of
us. Maybe both. Could be a battle on this very spot by the end
of the day. So
what’s it going to be?”

Greta spoke to her parents for a minute, then
turned back to
Cal. “We have a handcart. It was loaded with some food and
clothing and Mutti’s
best dishes before the soldiers threw us out. We could join the
refugees on the
main road, and you can hide underneath the blankets. We’ll leave
the rest of it
behind. Then, when we get to American lines, you can climb out
and make sure
they do not hurt us.”

Cal didn’t like the idea of hiding in the
handcart while
Nazis marched by on the other side of the road, but he couldn’t
very well
travel in the open, either. Not in his flight uniform and his
C-1 vest. And if
he changed, they’d think he was a deserter. A shouted order,
then a roadside
execution when they learned he didn’t speak a lick of German.
They’d kill
Hans-Peter and his family, too, for giving aid and comfort.

“No towns, we stay to the countryside,” he
said. “Are there
any forests where we might hide out the day?”

She spoke to her father. “Vater says fifteen
kilometers.”

“That far? Fifteen kilometers is what? Nine
miles? That’s a
long time to steer clear of your friends with guns.” He turned
it over in his
mind. “No choice, I guess. We’ll make a run for it, and then
hide until night.”

“And we must worry about the
Tiefflieger
,
too.”

“Tieff-what?”

Her father made buzzing sound like an
aircraft and then held
out both his index fingers, pistol-style, and let out a machine
gun rattle.

“Ah. I don’t think the...
Tiefflieger
are going to
bother us today. Not with the Russians breathing down our
throats. Come on,
let’s move it.”

#

Minutes later, Cal found himself wedged
between an empty
trunk, two sacks of potatoes, and another of onions, with
clothes smothering
him from above. Hans-Peter grunted and picked up the handles of
the cart, which
he dragged around the back of the house and toward the main
road.

Soon, Cal heard the sound of other refugees.
They trudged
along, coughing, and speaking quietly in German. Dozens of
voices, perhaps
hundreds. The clomp of hooves every few minutes, and the crunch
of wheels, but
mostly feet. He pictured the sluggish current of refugees in his
mind’s eye,
imagined the target they would present to a callous pilot like
the Brit in the
Spitfire yesterday. Or to the vanguard of the Soviet army,
hungry for revenge
for the brutal actions of the Germans on the Eastern Front.

He was uncomfortable back here, feet tucked
up, the wool
blankets smothering him in the rising heat of day, the
oppressive smell of
onions, and the wooden wheels jarring on every rock and rut. The
pace was
maddeningly slow; from the sounds of it, the river was flowing
around them,
passing them. About an hour later, the wounded caught up to
them—women moaning
from the backs of creaking carts, a child screaming and a mother
trying to
comfort.

“
Mein Gott,
” Greta muttered after the
child had
passed. Then, in a low voice in English, “You are better in
there. The things I
am seeing. You cannot imagine.”

Cal could imagine plenty of awful things,
lying beneath the
blankets, with only dim sunlight and shadows breaking through to
where he hid.
And a few minutes later another cart passed, this one filled
with
several
screaming children. The conversations of the refugees died until
it was out of
earshot.

And then Cal heard a sound that chilled him
even more than
the cries of the wounded. A truck came rumbling from the west,
moving opposite
the flow of refugees, toward the front. Even before he heard the
man shouting
and yelling, he knew they were German troops.

A horse clopped, then stopped with a snort. A
man’s voice
called down in German. Hans-Peter answered back, his tone timid.
A response
that sounded like an order. Someone grabbed the handcart,
twisted it sideways,
and dragged it toward the side of the road.

Cal drew his Colt .45 as they dragged the cart
toward the
side of the road. The Russian rifle lay by his side. He would
sell his life
dearly. And drag out the gun battle if he could. Maybe in the
chaos Greta and
her parents could escape into the crowd.

The cart dropped to the ground again and the
blankets
settled around him. A touch of breeze on his face and a crack of
light through
the blankets. A figure in a gray uniform moved through the
sliver of light and
Cal caught his breath. It was Little Hitler.

The SS officer shouted at Hans-Peter, who
answered back in a
compliant tone. Cal moved his head a fraction of an inch, and
they came into
view. No sight of Greta or Helgard.

To his credit, Hans-Peter stood straight in
front of the
Nazi, even though it made him look down at the shorter man as if
with an
insolent manner. He offered papers, and then turned his gaze
straight ahead.
The other man looked at them, let out a single bark of a laugh,
and tossed the
papers to the ground.

Cal guessed the papers were Hans-Peter’s
permission to stay
with his wife and daughter, instead of throwing away the life of
the sole
remaining male of the family. Bad eyes, and all that.
Those
were yesterday’s
orders,
the other man seemed to say.
Today you die
for your country.

Confirming Cal’s guess, Little Hitler snapped
an order and a
younger soldier came forward with a jacket and one of the long
pipe-like
antitank guns Cal had seen at the last village. What was it
Greta called them?
Panzerfausts
.
One shot and then you tossed aside the launch tube.

