The Demi-Monde: Winter

by Rod Rees

  There was a round of louder laughter.

  The SS lumbered forward. Eighty yards … seventy yards … sixty yards … fifty yards.

  ‘Fire!’

  The soldiers of the WFA began to fire, working their Martini-Henry rifles for all they were worth, pouring fire into the advancing SS. In an instant the bright Winter’s sunshine was shrouded with a cloying, choking cloud of cordite.

  ‘Hold hard,’ Trixie screamed as the steamer hit the barricade. For a moment she thought the barricade would buckle but the tons of earth and timber that they had laboured to pour into its construction withstood the charge. Now Corporal Zawadzski’s men began to fire down into the ranks of the SS swarming around the beached steamer. A man fell back from the barricade, his face mashed by a bullet. Instinctively Trixie brought her brute of a pistol up, took aim at the SS advancing towards the barricade and pulled the trigger. The Mauser bucked back in her hand, raking her injured shoulder with pain as she worked the trigger and fired again and again and again. Frantically she fired shot after desperate shot into the black mob of the SS, firing until the hammer of her pistol clicked on an empty chamber.

  It looked hopeless: the SS were coming forward like a black wave, hosing the barricade with their automatic weapons. Then little Corporal Michalski and his band struck, hurling their fire-bombs down, turning the whole of Uyazhdov Boulevard into an inferno. In a moment the fashionable tree-lined avenue was turned into a living, burning Hel.

  ‘Now!’ she yelled and two boys – children really, neither was more than ten – leapt over the top of the barricade in a suicidal attempt to throw firebombs into the cabin of the steamer. One was cut down by machine-gun fire but the second managed to thrust his bomb through the driver’s observation port. There was a ‘wooomph’ as the bomb exploded and in that instant the sound of pounding steam pistons and scrabbling wheels was accompanied by the screams of the steamer’s crew as they were burnt to death.

  Then, like the ebbing of a tide, the ferocity of the fighting seemed to suddenly falter and, as she watched, the SS began to retreat.

  There was a shout from the barricades. ‘We’ve beaten them. They’re running for it.’

  ‘Keep firing,’ bellowed Trixie, ‘for fuck’s sake, keep firing. Kill as many of the fuckers as you can. Make them remember. Make them scared. Make them dead.’

  And as she screamed out her orders, Trixie realised that she had never been happier in the whole of her life.

  Comrade Major Hartley stood stock-still in front of Archie Clement’s desk as the Colonel idly played with his pencil, rolling it backwards and forwards between the fingers of his right hand. Finally Clement stopped his fidgeting and slowly raised his gaze.

  ‘So, waddya gotta say for yourself, Major?’

  ‘We encountered greater resistance than we had anticipated, Comrade Colonel. But I am confident …’

  ‘Con-fee-dent. Gracious me, Hartley, that’s a real two-guinea word, but ah gotta say iffn ah was standing in your boots ah wouldn’t be feeling con-fee-dent. No, Sirree. Iffn ah had seen two hundred of mah men blasted to buggery and the rest being forced to retreat by a pack of no-account Rebs, ah don’t think ah’d be using a word like con-fee-dent.’

  Hartley swallowed hard. The perks and benefits that came with being a high-ranking member of the SS were one thing, but they were granted only after having taken an oath of death or glory. And as the performance of his men this afternoon could hardly be termed glorious …

  ‘The Poles have used tactics which are bestial and violate every code governing civilised conduct in war.’

  Clement looked at Hartley as though he were mad. ‘You joshing me?’

  ‘No, Sir: the Poles have children hurling incendiaries from rooftops. They have booby-trapped buildings.’

  ‘Mah, mah, what ruffians we are fighting. Children … boobytraps … whatever will them Rebs think of next? Cuss words? Obscene gestures? You better quit your bellyaching, Comrade Major, ‘cos ah ain’t used to having my SS boys having the shit kicked outta them by Rebel scum.’

  ‘They are fanatical, Comrade Colonel, and their commander is a madman …’ Hartley paused and then corrected himself. ‘… a madwoman.’

  ‘Them Rebs are commanded by a woman?’ asked Clement, suddenly evincing a little more interest.

