The Girls from the Beach

by Andie Newton

  Several minutes passed, then the next thing we heard was the frantic race of footsteps cracking upstairs. The door was kicked open, and we jumped, only it was Jean, and there was no mistaking the look on her face, which was mixed with both surprise and fright.

  “The SS were here. Looking for you!” Jean said. “In the village and in the fields…” She ran to the window and looked outside, where we heard a car start up and the pop and crack of tires on gravel.

  “But how could they—”

  “They called you American spies,” Jean said. “Murderers.”

  My heart skipped before thumping viciously against my ribs. Esser. They knew we—that I—killed him.

  Red grabbed my arm. “We’re leaving!” Red said, and I nodded.

  “Out the back,” Jean said, and we followed her like a herd of elephants down the narrow staircase. “The river’s that way…” She pointed out the back door. “Take the workman’s lorry at the end of the orchard. Follow the dirt road. Straight on through a few miles.” We ran out the door, each holding the other’s hand. “You’ll hear the Rhine rushing soon enough,” she said, but we were already running through the trees breaking with morning sunlight.

  The lorry was an apple truck with bald tires. We ran up to it out of breath and panting, looking at each other, wondering who was going to drive. “I don’t know how to drive,” Red said, which shocked me because I thought Red knew everything.

  “But… but…” I said, looking at Roxy and then to Gail. I’d been taught in secret—women weren’t allowed to drive on the farm—my father strictly forbid it. “Sam taught me.” I looked at them. “But it’s been years!”

  Red threw open the door. “Get in!” We piled into the truck. The windows had been left down and the interior was wet and covered in soggy leaves. I could barely reach the gas pedal. We sat, looking out the windshield, waiting for the truck to start itself—me at the wheel next to Red with the gear stick between her legs, then Gail, and Roxy.

  “Where’s the key?” I said.

  “We have to hotwire it.” Roxy leaned over the others to pull a few wires out from under the wheel. “I learned a few things from my brother too,” she said.

  “Guys,” Gail said, but nobody listened to her because we were too busy watching Roxy twist the exposed wires together. “Guys,” she said again, only this time louder. She’d turned her whole body around to look out the back window. “Someone’s coming.”

  We flipped our heads around and saw a car speeding toward us on the dirt road. “Hurry, Rox,” I said, as she twisted and twisted wires together that made no sense. “Hurry—”

  The engine started with a pop and a jolt. “Go!” Roxy yelped, and I stepped on the gas, all of us jerking forward, the engine chugging and chugging. “Go, Kit! Go!” Roxy tapped the dash repeatedly.

  “I’m trying!” I said, and I punched the clutch with a shift of the stick and we took off down the road with a burst of black exhaust popping from the muffler. We sped through potholes with the clank of clattering metal both from the truck and tools left in the back. The tailgate unlatched, and we screamed from the drumming thump of apples tumbling onto the road.

  “It’s slowing them down!” I said, peeking through the rearview mirror.

  Red pointed to a line of trees toward the river. “Over there!” One golden tree stood out from the others. The path. I turned sharply to the right and found smoother ground. The steering wheel rolled loosely in my hands, and I felt the road, the dirt cords, the flatness. “I see the tree!” Red said, before whipping back around to see the car behind us, but there was no sight of it now. “You did it, Kit!” She smiled, but the road felt too smooth—off—and there was a pause, a split-second moment where Red caught my eye and we’d both realized I’d driven into a mine.

  Boom!

  The truck catapulted forward before skidding through dirt and rock and tipping over on its side. I only heard screaming, then absolutely nothing after we’d stopped.

  I tried to move, but my head felt like my brain had been through a blender. Heavy, scattered. “Are you all right?” I said, sluggishly. “Girls…” Roxy and Gail answered right away and climbed out, seemingly untouched. “Red…” I coughed dirt from my mouth and dug it out from my eyes. “Red…”

  She moaned, slumped on top of me like a wet rag. I pushed her dead weight toward the open window, and Roxy reached for her arm, trying to pull her out.

  “Leave me,” Red finally said, lifting her head, and I saw that she’d hit the windshield.

