Blood of Vipers (7 page)

Greta and Helgard inched over to his side.

“The SS officer drove us off,” Greta said.
“Would not even
let my mother kiss Vater goodbye. I was worried about you. I
thought they would
kill you.”

“Nobody saw me. They threw the cart off the
road to get it
out of the way and then rode off to gather more soldiers.”

“I am sorry we abandoned you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“The plane was bombing the road. We ran away.
I wanted to go
back and look for you,” she added. “But it was impossible.”

“Of course it was.”

“Did you see my father?”

“Yeah, I saw him. Little Hitler gave him one
of those potato
rockets and marched him to the front.”

“Oh.” She fell silent.

“He’s probably okay,” Cal lied. “Those
fellows weren’t going
to fight. Bet they threw down their weapons and surrendered
first thing.”

Inside, he wondered. How long from when
Hans-Peter marched
to the front with his
panzerfaust
until the live Russian
tank rolled
down the road toward the overturned cart, with the so-called
fausts
bouncing off the sloped armor of the T-34s with about as much
effect as a kid’s
firecracker? How many of those new recruits survived the
assault? Any of them?

Bunch of old men and boys. Dear God, that one
fellow had
only one arm.

“How many men did you see?” Greta asked.
“Maybe they pushed
the Russians back.”

They didn’t.

He didn’t say this aloud. What was the harm
in letting her
cling to hope? Instead, he said, “I’ve been wondering something.
Where did you
learn English?”

“You remember my aunt in Silesia?”

“The one with all the nice things she didn’t
want to leave?”

“That is right. She married a wealthy man
from England. An
older gentleman. When he died, she returned home with her
children. She hired
English tutors for them and convinced Vater to send us into town
every evening
to study with our cousins. At one time I spoke very good
English.”

“You still do.”

“Do you truly think so?” She shrugged, but he
could tell she
was pleased by the compliment. “When I first saw you, I was so
nervous. And my
English was so...how do you say when you have not used for a
long time?”

“Rusty.”

She laughed. “You see, even now I forget.”

It wasn’t the only thing she’d forgotten. The
tension was
gone from her voice, and he caught a glimpse of the light,
cheerful girl Greta
would be under normal circumstances. And beautiful, too, the
type of girl every
boy in the village would fall in love with, but be afraid to
approach.

An explosion shattered the relative silence.
The basement
shook and dust and ash rained through the slats in the ceiling.
People moaned,
and the boy screamed. The light dimmed as the rubble overhead
shifted and
filled in some of the gaps to the sky above.

It was over in a second, but the boy kept
screaming.

“Quiet,” Cal said. “Greta, tell that kid’s
mother he’s got
to shut up, or he’ll attract attention. The wrong kind. Last
thing we need is
some of those combat swine on top of us.”

Greta spoke out in German. Other women joined
in, until it
sounded like an argument.

“He belongs to nobody,” Greta said at last.
“He followed
some of the women into the cellar, that is all they know.”

Cal made his way over to the boy. “Hey there,
buddy. It
didn’t hit us. Just a stray shell. We’re okay.”

The kid had his hands clamped over his ears,
and flinched
away when Cal reached out a hand. Greta came over, put her arm
around the boy,
and then pinned his arms when he flailed out.

“Check this out,” Cal said. He reached into
his vest pocket
and fished out the picture of his dog, and held it up to catch a
hint of light
that flickered through the dust motes. “Look. It’s my dog, Rex.
How do you say
it in
Deutch
? My hound.”

“
Hund
,” Greta said. “
Blick auf die
Welpen.
”

The boy stopped screaming and opened his
eyes. He dropped a
hand from one ear and took the picture.

Cal got out another picture. “And this one is
my...what was
it? My
Mutti.
Here’s my kid brother.” He took out the
last one, the
pinup card of Lana Turner. “And my best girl. Isn’t she pretty?”

“Let me see that,” Greta said. “Your
girlfriend is a
Hollywood actress? Impressive.”

“So she won’t return my calls at present. But
I’m sure when
I come back a war hero, she’ll be happy to be seen around town
hanging on my
arm.”

