(Contains depictions of violence that may be uncomfortable for some readers.)
Act II
Kirby had been rudely awakened, shoved off a train with a gun in his back, and into the trunk of a beat up old police cruiser without a word of explanation. All he knew was that Saunders had told him not to fight. He'd done what he was told. He listened, from the trunk, and heard German voices, but none of them were Dieter. Saunders had whispered the kid's name while they were walking, reminding Kirby of the encounter with the group of very young soldiers, late in the war. Now, for reasons Kirby couldn't understand, Dieter and his buddies were taking them hostage. Kirby was in one car and he had to guess that Saunders was in the other one.
The trunk smelled of dried blood and vomit. And it took Kirby a minute to realize why the smell was so unnerving. He realized it was because someone else had to have been put there before him. He rolled around in his small dark prison, finding a broken wrench, shell casings and a crusty scrap of cloth that turned out to be a pillowcase. Kirby didn't bother trying to identify the stuff making the material stiff.
He got onto his back and started kicking at the trunk lid with both feet. It didn't take long for the old latch to give. The trunk bounced up on its hinges then slammed back down, further damaging the latch and guaranteeing that the trunk would never again close. Kirby stopped the lid from bouncing with the motion of the car and waited as the cruiser slowed. He grabbed the broken wrench in one hand and the pillowcase in the other.
When the goons came back to check on the trunk, Kirby burst from the dark space, throwing the pillowcase at one group of guys and jabbing the broken end of the wrench at another. Seconds after his attack, he had a clear path to the side of the road and he took it, disappearing into the trees.
The second car stopped, wheels squealing and Kirby heard men shouting, spilling out of the vehicle and onto the road. The trees lined the road four or five deep before thinning out. Kirby ran to the left, putting distance between himself and the cars, but keeping parallel to the road. Once he was far enough to their rear he slowed and watched as men filtered into the woods with flashlights.
Saunders had been given the luxury of riding in the backseat of the second car. Kirby watched as he was led around to the trunk, his hands secured in front of him. Dieter shouted an order to the men who had gone into the woods and they trickled back, panting.
"Corporal. I will give you ten seconds to give yourself up, or I will shoot your lieutenant. I have many bullets, and many places where I can shoot to wound, without killing him. The longer you delay, the more pain he will be in."
"Kirby, get the hell outta here! Call the general and tell him what these morons are up to-"
Kirby shuddered at the hollow sound of a gun butt descending on Saunders' skull. The lieutenant staggered a few steps, but kept his feet, holding his head with his bound hands.
Dieter began to count down.
Kirby knew he should be taking off. He knew he could do more for all of them if he was free. He knew that Saunders wanted him to go, get help, and end the madness as quickly as possible. Kirby didn't know if he could survive knowing he was the reason Saunders suffered more than he already had.
What would Saunders do? Saunders would do the unexpected. With nothing but trees and empty pockets Kirby didn't know how unexpected he could be. Dieter expected him to give in to his conscience and surrender. Dieter expected Kirby to act like a subordinate and not think independently of his station. Kirby felt sorely outclassed. He needed something to work with so he started moving, creeping as quietly as he could with the wound in his side still paining him, back away from the woods.
When Dieter reached one, Kirby froze and closed his eyes as tightly as he could. He begged for the younger man to change his mind, and waited almost five seconds before he breathed a sigh of relief. He turned to continue filtering through the trees and nearly shouted at the report of a gun.
He heard Saunders' pained cry in the same moment and wanted to collapse on the ground and curl up in a ball of shame and regret.
"Kirby! Get out! That's an order!" Saunders screamed, his voice cracking in response to the panic inducing pain.
Kirby burst into a clearing and found himself at the back of a boneyard. Islands of rusting metal were surrounded by a sea of grass and weeds. Kirby started picking his way through, listening to the distant voice of Dieter once more starting the countdown. This time Dieter peppered each number with a description of what he had done to Saunders.
Saunders, in turn, overrode the descriptions with screamed orders for Kirby to run, get help, and bring the full might of the United States military down on these guys.
Kirby cut his leg open on the jagged edge of an open door and pitched face first into briars and weeds. Running into a mirror that he couldn't see in the tall grass, punched him in the side over the old bullet wound, sending blood down his front. He was a mess by the time he limped to the main building on the lot and pounded on the door. Dieter grew closer and closer to one. Kirby had found a cinder block and tossed it through the window in the door as Dieter's voice went silent. This time there was no hesitation. Dieter shot, Saunders screamed, and Kirby forced the door to the small building open.
