by Ryan Graudin
“Weapons are a last resort,” Miriam said as she swung the pack over her shoulder, flanking it with her Mosin-Nagant. “You start shooting and your chances of getting killed jump up by a hundred. Understood?”
All nodded.
“Know this”—Miriam’s quelling-soldiers-to-their-knees stare shifted to both boys in turn—“If I think either of you are turning your iron sights on me or Yael, I’ll shoot. I will not hesitate. I will not miss.”
Luka took the warning in stride, securing his own gun to his shoulder. “Trust me. You’re the last person I want to pick a fight with.”
“That’s the problem,” Miriam pointed out. “I don’t trust you.”
“Let’s get moving,” Yael urged, eager to have this conversation, this night, done with. One at a time they slipped out of the truck. Yael brought up the rear, wishing hard for her not-Lebensraum-bride outerwear as she squelched through soggy earth. Hosiery and Mary Janes made terrible tactical gear.
Rainfall meant cover against enemy detection, but it also meant Scheisse visibility. No moon, no stars, all clouds. Yael’s twenty-twenty vision strained to keep up with Luka’s back as their group slunk through the dark, managing only a few yards before Miriam signaled a halt. It took a few flashes of artillery (far off, in the direction of the town) for Yael to gather why. The trees had ended, a field stretched out in their place: mud as far as the night would let her see. Yael noted a few hedges dotted the ground—large enough to take shelter in, thick enough to cloak an ambush. Dangers out here would vary by kilometer. SS patrols on this side. Reiniger’s men on the other.
Miriam readjusted the cinches of her pack. “Let’s take it slow. No talking. Follow my lead.”
With the gunfire so distant, and the rain falling so fully, and the darkness so hard, there was no need to crawl. Miriam guided them out into the open, followed by Felix, then Luka, then Yael. Every step into the field the mud grew worse: toes to ankles to shins. Yael’s flimsy shoes didn’t last long. (Good riddance!) She squelched stocking-first into the marks Luka’s boots left.
They reached the first set of bushes without incident. No helmets or Kar.98Ks melded into the leaves. To their right, the contested town lit bright. Its silhouette was ravaged, as if a dragon from lore had swooped from the clouds and taken great bites out of its gabled rooftops. They were still some kilometers from drawing even with the lines of battle. Only a few more kilometers after that and they’d encounter Reiniger’s men.
The field was an eyeless, soulless wasteland. Miriam forged the way to the second, third, fourth hedges. A few times Felix stumbled—palm-first, face-first—protesting Luka’s attempts to help him up. (The victor did anyway. Back muscles clenching through his soaked undershirt.)
Yael hoped, very much, that they would not have to run.
By the fifth set of bushes, she was beginning to think they wouldn’t. Most of the field was behind them now, and they were parallel with the town’s war-lit center. Soon they’d be out of SS territory.
Miriam must have been thinking the same thing. Their march became bolder.
Too bold.
The sixth mound of foliage wasn’t empty. When Miriam burst onto the scouting party, both sides were stunned. Black uniforms flinched in front of the storm-drenched fräulein, not knowing what to make of the sweater clinging to her hourglass waist, the blouse whispering around her breasts. They hesitated a moment too long.
Miriam swung her rifle forward and fired.
There was too much rain and chaos to count their opponents. All Yael could make out was the Sieg rune badge on the sleeve of the closest soldier. SS. These men had killed and killed and killed to earn their rank, and they would kill Yael if she didn’t end them first. This was the ugly, unforgiving truth. This was why Vlad had taught her to fight.
Yael was not a monster. She was a survivor.
Life or death was not a question this time.
—FORWARD FAST FIND HIS THROAT—
Yael lunged, stockinged feet screwed into the mud as she twisted around, grappling the nearest soldier in a choke hold. She held and held. Shots darted this way and that. The dragon devouring the town roared. Yael could feel its fire—hot against her side. The man’s breath rattled into her inner elbow, thrashing.
