Into the Storm

by Lisa Bingham

  Even when following the rules hurt.

  Sweetheart,

  I think that we all believed ourselves to be invincible. Until Dunkirk.

  We’d grown used to our routine—waiting at the dispersal hut for the call. They were days of boredom, interspersed with brief spurts of absolute terror. But we had convinced ourselves that we would hold off the Germans and eventually push them back where they belonged.

  Until suddenly, the German forces seemed to be everywhere—tanks, infantry, and especially in the air. Looking at it now, I can see that we didn’t have a chance. The Germans had brand new equipment with the latest advances, while we had a rudimentary force, some of them using equipment from the Great War.

  We were scrambled immediately, and the day soon became a blur. I had less than ten hours in a Spitfire up to that point, and suddenly I was supposed to down Stukas and Messerschmitts being manned by pilots who’d already been in battle.

  Not many people know this, but a Spit only has a few seconds of firepower. You have to ease up behind your target and shoot him in quick bursts so you don’t use up all your ammo at once. Then, as soon as your magazine is empty, you’re completely vulnerable, so you have to fly like a bat out of blazes to the aerodrome to be rearmed.

  We tried our damnedest to get a handle on things, but it soon became apparent that our forces were being overrun and everyone was told to retreat toward Dunkirk.

  I can still see the streams of men and machines, desperately trying to retreat from the advancing German army. We tried to provide as much cover as possible, but we were suffering our own losses, especially as the defensive lines began to shrink toward the sea. Machinery had to be abandoned when they ran out of fuel. I heard they were dumping dirt into the gas tanks to disable trucks and tanks and ambulances that couldn’t keep up with the retreat. And all the while, we were wondering what the blighters were supposed to do once they reached the Channel. Swim for it? Meanwhile, the German Luftwaffe was strafing the boys as they tried to get away, shooting them like fish in a barrel.

  I’ve since heard some of the squibs saying the RAF didn’t do enough when the flotilla of little ships arrived to help in the evacuation, and that’s total nonsense. They couldn’t see us on the shore because we were inland. We were all that was keeping the Germans at bay long enough to get anybody at all out of France. I suppose most of us have got a chip on our shoulder about that.

  We won’t get caught napping again.

  P.

  Chapter Seven

  Rouen, France

  Charles Tolliver woke to pain. Blinding white-hot pain that seared through his midsection like a knife.

  One moment, he existed in a hazy world of hurt. In the next, the gauziness was stripped away, leaving him alert, trembling, sickened by the sudden bolt of adrenalin that hit his system like a sucker punch.

  Charlie fought against the force that stole the strength from his limbs. Before he could make any headway, a hand slapped over his mouth and a voice hissed in his ear.

  “Shhh!”

  The sharp command was so low that Charlie could have thought he’d imagined it. But the urgency of that simple syllable sliced through his consciousness, centering his panic into the thump, thump, thump of his heart thrumming in his ears.

  “Patrols.”

  Reality rushed over Charlie’s head, swamping him, threatening to drown him in memories of blood and chaos and the noise of gunfire when they’d nearly been captured by a railway patrol for not having the proper papers. Then the secretive hush of their attempts to flee.

  Rex, Alec, and himself.

  No. Not Alec. Alec had drowned when they’d attempted to cross the river just outside of Rouen.

  “Lie still, mate.” The voice was Rex’s. Low. Gravelly from too many years with too many cigarettes. Cigarettes which had been finished days ago, leaving Rex snappish, out of sorts…

  And mean enough to mow down a brigade of Germans single-handedly if he were given the ammunition and half a chance.

  Blinking against the blackness, Charlie eased away from Rex’s grip, signaling that he’d heard and understood the warning. His muscles trembled, already spent with that small spurt of alertness. Bit by bit, he sank into the ground, into the soft, soft, ground…

  It was then that Charlie became aware of the smell. The stench was unmistakable, overwhelming.

  Shit. He was literally mired in shit, his body sunk several inches into the muddy, gooey mess.

  “Oh, God!” Charlie whispered hoarsely, gorge rising in his throat as he bucked against the hands that held him.

