The Secret of Lions (25 page)

“What’s that sound?” Anna asked.

“Shit!” I replied. “Get ready; we are going
for it.”

I grabbed her wrist. Not even giving her
time to prepare, I slung her toward the alley. I ran alongside her,
blocking the view of the sniper. With reflexes I never knew I had,
I fired a couple of rounds at the sniper.

One bullet hit the ledge of the building
directly beneath the sniper’s position. The second bullet whizzed
by his head. The sniper ducked down, giving Anna and me just enough
time to escape into the alley.

Looking back, I could see them, the
Todesgruppen. It was a group of five soldiers. One of them wielded
a chainsaw. He was an enormous man. His military fatigues were
stained with blood and fragments of bone.

One of the others carried a shotgun. Two
others held MP40 machine guns. The last member of the Todesgruppen
brandished a flamethrower. Bits of flame and gas seeped out of the
barrel. The smell of fuel filled my nostrils.

As the Todesgruppen approached me, they did
not raise their weapons. At the same time, they did not flinch or
retreat from the threat of my Colt 1911. I pushed Anna deeper into
the alley. She stopped by the wall for a moment.

“We can’t stay here. We have to keep going,”
I said. I squeezed her arm tightly and pulled her into the depths
of the alleyway. Darkness surrounded us. A hint of light escaped
the far corner of the alley.

“Where are we going, Peter?”

“It doesn’t matter. They’ll just think that
we are part of the Resistance. They’re not going to listen to us.
Even if they did, they would never believe us about who we are. We
have to run.”

She pulled away from me for a moment. With
an indescribable tightness in her throat, she said, “Peter, I don’t
want to be on their side.”

“Come on,” I said and pulled at her.

“No, I don’t want this,” she repeated.
“Those twin girls. I don’t want this.”

“Anna, they’re going to kill us. We have to
go,” I said.

We continued into the darkness toward the
light at the end of the alley. Behind us, we heard footsteps.
Flames shot into the alley. A thick puff of smoke instantly rose
into the air.

“Run, Anna,” I yelled. We picked up speed.
Finally we reached the end of the alley. Beyond the corner, I
realized why our pursuers walked casually and did not run after us:
We ran into a brick wall.

It rose up ten meters in the air and blocked
our passage through the alley. Flames lit the other side.

“No! No! What are we going to do?” Anna
said. She banged her fists on the brick.

I looked around for a moment. I saw a thick,
wooden door in the building to the right.

“In there,” I said, trying to turn the knob,
but the door was locked.

“Stand back,” I said, pointing the gun at
the lock. I shot it out. The cylinder burst.

The door began swinging slowly toward us. I
grabbed Anna’s arm and led her through the swinging door. Once we
were through, I slammed the door and pushed a heavy chest in front
of it. I quickly began sweeping the corridors and open doorways in
the building with the gun. I was ready to shoot anyone who came
into sight. The building had no signs of life.

We found ourselves in a jewelry store. The
front of the building was covered with windows, but they were
barred from the outside. I wasn’t sure if the owner or the Nazis
had put the bars up.

“Look for stairs. I’m going to try the front
door,” I said, letting go of Anna’s arm. We headed for the
foyer.

Anna loomed around in the darkness, looking
for the stairs leading up. Feeling around on the wall with her
hands, she found a light switch. It flickered and sparks shot out
from the cover as she flipped it up. The hallway lights came on.
They were dim, but they allowed us to see where we were going.

“I found the stairs,” she called out to
me.

I’d found the front door. I struggled to
open it, but it was locked. It was steel. The urge to try shooting
the lock surfaced. However, I realized it would not work without
wasting most of my bullets. I only had five left, and the
Todesgruppen were closing in.

“The door is of no use. We’ll have to jump
from a higher floor,” I said.

Anna ran up the stairs first. As her feet
connected with each step, I watched the door we’d gone through. I
pointed the Colt at it, waiting to shoot anyone who came in. For a
long moment, I expected to see one of the soldiers enter. It was my
hope I could shoot one by surprise; perhaps that could buy us some
time.

