Axe suppressed a laugh. “Nothing is wrong with you. This reaction,” she said, pointing at Sven’s startled face, “is why we are doing this. But you have to take your clothes off, too. All of them.”
Sven nodded. He disrobed, keeping his back to Axe. He cupped his hand over his genitals and turned enough to quietly say, “What now?”
“We pretend, make him hear us, then, when I say, you lie down and hold your chest and groan. You are dying. The excitement was too much for you. Understand?”
“Yes. Do you think he is asleep?”
“If he is, he won’t be.”
Axe groaned a sensuous mmm sound. “Oh, Sven,” she said, and kept moaning, building from sound to sound, a little louder and a little more carefree with each surge of feigned passion.
She nodded at Sven and gestured with an open, beckoning hand. He responded with his own form of passion: “Yes, Axe. Hello. Very nice … ugh,” and this time Axe squealed, turning her laughter into something she could use.
She increased the pitch and volume of her moaning. She sat down heavily on the bed, which creaked loudly, and repeated the action a dozen times. Sven did the same. He grunted the same grunt, over and over, louder and louder, like a pig rutting, “Ugh, ugh, ugh,” and did not stare at Axe’s breasts.
Above the noise, Axe heard the guard rouse. She heard his footsteps take him to the corridor, where he stopped. He was listening. Axe pushed Sven in the chest. He slammed back onto the bed. She stopped moaning and now she screamed, “Sven! Are you all right? Sven!” and he lay there panting, his eyes wide open, as Axe screamed at him.
She tapped her breast and Sven merely stared, so she tapped Sven’s chest and then he seemed to understand, for he began moaning again and clutching at his chest and writhing. Axe sprang to her feet.
“Volny! Help! Volny!”
The guard came at a trot. His face was flushed and the crotch of his pants bulged.
Axe faced him, conscious of keeping her back from sight—keeping the pistol from sight. Her bare chest was on full show.
“Volny!” she said, then put an arm across her breasts as if she had just remembered her modesty, making sure to be clumsy enough to leave one nipple showing. “Help, it is Sven, he is dying!”
The German stood there, wide mouthed, staring at Axe, his eyes flicking across her belly and shoulders and breasts. Sven continued to writhe and moan, his knees bent and turned toward the wall so that only his bony white ass showed.
Axe dropped her arm and daintily—damsel in distress style— ran to the bars. “Volny! Please help! Quick!”
The guard nodded and looked at his pocket and then looked at Axe’s breasts and nodded again. He reached into his pocket and drew his keys. He thrust a black key into the lock and twisted and jangled.
“Hurry,” said Axe.
The lock clicked and Volny swung the gate open. He went to Sven. The unusually tall German stood over him, staring now at Sven’s tiny, naked body. Sven started to hyperventilate; the fear and shame and panic gripped his chest and pushed the air out and pain in, making real the very thing he had begun as a feign.
“What do I do?” said Volny, still watching the little Belgian man who had apparently fucked himself into some sort of life-threatening conniption.
Axe pulled the pistol from her pant belt. She held it around the barrel and breach. She ran forward and reached high and smashed the stock into the back of the German’s head, just as a soldier had done to her the day before. But whereas she fell down, unconscious, Volny merely yelled in pain and dropped to his knees. His hand went to the back of his head as he crouched like a supplicant to a king—or queen.
Axe lunged forward and repeated her blow. Volny shrieked again and dropped fully to the ground, but he was still conscious. He turned on the stone floor and looked up at Axe, not at her breasts but at her face, and managed to say, “Why?”
Axe responded by dashing in again, arm raised to deliver a third blow, this one to the temple. Instinct—the dumb beast inside the German, the very thing that had turned Volny into an unthinking penis on legs—finally accepted that he was not being presented with an opportunity to mate, but rather an opportunity to be slaughtered before he had a chance to father little Germans of his own. That instinct to survive took over and Volny lunged from the ground, meeting Axe at the waist before she could land her blow.
He slammed her into the ground. The pistol knocked free from her grip.