While the officer shouted at him, Hans-Peter
stripped off
his brown farmer’s coat and put on the gray jacket given him.
While he buttoned
it up, the younger soldier showed him how to pull the lever on
the
panzerfaust
to ignite the propellant. Cal wasn’t sure, but he thought the
young man might
be the same one who had escaped from the fight with the
partisans at the ruined
castle.

No sign of Helgard or Greta. No protests as
their husband
and father took his single-shot weapon and stood at attention on
the road,
forehead bandaged and bloody, yet ready to march back the way
they came to die
or face capture by the end of the day. Or sooner, when the Nazis
discovered the
living contraband the farmer had been hiding in his handcart.

By now, the women would be lost in the crowd.
They might
escape. That was something.

More men appeared on the road. Cal knew he
should shrink
back into the blankets, before

 someone glanced at the abandoned cart
and noticed the eye
staring back at them, observing. But he was transfixed by what
he saw.

Men kept coming. First five, then ten,
finally two dozen or
more. Old men, bandaged men, boys as young as eleven or twelve.
Little Hitler
lined them up, shouted at them to stand straight, had his young
adjutant give
them gray jackets and weapons:
panzerfausts
, rifles, a
pistol to an elderly
man who was missing one arm from the elbow down. He needed help
buttoning and
buckling his jacket.

They stood at attention while more men
arrived. An airplane
roared overhead—the engine told Cal it was a Russian Yak-9—but
the men didn’t
flee the road, and the plane ignored them. A distant explosion
rolled through
the air and made the ground shudder. Gunfire in the distance.
The thump of
mortars. And still Little Hitler waited while men and boys
joined his
slowly-forming company.

Damn him, what is he waiting for?

Any moment and the battle would be upon them.

It was another twenty minutes before Little
Hitler decided
he had enough. There were several dozen new conscripts by now,
gathered by two
other soldiers who came and went. Whenever the pair left, only
the single
officer and the young soldier remained to keep them in line. Why
did the
newcomers obey? There was no point in this, no final defense to
throw back the
enemy. Every one of them must know that by now. Americans poured
by the
hundreds of thousands across the Rhine and through the heart of
Germany. The
Soviets surrounded Berlin, bombarding it with artillery and
Katyusha rockets. A
seething mass of troops gathered for the final, bloody assault.

It was so simple. Stop fighting. Just stop.
Throw down their
weapons and return to their families. Why wouldn’t they do it?

Little Hitler strutted back and forth in
front of this final
reserve. He barked orders, commanded them to stiffen their
resolve and do their
duty. Cal didn’t understand a word, but the meaning was as clear
as if he’d
spoken German since birth.

Now listen up! Last defenders of the
Reich, protectors of
the realm. They are monsters you face, not men. Beasts whipped
forth from the
pits of Hell. Show them no mercy, for they will show none to
you. You are all
that stands between the Aryan race and final destruction. Now
go, march forward
for glory and honor. For the Führer!

Little Hitler snapped the disgusting Nazi
salute and the men
did their duty and responded in kind. They marched out of sight
of Cal’s
peephole. Last in line was Hans-Peter. He stared at the boots of
the man ahead
of him, shoulder slumped under his
panzerfaust
, as if he
were carrying
the weight of his own coffin. A moment later he was out of
sight.

The officer and the younger soldier turned to
the handcart,
as if only now noticing it by the side of the road. Cal shrank
back within the
blankets. His hand tightened on the pistol. He was dead anyway,
so it was
Little Hitler first, no matter what. With any luck, the man
would meet his eye
in that split second before the bullet took him in the chest.
And he would know
that the American pilot had got the best of him.

But they didn’t pull back the blankets.
Instead, they
grabbed the handles of the handcart and gave it a push. The
wheels resisted,
then rolled backward, picking up momentum. The cart bounced on a
rock, shimmied
to one side, and flipped over. The empty crate slammed into
Cal’s ribs and the
lip of the cart came down on his thigh. He flinched in pain.

He’d only half flown out of the cart, and
with blankets and
clothing on and around him, he could scarcely believe his luck.
He was still
covered. They hadn’t even searched the contents of the cart.
Yesterday they
would have, no doubt. No time today. Not with the enemy only a
few miles up the
road. The only thing Little Hitler and his pals cared about was
rounding up
every male in the mass of refugees—young, old, infirm,
injured—pressing a
weapon into their hands, and moving them out to slow the enemy
juggernaut a few
more minutes.

Cal remained motionless. He couldn’t see or
hear Little
Hitler, but he didn’t think the man had marched to the front
with the new
recruits. Instead, he guessed the officer and his adjutant had
remounted their
horses and ridden back up the column of refugees to gather more
boys and old
men. And somewhere nearby would be more soldiers, moving supply
carts with
uniforms and weapons. He didn’t dare climb out.

But he didn’t dare stay under the cart,
either. A shell
exploded a few hundred feet up the road and women screamed. A
heavy machine gun
started a long, angry snarl and the small arms fire was nearer
now, no more
than a half mile distant.

But the clothing muffled sound, and he had a
hard time
deciphering everything he was hearing. A clank and a rumble.
Some thumping
explosion, either close and small or distant and massive.

A hiss, like a rush of gas, and then an
explosion up the
road. A
panzerfaust
? If so, then the battle...