“Peter?” Anna called from the top of the
stairs.

I looked up at her for a moment. In the
corner of my eyes I saw two of the Todesgruppen entering the
doorway in front of me. The first soldier pointed the flamethrower
directly at me.

Fire spit out in a single, elongated burst.
Flames streamed toward me. I heard Anna call out my name. I heaved
myself over the railing, rolling onto the hardwood staircase. The
flames just missed me. It scorched the entire lower part of the
staircase and wall. Large sections of the wallpaper combusted.
Flower patterns melted away to reveal the dark, oak wood that lay
beneath.

A longer burst of flame thrust out from the
flamethrower’s barrel. The blaze rose up and burned past me. Lying
on my back on the stairs, I hugged as close to the wall as
possible. The heat was intense. It set the entire wall below me on
fire.

“Peter?” Anna screamed from the top of the
stairs.

“Keep going!” I yelled up at her.

Another stream of flames followed. The
soldier moved from the foyer closer to my position. The floorboards
squeaked under his combat boots. I gripped my handgun tightly.
Still on my back, I squirmed up the stairs. Stopping halfway up, I
aimed the gun, resting my elbows on my stomach.

I pointed it into the fire below, hoping the
soldier would walk out. I waited for a long moment, but the soldier
did not reveal himself. There were no more bursts of flames.

Suddenly, I heard Anna scream from above me.
There was another sound: loud and metallic. It was like an engine.
I knew the sound. It was the sadistic hum of the chainsaw.

I looked above me and saw the large soldier
wielding the chainsaw and staring right back at me. Our eyes locked
for a moment, and then I raised my gun. Before I could take aim,
the soldier vanished into the darkness of the second floor, where
Anna had disappeared.

She continued to scream. I leapt to my feet.
Before I could pursue the large soldier, a stream of flame hurdled
over the railing and engulfed my path. The entire top of the
staircase was ablaze. I winced for a moment in pain from the
intense heat standing before me. The thought of brazing through the
wall of flames entered my mind, but before I could act, the fire
spread and thickened to make it a death trap.

I had no choice but to retreat back down the
stairs. Anna’s screams continued to penetrate through the wall of
fire and into my ears.

Slowly, I backed away from the fire as it
approached me. It followed me with each step I made.

Now, I heard a new noise. It was the
floorboards creaking beneath me. Swiftly, I turned to gaze upon the
tip of the flamethrower. The barrel appeared beyond the railing,
through the burning banister. The soldier wielding it had not yet
appeared.

I pressed my back to the wall and crouched
down out of sight. I waited for the right moment. The soldier’s
helmet appeared through the fire. In an instant his eyes locked
with mine. It was the perfect moment to strike.

I leapt over the burning railing and onto
the soldier. The force of my body pushed the soldier’s back against
the wall. He screamed out in pain as his bones crashed into the
weight of the flamethrower pack as it hit the wall behind him. The
soldier pulled the trigger on the flamethrower erratically. Flames
shot out. The stream engulfed the spot where I had been perched on
the staircase.

I was too close to the soldier for the
flames to hit me. I had the gun pressed against the soldier’s chest
at point blank range. My left hand shoved the soldier’s chin up so
his head was against the wall.

Immediately, I noticed the other soldier who
was standing in the foyer. He was stunned by what he was
witnessing. A machine gun shook in his hands. I flipped my hostage
so that the hostage’s back faced the other soldier. The hostage had
now become a human shield. It was easy for me to hide behind the
hostage because he was wearing that large flamethrower pack.

The other soldier had not yet fired his gun,
which would certainly kill the hostage. They both knew this. The
hostage started to beg and plead. He cried out to the other soldier
not to fire.

“Shut up!” I shouted, pushing the gun
farther into the man’s chest. “Now, you in the foyer, do not fire!
If you shoot that gun you will hit the flame tanks and kill all of
us, not to mention your friends upstairs. Now drop your gun.”

“Fuck you!” The other soldier screamed.

He began firing his gun. Bullets ricocheted
off the walls around me. The soldier’s machine gun was an
automatic.