“I am sure she will.”

He put the other pictures away, but let the
kid hold onto
the picture of Rex. He pointed to his chest. “Cal. That’s my
name. Cal. What’s
your name.”

“
Wie heißt du
?” Greta asked.

“Karl.”

“And what’s got you so worked up?” Cal said.
“We’re safe
down here, right?”

He said something accusatory. Cal looked at
Greta with a
frown.

“He says that’s what they said before. It
wasn’t true.
Everyone died.”

Greta asked a question in German and the boy
answered. Only
he didn’t stop talking now, he let out a torrent of words, while
the girl
stared at him grimly. He started shaking, and finally Greta
hushed him and took
him in her arms.

“His family was killed in Dresden,” she said.
“Parents,
grandparents, two sisters. A cousin, who was holding his hand in
the bomb
shelter. They were down below and the bombs kept falling and
everything was
shaking. He is very sorry he screamed, but the bomb scared him.”

“Hey, kid. It’s okay.”

“I did not understand that last part,
though,” Greta said.
“The water was on fire. It was burning.”

She asked him another question. He answered
in a few
sentences this time, and then fell silent.

“Water was pouring down the stairs into the
bomb shelter,
only it was on fire. What do you suppose that means? He says the
adults went
crazy when they saw it.”

“Dresden was firebombed,” Cal said.

“I know it was firebombed. Every German knows
what the
Allied bombers did. But what does Karl mean about burning
water?”

“Phosphorous, that’s what he’s talking about.
Not water. It
will flow down into anything to help spread the fire.”

“He said when the burning water came down,
the adults threw
open the doors to get away. They jumped out into the fire. His
mother, his
father, his grandparents, his sisters. Aunts and uncles and
neighbors. Didn’t
climb out, they jumped. What does that mean?”

Cal’s mouth felt dry. “The firestorm did it.
It burns so hot
the center is almost like a vacuum, because it needs to pull in
all that air to
keep the flames going. They didn’t jump, they were sucked into
the fire.”

Greta asked Karl another question, and nodded
at his answer.
“He said someone dragged him deeper into the bomb shelter, and
then someone
else passed him through a hole in a wall, and he joined a group
of people in
the sewers. When they came out the next morning, the first thing
he saw were
charred bodies being stacked into a huge pile.”

The boy shook and buried his head in Greta’s
arms.

“
Mein Gott
,” she said. “Why would you
people do that?
What good would that do to kill so many innocent civilians?”

“I didn’t make the decision, and I don’t
agree with it,” he
said.

The excuse sounded all wrong when it came out
of his mouth,
like the sort of thing a German would say.
We’re not
responsible, we only
follow orders.

The bulkhead doors swung open, and Cal blinked
against the
light that flooded into the cellar. After five minutes in the
dark, the
exhaustion of the past two days had caught up with him and he’d
begun to drift
off. The light snapped him to attention. A man’s voice spoke. It
was loud,
high-pitched, and nervous sounding. Multiple faces came into
focus in the
blinding light. Cal threw up his hands.

“Don’t shoot! Americanski. Americanski!”

More shouts.

Too late, Cal realized that it wasn’t Russian
the man was
yelling down at him, but German. Two men clomped down the
stairs, and he
reached for his Colt.

Greta threw herself on his arm. “No! Cal,
no!”

He struggled to free himself, almost got the
gun out, but
Helgard grabbed his arm, too, and he couldn’t fight them both
off before the
Germans reached him. The treachery hurt the most, that after
throwing
themselves on his protection, they had turned against him
without a second
thought the instant some of their own uniforms popped into view.
He almost had
the gun out, if only—

He flinched as the first German reached him,
hands out.

And then both men sank to their knees, arms
lifted overhead,
crying out in German.

“You cannot shoot men who are surrendering,”
Greta pleaded.
“Please, I beg you.”