More shots. One of the bullets found the soldier. He went limp in Yael’s grip: no fight, all dead. She dropped him. Next target. A helmet and a set of wide eyes. This soldier was ready, turning along with Yael as she leapt, using his strength to throw her to the earth. She hooked her legs under his as she fell. Gravity dragged the second soldier into the mud alongside her. Yael grabbed her pistol and fired.
The shot was hasty, but true.
She kept her finger on the trigger, searching through the downpour and shadows for a third target. All her sights found were more bodies and Luka.
“It’s me!” He threw his arms over his head. “No shooting!”
Miriam was close by, scraping tendrils of hair from her cheeks. “Everyone alive? Uninjured?”
“Yes and yes.” Luka dropped his hands. “Glad I have a gun now, m’lady?”
Miriam grunted.
“I’ve been shot,” Yael told them. The firefight’s adrenaline was ebbing, and the burn against her rib cage had worsened. A dozen red bees all wriggling to get through her pores. Yael fully expected when she bunched her blouse away to find a hole—as open and pouring as the ones from her nightmares. When she looked down, she saw the soles of the dead man’s boots, so close to her toes.
Taking a life takes something from you.
It had taken flesh this time. Not a hole, but a line of absent skin, carving along Yael’s side. The wound throbbed, but the bleeding seemed minimal. She pronounced it “Just a graze.”
“Are you sure?” Both Miriam and Luka asked this, stepping toward Yael in the same moment. Each looked at the other as if they were intruding.
“Yes.” Yael let down her shirt. “Where’s Felix?”
“Here!” Adele’s brother was a meter away, face full of mud, rifle flung to the side. Rain streaked through his electric hair, washing dirt away. “I couldn’t work my gun left-handed. Lay low to make myself less of a target.”
“There might be other scouts around,” Miriam warned as Luka hoisted the other boy to his feet. “We need to move.”
They kept slogging through the field. The bees in Yael’s side turned into hornets—angry, nest-stepped ones. She ignored them, fixing her stare on Luka’s back. Every few steps, the victor looked over his shoulder, as if double-checking her very existence. Every other few steps, he stopped and pulled Felix upright by his shirttails. The mechanic’s stumbles were getting more and more frequent.
They should have brought the stretcher.
Yael’s rib cage hive whipped into a fury. How long had they been walking? Where was the morning? How much colder could the rain get? Hadn’t they gone far enough?
(Hadn’t she gone far enough?)
Luka looked to her again. Through a flash from the town, Yael saw that his face was as translucent as his shirt, stripped down to emotions and veins. Blue, blue, shock and fear. “Behind you!”
When Yael turned, she saw movement in the direction of the bodies they’d left. The gunfire must have drawn the attention of another scouting group. Yael couldn’t tell how many, there was too much rain-blurred distance between them. A good thing—for the second SS patrol hadn’t yet spotted their group.
But sight went two ways. If she could see them…
—HIDE RUN FIGHT—
Yael had no time to decide which was the best course of action.
“There!” A wail pierced through the rain. Hounds of bullets followed.
Shots spit into the ground by Yael’s feet. The rainfall made for sloppy aim, which she discovered when she hoisted her own rifle to return the favor. Fighting in these conditions was out of the question. They were too exposed for a bullet not to land in the second or third volley.
Hiding was also out of the
question. They’d already been spotted, and Yael saw no hedges nearby.
Their only chance was to “RUN!”
She screamed this as she squeezed the trigger.
The others obeyed. Miriam paused to add her own BOOMing protest to the mix. Felix slipped. This time Luka didn’t just lug him upright. The victor lifted the other boy over his shoulder with a Herculean scream, becoming a stretcher of sinew and bone. His footsteps plunged deeper than ever as Yael trailed them.
She ran, waiting for another thousand bee stings to ram through her back. But the death that always lingered there did not fold forward. She ran and ran, until the pain in her side became nothing, and the field suddenly ended. Trees and their witch-claw twigs snapped up Luka and Felix. Yael barely had time to shield her face as she dived into the underbrush. Bullets clamored at their heels, hit the bark with sullen thuds.
Hercules was done, collapsing into the vegetation with Felix and the rifles.
