Girl Stalks the Ruins

by Jacques Antoine

  The first few young men wearing black t-shirts signified nothing to Perry. But when he stepped further out from the shop entrance, he saw what she had seen – a sea of black shirts, arrayed in a more orderly pattern than the advance guard had been. Banners fluttered in the background, bearing a field of crimson with the letters he’d been seeing around the city, now boldly marked in black and white: DVU.

  The meaning was unmistakable – the posters announced a political rally, and they’d stumbled into the middle of it – and the stark haircuts told Perry what he needed to know. These were neo-Nazis, and Li Li and Stone were about to be engulfed, and Emily was already trying to press through an increasingly resistant crowd.

  “Wait.” He reached out for Emily’s hand. “We can go around.”

  When she turned, her eyes were alight with an unfamiliar passion – could it be fear? “Fine. Let’s go your way.” She tried to squeeze by two men with heads shaved to reveal skull tattoos, one of twin lightning bolts, the other of a grinning Death’s head. They moved to block her path, and one touched her hand.

  “Bitte, gnädiges Fräulein.” His words seemed perfectly polite, but for the leering expression on his face. Perry readied himself to intercede. But Emily merely pushed his hand away and glowered at him, and he stepped aside. The potentially bloody and uncontainable confrontation he’d half expected hadn’t materialized, and Perry could breathe again.

  Men in green jackets had taken up stations around the square – these must be the local police, judging from the tension in their faces. Perry caught a glimpse of protestors preparing themselves on a side street, and officers in riot gear couldn’t be far behind. The security gates on all the shops had come down, and other men, wearing the drab formal suits common to federal agents everywhere, observed from a safe distance.

  Once the column had reached the end of the square, and a leader had stepped on top of a wooden box to address them through a bullhorn, they spread out to fill the margins. This made it easier to circle around the back, but it also meant the kids were now completely surrounded.

  As they ran, Li Li’s voice rang out, an angry, embarrassed squawk: “Let go of me.” The men nearest her had taken an interest, and one held the end of her ponytail, while another had a hand on her shoulder, and Perry thought he could make out his words.

  “Komm, schönes Schlitzaugenmädchen...“

  Whatever the words might mean, the tone of his voice was not as respectful as what had been directed at Emily a moment ago. Stone had been lost in his drawing, but as soon as he heard Li Li cry out, he dropped his pad and grabbed the man’s wrist. In the time it took to blink, he’d twisted the man down and flung him aside, where he collided with several others before landing on the pavement. In the meantime, Stone had seized a second man by the throat and held him above the ground, legs and arms flailing about.

  “Stop, my sweet boy,” Emily called out. “Don’t hurt him.”

  Stone turned at her words, and tossed the man into a group of others. The crowd backed away, and began to take notice of the large young man in their midst, as if they’d just discovered a snake in the grass. But, soon enough, they’d take a different sort of interest.

  “We have to get him out of here,” Emily whispered as loudly as she dared. “Before he hurts someone… or worse.”

  Perry nodded, and pulled on Stone’s shoulders. But he was immovable, glowering at the men who loomed around them, and refused to abandon his post.

  “How?”

  “Take Li Li. He’ll follow.” With these words, Emily tugged on Li Li’s wrist and gestured toward an alley on one side. “We have to go, sweetheart… now.”

  As soon as she started moving, Stone followed, just as Emily had predicted, and Perry herded them along from behind. But like hunting dogs, as soon as the men around them saw the strangers run, something like a prey drive kicked in, and they couldn’t help but chase after.

  The alley was wide enough for five or six people to walk abreast, and more than comfortable for a small group to run through.

  “Take them to the hotel… right at the end, and then left.” Emily nudged Li Li forward and stepped aside to guide Stone after her.

  “What are you going to do?” Perry glanced over his shoulder to see her take a stand in the alley, feet planted one slightly in front of the other, hands out wide.

  “I’m going to reason with them.”

  “We can all make it to the hotel. It’s only a few blocks. Run now.”

