by Ben Stevens
Reinhardt skidded the car to a halt beside the train track leading into the camp – close to the huge lorry Schroder had brought the Metal Man in earlier – and hurriedly got out. He entered into the camp and walked quickly across the shattered ground, noticing the two tanks abandoned and the bodies that were – everywhere.
He had three pistols on him. The man with the bazooka was looking suspiciously at him.
Reinhardt opened his mouth to speak…
To say something – anything…
42
‘ Wilhelm!’ cried out Schroder, turning his head to see what had captured Ackermann’s attention, and thus recognizing his superior.
Ackermann whirled his head back round to stare at the podgy man kneeling beside Mayer. He then stared back at the man walking across the ruined camp, wearing the black uniform of the Gestapo but…
Every instinct Ackermann possessed was screaming at him that this was a sham. Some kind of trick. That somehow this man was connected with the Metal Man, and anyone who knew the Metal Man thus knew Brucker, and so could possibly tell a story of how Ackermann had treacherously stabbed a fellow SS officer to death…
‘It’s a trap!’ yelled Ackermann suddenly, dropping the bazooka and grabbing for his pistol.
At first, the SS soldiers stared in startled amazement at their commanding officer. But when the black-uniformed man suddenly produced a pistol and began firing at them, it seemed to bear out the truth of their officer’s words. They raised their machineguns and began firing, the man diving behind a pile of rubble.
‘’Move forward – get him!’ screamed Ackermann, realizing that so long as the man remained behind cover, he was safe…
*
Mayer observed the commotion, and in a flash realized that the soldier guarding him was having his attention distracted.
That all the SS soldiers were having their attention distracted.
This was it – the only chance he and all the others currently down on their knees would get.
‘Weber!’ yelled Mayer, at the same moment as he sprang up and lunged for the guard stood a few feet away from him.
Weber, too, was quick to react. In a second he’d joined Mayer in bringing their guard down, Weber grabbing for his sub machinegun as Mayer repeatedly punched the man in the face.
Tearing the gun free from the shoulder strap, Weber then swung it in the direction of the kneeling Jews. But he saw that they’d already started to fight – to attack the soldiers guarding them themselves. The guards’ guns briefly chattered, and killed a few of the inmates – but then the inmates swarmed over the men wearing the camouflaged uniforms. Stamping, punching, biting, tearing, gouging… One of the guards screamed for mercy but there was absolutely none to be had.
Then his screams were muffled by the sheer weight of bodies upon him…
Weber turned his attention away from the bloody revenge being exacted and transferred it back towards Ackermann. That man had realized what was happening and was firing his pistol at the inmates advancing towards him, sheer hate shining in their eyes like a feral light.
Three… four inmates dropped as Ackermann’s pistol barked; then the hammer was clicking on an empty chamber.
With trembling fingers, Ackermann tried desperately to reload… But he was too slow. In a moment the inmates were upon him, Ackermann falling as the wooden clogs began kicking at his thrashing body…
‘Leave him!’
The voice was so loud – so authoritative – that it somehow cut through the sheer pandemonium taking place by the steep quarry. The inmates who’d commenced attacking Ackermann briefly paused, staring over in the direction the shout had come from and seeing…
The Metal Man. Karl Brucker. Risen from the huge pile of bricks and now standing with his right arm hanging uselessly from his side. The half of the face he still had was implacable. Smoke spilt out from the numerous tears in his armor as he began a slow, limping march towards the quarry, his gaze fixed determinedly on Ackermann.
As though somehow bidden, the inmates moved a few paces away from Ackermann, allowing the SS officer to get shakily back to his feet.
‘I knew you wouldn’t allow a fellow officer to be killed,’ said Ackermann, a weak smile showing as he wiped the blood from his nose. He took a cautious step towards Brucker, whose metallic left leg was emitting an awful, grinding noise with every step…
‘Leave him,’ repeated Brucker, his artificial eyes still fixed upon Ackermann, ‘to me…’
‘What…?’ emitted Ackermann, the slight, nervous smile now freezing. He stopped his uncertain walk forwards, and now took a step backwards, retreating from the advancing Metal Man. But then he realized that the quarry was barely two feet behind him.
Like a trapped rat, he looked frantically left and then right. But on either side stood the inmates – more joining their number as they finished off the other soldiers and so walked over to see what the Metal Man had in mind for this officer of the SS.
The inmates stared silently back at Ackermann, their flat gaze informing him that it was hopeless – that he’d no chance of escaping.
Karl Brucker extended the arm he still had control of. Ackermann almost squealed as the great metal fingers reached for his throat…
Then he was in a vice-like grip, being raised up, his own hands grabbing Brucker’s wrist in an attempt to stop himself from choking.
‘Brucker… for heaven’s sake…’ he rasped, his feet now dangling over the rocky chasm a hundred or so feet below.