Volny scrambled on top of Axe, straddling her, his knees either side of her naked breasts. He had eyes only for Axe’s throat. He wrapped his big hands around it, the long and knobby fingers overlapping by inches either side, and he squeezed.
Volny looked at Axe’s face and said, “You bitch,” more in shock than anger.
His grip was strong and his hands sunk into the protective flesh that provided a buffer between the violence of the world and Axe’s arteries, veins, windpipe, spine—everything that carried her life stuff. Axe’s hands scratched and slapped and punched, but she could only reach Volny’s forearms and it made no difference.
Sven responded without thought or delay. He bodily threw himself at Volny, every clumsy and awkward pound slapping into the tall German. Sven and Volny tumbled over and Volny’s grip knocked free.
As Axe fought for air, Sven scrambled away from Volny on all fours, but the lanky German reached out and grabbed his ankle. Sven sprawled like a newborn foal. Volny yanked him backwards, dragging Sven beneath his own body.
Now he did to Sven exactly what he had done to Axe, except Sven was face down on the stone and Volny had his hands wrapped from the back of the neck to the front. As he strangled him, he bashed Sven’s face into the ground, pulling up and thrusting down, pulling up and thrusting down.
“Stop!” screamed Axe, though she did not have enough in her lungs for a true scream, so she hissed the demand as a kitten hisses when denied the carcass of a bird—a naked little Dutch bird—and of course Volny did not stop, for his shock had become anger and his actions were those of a man, killing.
Axe crawled across and grabbed the pistol from the ground. She got to her feet quickly but shakily. She pointed the gun at Volny’s head.
“Stop,” she said.
Volny did not seem to hear her, for he continued to choke Sven’s neck and ram his face into the stone. Axe staggered forward.
“Stop. Please stop!” she said and kept moving forward, till the pistol poked Volny in the ear.
The German’s head twisted around so that as he continued to choke Sven he looked past the pistol and, as if in a trance, stared at Axe’s tits. All the while he continued to buck up, hauling Sven with him, then ram down. The motion would have been no different if he had been fucking Sven, and in a way he was, he was fucking the very life out of the little Dutchman who had pretended the same moments before.
There was nothing in Volny’s face that said to Axe he would stop, that he could be stopped, and so she pulled the trigger.
Pop!
A dot of red immediately appeared in the middle of Volny’s forehead. He crumpled on top of Sven.
Axe dropped the pistol and grabbed a side of the limp German. She hauled him from Sven, who stayed down. Axe turned Sven over. His face was covered with blood. His nose was smooshed to the right. Sven gasped for air and coughed all at once. He spat fine founts of blood.
Axe retrieved the pistol and put her shirt on while Sven recovered. She did not once ask if he was all right. He had to be all right, or they were dead. She gathered his clothes and threw them at his feet.
“Sven, put them on. Quickly. We have to go.”
Sven sat on the ground, his face dripping blood onto his lap, and he did not move. Axe looked at him, at his naked chest which showed every rib and seemed too small to house a heart—even a small, sparrow-like heart. She felt pity and sadness. Sven sucked air through his mouth and filled his chest, and still it seemed too small.
Axe tucked the pistol into her belt and rushed across. T
here was no time for the gentler emotions. She picked up his shirt and roughly mothered him, thrusting an arm through a sleeve.
“Come on, Sven! Do you want to die?” she said.
He turned and looked at her, as if seeing his fiancée for the first time.
“Do you? You want to die?” said Axe.
Sven finally started to move. He pushed his arm back and found the other sleeve. He gingerly pushed to his knees, then one foot and one knee, and finally he stood. While he put his pants on, Axe slipped from the cell and, pistol in hand, crept along the corridor. She poked her head around the corner and saw nothing—an empty room. She felt enormous relief. Somehow the soldiers in the neighboring barracks had not been woken. She supposed they had learned to sleep through everything.
Axe called behind in a hushed voice. “Sven, let’s go.”
There had been no time to lace his boots. They dangled open. He trudged up the corridor. He held a handkerchief—Sven always had a handkerchief or two in his pocket— over his nose and applied pressure. The white fabric was already soaked red.