  ‘Our Balloon Corps Observers report seeing a woman with long blonde hair organising the defenders and one captured Varsovian has confirmed this under interrogation.’

  ‘This woman’s gotta name?’

  ‘The prisoner didn’t know her name. All he was able to say before he died was that she was the same woman who led the attack on the barges. It is typical of these Polish scum that they would force women to fight like men.’

  ‘By mah reckoning, this woman is fighting better than a man, iffn the way she booted your ass this afternoon is any indicator.’ Clement took a long swig of his glass of Solution. ‘You better saddle up, Major Hartley, and get your boys ready to toe the line. You gonna attack again but this time ah’m gonna help you out by making sure that there’s a heavier artillery barrage before you let rip, a barrage so heavy that it’ll pound them Rebs to dog shit. And seeing as you caught me in a forgiving mood, Hartley, ah’m gonna allocate the six newly arrived armoured steamers to your assault. But listen real tight ‘cos ah don’t want there to be any misunderstanding: your objective is to take the barricades which block our advance to the Old Town before nightfall. This is your minimum objective and iffn them Rebs give you the turnabout again, Comrade Major …’ Clement gave Major Hartley an empty, cold smile. ‘Well, ah don’t think it’s necessary to explain to an SS officer who uses big words like con-fee-dent how he should act if he goes and fucks up for a second time, now is it?’

  The artillery barrage lasted for two interminable hours. Holed up in a basement, Trixie heard and felt rather than saw the destruction take place outside. She tried to number the explosions but lost count when she reached thirty and the blasts were coming so close together as to merge into one. As she huddled against the basement wall, hands pressed over her ears, all she wanted was for the hammering to stop, to be in a place where she wasn’t frightened that she’d be buried alive. For two long hours she cowered in the corner of the basement, hoping, praying that one of the shells the Anglos were raining down on Warsaw wouldn’t score a direct hit on where she was hiding.

  Finally there was silence.

  ‘Out, out,’ Trixie ordered as she kicked and pushed her troops out of the bunker. ‘Get back to the barricade.’

  Reluctantly, tiredly, the defenders did as they were told. Trixie emerged, blinking into the late afternoon sunlight, to a changed landscape. The picturesque Warsaw of only a few hours before was gone and in its place stood a desolate scene of ruined and burning buildings, the air dank and rank with the scorched smell of smouldering astral ether. Trixie gagged at the smell and threw up at the side of the road.

  A runner – a small boy wearing the jacket of a dead SS captain – came racing up. ‘Oo is the officer commanding ‘ere?’ he demanded.

  ‘I am,’ said Trixie.

  The boy looked at her suspiciously. ‘Oo are you?’

  ‘She is Lieutenant Trixie Dashwood, commanding Number One Barricade, Uyazhdov Boulevard,’ said Sergeant Wysochi as he tottered out of a bunker to stand beside Trixie. He looked dreadful but he was alive. Trixie felt her spirits rise.

  ‘Where’s Captain Gorski?’ asked the runner.

  ‘Dead,’ said Trixie simply, then held out her hand to take the orders the boy had brought.

  To the Officer Commanding #1 Barricade.

  Greetings,

  It is imperative that this barricade is held until nightfall. The

  defences behind #1 Barricade have been destroyed by enemy

  artillery fire. If you yield, Warsaw is doomed: there is no defence

  between your barricade and the centre of Warsaw. I beg you, as a

  fellow Pole, to spare no effort in your defence of
our people.

  May ABBA guide and protect you.

  Colonel Jan Dabrowski

  Officer Commanding the Warsaw Free Army

  ‘There is a message for you from our commander,’ Trixie announced in her loudest voice to the troops who were labouring to repair the barricade. ‘We are ordered to hold this street until nightfall. If we fail, Warsaw falls. There will be no retreat, there will be no surrender. I am an officer of the Warsaw Free Army and all soldiers under my command will do their duty.’

  The fighting that afternoon was, if anything, more ferocious and more intense than the first attack. The SS had obviously learnt from experience and moved forward more cautiously, house by house, door by door, and, using flame-throwers and grenades, they cleared each house before the main advance reached it.

