A city bus pulled to a stop, hissed, and opened its doors for Ashley, Stam, and Aurelio to disembark. They stepped out onto cold, empty, suburban streets, and as the bus pulled away, dousing the trio in thick black smoke, Ashley was the first to speak.
“I’m too old to be taking a bus around.”
“Still haven’t heard anything about your car?” Aurelio asked, coughing as he waved the exhaust cloud away. “Maybe you should call the impound lot, or—”
“It wasn’t in a tow zone.” He glanced to Stam, who nodded in agreement. “It wasn’t doing anyone any harm.”
“Maybe you had an old ticket, or maybe—”
“My plates were expired,” Ashley interrupted. “Very expired.”
“That could be it.”
“Well, then, the DMV should consider expanding its hours.”
Aurelio laughed. “Maybe you should start going to bed at a more reasonable time.”
“The DMV, banks, the post office,” he mused, ignoring him. “Nine-to-fivers….”
“I know what you mean,” Aurelio offered. “When I used to work overnight, I’d usually fall asleep at nine in the morning.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You know, in New York City they supposedly have a twenty-four-hour post office?” Aurelio commented.
“They do.” Ashley nodded. “Never used it, though. I don’t send a lot of mail—it’s just the principle of the thing.” He held up a full two-gallon tank of gasoline in his hand. “At least the petrol station keeps respectable hours.”
The streets around them were as silent as ever—the small town was always asleep by sunset—and no one spoke for another minute or so, until Stam at last opened her mouth.
“What did you buy?”
“Oh,” Aurelio reached into the bag he was holding and produced a DVD case. “It’s called ‘The Petrified Forest.’”
“What is it about?”
“A washed-up writer who meets a girl in a diner in Arizona. It’s also one of Humphrey Bogart’s first major roles. It’s embarrassing that it was just sitting in a gas station bargain bin.”
“Who?”
“He was in…” Aurelio tried to think of a title she’d know, “oh, remember when we watched ‘Across the Pacific?’”
Ashley interrupted. “Was that that ridiculous war movie with the terrible ending?”
“Yeah,” he confessed before turning back to Stam. “Anyway, he was the lead in that.”
Stam nodded as she brushed a strand of hair from her face.
“Hey.” Ashley placed a hand on her head. “You need a haircut.” He ruffled her hair.
“Already?” She made no move to escape his touch.
He said nothing, and slowed to let Aurelio take a slight lead.
“I’ve… had a ghost on my mind.” Ashley’s voice had grown suddenly very somber.
Stam said nothing, but listened.
He sighed. “And I need a distraction.”
* * *
There was no sound. No sight. No discernible feeling at all.
Gunther lay flat in the snow. A wide swath around him was stained bright red, while the grey wool of his uniform was turning a deep brown and his fair skin blued from the cold. To him, the world had disappeared, but in reality there was still the occasional spat of gunfire or a distant shout from the direction into which the battle had moved. The immediate area was host only to a few dozen sprawled bodies slowly being buried beneath snow.
As the gunshots faded further, the area reclaimed serenity, forgotten by whoever still lived and fought in the distance. Meaning nothing to the dead, night fell upon the woods, and only one figure still crept through the darkness….
It moved carefully, giving calculated thought to each and every step as it surveyed both the land and the bodies. Each object was treated with suspicion, until it last came upon one of the Einsatzgruppe officers. It knelt and felt his face, then his neck, before moving on.
The figure’s cautious search continued, determined but now skeptical, before seeing Gunther. It approached and touched his face, then his neck, this time not dissatisfied. From Gunther’s throat came the weakest whimper a voice could ever make.
The figure gently wrapped its arms around him, and with some strain, lifted part of him from the snow, exposing a dirt silhouette beneath his head. It folded back the collar of his jacket—snowflakes landed on Gunther’s skin without melting as two small hands worked his dog tags off and slid them carefully into a pocket.
While it continued searching his person, Gunther’s eyes flickered open for but a moment. Somehow, through his haze, he made out the form of a girl, paler than a corpse, with colorless hair that was wet and frozen where it dangled in long, stringy clumps from beneath an ill-fitting Soviet soldier’s cap. She was swaddled in a thick Russian jacket—many sizes too large—adorned with bloodstains and bullet holes.
Then, he saw nothing.
As the girl examined Gunther’s neck once more, a reluctant expression crossed her face. She took a deep breath, which deeply contrasted against the short, inaudible ones coming from the body in her arms. Her face moved in slowly, until the tip of her nose met and lingered on his jaw. With one more uncomfortable breath, she opened her lips and rested two pointed teeth on Gunther’s cold, sickly skin.
In a flash, Gunther awoke in a lifeless body. His eyes opened wide; the treetops above became clearer than ever. He felt wispy, icy fingers holding his head and something piercing his throat. Through what pain and terror he could manage to feel, he did nothing more than try and fail to scream. His mind fought to flail his body out from death’s paralysis, but soon, just as darkness had come over him before, he felt it coming again. While his vision remained crisp and vivid, there was a sense he couldn’t describe, but knew to be his own final fading from the world.
