Crack of Doom (18 page)

"They don't bother about that. They didn't bother either whether it was Germans or Czechs when they dropped their bombs on the station the night before last. What would I do in Baska without you? I'd die of fear."

He felt himself beginning to waver again, and hastily bent down to pick up her clothes. "Get dressed now. Pack anything else you need in your small case.

Don't forget to call on Mother. She'll just have to manage without you for the two or three days till Pawlowitsch comes to fetch her. Inform the neighbors so that they'll look in from time to time."

"So you're going after all," she said softly.

"I must." He handed her her clothes. "Later you'll understand everything."

"No," she said.

"I'm quite sure."

She let her clothes drop again. Kolodzi went to the door, and there turned around to say: "Good-by, Maria. In a few days you'll be glad I didn't listen to you."

She made no reply. Her face had become small and ravaged, everything about her looked helpless, miserable.

He could bear it no longer and ran out of the house.

CHAPTER

10

When he found that Vohringer had disappeared, Her-big's first reaction was fury: it was crazy to roam around the place on his own like this. Probably he was pretending to be insulted again—perhaps he was waiting for Herbig to run after him. If so, he was in for a disappointment, Herbig thought.

He looked out the window, annoyed at the mounting uneasiness he had begun to feel. Because he felt an urge to do something, he decided at least to go and see which way Vohringer had gone.

He slipped into his camouflage coat, took his gun and some magazines and left the house. He picked up Vohringer's trail leading to the edge of the wood, and then found it was joined by two others coming from the big house on the opposite side of the street. Herbig felt his heart thumping. Without stopping to think, he sprinted through the wood to the place where Vohringer's trail, which he recognized by the hob-nailed boots, deviated to the left before returning and leading in the opposite direction with the other two trails. He raced after them.

When the shot went off, he was so close to the clearing that he saw Vohringer fall. There was a building at the other end of the clearing which he remembered was a sanatorium; he noticed some faces at one of its windows, and fired at them without aiming. The faces disappeared immediately. In a flash Herbig was with Vohringer, who was writhing in the snow and screaming. Picking up his tommy-gun, which was lying near him, Herbig dragged him to the end of the wood, and there fired several more shots at the window. Then he hoisted Vohringer on to his back and panted off through the wood, feeling his load grow heavier and heavier with every step he took. After staggering about fifty yards down the steep slope, he could go no further. He put Vohringer down on the ground and pulled him along by the legs, past some thick scrub, to a huge mass of rock which looked like a snowed-up hut. Here Herbig flopped in the snow, gasping for breath.

He heard a noise above him, and without waiting till he could see anything, rattled off a new magazine into the scrub. As nothing moved, he again took hold of Vohringer's legs and dragged him the last two hundred yards to the edge of the wood. There he again took him on to his back, carried him around the house to the entrance, kicked the door open and tumbled into their room. After rolling Vohringer's inanimate body off his back and on to the floor, he sat panting for a moment, struggling to get his wind back. When he had recovered a bit, he rose and pushed the heavy table up against the door. Now he could attend to Vohringer.

At one glance Herbig saw there was little to be done for him: his face was the color of straw. Having unbuttoned the corporal's coat and trousers, Herbig looked for the wound. It was an unusually large hole for a bullet, with a bit of intestine sticking out of it.

Herbig bit his lip. It couldn't have caught the poor bastard worse. He took his field dressing out of his pocket and pressed it on to the wound, trying to push the bit of intestine back into the hole. It did not work. He felt as if he had a jelly-fish under his hands. Eventually he gave it up and raised Vohringer's body a bit so that he could get the bandage around. But since he could not take his one hand off the dressing, he did not succeed. The effort had exhausted him. For a while he squatted there looking at the distended stomach with a mixture of hatred and disgust. Then he tried a different method, lying between Vohringer's legs and pressing his chin down on the dressing. Now he had two hands to draw the bandage through behind the back, and was able to make a knot. After making sure the bandage was firm, he stood up, reeling. He went to the window and lit a cigarette with trembling fingers.

The house on the opposite side seemed deserted. The two men's tracks were still visible. Herbig crossed to the door and pushed the table away. He hesitated a second before pulling it open; but there was no one in the passage. He went quickly to the front door, turned the key, and ran into the kitchen. The woman was no longer there. A roast chicken lay on the table, the fire in the stove had almost burned out. On returning, Herbig found that Vohringer had recovered consciousness and was working at the bandage.

