A/N

Thank you to the one person that reviewed! I greatly appreciate it, you know! A quick fact: the girl is meant to have been eleven. Now she is older, but in the first chapter she was supposed to be eleven.

Chapter Two

I sat on a charred tree stump, cleaning the barrel of my rifle with a small rag. This action was more habitual than it was necessary, and as the cold winter air blew from the north I huddled deeper into my heavy coat and silently cursed my threadbare gloves. As I finished the ritual I looked around, noticing many of the trucks were still absent.

'Perhaps the raid was unsuccessful after all,' I thought sullenly, saying a quick prayer for the men that might never be coming back. I couldn't believe that just over three years ago I was so innocent as to call blood, "jelly," and describe death as, "sending them to God." So naive was I back then, as I recall thinking that perhaps the War wasn't as bad as I feared.. Such ideations were no longer in my mind, no, for they had been long ago replaced with a more realistic notion: "The War will not end until every Westerner lays down his rifle and surrenders to the might of the Fatherland, until the Deutschland regains its prominent position in the world, until we have revenge on those that forced us into poverty." Whether or not I agreed with that statement was inconsequential and irrelevant. My orders were to fight until Death came for me, and I would follow these orders with a vengeance. The sooner The War was over the sooner I could find out who killed my mother and my sisters.

Perhaps now is as good a time as ever to elaborate on my past. When I was born, my Papa and Momma owned a small farm in western Poland (or was it eastern Germany?), and lived with Momma's brother Hans; the house was just as small as the farm. Naturally, growing up I wished for nothing more than to inherit the farm and keep the tradition of working it alive. The farm had been a gift from a foreign dignitary to my Great-Great-Grandfather, and ever since that time the man of the family would be left the farm when the elder one died. Of course, since my parents never had a son, the farm would go to me, the eldest of three daughters. I was always more boyish than my sisters, not deigning to wear the dresses or long skirts as the others did; opting instead for the overalls and baggy shirts my Papa and Großvater wore when they tended to our horses and cattle, and the thick boots and wide-brimmed hats they wore when cultivating the crops. The farm had the fortune to be considered a ranch as well, which meant more money for our family.

Being the only female in the family that actively cared for the horses and tended to the farm (the other three cared for the other animals and did the housework), I never got as close as I desired to my sisters. I had two of them, two wonderful little things as adorable as they were intolerable. the second oldest of the three of us was Ellie, two years younger than myself. She and I couldn't possible have been more dissimilar. Where I liked to ride horses, cultivate the crops, and be out well into the pre-dawn hours with Papa and our Uncle Hans Ellie liked to be in the kitchen with our mother, cleaning dishes and talking about what the future might hold for her, or be out with Trudy among the animal pens. Trudy was the youngest, for years younger than Ellie, and she was so talented with a paintbrush one would never guess they were related. Not only did I not look like her (I looked like neither of my siblings, parents, or grandparents, but my Großvater said I had his mother's slim form and his father's grayish-green eyes), but she also had so much more talent than I could ever hope for. The only things I excelled at were physical activities like soccer of farming.

Trudy, I believe, truly idolized me. She followed me almost everywhere, showed me countless pictures she'd drawn, and would tell anyone who would stop for five seconds just how awesome a role model I was. Trudy took her love for me one stop further when Papa and Uncle Hans got enough money to buy an addition to the house, so Trudy and Ellie finally got their own rooms and we gained a long-needed storage space. What Trudy did in her room was truly fantastic and incredibly well-thought through; she had used her allowance to buy many different kinds of colored paper and used tree sap from the nearby tangle of maple trees to cover her walls in a collage of rainbows. I had once confided in Trudy that the reason I chose not to have a favorite color tied into the reason I didn't behave like other girls, and that reason is because I saw the infinite possibilities that came with being individual. People often mistook my sense of individuality for rebellion and chalked me up as a bad influence on their children, incidentally isolating me from my peers. Without any friends keeping me away from the farm, I became something of a spectator at social gatherings rather than an active participant.

