SecondWorld (22 page)

The impact came before she finished shouting her warning. Miller sprawled forward and landed on his back. Through fading vision he saw a tall, lanky man with a crooked smile. He wore beige Dickies pants and a plaid shirt that made him look like a local. His hair was slicked to the side in a style that looked straight from the 1940s.

Miller blinked, trying to find his bearings. He no longer felt the weight of the gun in his hand. But even if he had it, he doubted he could hit the man. The room spun around him, so much so that he barely registered the tall man who leaned down, raised his weapon, and slammed it into his forehead.

*   *   *

Miller woke to an argument. The voices—one female, one male—sounded furious. But he couldn’t make out a word of it. He remembered being struck and wondered if the blow had injured his ears, or rattled him so thoroughly that he couldn’t make sense of the words being spoken.

Miller forced his eyes open when he realized the verbal combatants spoke German.

Adler,
he thought, and opened his eyes.

The room swirled above him and sparks of lights, like fairies, danced in his vision. A swirl of nausea twisted in his gut. The copperlike smell of blood reached his nose. Blood. His, Huber’s, or Adler’s, he wasn’t sure.

Miller closed his eyes, turned his head toward the side, and opened his eyes again. The spinning worsened. He closed his eyes to keep his stomach under control. In that brief, turbulent look, he saw Adler on the floor, propped up on her hands. The tall man stood above her. He held a World War II–era Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifle—the first of its kind—but didn’t have it aimed directly at her.

“Begleiten Sie mich. Ende dieser Dummheit,”
the man said.
“Eine schöne, reine deutsche Frau wie Sie wäre eine gute Ehefrau in den kommenden ZweitenWeltkrieg zu machen.”

Miller opened his eyes. The spinning seemed less violent, and he saw Adler looking up at the man, her expression torn between fear and deep thought. While the man’s focus remained on Adler, Miller slowly slid a hand beneath his side. He could feel the cold knife against his back. He’d been holding it in one hand when he’d been struck and had fallen on top of it. He slowly wrapped his fingers around the handle.

The man reached a hand out to Adler.
“Kommen Sie.”

Was he inviting her to join him?
Miller wondered as he slowly slid the knife out from under himself.

When Adler reached her hand up to the man and said, “
Ja.
Okay,” Miller’s suspicions were confirmed in the worst way possible. The man offered her an invitation and she accepted.

How could she?
Miller thought. He tightened his grip on the knife. Despite her poor choice, he couldn’t let the man take her.

He took aim.

The room still spun.

Shit,
he thought. The odds of the knife striking flesh were good, but with Adler and the man so close, he couldn’t be sure which one of them he’d hit.

Adler linked hands with the man. He pulled her up, but her motion didn’t stop. She pulled down on the man’s hand, pulling him forward slightly. Before he could react, she brought her other hand up and around and smashed the butt of the shotgun into his forehead.

The strike wasn’t hard enough to incapacitate the big German, but he let go of Adler’s hand and stumbled back. The man quickly realized he’d been duped and brought his weapon to bear. But Adler was one step ahead of him. Holding the shotgun like a baseball bat, she swung out.

The blow fell just short of the man’s head, but connected solidly with the side of his nose. Cartilage tore, bone cracked, and blood sprayed. The man shouted in pain, and fired off a slew of German curses. But he didn’t lose his composure, or his aim. Instead, he lost his life.

When Adler struck the man, he stumbled back, and stopped just a few feet away from Miller. With a quick jerk, Miller sat up, raised his arm, and plunged the knife into the man’s back. With the assault rifle pointed at Adler, he needed the wound to be an instant kill. Anything else would give the man time to pull the trigger and then turn the weapon on Miller. So when he struck, Miller aimed for the man’s spine.

The jarring blow and instantaneous collapse of his target confirmed his accuracy. He should have felt relieved—that the attacker was dead, that Adler hadn’t actually betrayed him—but all he felt was dizzy. Miller leaned over and held his head.

Adler crouched beside him and placed a hand on his back. “Are you okay?”

Miller opened his eyes. The room spun a little less. “You had me fooled.”

“What?”

“I thought you were going with him.”

“I wanted to be an actress when I was in college,” she confessed.

“Could have made a fortune,” Miller said with a grunt. “Actually, you could have been the first woman in the major leagues with that swing.”

“I was terrified.”

Miller pushed himself to his knees. He kept his eyes closed to minimize the nausea. But he could do nothing about the throbbing pain emanating from his head and rolling down his body in sickening waves. Adler held on to his arm and helped him stand.

He opened his eyes and looked at Adler. “You did good.”

She looked back at the two dead bodies. “Doesn’t feel that way.”

Miller knew what she meant. He’d met many soldiers who felt guilty about what they did. Even if they saved lives, they likely took a few in the process. Adler fought to save the world, but had aided in the taking of a life.

Another life.

They’d left a trail of death in their wake.

And for someone new to the business of war, adjusting to carnage took time. Unfortunately for Adler, time was short and adjustment a luxury. Sirens rang out in the distance, growing louder by the moment.

“We need to go,” Miller said. Moving as fast as he could without falling over, he snatched up the small notebook and pistol taken from the man in the canoe. He handed the pistol to Adler, who took it without comment, and turned his attention to the fresh corpse.

“Did he say anything useful?” Miller asked as he searched the body.

“After I missed my first two shots, he taunted me,” she said. “Forced me to scream and then fired a shot.”

Miller shook his head. He’d been lured into a trap and if the man had shot him instead of knocking him unconscious, the trap would have worked. “Why didn’t he kill me?” he wondered.

“I think he wanted to question you,” she said. “He knew our names.”

“We’re on the list,” he said.

“List?”

“I found a hit list on the other shooter. Our names were recent additions.”