He found a treasure trove inside. He used the phone and called the operator, leaving the receiver off the hook while he searched the room. He used a letter opener to force the drawers in the desk open and he found a .38 and a box of rounds. He found a handful of road flares, a first aid kit and a flashlight. He loaded the gun, barking at the operator to get the police out to the road that ran parallel to Johnson's Used Car Lot and Boneyard. Police, ambulance, Army, Navy.
"This is no joke, lady. I got a man dying out on that road and he's worth a hundred of you, any day. Get Major Jampel on the horn right away and send him out here."
Kirby tied a clean-ish rag around his bleeding leg, pocketed the box of rounds, shoved the kit, flares and flashlight down the front of his shirt and went out the door, leaving the phone off the hook. He covered the ground as quickly as he could getting back to the road while avoiding the hazards of the weed covered junkyard. He put the two stalled cars between himself and the Germans before stepping out on the road.
Dieter, his back turned to Kirby, was on count 5. Kirby aimed the gun at the German's head and emptied it as quickly as he could before he dove for cover at the side of the road. He didn't know how many of Dieter's guys were armed, and at the moment he didn't care. He reloaded the gun, watching with satisfaction as the men scattered. Kirby charged into the trees then gained some ground, getting closer to the cars.
Two of the guys were ordered to go after Kirby and once they had cleared the trunk of the police car, Kirby opened up on them. One of them took a round in the leg. The other tripped and went face first into the asphalt, then rolled toward cover, clearly in pain. Kirby dumped the spent rounds, reloaded again, and brought up the gun in time to cut down two of the guys trying to cross the road in front of the cars.
The gun clicked on empty and Kirby dropped the box of rounds, hearing what was left of them scatter in the thick underbrush. He bent to scoop as many of them up as he could, collecting leaves and needles in the process. He had to clean the rounds on his shirt to load them and knew he was losing precious time.
The men that had survived Kirby's pot shots descended on him, one after another. Kirby emptied the gun on the easy targets, managing to squeeze off three shots before he felt a muzzle press against his skull. He froze instantly and the muzzle of the gun eased away.
Panting, Kirby gave up the gun, withstood a rough search of his person, and limped out onto the road with two able bodied men behind him. He passed four guys that he had shot on the road. Dieter had brought seven guys with him. He was now down to three.
The third was helping Dieter to his feet. Kirby had shot the brown-eyed leader through the side, to his satisfaction. Good that he had hit the guy, bad that Kirby had been aiming for his head, and clearly missed. He blamed his lack of practice with short barreled weapons. When he reached the rear of the two vehicles, one of the guys kicked his wounded leg. Kirby jerked the limb out of his reach and collapsed on the ground. He crawled with his elbows to Saunders.
The lieutenant lay panting on his side, clutching his left thigh where two bullet holes had been merged by the flow of blood. The once white cast on his left hand was smeared with blood and dirt.
"I told you…told you to run." Saunders said.
"I did." Kirby said, feeling the ache of regret and shame gnawing at him. He untied Saunders hands, wincing at the color of the casted fingers. Kirby used the rope as a tourniquet on Saunders' leg, slowly tightening it down with the broken wrench that had started the attack.
"Why did you come back?" Saunders panted, doing his level best to act like it was nothing more than a scratch.
"Didn't want you to get lonely." Kirby said, half-heartedly. "Hey! Hey, Kraut. Can I get that first aid kit back?"
Behind him, the most-muscle bound of the goons looked to the kit in his hands, then dumped its contents on the hood of the police cruiser. The goon helping Dieter immediately swooped in to collect supplies for the bleeding leader. What was left was dumped back into the bag and tossed at Kirby.
Kirby looked down at the precious little he was given to work with.
"I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have listened to you."
"You did what I told ya." Saunders said, quickly. "Did you…did you find a phone?"
Kirby nodded, morosely. "Told the operator to send the police out here."
Saunders' hand rose and clapped onto Kirby's arm. Despite the pain he had a smile on his face and seemed to be breathing easier.
The goons had left him a triangle bandage, a bottle of mercurochrome, and paper wrapped handy bandages. Kirby handed one of the tiny bandages to Saunders, asking, "What's that supposed to cure, huh?"
He dumped the mercurochrome on the two wounds and covered them with several layers of the triangle bandage before he tied it off.
Dieter was helped to the back end of the blue Ford he'd been riding in, and he glared angrily down at the two Americans.