  They brought up more steamers as well, having protected their vulnerable gun and driving ports with wire to prevent firebombs being thrown inside. There was something implacable, unstoppable about the advance, but for all their care and all their planning, in Trixie the SS met someone equally flexible and inventive in her tactical thinking.

  She sent Sergeant Wysochi out to mine the basements of the houses that lined the advance of the SS, detonating them when platoons of StormTroopers were inside. She sent snipers under the command of Corporal Zawadzski to harry and disrupt the tail of the SS advance, telling her men to kill officers and signallers. She had the bodies of the dead SS booby-trapped so that anyone touching them was maimed or killed.

  But all she and her fighters could do was slow the onslaught: it was impossible to stop the SS advance. By twilight the six armoured steamers spearheading the SS attack force were positioned at the top of Uyazhdov Boulevard ready to begin the final assault on the barricade.

  A grimed and cordite-stained Corporal Michalski appeared from the shadows after making a reconnaissance. ‘We’ve had it, Lieutenant. There are six steamers up there and maybe a thousand of them SS bastards. They’re bringing up field guns too. We’re fucked. Best iffn we pull back now.’

  Trixie looked around at the soldiers defending the barricade. There were perhaps a hundred and fifty of them left, at least a third of them women and a quarter little more than children. They were exhausted, thirsty and hungry.

  Slowly she shook her head. ‘We can’t, Corporal. They’re still evacuating all the civilians from the houses around Pilsudski Square. If the Anglos break through now there’s nothing to stop them slaughtering the whole lot of them. We have to stand.’

  The Corporal gave a shrug. ‘Okie-dokie, Lieutenant.’ And then he stopped, looked Trixie straight in the eyes and gave her a salute. ‘It has bin an honour an’ a privilege serving under you, Miss.’ And with that he signalled to his band of boys and girls, who collected up their armfuls of firebombs and the grenades taken from the SS dead and followed Michalski back into the shadows.

  Trixie had replaced her Mauser pistol with a Webley taken from a dead SS trooper. Being double-action it was easier for her to fire and a damned sight more accurate, but after an hour of fighting her palm had been ripped to pieces by the kick of the revolver, her right ear was stone-deaf and her fingers were burnt and blistered from loading bullets. By her reckoning she must have accounted for thirty of the SS but for every one she downed two seemed to take their place. The WFA ranks were thinning too: the barricades were littered with busted and twisted bodies.

  Trixie checked her watch. It was still only six o’clock. It wouldn’t be dark for an hour and with the steamers only a hundred yards away there seemed little chance of their being able to hold the SS. They needed a miracle.

  And the miracle was provided by Sergeant Wysochi.

  Where he had scrounged up the explosives Trixie had no idea, but it was obvious from the size of the blast that the mines he had built in the basements of the two houses that faced each other across the boulevard had been huge. The Sergeant waited until the two front steamers were in line with the houses before he pressed the detonator. There was an ear-splitting explosion, the whole street quivered, the fronts of the two tall buildings blew out and then slowly, majestically the buildings toppled forward, smashing into one another as they crashed onto the street below, burying the two steamers as they fell.

  There was a ragged cheer from the WFA fighters, but the respite afforded by the Sergeant’s booby-trap was short-lived. Immediately the dust settled Trixie could see SS soldiers begin to clamber over the debris, but without the shield offered by the two steamers they made easy targets. The Poles poured rifle fire into their ranks and children hurled bombs down on them from the windows of overlooking buildings. They died in their dozens but still they came on.

  For twenty frantic, ferocious minutes it was nip and tuck. The firing from the SS was incredible. It was so heavy that Trixie was scared to raise her head above the parapet to see what she was firing at, all she could do was hold her pistol up to a hole in the barricade and pull the trigger, hoping that at least some of her rounds found a target.

  And then suddenly – miraculously – it was over. As the daylight began to fade, the whistles sounded and the SS began to retreat. Dog-tired and hardly daring to believe what she was witnessing, Trixie slumped to her knees, but even as she knelt she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  Looking up, she saw the face of a young green-jacketed lieutenant peering down at her. ‘Do you command here?’ he asked.