Axe reached back and grabbed his free hand. “You’re doing great, Sven. We’re almost free,” she said.
63
Axe glanced from the window. It was dark outside and she could see almost nothing.
She pushed on the door’s lever handle then stood to the side as it opened a little. She leant her head out just enough to peer beyond the frame. She scanned the black and shadow.
She heard a sound. Trickling. She saw a shape. Axe stared with all the vigor that could be forced upon a set of human eyes. It remained a shape, while the noise remained a trickling noise, then the trickling arrested, started again, arrested, started and finally stopped for good. A grunt. Clearing of a throat. Hocking of spit, spitting, snap of suspenders …
Jesus, a German, a soldier.
Axe jerked her head behind the wall. She put a finger to her lips and made the faintest shh sound for Sven’s benefit. She waited as she heard footsteps approach. Axe held the pistol high, aimed for the spot she expected to see the German’s head when he came through the door.
But he did not. He sat down outside, a wooden bench shuddering with the lazy drop of his body.
“Volny!” the German called.
He fiddled with something. A cigarette—he was rolling a cigarette.
“Volny! Get your tall ass out here. You woke me up, you horse fucker. You can at least have a smoke with me. Volny!”
On the other side of the wall a match struck and a flame flared. Sven wheezed and Axe shot him a look. They were so close that Axe could hear the German suck down smoke then cough up what his throat and lungs repelled, then suck down more smoke. He farted. He hocked something up and spat it out.
“Fucking Volny, giraffe-bred freak of nature,” muttered the German. “What the fuck are you doing, Volny?” said the German to himself, but he could have been saying it to Axe so close was he, so clear were his words.
Axe heard him rise. She closed her eyes, a long blink, opened them and held her breath as she held the pistol in shaking hands. The door flung open.
“Volny,” called the man in a sing-song voice, “oh Volny, you zebra fucker, fucking the zebras—”
His body and head had begun to appear when Axe pulled the trigger, jerking at the mechanism in haste and fear and in doing so pulling her aim forward.
Pop!
The man shrieked from fright and then hollered from pain, for Axe had nearly shot the nose from his face, leaving a dangling heap of cartilage and skin that was like the shrunken wing of a flightless bird plucked for dinner. The German continued to scream as he fell back and landed on the ground.
Axe froze. She had not contemplated the possibility of missing, only the need to steel herself for murder.
Crack!
The soldier fired his rifle, the bullet hitting the door then ricocheting and hitting the stone wall, ricocheting and stopping dead somewhere. Axe heard the soldier working the bolt and it spurred her to action. She jumped into the doorway and pointed and fired at the man’s body, pop pop pop pop pop, and kept pulling the trigger after there were no more bullets, all five of which hit the German, arm and gut and chest and shoulder and chest, for he was so close—no more than two yards from pistol to man—that there was no missing.
And yet he was not dead. He stayed down, lying in his suspenders and looking straight up with wide open eyes, not trying to fight, not trying to live, dying the slow death that was inevitable.
Axe dropped the pistol and stepped forward and grabbed the soldier’s rifle. She realized Sven was not behind her. She thrust her head back inside the building.
“Let’s go! Now!” said Axe, but it was too late. She heard frantic sounds inside the barracks—clattering, shouts, calls to arms. The soldiers would be out in seconds and would gun her and Sven down in cold blood. The same way she had murdered the man in front of her who was still dying.
Sven stepped into the doorway. Axe pushed him and he staggered back. She threw herself inside and slammed the door. She opened the bolt on the rifle, far enough to check if the chambered round was good. She pushed it shut and opened the door a fraction.
She could barely see the barracks, thirty yards away. She thought she could make out the door. She saw a glow coming from a window, which meant there was a source of light inside. When they opened the door they would be silhouetted, making easy targets. She would pick them off. Axe raised the rifle and put it to her shoulder.