  “No,” I said, and I was able to crawl out and pull her by both arms. “I’m not leaving you.” We heard the long honk of a pressed car horn, and my stomach sank.

  “They’re coming!” Roxy yelped, and I looked at Red’s face in a panic, before turning to Roxy and hurling the bag of diamonds toward her.

  “Go!” I said, but Roxy hesitated, agony in her voice and in her face, as if it was the last time we’d see each other.

  “No, Kit…” Roxy said.

  “Roxy,” I said, and she tearfully answered back. “You have to go.”

  “But I can’t, Kit…” She wiped tears from her eyes, glancing toward the direction of the horn. “I can’t…”

  “You must,” I said. “I’m ordering you.” And it was the first time I’d ordered Roxy to do anything. “Get the bag across the river!” She turned away, and she and Gail ran off toward the river.

  I hung my head down momentarily, holding Red’s hand.

  “Leave me… leave me,” Red said, but I managed to pull her out of the truck through the window, dragging her body to a lethargic stand. She swung her arm over my shoulder, blinking, weary.

  Roxy and Gail disappeared behind the tree with the flaming orange leaves, and I felt some relief they’d made it. I turned to Red. “Like old times, Red. You and me.” I wrapped my arm around her waist and hoisted her against my hip. “Just you and me.” We staggered out of the mine and into the grass. The car stopped at the edge of the orchard, exhaust sputtering, and I thought we might make it—the mine had deterred them.

  “Come on,” I said, struggling, “come on…” I spun my head around, their engine revved, and they drove straight through the minefield at high speed as if they knew exactly where the mines were. “Hurry, Red! Hurry!” I squeezed her tighter, limping, alternating my looks between the speeding car, and the break in the trees where the leaves were still tittering from Roxy and Gail.

  And I realized that if we followed the girls now, they’d catch them too.

  I closed my eyes briefly, tapping my heart twice. One for Roxy and the other for Gail. “Be safe, girls,” I said, and a little cry came from my mouth as we collapsed onto the grass.

  24

  KIT

  I took a breath, feeling the air expand my lungs and thinking it was the last breath I’d take as a free woman. The car pulled up next to me and Red in the grass, the tire dangerously close to running over my ankle. “Don’t say anything. Not a word, all right? Nothing.” I wiped tears from my cheeks and kissed her forehead. “Promise me.”

  The engine cut off.

  “I promise, Kit.” She held my hand to her face. “Goddamn you.”

  Two men got out, both dressed in German uniforms, green, faded, and loose. I closed my eyes as they approached—play it cool—only to open them when I heard the cock of a pistol.

  “Get up, fräuleins,” he said in thick, unmistakable native German. Only when I saw the jagged scar on his cheek did I realize they were the same two we’d seen on our first day, laughing over their victims floating down the Rhine.

  Every fiber in my body felt sick. I helped Red up, and we stood like fragile half-dead beings.

  “Why were you speeding away?” he said.

  “We were scared,” I said in German, and he glanced at the river as if he thought there were more of us, but he didn’t ask. “The battle’s advancing. We thought you might be Americans—we thought you were the enemy.”

  “Where are your p
apers?” he said, and that’s when I knew he’d got me. All I had was the U.S. manufactured gun hidden under my dress. I shook my head as he asked about Red’s.

  “She’s mute. Lost her hearing from a bomb blast.”

  He and the driver talked quietly to themselves, and I thought he might let us go. I kissed Red’s forehead again, hoping, praying Roxy was now wading across the Rhine with Gail, when a hand grabbed me by the neck and pulled me forward to walk. “Go!” he said, and he flicked his gun for us to get in the car. We got into the back seat, Red with my help, moaning and still in a daze, holding her ribcage with one hand, wincing every time she took a breath.

  We drove out of the field and back through the apple orchard toward Lichtenau. They talked in hushed tones, laughing, occasionally glancing into the back seat at me and Red as we bumped along the road. I didn’t think to ask questions from the grass, or when he pulled me by the scruff of my neck, but in the car, listening to them chat, noticing their unkempt necks in need of a shave and the casual way they smoked, it became very clear to me that these men were not official.