  All Trixie had the energy to do was nod.

  ‘You and your fighters are ordered to pull back to Jerusalem Avenue. Keep to the side of the street, keep to the doorways. I’ll manage the rearguard. Good luck.’

  She felt Wysochi at her side helping to lever her back to her feet and as she tried to brush the dust from her hair she took a moment to look around. Of the two hundred fighters she had begun the battle with there were barely fifty left standing. It had been a mighty near-run thing.

  ‘Get back to Jerusalem Avenue,’ she shouted, her voice cracked and parched. She turned to the lieutenant. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant.’

  He shook his head. ‘No. It is the people of Warsaw who must thank you.’

  Major Hartley sat, stupefied, in his room, idly playing with the glass of Solution. An almost empty bottle of Blood Heat’s Finest 20% Solution sat on his desk in mute testimony to the way Hartley had been punishing himself – and the bottle – for the last hour.

  He grabbed at the bottle and attempted to top up his glass, but his hand was so unsteady that most of the red Solution tipped over the desk. With a slurred curse, he pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and tried to mop up the spill. In the end he gave up and simply lowered his forehead into the refreshingly cool pool of Solution.

  Even if he hadn’t been quite so blood-drunk he would still have been befuddled by how these Poles – these badly armed, outnumbered and ill-trained Poles – had defeated his beloved SS.

  He had never ever seen men – and women! – fight like that, as though they were indifferent to death. He was a veteran of the Troubles, a veteran who thought he had experienced every horror war had to offer, but he had never experienced anything to compare to these Polish fighters. They fought like the very possessed, hurling themselves, careless of their own safety, of their own survival, on his StormTroopers. He wondered for a moment whether they had been drugged, whether they had been dosed with blood, but this he knew was ridiculous. The only thing that would make a soldier fight like that was desperation … that and the Fury who was leading them.

  What had his StormTroopers started calling her: Lady Death?

  No wonder he had failed. And in the SS there was only one remedy for failure.

  Major Hartley checked his watch. It was now nearly eight o’clock. His two young sons would be in bed. He took the envelope addressed to his wife and placed it squarely before him. Then taking up his Mauser, he blew a hole in his head.

  28

  The Demi-Monde: 79th Day of Winter, 1004

  It was that canny nuJu Abraham Eleazar who secured a homeland for his
people in NoirVille, a homeland that became known as the nuJu Autonomous District (the JAD). Eleazar developed a chemical additive – Aqua Benedicta – which prevents blood congealing and enabled the Blood Brothers to store and preserve the blood they traded. It was Aqua Benedicta that made the Blood Brothers the Demi-Monde’s pre-eminent blood brokers. The establishing of the JAD was a deal which both parties were pleased to conclude: Shaka and his Blood Brothers secured a supply of Aqua Benedicta and in exchange they respected the independence of the JAD and the right of the JADniks to follow the WhoDoo religion. The only element of friction in this relationship is that the JAD has become a sanctuary for NoirVillian woeMen fleeing husbands and fathers.

  – Include Us Out: A Short History of the JAD: Schmuel

  Gelbfisz, JAD Hipster Books and Comics

  ‘I’ve got lice!’ squealed Norma Williams. She leapt to her feet and began to rake her fingers frantically through her hair.

  Vanka laughed. ‘Everybody’s got lice. Why should you be different?’

  It was true: in the cramped, crowded and decidedly unhygienic confines of a war-ravaged Ghetto, lice – and rats and mice and fleas – had overrun the place. Everyone had lice, just as everyone was filthy and foul and permanently scared shitless that one of the never-ending procession of SS artillery shells smashing into the city had their name on it.

  But seeing the look of real horror on Norma’s face, Ella took pity on her. Making a real effort – her moaning was incessant – she tried to be reassuring. ‘If it bothers you that much the best thing to do, when you turn in tonight, is to hang your clothes outside. The frost will kill the lice.’

  ‘I don’t mean in my clothes.’ Norma lowered her voice and looked suspiciously around at the other people huddled in the cellar. ‘I mean in my hair,’ she whispered. ‘I’m infested.’