Gunshots echoed throughout the entire
building. I held my breath and squeezed into my human shield for
protection. My hostage screamed and started to resist violently. I
fired a single round into the man’s chest. He stopped
squirming.

Bullets were hitting the tank on his back. I
did not realize it, but blood splattered on my clothes. Now, I was
forced to hold both the hostage and the heavy flamethrower tanks up
with my free hand, while still holding my gun. The tank had
resisted the bullets thus far, but I was not sure how much longer
it’d last before erupting.

I released my grip and shoved the hostage as
hard as I could toward the gunman in the foyer. Taking a couple of
steps back, I knelt down. Aiming the Colt, I fired four rounds.
Bullets from the machine gun barely missed me as they whizzed
through the air. Every bullet I fired flew directly past the flung
hostage and into the other soldier’s chest, except for one.

It tore through his neck. The soldier
stopped firing immediately. The bullets whipped him off his feet,
and he landed hard against the floor. Blood gushed out of the
bullet holes. The body convulsed violently. He gripped his throat
with one working arm. He hacked up blood.

I heard Anna scream once again from the
floor above. I jumped to my feet. The shaft of the Colt was
exposed, signaling I’d used all of the bullets. I tossed the gun
and ran over to the fallen soldier. Reaching down, I retrieved the
MP40 and ejected the magazine. It was empty. I searched the fallen
soldier for more magazines.

There was nothing—no magazines, no other
guns, nothing. The only weapon I found was a stiletto with a long
blade. It was like an ice pick with a slightly thicker blade.

I pocketed it and then looked over at the
other soldier. I tried to lift the flamethrower, but it was too
heavy for me to carry around. Also the air smelled like gasoline,
and I knew the tank had been penetrated during the struggle. It
could explode at any moment.

I searched the soldier and found nothing.
Despite feeling unsatisfied with the stiletto, I still charged out
of the building in order to search for another way up to Anna. I
looked over the alleyway cautiously. I remembered seeing two other
soldiers, one with a MP40 machine gun and one with a shotgun. Plus,
I remembered the sniper. I knew the large man with the chainsaw was
up there with Anna.

Anna’s screams still echoed throughout the
building. Before I made it into the street, I heard a bursting
sound, like a water pipe rupturing. I turned back toward the foyer.
The flamethrower tank was leaking profusely. Only a split second
went by before I realized what was about to happen.

The tank exploded. A massive cloud of smoke
and intense heat that seemed to appear from nowhere filled up the
entire first floor of the building and spread past me onto the
street. The force of the explosion hit me in nearly the same
moment. It lifted me off the ground and threw me twenty meters out
into the street. I hit the ground hard and rolled until I crashed
into a pile of debris.

Blood seeped out of my forehead. I felt numb
all over. I looked up in time to see a second explosion. This one
consumed the upper floors of the building. My eyes were heavy and
swelling up. I tried to stay conscious long enough to determine
whether or not Anna had survived.

A long moment went by. I fought the
overwhelming need to blackout—to rest. Paralysis began to consume
me. I could only lie on the ground and watch the burning building.
Suddenly, I heard a faint, shrill sound.

Anna was screaming again. Her scream was the
last thing I heard before I could no longer fight my body’s urge to
shut down. I blacked out.

The screams silenced for the moment. Smoke
rose around my body as I lay in complete stillness. The sun
appeared over the horizon, creating the dullest orange tint around
the battle-ridden town. The orange hue was such a faint glow that
the skyline appeared to be in a sunset, not a sunrise, as though
the light had faded away.

76

I stirred under the smoke. My eyelids
unveiled my green eyes. I took a sudden breath of air. My chest
heaved up and expanded to its maximum capacity. I could feel my
lungs opening up to the air. I felt my energy suddenly
returning.

I stood up and hacked up some dirt that had
managed to get lodged deep in my throat. I spent the next few
minutes trying to breathe regularly. I had no idea how long I’d
blacked out for, but the sun was an indicator that it’d been a
while.

Anna was up on the second floor somewhere. I
tried to gather my strength. I was terrified because she’d stopped
screaming; only the silence that comes after the dust settles
remained.