Highway To Hell (19 page)

Just as they let their guard down the ground began to tremble as tank tracks tore at the dried dusty soil.

“Sarge, targets approaching from the south. My count is at two tanks; Panzers is my best bet. Not enough movement for a whole platoon. I would say just a couple of stragglers,” Henry Balfont said. His thick Southern accent disguised every other word. Graham was the one person who seemed able to understand him well enough to not have to ask for a repeat of every other sentence.

“Move the men; head into the trees yonder. Henry, take the family with you, just for precaution. Let’s not make any hasty decisions before we know what we’re up against,” Graham answered. The trees would give them the best position for mounting a possible attack while also offering enough shelter should the unexpected guests be too strong in numbers. Better then to wait for them to move on, radio the news and then stage an attack under more favorable conditions.

“Yes, Sarge,” Henry called in response although it came out sounding like, “Ayuh-Saage,” before signaling to the others. They moved silent and they moved fast, but when Graham turned back to the family, they were gone, the doors to the church just closing behind them. Graham ran over to the door but it was locked. He knocked and waited, then knocked again, harder this time. The drone of the approaching tanks grew closer. The door didn’t open. “Come out, we will protect you,” Graham called to them. “You don’t have to be scared,” he added. It was a blatant lie, but he guessed they either couldn’t understand or wouldn’t listen to him anyway. He tried once more, refusing to give up until the last possible moment. They would not be able to explain their presence in the church and would no doubt be killed.

“Sarge, come on, will ya?” Henry called, grabbing him by the shoulder. “Jimmy’s got the base rat on the wire. What do you want us to say?” Henry asked him as they ran for cover.

The air turned grey as a lone tank approached, and offered Graham the first clue that things were not as they appeared to be, but he waited nonetheless.

The tank drove up to the church, stopping close enough for the barrel of the cannon to be inches away from the sidewall. The other held back, standing point.

Graham and his men watched as seven men clambered out of the machine, not wearing the expected Nazi uniforms, but rather a mixture of what seemed to be every uniform involved in the war; the American Army and Air-Force, British infantry and RAF colors. Some of the men had even gone so far as to mix and match their military ensemble with British shirts and American trousers and boots. Graham couldn’t see any of the marks of the 30
Infantry; his unit.

“You seeing this, Sarge? They’s tryin’ to be us,” a New Yorker called Martin Brittori whispered. They were the same words that were on the lips of the entire group. Martin laughed under his breath. Graham smiled in spite of himself. “Shall we go t’em?” Martin asked.

Graham was about to answer when one man, dressed in a complete British uniform, walked to the church, picked up a rock and threw it through one of the small windows. This seemed to be some sort of signal, for the others walked over to the door and with a small burst of gunfire succeeded in wrenching them apart before storming the building like a modern day SWAT team. They all heard the screaming, followed by the familiar rattling burst of gunfire erupt from within the church. The men emerged soon after, holding both the wife and Johanna by the hair. They dragged the women behind them as if they were mules at auction. There was no sign of the father, son, or young Wilhelmina.

“What do we do, Sarge?” a voice said up from the background. Graham didn’t hear who it was; he was focused on the scene unfolding before his eyes. The fight or flight syndrome, as people had labeled it over the years, raged through his body. Graham knew that any action would result in bloodshed, and although it took him many years before he would admit it to himself, the only thing he had thought about back then was which way would be the most likely to leave him alive.

The group remained in the trees and watched in silence as first the mother and then the daughter were bent over the tank then stripped and beaten by the soldiers, who cawed with laughter throughout the whole ordeal. Johanna screamed, while the mother was silent, her face unemotional, broken; she had surrendered.

“Sarge, we can’t wait any longer. Jesus, look at what they’re doing, for Christ sake!” Martin shouted from beside him. “Come on,” he called and charged out of the coppice, followed by ten other men, the movements fuelled by rage, their actions clumsy. Their minds shunted over into the passenger seat for their joy ride into death.

“No!” Graham called after them – but his words were cut off by gunfire, and not from the group of men. Their attention was still held by the two women, but from a new group, hidden by the trees to their far left.