  “Where are you taking us?” I finally asked in German.

  The man in the passenger seat turned around sharply, emotionless, overgrown eyebrows and a dirty face. He burst out laughing before turning back around and taking a drag off his cigarette, which made the driver laugh too.

  They parked outside an abandoned building near the square. I could tell right away it wasn’t a police station or a German command post. This is what scared me.

  They brought us to a store that looked as if it had been ransacked at one time, with only a shattered glass counter and a few raggedy chairs left.

  “Sit!” one of them barked, and we did, pushing the chairs close together and holding each other’s hands. I fixed my dress to conceal the gun on my leg before inspecting Red’s facial wound. I applied some pressure to her ribs to see how bad she bought it while they stood outside the door with their backs to us.

  Red managed to sneak a few whispering words into my ear. “My ribs are cracked,” she said, wheezing, and my eyes closed briefly. “Who are they?” She paused between her words. “Why are we here?”

  “I don’t…” A car pulled up, and the men seemed nervous, stomping out their full cigarettes and arguing about who was going to talk. A man in a uniform and glossy boots stepped out of it. The kind of uniforms I’d seen on the newsreels—the kind I’d seen on the dead inside ambushed buildings.

  “SS,” I whispered, and Red sat up the best she could.

  He didn’t seem real, dressed in that stiff uniform with double lightning bolts on his collar. He was blond, his hair shaved very close to his scalp and barely visible under his hat. He stepped into the building with one leaping step.

  He skillfully studied us as we looked helplessly up at him. A click of his boot heels and he called for someone outside. “This way, come, come…” he kept saying, snapping his fingers, and I gulped, thinking the butcher and his crazy wife would come walking in any second, only I didn’t have the jewels and when they’d searched me, they’d find the gun and would probably kill me with it.

  A car door opened and shut, but I saw nobody else outside the window. The padding of feet followed a light scuff. “Recognize either of them?” the officer said, and a little boy walked in through the door, his eyes puffy from crying, and tired. Blond.

  “Look at them, boy,” the officer said, and when he did my stomach knotted up and I wanted to vomit. The boy from the field—the one Gail had chased after.

  I looked at my feet, trying not to fidget.

  The officer took the boy by the shoulders and pushed him to stand in front of us. The boy twisted his hands around in his pockets. “Make them listen to you,” the officer said to the boy, and he kicked me in the shin.

  “Ack!” I cried out, and a puff of laughter spurt from the officer’s lips.

  “Stand!” the boy barked, his voice changing from a pouty little German child into a sinister monster.

  I stood up slowly, but Red sat still, holding her side, not knowing what he’d said. He threw his leg back to kick her and I yelled that she had a cracked rib, and for some reason that got him to back away. He turned around and addressed the SS officer. “She had hair like straw and was tall.” He pointed his finger at me before sniffing his nose and wiping a glob of snot away. “Not short and dark, or ginger.”

  Gail. Red slowly glanced up at me. I wanted to crumple in relief on the ground, thank God that this boy’s memory hadn’t been skewed, but I dare not even move.

  The officer yelled for the men to come into the room, where he scolded them for catching the wrong woman. “You’re a disgrace,” he added.

  “Neither of them has papers,” the driver said. “And… and… we found them driving through a mine. That has to count for something, suspicious behavior indeed.”

  “Hmm.” The officer glanced at his watch and then looked out the door where we heard the eruption of incoming artillery. “Put them on the seven. Someone will figure out who they are.” He tucked his watch back under his sleeve.

  “There’s still a seven?” one of the men said, and the officer glared.

  “Get back out there and find me the real murderer.” The sun slipped behind a rain cloud, and the room shrouded in gray. “And if you fail, come sun-up you’ll be the ones who’re dead.”

  More explosions. Boom, boom, boom. The windows rattled faintly that time.

  The officer left with the boy and the others went back outside to guard the doors. Hours passed, and we were sitting ducks listening to the sounds of war drawing nearer.

