Blood of Vipers (3 page)

It wasn’t a scream of warning, and it wasn’t
anguish over a
child who had just died of its injuries, but terror, not so
different from the
cries of the young German soldier as the partisan brought the
knife toward his
groin. The woman spoke rapid-fire German, high and frightened. A
slap and a
cry.

None of your business. Keep going.

Earlier, stumbling across the road, he’d
spotted no German
troops on the move, and no refugees, either. Overturned wagons
littered the
ground, together with dead horses, trunks that spilled blowing
papers, muddy
clothing, even an abandoned sewing machine. Half a dozen dead
bodies.

He’d left the road and entered the pasture
sometime after
midnight, oriented himself west, toward American lines. The
artillery sounded
more distant, the glow on the horizon duller, but gunfire
chattered to the
east, in the direction of the burning village he’d spotted
earlier.

Shortly thereafter, he came upon the
farmhouse with its
windows smashed, the door splintered. Two dead pigs lay between
the house and
the barn, and a cat shot away in terror as he surprised it
around the side of
the barn. And now the screaming woman. He stopped, put his hand
against the
exterior wall of the barn to steady himself.

Keeping going, keep walking.

But his cold .45 sat in his hand, as if it
had jumped there
of its own accord. Before he could think about it again, he made
his way around
the front of the barn. The doors hung open, a lantern sat to one
side, its
flame casting the room in shadows.

A single soldier in a Russian uniform bent
over the
screaming woman with his hand at her throat. Her dress was torn,
and she
struggled beneath the man’s bulk, pleading in German. The
Russian soldier was
trying to get his pants down with his other hand, but both his
wrists and hands
were covered with so many looted watches and rings that he was
having a hard
time finishing the job.

A farmer—presumably the woman’s husband—lay
to one side with
blood streaming from his forehead and a glazed look on his face.
A dead dog lay
next to him, neck a bloody hole.

Cal crossed the distance to the Russian
soldier in two
steps, and lifted the gun as the man turned toward him, surprise
written across
his face. He reached for something, but Cal didn’t wait to find
out what it
was. His finger squeezed on the trigger. The gunshot exploded in
the confined
space. The man fell on top of the woman, who started to scream.
Cal looked
down, stunned, unable to believe what he’d done.

A movement caught Cal’s eye. He whirled with
the pistol to
discover the farmer crawling toward the Russian’s jacket, where
the dead
soldier’s rifle lay.

Cal waved the gun. “Don’t think about it,
Pops.”

The man continued to crawl toward the gun.
The woman cried
at her husband, “
Nein! Nein! Englisch!
”

The man hesitated.

“Not English, lady. I’m an American. But if
he makes one
more move, I’m going to blow a hole in his brains the size of
Berlin.”

She kept screaming at her husband, and at
last he gave up
and sat up and touched the blood on his forehead. When he looked
at Cal, his
eyes burned with hate.

“No thanks necessary, you ungrateful Kraut.
Now crawl over
there.” He gestured with his pistol. “Back. Move it. I haven’t
got all night.
That’s it. More.”

Cal picked up the dead soldier’s rifle, and
then made his
way to the woman’s side. The farmer groaned and tried to rise to
his feet.

“Cool it, pal. I’m not going to hurt your
lady.”

He helped the woman stand. Apart from some
bruising about
the neck she looked okay. She straightened her dress, then spat
on the dead
Russian. “
Frontschweine.
”

“Move away,” Cal said. “I need a look. Let’s
see what stupid
thing I did this time.”

He bent over the dead Russian. Dammit. And to
protect
Germans, too.

Maybe the man had something that would help
keep him alive.
He searched the man’s belongings. A hunk of dry, nasty-looking
bread,
cartridges, a hunting knife, and a bunch of stolen loot: rings,
old coins, more
watches, a pair of binoculars that looked English made. Finally,
a picture of
an elderly woman with a scarf wrapped around her head. Mom?
Grandma? What would
the old lady say if she could see her beloved boy’s last,
murderous hours on
earth. Would she be ashamed? Or proud?