  Above him, the craggy face of Rex Carmichael swam into view. How long had they known one another now? Days? Months?

  Forever?

  Time had become as much the enemy as the Nazis, Charlie realized. Their mission had been simple then. England had barely declared war when the British Expeditionary Forces had been sent to protect the Maginot Line in France. Meanwhile, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the Germans threw their full weight against their vulnerable neighbors, Charlie, Alec and Rex were assigned the task of disguising themselves as Swiss businessmen and moving deeper into Nazi-occupied Europe. According to the information gathered from Jean-Claude Foulard and other sources, they had deduced that a secret propulsion facility was being erected near the border in a little town called Hausman. Charlie and his men were to gather as much information as possible and return to the front lines before the whole continent became a battlefield.

  But they’d been too late. The factory site had been bombed. Abandoned. Worse yet, they’d just arrived in southern Germany when the Nazis had begun to gobble up the Low Countries. Rather than a quick trip in and out of The Fatherland, they’d been evading Germans and attempting to reach a possible pick up point ever since.

  Charlie grappled with Rex in his efforts to rise, but his friend pushed him deeper into the muck.

  “Shh! I didn’t have a huge selection of hiding places. This pigsty was the only real cover I could find. Figured the stink alone would keep the Germans away.”

  The sound of footsteps grew louder. The guttural, sharp-edged murmurs were definitely German.

  Rex held a finger to his lips and reached for his sidearm, locking the hammer in place with a perceptible click.

  Charlie swallowed against a gag reflex that threatened to overpower him. The searing pain in his gut, his shoulder, and his thigh began to throb in tempo with his pounding heart. Vaguely he wondered what would get him first—enemy soldiers, or the filth.

  With eyes squeezed tight against the pain, he took gulps of air through his mouth until the intense, stabbing waves of nausea had passed. Then he peered through the slats of the sty to the woolen darkness beyond.

  A slice of a moon spilled its glow to the ground, the light too weak to let him examine the state of his injuries, but too bright to allow real cover. Against the fuzzy shapes of the trees and outbuildings, the green-gray wool of the Germans’ uniforms moved through the darkness like patches of smoke. Silvery light gleamed off their helmets, the shiny buttons of their uniforms, the highly polished boots above muddy soles.

  Rex rolled noiselessly in the muck, his pistol centering on the gap in the wall. He bent low to whisper in Charlie’s ear, “If they come this way, I’ll shoot; you run.” But the cockeyed grin he slanted Charlie’s way made it clear that if they were discovered, neither of them would be running anywhere soon.

  Reality slipped, faded, then rammed into sharp focus again as Charlie panted in the blackness. He blamed himself for getting shot escaping the patrols at the railway station. Bloody, bloody hell! If he’d dodged a second earlier, taken cover a split-second sooner…

  Instead, he lay with a bullet lodged in his shoulder and another shot through-and-through just above his hip. At first, the adrenaline had been enough to help him keep running, but now…

  Now he vacillated from cold to hot, alert to barely conscious.

  The shivering was taking its toll on him
, exhausting him beyond anything he’d ever felt before. A warm, enveloping blackness beckoned to him, sucking him deeper into a rabbit hole of sensation so that he felt as if he were spinning, spinning, and the spinning was making him sick to his stomach, making his head throb, making his extremities numb…so numb…so…

  “Charlie? Charlie!”

  Charlie’s eyes rolled in his head. With some effort, he managed to locate and focus on Rex’s face.

  It appeared lighter this time, a grayish tinge fuzzing the edges of Rex’s figure so that he could have been formed of frayed watercolor paper. In that grayness, Charlie could see the purplish welt over his friend’s eye and the caked blackness of dried blood seeping down from his hairline.

  “You’re…filthy.”

  Rex grimaced. “Bugger off, y’ bloomin’ idiot. We both are.”

  Charlie’s gaze dipped to his chest and he shrank back. Good Lord, he was covered in grime that smelled too much like a barnyard and worse. The sickly-sweet odor of infection, the coppery tang of blood.

  Where…

  Pigs. There’d been something about pigs.

  And butternut toffee. No. Not toffee.