Martin was the first to fall, his head exploding in a red mist; quite possibly the same mist that had descended over him a few moments earlier. The rest of the group fell after a scattered burst of panic fire tore through them. The first shot was more luck than a specifically aimed headshot.

Graham had seen them, something, a glint of light which he was sure came from either a pair of binoculars or the sight of a rifle, but he hadn’t seen it in time to stop Martin from doing exactly what he himself had wanted to do.

“Two o clock. Unknown number of targets. Watch the trees and open fire as soon as they emerge!” Graham shouted over the rattling sound of his own gunfire directed towards the tank. The German soldiers threw the women to the floor behind the tanks in what looked at first glance like a strange act of protection.

The Nazis (for there was no other option that that) jumped inside the British tank which they had somehow acquired, no doubt at the same time they picked up their uniforms, Graham reasoned. They heard German voices barking orders on all sides of them, and when the tank’s engine roared into life the group’s resolve was broken.

The battle intensified and when the turret of the giant tank turned in their direction Graham didn’t need to give any orders. The group turned and fled. They moved along the trees rather than deeper into them. No sooner had the last man broken into a run than a booming shot rang out, shaking the ground like an earthquake. The splintering sound of trees being felled shook their bones. Tendrils of smoke overtook them like a mist rolling across the English moors, only the snarling hound was not the Baskerville ghost but the machine gun fire of German troops.

By the time they stopped moving to regroup, the hidden German soldiers had emerged, another tank, this one a Panzer with approximately ten men walking beside it, all in German uniform.

Graham couldn’t help but offer the world a wry smile.

“Waas’up, Sarge?” Matthew Paterson asked, his voice barely a whisper, his body crouched low to the ground behind a small bushel which had at one time been a wild blackberry plant.

“Just thinking about how fucked we seem to be,” Graham whispered in return. Their situation was indeed grave and at that point in time he saw no options open to them other than to make a stand.

The ensuing battle was inevitable. The German troops joined together and spread out, leaving the tanks guarded but not occupied. Graham knew that once the skirmish began the tanks would be useless, as not even the Germans would use them in such close proximity to their own troops.

Matthew, Henry Balfont, and Jimmy Stevens, the radio operator, were the first to fall, followed soon after by a number of German soldiers. The cover offered by the trees, although sparse, was enough to give Graham and his men a degree of shelter. They moved fast but with caution towards the edge of the copse, moving away from the church. Graham was relieved when no more German troops arrived. The numbers had not been in their favor when it began, and with nine of his initial twenty men dead and one other with a nasty wound in his shoulder, things hadn’t gotten any better.

“Listen, we need a plan. If we run now they’ll mow us down; if we stick in the trees they’ll unleash the big dogs on us.” Graham gestured towards the tanks. The Germans were less than a hundred meters away, remaining outside the line of trees.

Graham crouched down to his haunches and fired a burst towards the moving stumps that were legs attached to hidden German bodies. None of his shots killed but several of the group fell, their screams breaking the eerie silence that had fallen. Graham sprang from the trees, his rifle ready, and unleashed another volley, partnered by Harold McCarb, the oldest man in their group at twenty-five – yet he still had yet to be promoted to a higher rank despite his near perfect service record. He and Graham had both enlisted together before the war even started, unlike the majority of the others.

“Walter, John, we’ll divert their attention. You guys need to get to those tanks,” Graham instructed the two men he knew could operate a tank. They sped off at once without even daring to question his order. The skirmish wasn’t a long one; Graham took a flesh wound to the right thigh from one of the tank guards – who he had rightly guessed didn’t dare even consider firing the big guns into their own men. He remained on his feet long enough to fire one round. The man’s face disappeared in a cloud of red, and he fell backwards onto the Panzer and everything fell still. The only sound that remained had been groaning of the injured Germans, their bodies broken and bleeding, their guns fallen out of reach.