He kept the binoculars, and decided to take
the rifle and
the cartridges with him as well. No sense having these two
shooting at him as
he left their property.

Meanwhile, the German couple started a heated
argument, no
doubt something about whether or not they should try to kill him
now or wait
until morning to rush off to find Little Hitler, or someone
similar. Cal had
what he needed. Time to hightail it out of here.

But as he turned to go, the woman grabbed his
sleeve and
asked him something.

“No spreken ze Deutch, lady. Now let go of me
before I’m
doubly sorry for saving your Nazi hide.”

She let go and rushed toward the back of the
barn, calling
out as she went. He kept an eye on her, but backed his way to
the open barn
door as she reached a pile of hay and tore it away in big
handfuls. Whatever
she had back there, he was not interested. But to his surprise,
the woman
reached into the pile and pulled out a girl who had been hiding
beneath the
hay. She looked about seventeen or eighteen, very pretty with
corn silk hair in
a braided bun coming undone at the back of her head. The mother
brushed hay
from the girl’s hair and dress and pushed her toward the
American pilot.

“Oh, good Lord. No, I’m not taking your
daughter with me. Is
that what you want? I can’t keep her safe out there. I’ll be
damn lucky to keep
myself
alive.”

The girl came toward him, trembling. She
clasped her hands
in a pleading gesture. “Please, you will help us, yes?”

“And you speak English. Of course. Just my
luck.”

“Please. It is very dangerous. You are Ami,
yes?”

“American? Right. Cal Jameson, Lieutenant,
U.S. Army Air
Forces. Your enemy, and don’t you forget it.”

“Americans are in Leipzig. You take us there,
please. More
safe.”

“Listen, I’ve got enough trouble as it is,
trying to stay alive.”

“Mother and father, too. We leave in morning,
yes? Your name
is Cal? I am called Greta.”

“No, I don’t want to know your name. And I’m
leaving now,
you understand? Not morning. And I’m going alone.”

The girl opened her mouth to say something
else, but a
gunshot sounded outside the barn. Close, perhaps as near as the
farmhouse, only
a few dozen yards away. Cal grabbed the barn handles and pulled
the doors shut.

The German farmer reached for the lamp and
the barn plunged
into darkness. Cal cursed and groped for the rifle. When he had
it, he edged
back until he pressed against the wall, kept the Russian gun
between his feet,
the pistol in one hand, and the other hand outstretched in case
the farmer came
at him in the dark.

Voices sounded outside the barn, laughing and
jeering. A man
broke into song in Russian. Another man joined him. They sounded
drunk. Two
more men shouted from farther away.

The girl’s voice came from his side. “How
many?”

“Go back to the hay,” he whispered. “Bury
yourself and don’t
come out.”

Greta made too much noise obeying, but at
least she was out
of the way. Cal replaced the lost bullet in his pistol, and then
stood waiting
for the door to open. There was enough light outside from the
moon and the
glowing horizon that he should get one good shot, maybe two. And
then, if he
picked up the rifle...

No good. The others could simply light the
barn on fire and
burn them alive.

The song continued for several moments. More
words, more
drunk laughter. Another gunshot, this one a few hundred yards
away. One of the
Russians outside the barn yelled something that sounded like,
stop
shooting,
you idiots.

And then the voices trailed away. The singing
picked up
again, this time from nearer the house.

Cal cracked the barn door. He saw nobody in
the shadows.

The three Germans made their way to his side
a few moments
later.

Greta tugged on his sleeve. “You see? They
will kill us. You
must help.”

“All right, but only until dawn. Then, you
can find more
Germans if you can and I’ll find a place to hide.”

He had no idea how much of this the girl
understood, but she
nodded and spoke to her parents. The mother sounded grateful,
the father
grudging, but he seemed to agree.

“Hurry up,” Cal said. “Before they come
looking to join Ivan
in some recreational raping. Do you have any bags. Any food?”

“No, nothing,” Greta said.

“You people didn’t give this much thought,
did you? All
right, let’s go.”