"Shoot Kirby. Leave him here. Put Saunders in the back." Dieter said, through tightly clenched teeth. The man helping him to stand didn't acknowledge the command at all. The other two moved in to pull a protesting Saunders to his feet.
Kirby had noticed several things while on the ground next to Saunders. The first was the growing smell of spilled gasoline. One of his shots had to have ruptured one of the gas tanks. The second was that the flares he'd grabbed at the junkyard had been dumped in the open trunk of the police cruiser. The third, was that no one was watching him. He grabbed the flares, ignited one, rolled it under the cruiser, then plowed into the three-man sack race trying to get Saunders into the back of the blue Ford, taking himself and the other three off the road and into the woods.
Saunders hit the ground, rallied and started grappling with one of the men. He found and wrenched the gun from the unprepared man's pocket, turning it on him. He heard the flare hissing under the cruiser, then felt the flash of a fire igniting behind his back and curled in on himself. A body landed on his back, then another. There were several gunshots, some of them right on top of him, then fire under the cruiser superheated the gas in the tank and there was a brief explosion.
Flaming gasoline went everywhere, landing on asphalt, trees, grass, the blue Ford, Dieter and the man that had been helping him into the vehicle. Saunders was protected by the pile of bodies surrounding him but he didn't know where Kirby was. Dieter's man had managed to get his leader into the Ford, and after tamping out a few small fires, he got into the driver's seat of the sedan and took off.
Saunders shoved at the bodies holding him down, and found that the man he'd been grappling with was now dead. His back was smoldering as well. Saunders rolled the man onto his shoulders, and the wet dew put the rest of the coals out. The fire in the cruiser had dwindled a little and seemed contained to the interior of the car.
Kirby was moving to Saunders' right, slowly inching away from the second body. Saunders made sure the man was dead, then worked his way to the corporal. Kirby was heavily favoring the leg that had a dirty rag tied around it. The new source of pain and blood appeared to be much higher on his leg. Saunders dragged himself even with the bullet wound and tore at the cloth, making the smaller hole into a bigger hole.
"You got shot in the ass, Kirby."
"Upper thigh."
"Ass." Saunders said, and he jabbed a finger at the body part in question. "That..is your ass, Kirby. Somebody finally shot you in the ass."
Kirby made a face, and protested, "That hurts!"
Saunders almost grinned at him, but it turned into a grimace and he lay back against the ground cover, resting his leg in the most painless position possible. A minute later Kirby heard him chuckling.
"Should'a known you'd enjoy this…"
Saunders' chuckle turned into a full belly laugh that hurt him as much as it felt good.
"You're an ass." Kirby snapped, irritated. It only made Saunders laugh all the more.
Kirby grunted and started searching through the pockets of the body beside him. He pocketed what he found, then crawled to the other body. At some point he 'accidentally' kicked Saunders' leg below the pair of wounds, and felt a twisted satisfaction when the jolt of pain finally put an end to the laughter.
When Kirby returned with what he had found he had to rest, turned with the wounded part of his anatomy away from Saunders. The lieutenant was still, face focused on fighting the pain.
"Cops should be on their way. Ambulance too." Kirby said, lighting one of the cigarettes he'd liberated from the pockets of the dead guys.
"Was there a house or a building back there?"
Kirby grunted and glanced over his shoulder. "Junkyard and a office building. Maybe two hundred yards back that way."
Saunders jolted up onto his elbows, watching the cruiser fire dwindle. "Dieter might try to come back and finish off what he started."
"It's rough ground, Lieutenant." Kirby said, not anxious at all to try walking on his wound, let alone supporting another wounded man.
"This cruiser is a great big "come and get us" sign. I don't want to stick too close to it."
Saunders rolled onto his side, getting a knee under him and reaching for the trunk of a tree. Kirby watched the officers' eyes glance briefly over him and then the start of a smile.
"I hear one more chuckle outta you and you're on your own….sir."
Saunders leaned his shoulder against the tree and put his hands up. "I promise."
"Promise what?" Kirby asked, grunting and making his own way to his feet.
"I promise to try not to laugh."
Kirby studied him for a moment then waved off the promise. "Grade A, double-wide, top of the line…" Kirby limped to Saunders and pulled him upright. "…white-wall asshole."
Saunders smirked at him. "Takes one to know one."
Kirby grinned. "Amen. Here we go."
They took their time weaving through the hazards in the junkyard. The building was still as Kirby had left it. The operator's voice could be heard chiming through the handset.