  Not the entire crowd, of course, most of whom were still listening to the man with the bullhorn bark out what sounded like slogans in an increasingly passionate voice – he could be heard even at the far end of the alley – but a dozen or so men in black shirts were running toward Emily.

  “Go,” Perry shouted to Li Li, as he gave her a shove down the next street, his other hand still clutching the corner of a brick building, as if that would preserve some contact with Emily. “The hotel is that way. Do you remember how to get there?”

  Li Li nodded, but didn’t move more than a few steps.

  “Listen. You’ve got to get Stone to the hotel. Can you do that?”

  Li Li’s eyes snapped into focus with the new responsibility. Taking care of Stone provided a purpose she could focus on. Reassured, or at least hopeful, Perry turned back into the alley.

  That many men ought to have been able to push past Emily just on the basis of relative mass and force of will. But for some reason, they had been brought to a standstill by the sight of her, a solitary woman, barely five feet eight inches tall, and at most a hundred sixty pounds. It occurred to Perry that he had no idea how much she weighed. For all he knew, she weighed a hundred thirty, or perhaps a hundred eighty.

  No, she couldn’t weigh that much, since he weighed one eighty five, and he was six foot one. But she was deceptively strong – he’d found that out on several occasions, and strength doesn’t come without mass. Still, even if she weighed three hundred pounds, it wouldn’t be enough to hold back a mob of angry neo-Nazis… and yet…

  The first man to lunge at her had already paid a heavy price, and lay in an awkward heap on one side, against a trash can. This must have given the others pause, since they seemed to be gathering themselves for a more concerted second attempt.

  Emily took a long low step to her right and thrust her arms into a provocative position, one open hand held high, the other low and to the side. A second step brought her to the center of the alley and a different hand position. Two men tried to grab her, but she stepped away without breaking her rhythm, and pulled one over her hip. He screamed when he hit the ground, since she’d forced his shoulder out of its accustomed relation to the rest of his body in the process, and somehow managed to jam her trailing foot into the throat of the other man. When another tried to slip past, she pivoted into a low kick that upended him, and he landed on the back of his neck.

  “That’s bagua-zhang,” Li Li said. Perry turned to see both kids standing directly behind him, staring as curiously as he was. “She showed me how to do it at Wudangshan.”

  Perry found himself transfixed by this new style. Just when he thought he’d seen to the bottom of her bag of tricks, Emily had managed to pull out something entirely new. Her movements were a hypnotic mix of fluid and sudden. There was such self-control visible in every step, and eventually the mob was cowed by the fate of each man who took her on.

  Judging from the tattoos and the images printed on their t-shirts, Perry supposed they fancied themselves soldiers. Maybe some really had served in the Bundeswehr, and even been posted to Afghanistan, where they might have seen limited action. But none of them could have seen combat on the scale Emily was used to.

  She glowered at the men still standing and they shied away from her, until another voice rattled them from behind. A much larger man, stout and muscular, pushed his way through the crowd to see what had stalled their advance. Stone moved to re-enter the alley, but Perry and Li Li held him back.

  “No
, you mustn’t,” Li Li pleaded. “We have to go back to the hotel… please.”

  Eventually, Stone relented and accompanied her away from the alley, and Perry turned back toward Emily for one last glimpse – until he saw how much larger the man facing her was. Could he really be twice her size, with arms as thick as her legs? Surely, he must have expected to backhand this girl out of the way, or perhaps allow the mob to vent its rage on her.

  How strange, then, that he was unable to strike her at all. He slapped at her, swung his fists, even kicked at her, all to no avail. At one point, he seemed to have her in his grasp, but just as he tried to press his advantage, clutching her shoulder and preparing a strike, he felt the pressure of her thumb on the soft spot under his jaw. She pressed him back and peeled his hand from her shoulder, twisting down and out until he’d been forced to his knees. She glowered at the others as she tormented their champion who, for his part, tried not to cry out, with his face pressed into the pavement.