"Keep your paws still," said Herbig.

Vohringer turned his face towards Herbig. "The swine have got me."

"It's your own fault," said Herbig.

"Where did it hit me?"

"Bad enough place," said Herbig. He stuck a cigarette between Vohringer's lips and watched him inhaling the smoke.

"Give me something to drink," said Vohringer between two puffs.

"All right." Herbig went to the table, where Vohringer's flask lay. Taking the cigarette out of Vohringer's mouth, he let him drink, putting the flask down by him afterward and asking: "Can you feel anything^'

"Can I! I need a doctor. You have to get one."

"If I leave you on your own, the partisans will kill you."

"Just let 'em come. That's what I've been waiting for all along. I need a doctor, otherwise I'll croak here."

"Nobody croaks as quickly as that. You must hold out till this evening. As soon as Kolodzi comes, we'll take you back."

"You want to see me croak," said Vohringer. "You want that, don't you! Go on, say it, you filthy swine, you're glad they've got me."

"Shut your trap."

"Not while I can still talk. While I can still talk, I'll tell you what I think of you, you cowardly swine, you mean. . . ." He broke off and tried to crawl on his stomach toward Herbig, who stared at him angrily, and said in a hoarse voice: "You're crazy. Why do you think I dragged you all the way back here?"

"That's true." Vohringer stopped his movements in surprise. "By God, I hadn't thought of that. . . . Thanks."

Herbig watched him feeling for the flask, unscrewing the cork and drinking, spilling half of it over his face. His face was now the color of sulphur, and Herbig wished he had died at once. "Nonsense," he answered gruffly.

After mumbling a few words which Herbig couldn't catch, Vohringer said: "If you had the pain I've got–––"

"You wouldn't have it if you'd stayed here."

"Those bastards, shooting a man in the guts. Oh, those bastards," groaned Vohringer, beating his fists against the floor.

Herbig had never before been affected by watching someone die, but this time it churned his insides. Another thing was that his own position was getting more and more dangerous. If he only knew whether the two men up there had stayed in the sanatorium or whether they'd come down and were now waiting for him to walk out of the house! The more time I lose, he thought, the smaller my chances will be. There was nothing to be done for Vohringer, and as far as Kolodzi . . . He looked at Vohringer, who was making peculiar movements with his head; and as he looked at him, Herbig forgot that he had thought of leaving him to the partisans. He walked over to him, and said, "I'll get you into a bed."

"In the guts of all places," whimpered Vohringer, his eyes closed.

"Not as bad as in the head. Stop your damned whining, you're not a woman, are you?" said Herbig, wondering where to put him. He went to have a look at the bedroom. If I put Vohringer in here, Herbig thought, the partisans may shoot him in bed. They might force their way into the house from any side. He regarded the beds uncertainly, and in the end collected a few cushions, dragging them back into the other room. There he stopped in the doorway, looking silently at Vohringer.

Vohringer had unbuttoned his trousers, pushed the dressing to one side, and was staring incredulously at his bulging intestines. He looked up at Herbig, his mouth agape, and from there back to the wound. Herbig had never in his life seen such terror in a face; it was dreadful. Dropping the cushions, he dashed over, wildly shouting: "Hands off."

Vohringer put his head on the ground and began to cry, silently, not moving his mouth. His face now seemed like a squeezed lemon, wrinkled and weary and unutterably sad. Herbig felt it was more than he could bear.

He carried the cushions over by the stove, and laid them on the ground. Returning to Vohringer, he said: "For Christ's sake stop, I just can't stand watching you.

Put your arms around my neck." When he lifted him, he could feel the tear-stained face against his own, which upset him so much he almost dropped the heavy body. "This is terrible," he gasped, dragging Vohringer to the cushions. Then he bent over him. "Now stop fussing—do you hear?"

Vohringer did not answer, and as he looked at him, the thought struck Herbig for the first time that it was hideous to have to die this way. He sat down near him on the bench by the stove, and looked out the window. Suddenly he noticed a civilian, who was running over to the house opposite with a sub-machine gun. It surprised him so much that he waited three seconds before leaping to the window. The place where the man had disappeared lay on the right side of the house, of which Herbig couldn't see anything.