"I've connected you with the local police, sir. Please pick up the phone."
Once he had Saunders sitting in one of the beat up chairs in the office, Kirby picked up the phone.
"This is Corporal Kirby of the United States Army, stationed at Fort Dix. Do you copy?"
"Officer. He's back on the line."
"This is Deputy Martin Scott, who am I speaking to?"
Kirby repeated himself and started describing where he and Saunders were, what had just gone down and what their conditions were.
"Now hold on a minute, son." The deputy interrupted and Kirby began to realize that the police weren't going to be any help. "You say you're calling from the junkyard on Route 678. Now, I happen to know that junkyard don't have a pay phone. Did you break into that place?"
Kirby's ass hurt. He would never admit it out loud, but it hurt like hell, along with his calf and side. He was tired and sore and not interested in dealing with a self-important country bumpkin. "Yeah, I broke in. This is an emergency."
"Do you know how serious it is to break and enter, son?"
"Listen you stupid in-bred hicktown moron, this is an emergency. Now there's a burning police cruiser out there on that road, a whole passel of bodies and the lieutenant and I are bleedin' to death while you prattle on about B and E charges. Shut the hell up and put somebody with brains on the line."
Kirby heard the smack of gums on the other end then a heavy sigh. "Well that was a mouthful, wasn't it? I hope you don't talk like that in front of the county judge, son. He don't like smart young kids mouthin' off like that."
Kirby hung up the phone.
"They comin'?" Saunders asked, sagging in the chair.
"Who knows. I got a local yokel on the line who was more worried about me breaking into this place than dead bodies all over the street. How's the leg?"
"Hurts." Saunders admitted, his voice dropping dramatically in volume.
Kirby glanced around the small office then limped to the door and peered out at the front yard. "There's a tow truck out there. I could probably get it started."
"Want my help?"
There was a puddle under Saunders' leg. It was small, but shouldn't have been there at all.
"Nah. Stay put." Kirby said, then limped out the door.
The tow truck was well taken care of and was clearly used on a daily basis. The keys were in the ignition and it took only seconds to get the engine going. Kirby limped back to the office and got Saunders upright. He walked him out to the cab and pushed him up into the passenger seat before limping around the front of the truck and climbing up behind the wheel.
Sitting was an interesting challenge but Kirby managed it, grateful that Saunders was more out of it than he had been. He got the truck in gear and bounced out of the yard, hovering over the seat to avoid the painful jolts to his wound. He pulled out onto the road and kicked the truck up to speed.
"Where the hell do we go?" Kirby asked.
Saunders opened his eyes and peered out the window. He scanned the dash then found a compass recessed into the metal above the CB radio. "East." Saunders said, pointing.
Kirby turned at the next crossroads and wove back and forth, doing his best to keep the needle pointing at the E. The trouble was that there was a second needle on the dash, also swinging toward the E, slowly but surely. Everytime he glanced over to Saunders the man was paler in the moonlight. He'd fallen asleep or passed out shortly after pointing at the compass and Kirby was terrified the man would bleed to death while he stumbled around lost on country roads.
Kirby stopped the truck before it ran completely out of gas and turned on the radio. "Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is a medical emergency. I'm sittin' in a tow truck at the intersection of Route 144 and West Friendship Road. If you can hear my voice, this is a medical emergency."
Kirby switched channels and repeated the message, praying that someone in the town of West Friendship would hear him. Someone on the roads around him. Someone, anyone. He spotted the puddle of blood on the cab floor while he fiddled with the radio and took a few minutes to tighten the tourniquet until Saunders started to moan in his sleep.
Then he went back to calling for help.
"This is JH509, calling Medical Emergency."
Kirby blinked at the radio, and what he was certain had been a female voice. "Tell me you're a nurse or a midwife or somethin', lady." Kirby called.
"Medical Emergency, repeat your location." The voice called.
"We're at an intersection. I couldn't tell you what county but we gotta be near a place called West Friendship, over."
"Are you mobile, over?"
"No. We're about outta gas, sweetheart."
"Describe your medical emergency."
"We got a couple of GSWs, leg wounds. My buddy is bleedin' a lot. I got a tourniquet around it but he's lost a lot of blood."
"Are you able to tighten the tourniquet?"
Something in the way she said tourniquet made a light go on in the back of his head. Kirby snorted a little at his own mind, thinking maybe the door he'd run into had been covered in rust and he was now horribly infected with tetanus. Thus raving mad. To think that this girl. Was somehow.