  Coffee.

  Coffee-colored eyes.

  “Charlie. Charlie!”

  Rex shook his shoulders, causing Charlie to cry out as a fiery bolt of lightning shot through his shoulder and stabbed him again somewhere low by his hip.

  Rex lifted his head to look through the bower of trees that hid them.

  Trees.

  They’d been somewhere else…was it last night? Last week?

  Rex leaned close again, “Charlie, you’ve got to listen to me. I can’t…I…” He swallowed hard. “You’re sick, mate. I’ve tried my best to clean you off and patch you up, but…” He cleared his throat when it emerged tight and high. “But you’ve got to know my half-assed efforts aren’t worth shit.”

  Shit. He’d been lying in shit.

  Charlie’s eyes started to slip back in his head and Rex slapped his cheeks. “Charlie! Stay with me, old boy, okay?”

  Rex waited his eyes narrowed, his gaze so pointed, so commanding, that Charlie was sucked out of the blackness that threatened to consume him.

  Focus. Focus.

  Using more effort than he would have thought possible, Charlie tipped his head in the barest semblance of a nod. Even that small movement caused his stomach to lurch.

  Hungry. So hungry.

  He swiped his tongue over lips that were painfully cracked and swollen.

  “Water,” he croaked. It shocked him when the word emerged as an unintelligible croak.

  Rex moved away and the multi-colored patches of color from the leaves and the gray light beyond bled together like the muddied palette of an artist. Then the dappled patterns dipped. Swayed.

  Charlie’s eyes flickered and he took short, quick breaths to keep himself from passing out again. But such efforts were growing harder and harder. He was trembling again, not from cold, but from an unbearable weariness that radiated through his body.

  Using what little strength he had left, he reached for his breast pocket, assuring himself that the letters were still there.

  RueAnn’s letters to another man. A mysterious “J.” A correspondence so frank and beautiful that they made his chest ache with regret.

  He’d treated her badly, he knew that now. He’d done the minimum he could do to help her, not knowing…not realizing…

  Dear God, would he ever see her again? Would he ever have the chance to tell her he was sorry? Sorry for taking something so personal…so painfully honest? He didn’t know what was worse, to admit he’d taken the letters…or to confess he’d read the secrets printed inside. Painfully frank, heart-wrenching entries that had the power to flay the layers of thick-skinned guardedness from his own soul and leave him weak and trembling and ineffectual against her obvious need.

  He’d treated her badly.

  So badly…

  “Charlie!”

  He could hear Rex calling to him from far, far away. But it was too late. He was falling, falling, falling into the deep, dark hole of unconsciousness and he welcomed it.

  Anything to block out his regret and self-recrimination.

  • • •

  London, England

  A piercing whine woke RueAnn by degrees. Lifting her head, she realized she’d fallen asleep on Charlie’s bed, wrapped in his dressing gown. A dressing gown that still smelled like him. Squinting at his alarm clock, she discovered that the darkness around her was misleading. It was the blackout curtains which gave the illusion that it was closer to midnight than first light.

  Groaning, she closed her eyes again. She’d slept like the dead, a heavy, thick slumber that was filled with disturbing dreams of roiling shapes, her father, and a pistol that had been fired at her husband at point blank range. Vaguely, she remembered trying to stem the flow of blood with her outstretched hands while a puddle of crimson threatened to consume them both. And all the while, there’d been a whining scream that grew and grew in intensity, subsided, then grew again until…

  Blinking, she froze. The sound in her head had not disappeared upon waking.

  Dear God. An air raid siren.

  Scrambling to her feet, she threw open the door to Charlie’s bedroom just as another door yanked wide further down the hall.

  RueAnn didn’t bother with social niceties. “What are we supposed to do?”

  Edna stiffened, clearly upset that RueAnn had emerged from Charlie’s room. To her credit, she didn’t openly chastise RueAnn, but tore a frilly boudoir cap off her head and attempted to smooth her hair into place, despite its pins. Although she’d gone to bed in an extravagant lacy nightdress, she’d covered it with a utilitarian woolen robe belted at her waist and jammed her feet into practical, low-heeled oxfords. In her arms, she clutched her handbag and a book.