Slowly, the scene around Graham began to dilute, the same way a photograph reduces in clarity over the years. The color was the first thing to fade. Then the lines and boundaries of everything began to blur. Colors ran and collided with each other. The tanks half sank into the ground, their motors still grumbling. Graham looked to his left, but Harold was gone. He had been replaced by a faceless, flesh colored orb; the eyes, nose, mouth, everything had been erased. The dawning realization that it had all been a dream came when Graham tried to move. He was still sitting, lost between worlds. His wrists were bound, his legs also. His army uniform was gone, replaced instead by a strange and rather uncomfortable suit, the top button fastened in a choking fashion.

“You remember, I see. Well, that makes my job somewhat easier,” a voice said.

Graham felt a surge of emotion rush through him, and he fought hard to keep control of himself, tensing his jaw until it hurt.

“How could I forget? But it was a war. I killed. I shot first and cursed when I missed, but I accepted what happened over there,” Graham said defiantly. The room was cold and his breath clouded before his face with every word he said.

“Really? You can tell yourself that, you can even tell me that, but we both know that this is where you finally broke. Doesn’t it still haunt you, the look on those women’s faces?” Was there pleasure in the voice?

“Fuck you. I still remember them; how could I forget? I remember every man who served and died by my side, so I guess you’re out of luck.” Graham tried to sound strong, but even he could hear his voice start to waver, just a little. As Graham’s eyes adjusted he found he could make out more and more of his cell. The walls were lined with wood. There was nothing but earth on the other side; he could smell it, rich and peaty. Before long Graham could see from one corner to the other, yet try as he liked, he could not find the owner of the voice.

“I believe you, I really do. That’s why our time together it about something else entirely,” the voice whispered in Graham’s ear.

“Oh, then please enlighten me, set me on the right path so that we can get this over and done with,” Graham responded, not with fire and guile but anger. An instinctive reaction brought on through having to relive memories that now they had been replayed and brought to the surface again didn’t seem to matter.

“First, answer me this: why did you leave them?” the voice asked. It came from behind him now. Graham turned his head. He saw someone, two people in fact. Shadows in the corner, but just as Graham thought he could see his tormentor both figures disappeared, leaving him with a different scene to contend with. He saw the old church; the brick and stone walls had crumbled away, the small spire fallen through the roof and stood but a few feet proud of the walls that had supported it for so many years. Graham recognized it without a moment’s hesitation.

Then all of a sudden they stood before him. Stared at him, their heads tilted to the right. They studied him. Their faces blank, expressionless. Their grey, sagging flesh was covered in open wounds which even after so many years still wept. Fleas and ticks sprung joyously from one body to another. They opened their mouths, yet speech was impossible for the women as they had no tongues. They had long since rotted away or been eaten by some hungry scavenger. As a replacement, each mouth contained a thick white maggot, their bodies swelled so large and obese after having gorged on the rotting treasure trove they had discovered that they now barely fit inside the respective mouths that they called home.

“Johanna, Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry.” The words were empty. They were words he had spoken a hundred times over the years but never had he wished them so earnestly.

The corpse muttered at him, angry mumbled sounds. Yet her eyes said volumes. They stared blindly at Graham but he understood well enough that it wasn’t anger, but warning; a plea for him to once again turn around and just keep walking.

“Answer my question, peon. Why did you leave them? You never gave a second thought to that family,” the voice said through the women. Their mouths opened and closed in no particular synchronicity with the words, like fish. “You just packed up your things and left, eager to get back to the comfort of your platoon and spread the word of your heroics.” The last word was spat, as if it left a foul taste in the back of the mouth.

“They were dead. It’s not as though burying them wouldn’t have helped. We needed to get back and advise those that needed to know what had happened,” Graham lied. He stuttered as he spoke. He always was a bad liar.

“That does make a convenient excuse for you, I am sure, but utterly irrelevant. You see, they were alive; they were healthy, in fact. In spite of their exterior ailments, their bodies were strong. But thanks to you their family was taken from them, their patriarch, their hunter-gatherer, and their future, the small child. Their bodies were left to rot inside that church, riddled with holes; they drowned in a sea of their own blood. Alone. The women didn’t dare go back inside, not even to say goodbye,” the voice snarled.