  “Kit,” Red rasped. “I’m not going to make it.” Her eyes sagged as I’d never seen and her chest huffed even more than before. I started to think she’d crushed more than one rib and hadn’t told me.

  “Listen, all right?” I said. “Don’t talk like that. You’re with me. What could go wrong?” I tried smiling, but there was nothing to smile about. The men paced outside, looking up and down the street. I wiped my eyes. “Well, who’s gonna get mad at me for stealing wine, or the ration cigarettes?”

  “Kit…” Red said, and she held her side, shivering.

  I shook my head, not wanting to hear what she had to say, not if it had anything to do with dying and leaving me.

  “Back in our tent,” she said. “My army blanket. The Nurse Corps will take it. Don’t let them have it. You’ll freeze at night in the winter.” She took a deep breath in through her nose before continuing. “And don’t tell anyone I’m gone right away. You can have my ration packs. Something extra for you and the girls…”

  “Stop it, all right?” I said, and my eyes welled with tears no matter how many times I wiped them. “Who’s gonna kiss Jim Marshall? You don’t want me to do it. I swear it, Red.”

  “I love ya, Kit,” she said. “I knew we’d be friends when I met you. But it wasn’t until we washed up in the surf together all full of saltwater that I knew we’d be best friends, a bond that would last forever. You can’t go through something like that and not be. You’re a heckuva nurse. You’re gonna be okay… You’re gonna be okay…”

  I wiped my cheeks. “You’re beating your gums for nothing, Red,” I said. “Because you’re gonna make it. We’re gonna make it. It’s me and you, Red. It’s always been. Nothing’s gonna change.”

  Rain tapped on the roof, and we both looked up. One drop became two, then three and four.

  “Get up!” the driver yelled from the door. “You’re leaving!”

  I helped Red out of her chair and we walked outside where they shoved us in the car we’d arrived in. We sat in the back not saying a word, and I held her close. I was glad to leave the building, and I thought I’d be glad to leave the village, but they’d driven us to a train station.

  “Seven o’clock train,” the driver said. “That’s you.” He opened the door and pulled us out.

  “Where’s it going to?” I said, but he only smiled, and it was coy and chilling and ma
de me want to buckle in two.

  They brought us inside where it was crowded with women and children traveling without luggage—many with torn skirts and dirty faces, heavy eyes and frightened, cowering bodies. There was no heat, but with so many bodies the smell of clammy, yeasty skin was almost overwhelming. Shoeless children clutched headless dolls, sucking dirty thumbs. I picked up a little girl, thin, scraggly, and lost between shuffling feet. The poor thing swatted at me for being a stranger until another woman ripped her from my arms, her wail echoing. “Leave my child alone!”

  Red grabbed on to me, and we were pushed into a collecting line. “Where are we going?” I asked in German to anyone who might answer.

  “They said we’re being evacuated,” a young girl said, shuffling past.

  Evacuated? A rail worker handed each of us a piece of paper with a number on it, both with a four.

  A guard with a rifle took over where the rail worker left off. “On the platform! Get in the compartment and shut up.” We boarded by number. “Number four! That’s you two.” He shoved us into the rear of the train car; that’s when Red started to cry, but it wasn’t from her crackling ribs.

  “Why didn’t you leave me?” Her eyelashes were wet and clumpy with tears.

  “You know why,” I said, and a few women standing in front of us turned around, looking both confused and admiring as we spoke in English.

  “American…” I heard in a rolling whisper.

  The train jerked forward, and we swayed into each other. A puff of steam floated by, looking thicker, denser, from a train about to leave, then a piercing whistle that sounded like a kettle about to explode erupted into the air. “Where are we being evacuated to?” I said in German, and a woman with sunken eyes looked solemnly up at me.

  She tucked a matted swatch of hair behind her ear. “Don’t you know?” she whispered, and I shook my head. “We’re not being evacuated. We’re going to prison.”

  My mouth hung open. “Prison?”

  “We were in hiding, in the woods.” She ran her hand over her bruised arm, and mumbled the rest of her words with a painful cry. “They took all the women and children. Every last one of us.”