Blood of Vipers

by Michael Wallace

  “No, I’m not. Not this time.”

  “Shh,” she said in a soothing tone, as if he were the baby. “That is good. You come down. Where it is safe, yes?”

  He let her lead him to the head of the stairs. Women rushed up and held out their hands for him, pleading, begging for him to come downstairs. One woman took her daughter of perhaps ten or eleven, and pushed her forward, as if insisting that he look, forcing him to imprint the child in his mind.

  It worked. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t leave them.

  “Okay,” he told Greta. “But first I’m going to put up my surrender flag, so the Russians can find us.”

  “No, you must not.”

  “Yeah, really I got to do it. They’ll find us anyway. I want it clear ahead of time that we’re surrendering. And when they come I’ll tell them I’m American. That’ll stop them, at least for a minute. They’ll get an officer, and then...well, I hope I’ll be able to keep you safe until I reestablish contact with the U.S. Army.” He looked down at the child in his arms and held her out. “Can someone take her, please?”

  A woman with sad, dark eyes held out her hands for the baby girl. Grateful, he bent and handed her down into the cellar.

  “Come on,” he said to Greta. “Give me a hand. It will go quicker with two.”

  She followed him around to the front of the house, where Cal pulled out the sheet he’d taken from the clothesline, still tucked under his arm, and gave her one half. “We’ll climb onto the rubble and spread it out as wide as we can.”

  “Would it be good idea to write something on the sheet?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Do not shoot, maybe?”

  “Good idea, but I don’t have anything—” he began, but she’d already let go of her half of the sheet and ran around the corner of the destroyed house.

  She came back with a bottle of ink. “I saw this earlier. I could not find a pen.”

  “Good thinking, and forget the pen. We don’t need it.”

  They spread the sheet on the ground and Cal dipped his thumb in the ink and wrote in big letters.

  DO NOT SHOOT

  AMERICAN SOLDIER WITH PRISONERS

  When he finished, he stared at the sheet, worried it wouldn’t do any good. Forget English, the Russians didn’t even use the same alphabet. They wouldn’t know this from German.

  He had an idea. He freshened the ink on his thumb, and then sketched a big rectangle below his surrender message, with stars in the upper left corner of the rectangle and stripes across the rest. When he finished, he had a fairly good approximation of an American flag in black and white.

  Cal and Greta scrambled up the side of the ruins, over empty window frames, charred mattresses, and broken slate shingles. They spread the flag on the north-facing side, toward the road and the battle, and pinned down the corners with piles of broken slate until the ends stopped flapping in the breeze.

  Greta climbed down, but Cal hazarded a glance across the fields before following. Dense columns of smoke sat in a row in the direction of the road, which he couldn’t see through the hedges and windbreaks of trees. The sky had an acrid smell like burning rubber. Flakes of ash spiraled down like gray snowflakes. The last wall of the burning barn collapsed with a crash.

  When they returned to the cellar, Cal looked for the woman who had taken the baby. She sat in the corner, dress slipped off one shoulder, nursing. The baby lay still and placid as she ate, eyes closed, and mouth moving rhythmically. The implication hit him—the woman was ready to nurse, yet had no child with her except the one he’d given her.

  Helgard gathered Greta and pulled her down, and then helped Cal shut the bulkhead doors.He sank to his haunches in one corner to watch the women and their children through the shafts of light that penetrated the broken flooring above them. Four women, three teenage or nearly teenage girls. A toddler with a bandage around the eyes. The nursing baby. And a single boy, who looked about nine. Plus Helgard and Greta, of course.

  He’d never seen a more miserable-looking group in his life, and it struck him as unfair that now, at the end, the men who had started the war were dead, dying, prisoners, and here were their wives and children, waiting for the final, cruelest cut of the scythe. These people had nothing to do with this war; couldn’t it leave them be?

  But no, that wasn’t quite right, was it? The war didn’t start in a vacuum, and women had their place in enforcing the natural order. Back home, when a young man failed to show the proper enthusiasm, girlfriends, sisters, mothers, even elderly women in the street joined forces to heap scorn until the young man did his duty and enlisted. How much worse would it be here, under the oppressive boot of a fascist regime?

  Women had lifted their hands in the Nazi salute, had taught their sons about national honor and hatred of Slavs and Jews. And Cal had no doubt that women had stood by silently while the Gestapo rounded up anyone who dared stand against the regime.

  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.

  10.

  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.