Cal had second thoughts by the time they
climbed over a low
stone wall and passed into the next farm some twenty minutes
after leaving the
barn with the dead Russian. The girl’s father—Greta said his
name was
Hans-Peter and her mother was Helgard—stared at him suspiciously
whenever Cal
spoke to his daughter. Say the village up ahead was still held
by Germans. What
would keep Hans-Peter from shouting for help from the first
friendly soldier
they saw?

Once they were clear of the farm, Cal gave
Helgard the
bandage from his C-1 vest, which she wrapped around her
husband’s head to stop
the bleeding from the gash above his left eye.

They followed a rutted farm road that passed
along a canal
to their left. Hedges of willow and privet rose to the right.
Perfect place for
an ambush. The Germans spoke in whispers, which he tried to hush
at first, but
the gunfire had receded and he gradually relaxed. Even the
artillery had taken
a lull and he heard frogs croaking their spring mating calls,
oblivious to the
chaos that enveloped the human world.

Hans-Peter and Helgard started arguing in
low, intense
whispers.

“Fighting about me again?” Cal said.

“No,” Greta said. “About whether it is safe
to go back to my
grandmother’s house or whether the
Frontschweine
are
there.”

“What’s that mean, anyway?”

“Combat swine. Front troops. Not all of them
are Russian
army. You understand? Like the man in barn. They get behind the
lines. Pillage.
Abuse the women. They are everywhere.”

“Yeah, I saw some of them in the woods, too.
Disorganized
mob. Why doesn’t someone drive them out?”

“There are not enough men left. The army is
at the front,
fighting regular troops.”

“They had enough men to organize a hunt for a
single
American pilot. Hunt me with dogs, too.”

Didn’t do them any good once they stumbled
into that ambush.
Maybe if they’d been paying attention to the combat swine in the
first place
they’d still be alive.

“Believe me, there is nothing we can do.”
Greta’s English
was improving rapidly, as if it had only been rusty from disuse,
and burdened
by her terror. “This is the third time we have run from them
since January when
we crossed the Vistula and the Nazis took my little brother to
fight with the
Volkssturm
.
We thought we’d be safe with Oma.”

“There’s nowhere safe. The war is over, you
know.”

“Not yet.”

“Well, it will be. A few days now, maybe
weeks.”

“Maybe for you,” she said. “Not for the
people under the
Russians. That is why we must reach American lines. You want the
same thing,
yes?”

The argument picked up between the farm
couple, voices
raised.

“Shh,” he told them. “Whisper, for God’s
sake. Why the devil
are you still arguing anyway?”

Greta said something to her parents, and they
fell silent.
She whispered to Cal, “Whether it will be safe to get our things
from Oma’s. My
father says yes. Mother, no.”

“Oma?”

“That’s my grandmother. We were living with
her.”

“That wasn’t your house back there?”

“No. We are from Upper Silesia. We went to
town to catch the
train for Hamburg, but the planes destroyed the locomotive.”

“And where’s Oma?” he asked quickly, before
she made the
connection between the air attack on the train and the downed
American pilot
walking by her side. “Why didn’t she come with you?”

She didn’t answer the question about her
grannie. Instead,
she kept explaining, as if she’d caught his disbelief that
they’d waited until
now to flee the Russians. “It all happened so quickly. Two weeks
ago, they were
fifty miles away. The brave men in the Wehrmacht were already
turning the enemy
back. We could return home by summer.”

“That’s what they told you?”

She whispered something else that he didn’t
pick up, and
then added, “We turned around when the train would not run. No
way to make it
home by night, so we knocked on doors. Nobody answered. Vater
thought we would
be safe in the barn.”

“How long to Oma’s house?”

“An hour on foot, maybe longer. You are
limping. Are you
injured?”

“I can manage,” he said. “Hope the old lady
is ready to go.
We don’t have time to wait around while she gathers up her
knitting.”

Greta fell silent.

Trudging along, Cal thought about the
coincidence that
dropped him into the midst of refugees from the same train he’d
buzzed earlier
that day. That wasn’t a good thing. He doubted they would
differentiate between
the British pilot who attacked and the American who refrained.