  In a last effort to reclaim some respect, when she released him he lunged at her, only to find himself once again ensnared in a pain-compliance hold. But this time, instead of a hard crouch, she sent him cartwheeling into a wall, where he lay motionless, groaning.

  The noise from the main square had abated by now; the man speaking through the bullhorn had finished his address, and the cheers from the black shirts, as well as the shouts of the protestors, had gone quiet. Officers in green jackets had taken notice of the disturbance in the alley, and began to push through from the other end. Emily sneered at the perplexed crowd of Neo-Nazis and walked away, seemingly without a care.

  Later, finally able to relax in the bathtub in their room, Perry’s thoughts kept returning to the instant ferocity Stone had unleashed in the square to defend Li Li. The boy was large for his age, which Emily insisted was only fourteen years, with broad shoulders and a thick chest, and only slightly shorter than Perry. Hell, he’d be big for a marine. Even more striking than his bulk was the speed of the transition from calm to extreme violence on display in the square.

  How different was Stone, in this respect, from Emily? He’d seen her fight on numerous occasions, and he knew how to value the magnitude of her skills. But he also appreciated the unique shape of her fighting spirit, and its salient feature was the ability to rouse her fury quickly. She didn’t hesitate in the face of sudden danger, and often seemed to beather opponents to the punch because they did hesitate. Though she could be rash, she was never paralyzed by fear. Perhaps she knew better than Stone how to return ferocity to dimensions more suited to the ordinary bounds of social life.

  Last night, in the Kaiserslautern Bierstübe, she had responded instantly to a threat she’d perceived in the behavior of a pair of BFV agents, while he had hesitated under the onslaught of Dieter’s sexual innuendos. When she recognized the true situation, she reined in her passion and released Anneke before any real harm had been done.

  From the first moment he met her, all those years ago in the Halsey Field House in Annapolis, he’d assumed her fighting spirit was born of trauma. Coach Parker had invited her that day, a mere high school senior, to school the karate team in the subtleties of what she called sen, and not everyone was receptive, at least initially. By the time she’d introduced the entire team, one by one, to the true meaning of elusiveness and sudden ferocity, nobody doubted her any longer. He sparred with her last, after the others had gone, and in the vast quiet of the empty field house, he fought harder than he ever had before, struggled to overcome her already extensive skills, even lost his temper at one point, only to discover the god of battles gleaming at the bottom of her dark eyes.

  He lingered in the cooling water of the bath a little longer, and turned over this new thought: if she was like Stone, and her ferocity hadn’t been built up out of harsh experience, but had come to her naturally, might their children inherit the same character? That is, if she’d ever consent to marry him. His own father had worked hard to stiffen his spirit in the softly forested land of Vermont, and a few of the scars from that period could still be felt. But he might have to be a different sort of father, reining ferocity in rather than provoking it.

  Emily stuck her head around the bathroom door – “You almost done in here?” – and paused without thinking to consider herself in the mirror. She smoothed the robe down across her hips, tilted her head, and then retreated to the main room. Such an odd gesture for this consummate tomboy – he didn’t have the mental focus to follow the thought to its natural conclusion.

  Chapter 5

  Riding The Rails

  Of course, the next morning Emily had insisted on walking to the Hauptbahnhof, pulling luggage the whole way. By the time they crossed Bismarckstraße, Perry had plenty of motivation to regret bringing a duffle without wheels. But it was sweet of Stone to make a point of walking in front with him, carrying his bag even though it had wheels. Had Emily put him up to it? Perhaps she’d also wanted one last chance to pop into a shop or two.

  A darker thought presented itself: perhaps she just wanted to pass through the scene of the previous day’s ‘unpleasantness.’ If it was catharsis she was after, Li Li appeared not even to notice, though she had developed an air of inscrutability that could rival Emily’s, on occasion. By contrast, Stone was preoccupied with the pleasures of walking in a group.