"Hey, tell me something. How do you feel about squirrels?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Squirrels. You know, cute fuzzy things. Like to hide nuts. How do you feel about 'em?"
"I-I…"
"No, no. Say it right, say, "Squirrels are…"
"I think you have lost more blood than you realize. You should conserve the battery-"
"Come on, tell me about the squirrels." Kirby urged, keeping his tone light.
"Why?" She asked, and there was an echoing silence behind her, peppered by the calls of seagulls and the clang of bells. "Why must you know about squirrels?"
She couldn't quite say it. The combination of the q-u stumped her because there was no occasion in her native language where she might be asked to put them together. She could fake the best American accent but for that one word.
"Cause my buddy Dieter likes squirrels. You know him right? Dieter?"
She took a long time to respond. Kirby put the truck in gear and started inching forward.
"Your lieutenant will die unless you are given aid, Corporal. The wise course would be to remain where you are, and give yourselves up when we arrive."
"We? Last I saw, your buddy Dieter wasn't doin' so hot. I plugged him good as I recall."
There was another long pause. "If you wish to live, you will stay where you are, Corporal."
The truck engine sputtered and died, and a few minutes later the light on the radio went out, too. Kirby smashed the mic to bits against the dash, screaming his rage and frustration until there was nothing but wires and slivers of plastic in his hand.
"Kirby..what's goin' on?"
Kirby looked at the pale man slumped in the shadows of the cab and sighed. "They're comin' for us."
"Good guys?"
Kirby shook his head. "Bad guys. I gave 'em our position before I realized."
"Ok."
Kirby snapped his gaze over. "What do you mean, ok? None of this is ok, Lieutenant."
"We need…help." Saunders panted, his tongue thicker than he remembered, desperately thirsty, and starting to shake from the cold. Kirby saw it and tore off his jacket, laying it over him.
"How's your-"
"Fine." Kirby bit out, bitterly, then started looking through the cab. Galvanized by the need to do more than just wait Kirby searched the cab, the tow bed, the glove box and the tool box welded to the crossbeam. He found plenty of heavy tools and a second first aid kit. Grateful for the over-prepared nature of the man who owned the junkyard, Kirby changed the bandage on Saunders' leg, then cleaned up the gash on his own leg and bandaged it properly. There was little he could do for the 'upper thigh' wound and the blood had dried his shirt to his skin over his side. Kirby used everything the kit had to offer but for the tiny paper wrapped bandages, then tossed the rest into the footwell of the cab.
He'd found a file with a wicked pointed end, and he slipped it down his pant leg, holding it in place with the bandage around his calf. There was a boy scout knife in the glove box and Kirby finally found a use for the handy bandages. He used the adhesive paste and about four of the bandages to attach the knife to his chest, just under his armpit. While he worked he tried to keep Saunders awake and talking. He made sure the lieutenant knew about both of the weapons he'd hidden on his person and regularly checked to see if Saunders was still bleeding.
The blue Ford appeared on the horizon as the sun began to rise and Kirby watched it, leaning against the side of the cab, the passenger door open. Kirby put his hands behind his head and stood perfectly still while the Ford approached and parked. Four guys stepped out. Kirby hoped they were the last four guys Dieter had, and not a sign that there was an unending supply.
He waited quietly, half expecting that Dieter had ordered them, again, to shoot the corporal, and bring in only the lieutenant alive. After a tense moment where two of the men searched Kirby's pockets, and belt, they got under Saunders' armpits and knees and carried him to the back seat of the Ford.
Then they opened the trunk. Kirby was forced into the space at gunpoint, then cast into darkness. He could have easily escaped, but he didn't try. He had to stay with Saunders. He had to make sure the lieutenant was given medical care and would survive. He had to know if Saunders would live, because it would decide Kirby's fate as well. If Saunders lived, Kirby would do his best to get the both of them out of there in one piece. If Saunders died, Kirby's sole mission would be to spread that death around to every man or woman associated with Dieter, regardless of his own fate.
The idea was so satisfying, Kirby was willing to be the angel of death whether or not Saunders survived. Clearly leaving Dieter alive had been the primary mistake, and one he didn't plan to make a second time.
They were driven to the coast and loaded on a boat. They were taken to a cabin at the front of the boat and Kirby became an afterthought while two young women tended to Saunders. They were surprisingly well prepared, and worked diligently for an hour or more while the boat put out to sea.