The fellow must have a damned guilty conscience, he thought, annoyed that he had not watched more carefully. He picked his tommy-gun off the table, pushed a chair up to the window seat, with its back facing the window, and straddled his legs over it. In the next few minutes he did not take his eyes off the house. Once he thought he could see movements behind one of the windows. He was itching to fire a few shots, but it would only have been waste of ammunition.

Where had the man gone? So far as Herbig remembered, the house hadn't a door on the right. It was annoying he could only see the front of it, which was about ten yards wide with its two windows and the door in between them. On the other hand the house was favorably placed for him, because it was separated from the other houses by an open space. Nor could anyone come up unseen from behind, where the ground climbed steeply to the wood.

"Are they coming?" asked Vohringer. His voice sounded amazingly clear. He's tough as a cat, thought Herbig, and answered: "They're in the house across the street. One of them's just run inside it."

"Why didn't you shoot him?"

"I didn't see him till too late."

"I bet they're going to try and smoke us out."

"Easier said than done."

Vohringer groaned. "Oh, damned—if only I could do something. I can't move my legs any more, it's as if they'd been chopped off. This will be a shock for Kolodzi."

"He should have stayed here."

"Then it might have caught
him.
He's just as much of a fool as you and I are. We're bloody fools, the whole lot of us. We croak here so that the boys in Berlin can keep their fat asses warm."

"No warmer than the boys in Moscow and London. But well get them yet."

"Just like they've got me. Wait till
you
have something like this in your belly. Man, how it hurts!" He began to moan again and writhed about on the cushions.

"You have to try to lie still," said Herbig.

"I'll be doing that long enough—till the worms have eaten me. And all because of this damned army, this God damned army, this God damned. . . ." The pain made him scream.

Herbig looked out of the window, gritting his teeth. Another man was going over to the house. This time Herbig reacted quicker. Without even stopping to make a hole in the window he fired at random. The man jumped up as if he had been standing on a springboard, and shot toward the house like the cast of a harpoon. There he vanished on one side just as the other man had done.

Herbig swore. He had aimed badly, disconcerted by the cross-bars of the window. In a sudden fit of temper he fired the rest of the magazine at the house's right window. Then he took a few more magazines from his pack and took up position by the window again. Suddenly the window panes shattered, and in came a rain of machine-gun bullets like a swarm of hornets. Herbig waited till they stopped, then edged nearer to the window so that he could have a better view of the street without risk of a sudden bullet catching his face. Cold air came through the shattered window. Then he heard Vohringer's voice from the corner near the stove. "I've no time now," Herbig said impatiently. "What d'you want?"

"Can you see them?" asked Vohringer.

"Of course not. If I could, they'd be dead now."

"Perhaps I can help you. Get me on the table and push it up to the window."

"So they could make mincemeat out of you," Herbig growled. He was much impressed by Vohringer's suggestion, though it would have been foolish to take it seriously. "You better nurse your belly."

"Oh, that's gone anyhow, I needn't worry about that any more. But I'd like to knock off one of those swine before I go." His teeth chattered as he spoke, but his head had become quite clear. He could feel the warmth of the stove, the soft cushions which gave rest to his tortured body, with a grateful sense of security.

Suddenly the bark of sub-machine guns broke into his consciousness. He heard Herbig's voice yell out something; as if through a soft red fog he saw Herbig dashing to the door, then back to the window, from where he started firing like a madman. Then two men came stumbling into the room, staggered to the wall with faces white as chalk, and stopped there to look at Herbig, who was still firing out of the window.

Vohringer closed his eyes in bewilderment, unsure whether what was happening was reality or some terrifying nightmare conjured up by his fever. He only looked at the two men again when he heard Herbig's voice asking them where they had left their guns.

"We've only got pistols," one of them answered, a redhead with a weak sagging chin that was covered with pimples. The other one was very fat; in his greatcoat he looked like a barrel. The expression on his bloated face was one of mortal fright.

"Well, I like that," said Herbig. "You pull up here in your limousine as if you were attending a wedding. What's the idea?'

"It was the inspector's fault," said the Redhead dejectedly.

"What inspector?"

"We're from the Gestapo."

Herbig gave a whistle. "Well, fancy that now. What's secret about
you?"

"The uniform," said the Fat One with a rueful grin.