  When they passed by the fountain in the central market square, too early yet for the tourists to have finished their hotel breakfasts, and still time for the merchants to busy themselves about opening their shops, Perry thought a few of them paused to take notice of their little procession. In fact, one old man, who had just moved several displays onto the pavement in front of his shop, took particular notice of Emily, and stepped back inside. In the windows on either side, other faces had paused from their labors to take notice of her. Perry glanced around the square, and thought this curiosity had become more widespread than he was comfortable with, though she seemed not to notice, or at least, was not letting on if she did.

  “Bitte,” the old man cried out. “Warten Sie mal, gnädige Fräulein.” He turned to say something to the old woman who’d remained in the back of the shop, and repeated his call, since Emily had not responded. “Bitte, warten Sie mal…”

  Finally, Emily stopped to consider the old man. In the meantime, the food stalls at the far end of the square had begun to show signs of life, and some part of their activity seemed to have reference to them. Perry pulled Stone to one side, the better to take stock of the situation.

  “Bitte, Fräulein.” The old shopkeeper had caught up to Emily by this time. “Verzeihen sie uns, gnädige Fräulein… was sie gestern getan haben… Danke vielmals.” He tried to push a small package into her hands. “Bitte, Fräulein.”

  Emily considered the bright paper and the ribbon he’d wrapped it up in, and looked into the man’s face. His kind intentions were unmistakable, though she couldn’t quite guess at their precise meaning. A young woman approached from a storefront two doors down.

  “He wants to thank you, and apologize,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “Everyone saw what you did yesterday. Those men, they’re not from around here. The whole town is embarrassed. But you stood up to them, and it gave the Polizei an excuse to arrest a few and chase the rest out of town.”

  More people crowded around Emily and pressed trinkets and tokens of appreciation into her hands. The young woman who spoke English ran back to her shop and returned with a gift for Stone.

  “I saw you drawing by the fountain yesterday. This is for you, because you stood up for your sister. You were very brave.”

  Stone held the calligraphy pen in his thick fingers, and grunted and nodded at the woman, until tears came to his eyes.

  “He doesn’t speak,” Li Li said. “Thank you for the pen. He will love it.”

  By the time they cleared the square, they’d amassed two shopping bags full of gifts – post cards, sunglasses, a fine scarf, a couple of snow globes, a pair o
f earrings, t-shirts and sweatshirts, and more – and the food stalls had put together an assortment of snacks for the train ride.

  Pushing through the crowd at the train station was less challenging, even though the last of the commuter traffic still clogged the main platforms. Emily had reserved first class seats on the 08:15 Deutsche Bahn Express, with a change at Saarbrücken.

  A local train pulled away and the westbound platform cleared enough for Perry to find a bench for the four of them, and Emily handed the shopping bags to Li Li.

  “See if you can combine these so it’s not so much to carry.”

  Within a few minutes, Li Li had spread the contents across the bench and begun sorting them according to suitability and recipient, as she saw fit: a pen for Stone, a sweatshirt for Perry, a bracelet and a set of post cards for herself, and a mysterious, wrapped box.

  “What’s this, Emmy?”

  “Open it and find out.”

  “I think it’s for you. The old man… didn’t he give it to you, special?”

  Perry extended a hand. “Let me see.” He held it up to his ear and gave it a shake.

  “Just open it.” Emily stood up to stretch and took an interest in a man with a limp further down the platform.

  “No, Li Li’s right. He meant it for you.” When she didn’t respond, and began to walk away, he called after her. “Em, what’s up?”

  “Nothing. Just stretching my legs. Didn’t we see a snack stand down this way?” She didn’t wait to hear an answer.

  “Em, you already have a sack full of food from the folks back in town… have you forgotten?”

  “I’ll just get the kids some juice.”

  Perry got up to follow her, unconvinced by this lackluster excuse for her departure. It was easy to see what had caught her attention – the limping man, and now he had begun to look familiar. The blue shirt and trousers of a station official, maybe a porter or platform guard, masked whatever tattoos he may have, but Perry thought he recognized one of the Neo-Nazis from yesterday’s rally. Is he one of the men Emily had thrown into a wall? One arm hung lower than the other, perhaps the sign of a dislocated shoulder.