Only one person in my life has ever truly understood this sentiment, and that person was my Uncle Hans. I'm not sure how he understood, as he never saw fit to share that story with me, but he clearly did. Yet, for all the things he didn't tell me, the things he did seemed wickedly important, like how he was a pacifist and truthfully had next-to-no interest in working on the farm for much longer. My Uncle told me that he was looking into a place in the mountains where he could finally be alone. I couldn't ignore the fact that some things were changing, like how more and more covered trucks were turning onto our dirt roads and the dirt roads of our neighbors, taking men away with official letters and harsh words. Oddly enough, though my Papa was not drafted into the Army my Uncle was, and even after all this time I have received no word of him. The days seemed to get more and more panicked, with Papa and Momma forgetting to do little things like take out the trash or clean the animal pens, dumping these extra chores on my sisters and I. The decision to leave came three months after Uncle Hans had been called away. Trudy had been so excited to leave she'd forgotten her paintbrush behind, but my grip on her hand was unrelenting and she was forced to leave it behind.

I once again found myself staring at nothing, the hand circling around me and trying to get to me. I reached out to it and fell to my knees, but still I crawled after it.

"Arnalt!" a voice called out, and I recognized my given name. I stopped my desperate crawling and laid still, staring ahead. "Was tun Sie, wertlose Schwein! Aus dem Boden!" (Translation: "What are you doing, worthless pig? Get off the ground!") I quickly scrambled to my feet, angry at being called a pig.

"Es tut uns leid, Sir. Es wird nicht wieder vorkommen." (Translation: "Sorry, Sir. It will not happen again.") I looked down at the uneven ground, waiting for some sort of reprimand. Sensing that none was forthcoming I raised my head and looked around, realizing that I was alone. The nearest soldier to myself was sleeping soundly against his pack, and had been for the past hour. Strange, I thought slowly, wondering what was going on with me.

"ACHTUNG! Jeder montieren und raus hier! Eingehende Luftangriff! Bewegen, Sie Scheiße Flecken!" (Translation: "ATTENTION! Everyone mount up and get out here! Incoming air raid! Move, you shit stains!") The harsh tone of our commander jarred everyone into action, including myself. I raced to my pack and slung it over my shoulder, picking up my rifle and racing to the salvation of my truck. I hopped into the back and hastily rushed to my seat, forgetting in my blind rush that it was without a driver. Cursing myself for my stupidity I slid over the top and into the driver seat, honking the horn until everyone in my squad had mounted up. Slamming the stick into gear I pushed down hard on the gas, feeling the whole monstrous vehicle roar to life beneath me. I hurried away to the rendezvous point, letting other soldiers pile into the half-track with us despite Smokey's incessant hollering.

BA-BOOM, BA-BOOM, BA-BOOM!

JUGA-JUGA-JUGA-JUGA-JUGA!

The sounds of .50 cal machine guns, missiles, and conventional bombs ripped through the already prominent unease of my consciousness, cranking me up to brand-new levels of jitters and situational awareness. All of these things contributed to making my driving not only erratic but also jolting, the sound of bodies smacking into steel and other bodies coming from the back of the half-track like a symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven. When the sounds finally stopped and I turned onto a back road, following the vehicles before me. 'Maybe I'll finally catch a break for once. The raid must be ov-'

FFFFFWWWWOOOOOSSSSSHHH! and a firebomb going off close enough to the vehicle that my face burned to the third degree shattered through my thoughts, dashing them away as I swerved madly away from the crater left by the explosion. Inevitably I was unable to avoid it and the back left wheel slammed into the hole and bounced up violently. With a startled yelp, one of my comrades was thrown from the back of the vehicle, and though I stopped to get him back to the salvation of the vehicle, a horrified shout crushed that notion.

"Nein! Er ist tot, gehen Sie einfach!" (Translation: "No! He is dead, just go!") I flinched and allowed the clutch to release, jarring the vehicle forward. The bumpy road tossed us around once more, and as I kept going a change in wind brought down a whirl of snowflakes, floating passively around our frozen bodies and accumulating on the shoulders and heads of those men behind me in the truck bed. The dog tags we were required to wear had long ago become ice tags, and froze to my skin quite completely. It would not be easy to remove them, I knew that much right away. Of course, the task of keeping the massive truck on the road and close to the other was most important, so I blocked out every other distraction and focused on that instead.