‘Heaven?’ returned Brucker, his voice sounding almost ponderous. ‘I’m not sure there’s even such a place. But I’ll let you find out for yourself whether or not there’s a hell…’
‘Brucker!’ cried out Ackermann, the word turning into a scream as the Metal Man released his grip. A few moments later, Ackermann’s voice was abruptly silenced as his body hit one of the rocks, far below…
Brucker’s left arm fell back by his side. His great metallic body swayed, and for a moment it seemed as though he would pitch forwards into the quarry himself.
And then he fell backwards, onto the frozen ground, where he lay quite still.
43
Freda and Max. He could remember their names now – finally. His wife and their baby son. The source of the warm feeling he could still recognize; the smiling, dark-haired woman and the baby who’d somehow implored him to claw his way out of the imprisoning darkness and to at last destroy Ackermann.
He was dying. He felt his body of metal now almost as he’d previously felt his body of flesh and blood. It was twisted and ruptured and broken, the armor split open and many of the delicate inner mechanisms hopelessly smashed.
He was lying on his back staring up at the winter sky and his sight was fading. But the image of Freda and Max then flashed – and stayed there. They were proud of him. He’d done what he’d had to do. At least two of his men were still alive along with all those Jews.
He could go now. He could die again…
Then he realized that Mayer was leaning by his right side, saying –
‘Sir? Sir?’
44
‘ Mayer…’ said Brucker almost hoarsely. The smoke spilling out from his mangled metallic body was so thick now that Mayer coughed, and had to wave a hand in front of his face in order to try and fan it away.
‘We did it, sir,’ said Mayer simply.
The woman holding the baby knelt down beside Mayer. She was crying.
‘Thank you,’ she said, putting one hand on Brucker’s ruined right arm, her other arm cradling her child.
She then looked at Mayer.
‘Thank you… all of you…’ she said in halting German.
‘All of us… did it…’rasped Brucker.
Weber had also moved to stand beside the Metal Man, as had all the surviving inmates, Schroder – and that strange man, dressed in a black Gestapo uniform, who’d so suddenly arrived just a few minutes earlier.
Weber looked at Schroder, who was st
anding almost beside him.
‘Schroder,’ he said urgently. ‘You… built Karl Brucker. Surely you can… fix him… now?
Schroder shook his head sadly.
‘Impossible,’ he said quietly. ‘Even if I had all the equipment I’d need, he’s suffered too much damage…’
‘It’s… okay…’ said Brucker – and his voice was now little more than whisper. ‘It’s my time – now. That is… again. Goodbye Mayer, Weber…’
Then the exposed steel structure of his face suddenly froze, Brucker’s artificial eyes fixed staring up at the winter sky. It started to snow, the surviving SS soldiers, Schroder, Reinhardt and the inmates stood in silence, looking down at the man who’d been resurrected as a machine.
Epilogue
It was out of the question for Mayer and Weber to remain at the camp. As SS soldiers, they had to get back into Germany.
‘We’re on the wrong side, I know that now,’ Mayer addressed the inmates, as some time later he and Weber prepared to leave. ‘But Germany’s still our country, and we have a duty to defend it. From the Russians – who will be here shortly.’
‘I wish we could get them buried, first,’ said Weber softly, staring down at the jet-black metal body of Karl Brucker – and also the body of Bach, which had been recovered by the two surviving SS soldiers and placed tenderly beside their commanding officer.
Aron – the blue-eyed man who’d led the Jewish revolt earlier – said –
‘It’s a shame, but the ground is too rocky and frozen. But – we will tell the Russians , when they get here, of what Karl Brucker and this other man did. How they fought to protect us. How they were men entirely different from those other animals.’
‘Well – so long,’ said Mayer, looking round at the inmates. The baby cried, and the woman cradling it said gently –
‘Hush, Karl – hush.’
Weber smiled.
‘He would have liked that,’ he told the woman. She smiled back at him, understanding the meaning of what he was saying even if the words were unclear to her.
The inmates watched the two SS men leave, sub machineguns again dangling from shoulder straps. Schroder and Reinhardt stood almost side-by-side, Reinhardt now wearing the civilian clothing he’d brought with him in the Gestapo car. As a full Jew – and Schroder a half-Jew – it had been decided that they should remain at the camp and allow themselves to be found by the Russians.
Schroder stared at Brucker’s body. He supposed the Russians would be greatly interested in the construction of the Metal Man – and also in Schroder himself, as the Metal Man’s creator.
Schroder supposed he’d have to work for them, which at least guaranteed his and Reinhardt’s safety.
They might even want a new Metal Man – one, perhaps, with the hammer and sickle where the swastika shoulder emblems currently were…
If so, then Schroder would have to start completely from scratch. Brucker was dead; there was no way that –
Unless…
Insanity – what was he even thinking? There was no way to resurrect this fallen metallic warrior –
Unless…
Schroder’s frantic thoughts were disturbed by the sudden squealing of tank tracks sounding in the distance.
‘It’s the Russians,’ said the Polish farm worker named Arnold. He’d survived the massacre at the death camp named Mittlebruck, along with two other members of his group.
‘They are coming. We are safe…’
End
By the same author: The Whistler: A Murderer’s Tale
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