It was then the sound of a soft thud took the girl’s gaze away. Not pulling her mouth from Gunther’s throat, she tilted her eyes to its source. The frozen body of a man dangling an iron ring from his finger had not moved, but on the ground, like a fallen fruit from his hand, a snow-coated sphere trembled as it hissed a thin wisp of smoke. It held the girl’s attention, but did nothing to interrupt her further—
―Until, in a flash, the device shed its skin and an explosion tore through the air and earth. The girl’s tiny body was catapulted violently away; her head slammed into a tree, cracking her skull. Her previously flawless face was burned and dirty—splattered in a mix of her own blood and Gunther’s.
Gunther had flown only a few feet; the explosion had rolled and contorted him across the ground. Much of the blast had hit his torso, and a hundred tiny shards of shrapnel had eaten into his chest and stomach. The dull nothingness that had consumed him was replaced by pain in every corner of his body: his neck, the earlier bullet-wound, the shrapnel, broad swaths of scorched skin, bruises and broken bones, and strangely, his muscles, which had been so unresponsive to his attempts to move now worked, however painfully. He winced and writhed in agony in the snow where he lay while his burning eyes refused to shut; they remained open wide, taking in all around him.
He knew he lacked the strength to do so, and yet, he still succeeded in a struggle to hold himself up. From there, he completed the impossible task of climbing to his knees. He felt little more alive than he had before, and yet he began to crawl, toward what, he couldn’t say. His head hung limp and all he could see was the ground beneath him; it jaggedly moved just inches at a time as his entire frame lurched and trembled. His mind was a thick fog; everything felt like a dream. Where he was, what had happened—life itself—it was all lost in a haze.
And then something felt real: a piercing fear. He ripped his hand away from something it had rested on and painfully lifted his head to look at what had crippled him with such terror. He already somehow knew what it was, though he was bereft of reasoning for why it, of all things, terrified him: it was only a small, fallen tree branch. He searched carefully for an alternate place to rest his hand, and though he was still filled with inexplicable dread at the sight of the little twig, Gunther pressed on while avoiding any contact whatsoever. He was no more alert than before, but some part of him beamed with an overwhelming urgency to watch out for any other wood. A horrifying fear surged through his body—beyond the fear of death or any possible loss—that he could not possibly, ever—no matter what—willfully touch it.
The forest around him closed in. Each tree was more terrifying than a Soviet, and every log or broken limb was like an exposed landmine. All he could do was crawl, stricken with a childlike panic and desperation, to flee somewhere—anywhere—from the surrounding wood.
Dazed and weak, the ghostly girl strained to lift her head and watch Gunther. Utter terror had crossed her face not unlike it had his, and as urgently as she could, she called out after him, “Opreşte-te!”
Her soft, breathy whisper of a voice went unheard. Some part of her frail body vital to movement had been shattered against the tree, and she could not follow Gunther as he vanished into the darkness.
Gunther shambled toward the dwindling sounds of gunfire. At some point, he had begun to hobble on two feet. The earth was peppered with bodies completely submerged beneath the snow, but as he pushed on, there were ones more exposed—more freshly dead.
In time, he reached a clearing. The guns and rifles had fallen silent in the last few minutes and the nearest bodies had yet to develop a coating of snow—one still had a red pool expanding slowly beneath him. Gunther trudged past, still delirious—oblivious to the carnage around him—and continued moving until a hand grasped at his foot.
“Heulsuse…” came a gurgling call.
He looked down at bloodstained fingers creeping their way up his leg, pulling desperately at the fabric of his pants. Dazed as he was, he managed to recognize the dirty face beneath him: it was Heinz. He looked bad—not as bad as Gunther—but still bad.
“Help… me….” Heinz’s weak voice quivered while his hand feebly twisted against Gunther in pain.
He knelt down beside Heinz and took his hand, but he had no idea what to do; he couldn’t tell from where Heinz was bleeding. Gunther’s trembling head slowly twisted in one direction and then another, seeking any kind of first aid kit or materials. In the darkness, he could make nothing out, and performing even the little first aid he did know seemed an impossible task. His mind raced as best as it could, and he did the only thing he could think to: he took hold of Heinz.
“Come on,” Gunther managed to whisper.
As he struggled to lift Heinz from the ground, the boy let out a hideous, agonizing scream. Gunther winced at the sound, but still got Heinz up. He threw the boy’s arm around his neck and put an arm around his torso. He was bigger and taller than Gunther and his feet were limp and useless, but with tremendous strain, Gunther was able to take short, labored steps and drag him along.
Heinz whimpered softly, mumbling unintelligible words and possibly even prayers. The small piece of Gunther which didn’t feel like a lifeless corpse stumbling in terror at the sight of the wood tried to comfort him, “It’s okay, Heinz. It’s gonna be okay.”
* * *
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