"Schauen Sie dort! Ich kann Rückleuchten bis weit sehen! Wir müssen ind der Näheder Rest der Spalte sein!" (Translation: "Look there! I can see tail lights! We must be close to the rest of the column!") I called out to the ice sculptures behind me, and they began to move. The sight of blackened and yellowed, though some were white, teeth told me that a few of the frozen men were still alive. Of course, looking more closely at the lights, I thought that there was something a bit off about them. They weren't positioned like those of standard-issue German trucks. Such a small thing to notice, but because it was so small it was all the more noticeable in the falling snow. I slowed my approach and motioned to a more skilled driver to take over, dropping into the snow and bringing the rifle to my shoulder. Sneaking through the frozen tendrils of fern and bracken I laid eyes on the vehicles before me, recognizing the accents of the men though I did not know what their conversations entailed. Sneaking up to the trucks and praising Mother for teaching me to walk lightly I placed satchel charges on their undercarriages, smiling wickedly as I played the images of twisted metal and charred bodies in my mind, telling myself this was payback for the violent death of Blinky and his small squad. Steeling myself for the anguished cries and terrified screams I rushed to the welcoming embrace of those ferns and bracken, diving into their shadow as I set off the chain of explosions that would take their lives and morale.

As I mentioned before, The War had changed me for the worse, and I was now devoid of pity or any kind thoughts for my enemy. I heard the footsteps of my squad behind me, and though they all outranked me, der Feldwebel came to me and put his hand on my shoulder, pointing before me at the column of devastation, as only a few seconds had passed since the explosions ripped the Americans apart.

"Jäger Steiner. Nehmen Punkt und schlachten jene Amerikanischen Schweine." (Translation: "Private Steiner. Take point and slaughter those American pigs.") Der Feldwebel was insistent on this last part, and his eyes burned with the fierce fire that one who has been through deep sadness and experienced great loss would show. I knew this look because it was the same look I wore when I looked in the mirror. Der Feldwebel and I had so much in common that we always seemed in sync, and I knew that I was easily his favorite Jäger by far. However, much to his chagrin, I did not believe in the concept of a God any longer. I knew by now that if there was a God then He must be wicked and His heart must be colder than the glaciers that dominated the north, for who could be so wicked as to sit idly by while millions of his "beloved children" died at the hands of their brethren. The alternative to this was so outlandish my mind at the time could not comprehend; God had some sort of master plan for all of humanity, perhaps involving a superior race, that would require a mass extermination. Shrugging off the fog that had settled over my mind as these thoughts raced through it I spun around and crept back to the Americans, slitting their throats and shooting their chests. Blood spurted and warmth left bodies, cries rang out and the gunfire was like a knife in the silence.

"Pls 've meh'r'ss'y!" Was a common plea, but I could not understand it and so I thought they were calling for help. I didn't give them the chance to repeat it, and after about twenty minutes there was no movement but the falling snow and the flickering flames. Sneaking back to der Feldwebel I looked into his eyes, and his were worried. He put a hand on my shoulder and locked my gaze with his.

"Arnalt. Nur weil sie Hunde und den Tod verdienen, rechtfertigt nicht eine gnadenlose Schlachten. Sie baten um Gnade, warum haben Sie nicht nehmen sie gefangen? Gefangene sind wertvoller als Körper, und Sie wissen." (Translation: "Arnalt. Just because they are dogs and deserve, does not justify a merciless slaughter. They asked for mercy, why did you not take them prisoner? Prisoners are more valuable than bodies, and you know this.") Der Feldwebel looked concerned for my well-being, and suddenly I realized that the Americans must have been begging me for mercy. My eyes must have shown my horror and remorse, for der Feldwebel grabbed my shoulder harder and motioned for us to get back to the truck. Our group boarded the truck and we drove around the devastation, following the road they'd been on and trying not to freeze. The driver was a middle-aged man named Hertz, and he let me sit beside him. I kept the rifle up and ready to shoot, examining the terrain as it blurred past. After a certain point, der Feldwebel stopped the truck and went to one of the compartments down below, giving us American uniforms and painting over the Iron Cross with a shade of green paint. He told me to pretend to be a mute, and so I stuck out my jaw slightly and bit down hard on my tongue, bringing hot tears to my eyes.