  “Are we supposed to head for the public shelters?” RueAnn asked.

  Edna sniffed in disapproval, taking a pair of pince-nez spectacles from her pocket and pinning them to her robe. “As if the public shelters are any safer than the streets. Little more than hastily constructed brick boxes used by vagrants and riff-raff.” She tipped her chin haughtily. “The sirens are simply a nuisance meant to keep us disconcerted and uncomfortable for a few hours. You’re free to return to your own room,” she said pointedly, “or join me in the space under the staircase.”

  With that, she brushed past RueAnn and made her way downstairs.

  Although a part of her bristled at the woman’s rudeness, another portion noticed that Edna moved stiffly, imperceptibly favoring her right leg.

  Since Edna had appeared prepared for any eventuality, RueAnn rushed up to her room to retrieve a robe, a blanket, and her shoes, then thundered downstairs.

  Edna clearly wanted to say something about the noise and RueAnn’s unladylike charge, but she snapped her jaw shut and wrenched open a door which had been cut to the shape of sloping treads. Twisting a switch, she turned on the single bulb that hung overhead.

  Inside, RueAnn could see that a narrow cot had been set up along the wall. A crate, serving as a nightstand, held a stack of candles and a box of matches.

  “You may set up your things on the floor here,” Edna said as she settled on the creaking cot and opened her book.

  “But what if—”

  “The Germans won’t be coming this morning,” Edna said firmly—so firmly, that RueAnn felt the woman didn’t entirely believe what she said. She clipped the spectacles to the bridge of her nose. “The gallant boys in the RAF will see to them.”

  She then began to read with such pointed concentration that RueAnn feared interrupting her again.

  Settling onto the floor, she wished she had something of her own to pass the time. Peering beneath her lashes, she tried see the title of Edna’s book in the dim light.

  A History of the English Language.

  In an instant, RueAnn knew she wouldn’t be asking to borrow the tome in Edna�
��s lap. Good Lord, as if the scream of the siren weren’t enough to send RueAnn ‘round the bend, the sheer boredom of the subject would do her in completely.

  Sighing, RueAnn wadded her blanket into a semblance of a pillow. By lying on her side, she could just fit into the space beside Edna’s cot.

  Tucking her hands beneath her cheek, she tried to think of something—anything—to keep her mind occupied with trivial things. But try as she might, she strained for the slightest noise beyond the siren—shouts, screams, the approach of German bombers.

  Under normal circumstances, she would use the early morning hours to make a mental list of tasks that needed to be completed by dark. But she was at a loss as to what duties the day might hold. She meant to share in the household upkeep until she could find a job somewhere in the city. But until then…

  Until then, she was forced to drag air into her lungs, in and out, in and out, while the walls of the closet closed in on her and the confined area became hot from the overhead bulb. Like bursting fireworks, she saw snatches of her childhood flash before her eyes—the dank cellar, the smokehouse, the closet in her father’s church. How many times had she been locked in those tiny airless spaces as a means of punishment? Not just for hours, but sometimes days.

  Suddenly, she burst to her feet, swamped by the need to escape, to feel cold, cool air touching her cheeks.

  Edna looked up from her book as if RueAnn had suddenly taken leave of her senses. “What on earth?”

  Instead of returning to her nest of blankets, RueAnn took an involuntarily step backward. “I-I’ve never tolerated small spaces very well.”

  She swung the door open and took a giant step backward, dragging huge gulps of air into her lungs.

  Edna’s expression grew grim. “There’s little sense in taking refuge if you’re going to stand there with the door open. If a bomb were to fall in the neighborhood, we could be injured by flying glass. Or worse.”

  But RueAnn couldn’t do it. She simply couldn’t get back into the shadowy cupboard.

  Without another word, she stepped out of the way and closed the door behind her. Needing fresh air so badly her lungs burned, she hurried through the hall, pushing past the swinging door into the tidy kitchen beyond. A frantic glance around the unfamiliar room revealed two doors on the far wall. One held mullion panes carefully blacked out with paint and crisscrossed with tape.