The sirens grew louder still and Miller guessed they’d reached Huber’s road. They had maybe two minutes before the place swarmed with police who might or might not be friendly. He took the assault rifle and a second Walther P38 from the dead assassin. “What is it with these guys and old weapons?”

Miller stood and stumbled to the back door.

“What do you mean?” Adler asked as she helped him walk. “Where are we going?”

“To the canoe,” Miller said, and they started across the grass. Miller pointed to his clothes. “Grab my clothes. The phone is in my pocket.”

Adler let go of Miller’s arm and retrieved the clothes. He stumbled, but remained upright and mobile. “All of their weapons are World War Two relics, like they want to be authentic SS soldiers.”

“Strange,” Adler said as she jumped from the grass to the beach and helped Miller down. “I noticed something, too.”

“What?”

“The way he spoke—” she said, then paused to think. “It sounded, I don’t know. Language changes over time. Certain inflections and words are more common during different time periods. They can define the way a generation speaks.”

Miller knew what she meant. He imagined that he could peg the time period of any movie from the past seventy years just by listening to the dialogue.

He reached the canoe and pushed it into the water. They put the weapons and his clothes in the canoe. Standing in waist-deep water, Miller held the boat steady as Adler stepped in and sat down. After she was in, he flung himself over the side and landed on the bottom of the canoe, too exhausted and dizzy to move. The bobbing of the boat didn’t help any, and he fought to stay lucid. “You paddle,” he said. “Take us along the shore. Get behind the trees.”

Adler picked up the paddle and got them moving. She struggled at first, but quickly found her rhythm, stroking twice on one side and then twice on the other.

Once they were behind the tree line, Adler stopped paddling and looked at Miller. “He sounded old.”

“How old?” he asked. The man in the boat looked to be in his midtwenties. The man now dead in Huber’s living room couldn’t have been much over thirty, right around the same age as Adler. His speech pattern shouldn’t have been all that different from hers. But something about it had rattled her.

She looked up at the sky, paddled twice more, and stopped again. The words were hard to say, but she forced them out. She motioned to the collection of World War II weapons on the floor of the boat next to Miller’s feet. “As old as those weapons.”

32

After taking the canoe a mile along the shore without seeing any sign of police or men with World War II weapons, Miller sat up. The dizziness and nausea had faded, but his head pulsed with pain.

“Got any painkillers on you?”

Adler pulled the paddle out of the water. “I think so.” She rummaged through her purse while the canoe drifted forward, past a string of tall pines lining the shore.

“Found something.”

Miller noted how the “somesing” sound of her voice no longer grated on him. In fact, after everything he’d been through over the past days, her voice, like Arwen’s, kept him thinking straight.

“It’s ibuprofen,” she said. “You want two?”

“Make it four.”

She tsked and said, “You’re going to melt your liver.”

“Odds are I’ll be shot first so it won’t matter much, will it?” Miller took the pills and popped them into his mouth. Unlike the macho men in movies who could not only swallow pills dry, but roughly chew them first, Miller couldn’t take pills without a drink. He dipped his hands into the lake and drank. The water was gritty but felt cool and refreshing. When he leaned back up, Adler was staring at him, a look of disgust frozen on her face. “Once again, I’m more likely to get shot before I die from dysentery. This isn’t Oregon Trail.”

“Oregon Trail?”

“A video game. Forget it.” Miller turned toward the shore. The trees suddenly gave way to a long public beach. The beach wasn’t crowded, but there were more than a few people sitting on the sand and enjoying the water. Good for them, Miller thought. While much of the nation had taken to looting or holing up in their homes, these folks had continued on with their lives, refusing to live in fear. He wondered if they would do the same if they were in the city instead of New Hampshire, or if they knew the world had only five days left.

For a brief moment, Miller realized he was still dressed in just his boxers. But then they passed by an overweight shirtless man standing waist deep in the water. The man held a beer in a bright orange cozy and had enough hair on his body to be mistaken for a yeti. Miller glanced at the other beachgoers and saw more skin than clothes. No one would notice his lack of clothing.

The fat man raised his beer at them as they glided past him. He gave a nod and said, “Live free or die.”

Miller grinned and gave the man a casual salute. He liked New Hampshire. He looked back at Adler. “Take us to the far end of the beach. We need to find a new car.”

Adler took up the paddle again. “Thank God. My arms are killing me.” Sweat dripped down her forehead and she’d undone the top few buttons of her blouse so that a hint of cleavage showed.

Feeling self-conscious again, Miller gathered up his clothes.

Adler noticed his haste. “Don’t worry. You’re not that bad on the eyes.”

Miller smiled as he slid slowly into his pants, trying not to tip them in the process. “Thank you for choosing the Love Boat,” he said as he picked up his shoes. “We hope you enjoy your—”

Adler stopped laughing when Miller’s grin disappeared.

He stared at the boat shoes in his hands. At some point they’d stopped being Scuba Dave’s shoes and become his. But there was blood on them now and he remembered, in fresh detail, where they came from. He pursed his lips and sighed.

“What is it?”

The boat slid onto the sandy beach and they were embraced by the cool shade of the nearby trees. “Back when I was sixteen, I somehow managed to get a girlfriend, and one day after school we found ourselves alone at my house. I don’t think I’ve felt so nervous and excited since that day. It took us thirty minutes to work up the guts, but then we were on the bed. Half naked. I’m rounding the plates like a son of a bitch.” He looked up at Adler. She stared at him with a single raised eyebrow and an unsure smile, no doubt wondering how hard he’d been hit. He continued, “I stand, drop my pants, and then,
wham!
The front door closes and my mom announces that she’s home.” He held the shoes up. “These shoes are like my mother.”