The barracks door flung open and Axe reflexively fired. But there was no soldier there, just an empty doorway that now filled as a soldier burst forth and sprinted clear. Axe worked the bolt and tried to follow him as she reloaded. Another soldier ran clear from the door. She jerked her aim back and fired at the moving target, but she had not settled and moving targets were almost impossible to hit. She missed.
Axe worked the bolt, aimed at what she thought was the second man, now stopped and kneeling in the darkness, but that darkness lit with a brief burst of red and the night exploded with a shot, crack, then a second from the other soldier, crack, and the door splintered beside her face.
Axe pulled the rifle and her head inside. She slammed the door shut.
“Oh God, oh God …”
“What’s happening?” said Sven, the first thing he had said in a long time.
Axe did not respond. She heard men running, more than the initial two, and voices as they asked each other what was happening—apparently they did not know, only that Goreg looked shot and someone was shooting at them from the prison—and coordinated their positions for an attack.
Another shot rang out, piercing the glass of the window and cracking where it hit the stone wall. Axe fixed Sven in her gaze.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do, Sven. It’s … We’re …” and she shook her head.
“Maybe we can surrender. We can call out,” he said.
A bullet hit the door, then another hit the wall beside it. Not a barrage of bullets, just enough to keep them pinned down.
Axe shook her head and spoke gently. “No, Sven. Not with what I’ve done. I’m so sorry.”
“We could try, we can explain … tell them …”
“They’ll shoot us like dogs if we go out there! And if they don’t, they’ll find us guilty of murder and put us against a wall. If they don’t kill us tonight, a firing squad will do it tomorrow.”
“Then what? What? I don’t want to die, Axe. I’m scared to die. There’s nothing there. Nothing beyond. I’ve barely had a chance to live!”
Sven began to weep.
“Go back to the cell. Lock yourself inside. The keys are still in the door. Throw them clear. They might believe it was only me. It was only me, so they have to believe it. You don’t deserve any of this. Go, Sven. Please. I don’t want you to die for loving me.”
“But, but—”
Axe leaned across and kissed Sven on the forehead. “I love you. I’ll be fine. I’ll surrender on m
y own. Go!” hissed Axe. “Go!”
Sven nodded. He tried to say something but could not.
“I know, Sven. It’s all right. Please go now, while you can.”
He dropped to knees and one hand—the other still gripping the handkerchief around his bleeding nose—and he crawled along the floor. He rounded the corner and Axe heard him get to his feet. He ran to the cell. The door pulled shut, the keys jangled and then clattered against stone.
Axe heard Sven sobbing.
64
A lone bullet carried through the broken window and bounced off two walls.
Axe was not going to surrender. They had killed her parents. They were going to kill her, too. Axe knew that now. She accepted it as an undeniable fact. But she would not be killed while sleepwalking. Not be led to slaughter like a lamb. She would fight.
Axe stood tall. She backed away till she stood at the opposite end of the room, rifle raised. This time she would wait and aim carefully. Make her last bullets count. Maybe she could get a few before they got her.
She could hear Sven in his cell, sobbing.
Good. Cry and maybe they will believe you did not do this. Survive. Then you can cry for me.
Outside, she could hear them closing in—their voices coordinating movements. Something in her clicked.
To hell with it. Lambs wait. Lions attack.
She walked toward the door. Her right hand remained firm around the stock and trigger of the rifle as she put her left hand on the door handle. She paused, steeling herself to yank down and rush out.
The men outside had grown quiet. They were coming for her now. It was time.
She pulled the door open and shrieked, for there stood a German, inches away—his hand reaching out just like hers—about to breach the threshold. They locked eyes for what could have only been the merest fraction of a second, sharing shock and terror, before the German’s hand jabbed forward and tried to knock away Axe’s rifle barrel.
Phoomp—a strange noise. The man shuddered.
Axe fired—crack!
The bullet zipped harmlessly past his ear. The German remained frozen in the doorway, not advancing, not retreating, not firing his own rifle. His head gradually dropped down so that he stared at his chest.
Michel And Axe Bury The Hatchet (The French Bastard Book 2) Page 25