—TIME TO FIGHT—
Luka grabbed a Mosin-Nagant, pressed the buttstock into his shoulder, and spun around to face the field. Miriam did the same, using a trunk for cover. Yael hunkered by her own tree, pulling back her rifle’s bolt to free it for another shot. She could tell by the number of bullets and their steady onslaught that this patrol was larger than the last. Much larger.
She peered into the glistening rain, waiting for the next flash. It came, bringing with it the outlines of their approaching enemy. Ten fleet-on-their-feet shadows. Yael let the image burn against her eyelids, aimed from memory at the nearest man, and fired. She did this three more times, though the next flash revealed she’d only stopped two of the ten. Her Mosin-Nagant needed reloading, but there were eight men charging the trees and seven bullets left in her TT-33.
A shot from Miriam brought one down. Luka’s bullets were wild cards. Felix was trying his best to bring his hands and his pistol to a truce. Yael fired another bullet. The trunk by her face splintered with a close call.
Three men down. Seven descending. The patrol was only yards away, closing in fast. The artillery flashes weren’t coming quickly enough for Yael to pick out her marks.
When she fired the next bullet, it sounded as if every tree around her had decided to fall. SO MUCH NOISE. Too much for a single handgun. Or even a handgun plus Luka’s rifle. It was coming from behind them. Shots being fired from the trees!
The next jag of light showed the SS patrol stopping, uncertain.
The one after that painted them in full retreat.
Yael looked back into the trees to find shadows that hadn’t been there before. Several gathered around Felix and Luka. Their uniforms were nondescript—neither black nor swastika-ed. It was too dark to tell, but Yael was certain, if she looked, there would be frays and tears identical to Ernst Förstner’s.
These men were resistance fighters.
They’d reached Reiniger’s line.
She was just about to exhale her thanks, when the men lifted their Mausers again, aiming their guns straight at Luka’s and Felix’s heads.
CHAPTER 40
“Pass code?”
The gun was barrel-first in Felix’s face, such a small circle evoking so much fear. His mouth had gone dry, and his tongue felt nailed to his teeth. He held his hands up. The others were doing the same. Weapons down, arms high.
“The wolves of war are gathering! They sing the song of rotten bones!” Yael tore at her sleeve, unleashing the tattooed wolves. “I’m Volchitsa, and these three are with me!”
The Mausers didn’t move.
Was it normal to sweat when you were this cold?
“All of you take off your shirts,” said the fighter whose rifle was prepped to blow Luka to the heavens. The man’s left sleeve had been ripped off at the shoulder. (In fact, all of the soldiers’ left sleeves were gone.)
“What?” Miriam asked sharply.
“If you are who you claim to be, it shouldn’t be a problem. Shirts off. Now.”
They obeyed, stripping down to their underthings. A fighter by Felix grabbed the mechanic’s bare arm, wiping the mud off his left bicep. Wiping still, until the skin became prickly and irritated.
“He’s clean!”
“This one, too,” Luka’s inspector declared.
The soldier studying Miriam paused, staring at her numbers as if they were a safe combination he couldn’t quite crack.
“It’s not a blood-group tattoo,” she told him, “if that’s what you’re looking for. I’m a face-changer, like Volchitsa here, but I’m not SS.”
“They’re with me,” Yael said again. “General Reiniger and Henryka are expecting us. Now, may we please put our clothes back on?”
It was an affirmative. Rifles lowered, shirts were restored.
“Apologies,” the fighter closest to Yael said. “New protocol. We’ve had a few breaches the past few days.”
“Breaches?” Yael winced when she stood, hands clutching her side. “Enemy skinshifters?”
“Four that we know of. One got shot trying to cross the front. He went frosted postmortem. When we examined the body, we found the blood-group tattoo. Higher-ups figured he was a skinshifter. Another almost killed General Bauer, trying to take his place. He had the blood-group marking, too. That’s when General Reiniger ordered everyone to destroy their left sleeves. We discovered two more that way.”
“Sneaky Saukerls,” Luka muttered.
“When was this?” Yael asked.