Cal snorted in surprise and disbelief. The
two young men in
dirty, tattered Wehrmacht uniforms were begging
him
to
show mercy. They
stank of sweat and grease and powder, so strong it overpowered
the charred
smell of the house itself. Their eyes were bloodshot and their
faces slack with
exhaustion.

“Sit over there,” he said. “Don’t move.
Greta, tell them.”

She did, and they obeyed. “What are you going
to do with
them?”

“Do? I don’t want to do anything with them.
Think about it.
What’s going to happen when the Russians come? They’ll only kill
those men.”

“You cannot let them do it.”

“How am I going to stop them? I’m still
working it over how
I’m going to save the rest of you. I can’t—”

He stopped as one of the men spoke.

“He wants to know,” Greta said, “why you put
up a banner
telling people to come here to surrender to the Americans, why
you said you
will take prisoners.”

“That’s not what it says—tell him! It says I
have prisoners
already. I sure as hell don’t want any more.”

“But what are they supposed to do?”

“I don’t care. Tell them to go out and
surrender to the
Russians.”

“They will be killed.”

“People are dying every second. Do you think
we can stop
that?”

“Cal, they are only boys. Look at them.”

He glanced at the two young men,
battle-weary, frightened.
Thin and hungry, clothes tattered, faces dirty and stubbled. A
bandaged hand on
one man, a smear of blood on the other’s forehead. A frustrated
cry rose up
from Cal’s gut, but he forced it down.

“They’re soldiers,” he said in a low voice,
in case one of
them understood English. “And I haven’t slept in two days.
Minute I close my
eyes, what’s to keep them from slitting my throat?”

“They wouldn’t—”

“I know, they want to surrender, and all of
the rest of it.
But how do I
know
?”

“I will help you,” she said. “If you start to
fall asleep,
and one of them moves, I will shoot him. Give me your gun.”

He let the skepticism show in his voice.
“Really? You’d do
that?”

“I know how to shoot.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Please do not send them out there to die.
Please.”

He let out a long, weary sigh. “Fine, but
they’re it. Any
more soldiers and we send them away. Got it?”

Greta bit on her lower lip, but then she
nodded. “Okay.”

“I want them in the corner, hands on their
heads. Tell them
if they make one problem for me I’ll tell the Soviets they
executed two unarmed
Russian prisoners.”

She must have heard he was serious, because
she hardened her
voice when she repeated his words to the soldiers, finishing
with “
Macht
schnell!
” when they didn’t move quickly enough.

Satisfied they wouldn’t be any trouble, Cal
grabbed his
pistol, made a point of handing it over to Greta, and then
climbed to his feet
to shut the bulkhead doors. When he got up the stairs, two more
refugees
materialized, this time a girl of about twelve and her younger
brother.

“Yeah, why not? The more the merrier!” He
pointed at them
and gestured to the basement. “Down! Now!
Macht schnell!
”

The problem was that damn sheet and its
surrender message.
Any German who stumbled across the wrecked farmhouse was going
to take one look
at his crudely sketched American flag and think he was their
savior. Wouldn’t
take much searching to find the bulkhead door. Before the
Russians bothered to
show up, he might have a hundred refugees on his hands, and then
what?

“Watch those soldiers,” he told Greta. “I’m
going out to
take down that stupid sign. Don’t put the gun down for an
instant.”

As he clomped the last few stairs and came
into the open
air, he looked skyward to scan for aircraft. Nothing overhead.
The shelling and
mortar fire continued unabated from the direction of the road,
but it seemed to
have moved west, deeper into Germany in the direction of the
American lines.
Whatever was left of the pocket of resistance must have shrunk
to a few miles by
now. With any luck, it would be over—at least in this sector—by
morning.

Cal came around the house, looking for a
place to climb the
pile of rubble to get at his ill-advised banner, when he found
himself face to
face with two more Germans. But this time they were soldiers in
steel helmets
and green uniforms with twin lightning bolts on the
collar—Waffen-SS.

The men were staring at his banner with
scowls, and looked
startled at the American’s sudden appearance. One of them held a
submachine gun
and swung it in Cal’s direction, but the second, an officer,
shouted for him to
stop.