"Ordnung. Wir stehen kurz vor einem amerikanischen Vorposten. Lassen Sie mich und Hertz alles tun, die Reden, der Rest von euch einfach nur zuhören und ruhig sein." (Translation: "Alright. We are nearing an American outpost. Let myself and Hertz do all the talking, the rest of you just listen and be quiet.") Der Feldwebel added this last part menacingly, clacking off the safety of his rifle and glaring at each and every one of us in turn. We all nodded our understanding, and I found myself relaxing slightly. Americans were very kind to passing soldiers, and we would not only be given warm food and blankets, but also, hopefully, more kippes and lighters. Not only did all of these happen, but we also were given directions to the next outpost; as we passed the isolated encampment der Feldwebel mentioned hearing explosions a couple clicks back, and gave more precise direction upon closer questioning. Once they'd turned their backs, Hertz very hurriedly drove away. I felt eyes on me, and turned my head to lock eyes with a middle-aged blonde American. Being a rural girl myself, I recognized a farmer when I saw one, and this one was wearing the same, tired smile my father used to wear when he was absent from my sisters and I. I decided this man was a father, and his daughter must be back in their home. In a violent flash, I remembered a man from the ambush that resembled this man very closely, but he had fire-red hair and green eyes. I lowered my gaze in shame, knowing I had ripped a family member from this man.

The dirt road stretched before us in a manner befitting that of Grandfather's old stories about an alternate reality, where an apocalypse had taken place and left everyone without power. Things went back to the Stone Age; fighting with swords and killing for scraps of food. This was how I felt while I looked ahead, like Grandfather's stories had come true and I was riding a great mechanical monster through the wilderness. Of course, this was entirely not the case, and that was evidenced by the ever-growing lights before us. I knew now where Hertz and der Feldwebel were taking us, "Fachmilitärakademie," or the "Specialist Military Academy." This place broke the young boys and other cadets, leaving them with nothing but severe hatred for their enemy and an inhuman desire for their enemy's organs to be minced on their own bodies. They were worse than a pack of wolves, and left their targets barely recognizable. These..."men" were called "Die Schneidemaschinen," or "The Guillotines." The Academy itself was built like a fortress, almost entirely impregnable but for it's front gate, a weakness that the Americans and their allies would most definitely attempt to exploit. However, as we neared the menacing walls, I realized some things that might jeopardize every man with us: we were still wearing American uniforms, and my appearance, once compared to boys my age at the Academy, would give my true gender away rather nicely. Der Feldwebel seemed to have these same concerns, and if I didn't already believe it his next words would have confirmed it.

"Setzen Sie auf die deutschen Uniformen, schnell! Steiner, holen Sie sich eine Sturmhaube und decken Sie das Kinn und die Seiten des Kopfes unter dem Helm! Hoffentlich wird es die weircheren Funktionen verbergen." (Translation: "Put on the German uniforms, quickly! Steiner, get a balaclava and cover your chin and the sides of your head under the helmet! Hopefully it will hide the softer features.") I was scared, then, as well I should be. If found out, I would be fed directly to the hungry maw of the firing squads, as would my comrades-in-arms. I could not condemn der Feldwebel, Smokey, and the others to such a fate. I, in a moment of blind courage, did the only thing I could do: put a bullet through my arm, slashed my other arm with the knife, and let the blood cover enough to look like I'd died. Immediately after I threw myself from the truck. In the falling snow, and with the desperation with which I had to flee, I knew my blood trail would be covered very quickly, and der Feldwebel, looking back to me with desperation in his eyes, understood I'd done what I needed to. He motioned to the truck to keep going, and I took off into the wilderness. I knew not where I was going, but I knew I had to get there soon, as the tourniquets I'd just applied would not last forever by any means. I must have run very far, because the alarm sirens of the Academy, indicating a soldier had died nearby, were muffled and distorted. Another desperate couple of minutes and they were lost to my ears entirely. The sun had begun to set long ago, and now the only light came from the snow itself, casting an erie glow all around. The light was almost nonexistent, but I grew moderately accustomed to it before too long. My rifle was strung across my back, the pistol holstered at my side, and the ammunition packets attached to my belt along with three grenades.