“First one got shot a while back. Didn’t ferret out the rest of them until two days ago.”
“Explains our leak,” Yael said to Miriam, who just frowned.
Felix was grateful no one was looking too carefully at his mud-caked face as he listened in. His morphine armor was long gone, and Baasch’s deadline was a noose around his neck—drawing in, in with every passing minute.
There were only a few hours left to reach the resistance’s headquarters, ask them to radio Vlad’s safe house, dig into the truth of things. What was real? Mama’s death or Mama’s life? Felix’s hearing or his hope?
When the SS-Standartenführer first spoke of the resistance, Felix imagined a few hundred men with rifles holed up in a city block. Eavesdropping on the radio conversation in Molotov had only reinforced the image. But as the patrol led them to a transport—passing tank tracks and command tents and men barking orders—Felix realized this was a serious underestimation.
This was more than a few hundred men. Much more.
This was the Wehrmacht.
Everywhere Felix looked, he saw some version of his father’s uniform. All National Socialist badges were gone, and the brown fabric soaked, but the resemblance was unmistakable. Generations of men wore them—some sporting Papa’s gray hair, others closer to twenty-one. The age Martin would have been. Felix spotted one or two soldiers his own age, their Hitler Youth uniforms stripped to barest buttons and seams. Boys who could so easily be him.
Papa, Martin, himself, Papa, Martin, Papa, Martin.
Felix pressed his good hand to the watch in his pocket and wondered what his brother would do in the face of all this. Would Martin have called Baasch from that farmhouse telephone? Could Martin sacrifice all these people to the SS for the Wolfes’ safety?
Could Felix, if it came to it?
The ground was slick with mud—just like the many miserable kilometers they’d slogged through. Only here, the earth had been stamped down by scores of boots, slashed through with tank tracks. Extra-treacherous landscape, perfect for stumbling.
Felix didn’t stand a chance.
Papa, Martin, Papa—face full of mud, teeth pressed into tread. Grit scratched shapes beneath Felix’s eyelids. The ground peeled away before he could even try to push himself up.
Luka—the Arschloch who’d just saved his life—was helping him to his feet again. “You all right there, Wonderboy?”
Not really. He was losing focus, getting distracted by a picture too huge to process. These soldiers passing in dizzying numbers were not
Felix, nor his family. They weren’t who mattered, and if Felix allowed himself to think any differently… that’s when doubt crept in. That’s when the choice Baasch gave him would be too horrible to make.
“I’m fine.” Felix tried to wipe the grit from his eyes, but his arm was just as filthy, and he only succeeded in smearing more between frost-colored eyelashes.
He was glad when they finally reached their transport: a Kübelwagen. The car was too small to fit the four of them plus a driver, but it was the only vehicle the front could spare. They crammed into the seats, slipping on account of mud everywhere. Felix couldn’t tell if the girls had shifted their hair into darker colors or if they were simply that caked in dirt.
“We look like golems,” Miriam muttered as they settled in.
Felix had no idea what a golem was, but Yael laughed as she climbed into the front passenger seat. The sound was so at odds with its surroundings, so… hopeful.
“We’ll be clean soon enough,” she assured them, then turned to Felix. “You’ll be reunited with your sister. I’m directing the driver to Henryka’s office.”
Almost there.
Battle sounds faded as their vehicle pulled away from the front lines, but they returned within minutes. Germania was smoldering. Felix smelled the city’s ashes through the open windows, mixing with rain. They drove farther and farther into the city, past standstill streetcars and buildings pocked with bullet-hole constellations. It was hard to reconcile these streets with the bustling capital Felix had visited only a month before. Gone were the housewives carrying freshly wrapped baked goods under their arms, the schoolchildren thronging along sidewalks. Cafés usually cluttered with coffee cups and congenial conversations were gutted clean.
Felix kept expecting the Kübelwagen to pull to a stop—in front of an imposing house with a brass door knocker, by the steps of a stately marble structure—but the driver kept going, until the gunshots were a deafening distance away. He could almost feel the heat of the battle when the engine cut off.