Kirby was feverish by the time they were done. He forgot about the file and the girls discovered it when they untied the bandage around his leg. The skinny one picked up the file and turned to leave the cabin with it, but the bigger one stopped her. Kirby couldn't understand the German but he could tell that the one talking was the same girl he'd connected with on the radio. She easily convinced her counterpart to drop the tool and forget about it.
They cleaned up the wound on his stomach then turned him onto his chest to deal with the other two wounds. When it came time to dig the bullet out of his posterior Kirby was given a few shots that numbed him up and the bullet came out like it hadn't really been there in the first place. He was bandaged and guided onto his side before he was given a blanket.
He watched, blearily as the girls cleaned up their tools, frequently checking on Saunders. The adhesive he'd used to secure the knife to his chest was itching like mad, and he struggled to leave the area alone. He'd worked most of the bandages free of his skin by the time the girls had finished, and once they left he fished the knife out of his shirt and put it in the pocket of his pants.
They were left alone for most of the day and to Kirby's surprise he was able to drift into sleep a couple of times. It had to have been four or five by the time the goons came for him. They came with the girls hot on their tails. The girls stayed in the cabin with Saunders, like they'd been ordered to. Kirby was dragged out onto the main deck and tied face first against a long arching pole that stretched out over the back of the boat.
It took the goons a couple of tries to get him secured the way they wanted. The extra care didn't bode well. Kirby's arms were tied above his head, stretching out in front of him with the rope anchored through a metal eyelet at the end of the pole. The tension in his shoulders immediately became painful. His feet were spread and tied at each ankle to mooring cleats on either side of the deck. The position opened the wound on his hind end and broke open the gash on his leg. The final indignity was to have his shirt and undershirt ripped down the middle of the back. The sun was blessedly warm and the breeze glanced off the sweat for a pleasant feeling that he might have wanted to share with a swimsuit-clad girl on a Jersey beach, not a bunch of angry Germans on a boat.
"Corporal Kirby." The voice behind him was angry, distant, weak, and in pain. "You tried to kill me, and you murdered some of my men."
Kirby tried to get a little slack, feeling the adrenaline thrill of panic. He searched over both shoulders with his peripheral vision, catching glimpses of Dieter where he sat under the protection of a blanket at the base of the steps to the pilot house. His four guys were standing in a semi-circle around him, some of them recently bandaged themselves.
"You shot him point blank, twice." Kirby shot back. "You stood there and you shot him and he did nothin' to you, but try to save your life when you were an upstart of a young kid." He shouted, struggling all the harder against the ropes. They tightened around his wrists and ankles, digging into the bare skin. "He could'a shot ya then. You and your buddies could be dead up on that hill, but he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't murder a bunch'a kids."
Kirby had to stop his struggle so that he could breathe. He sucked hard breaths into his lungs and rode out the cramp coming from his leg. "Seein' how you turned out, he should'a let you die."
"I'm a patriot." Dieter protested.
"You're a little shit." Kirby bit back.
"Hans!" Dieter called. Kirby heard the slap of heavy leather on the deck, then the whistle of something slicing through the air and the lightning hard strike of a whip across his back. He stiffened, his body naturally trying to escape the attack by moving forward. His lungs stopped working and he had to gasp for air after. Only then did he feel something he would describe as pain.
"We weren't just children, Corporal Kirby. We were human beings, with families. We were there to protect our families from the approaching enemy. Your Lieutenant Saunders took us as prisoners and prevented us from protecting those that we loved."
Kirby got his air back, and with it the strength to straighten his back a little. That gave him more room to expand his lungs and he clung to the pole, desperately feeding his brain with oxygen.
"Do you remember a little town in Germany called Wustermark?"
When Kirby didn't respond, Dieter again said, "Hans."
The whip was enroute before Kirby could answer, striking down across his shoulder blade and over his exposed ribs. Kirby stifled the cry of pain, yanking over and over on the ropes holding him in place until the sting faded.
"Do you remember-"
"No! I don't remember." Kirby screamed.
"It was the site of the 1936 Olympic Games. And when the Americans and the Russians reached that place they were so filled with bitter hate, that they tore the women and children out of their beds and homes. Some were tortured. Some were brutally abused. Some were taken prisoner. The fortunate ones were murdered."
"I was never there." Kirby said.
"What?"
"We were never there." Kirby shouted.
"No." Dieter responded. "Neither was I. I could not be there because I was rotting in an American POW camp. I could not be there to protect my mother or sisters. None of us could."
Kirby desperately tried to get a handle on his breathing. "What did you expect us to do? Let you go? Say..go on ahead and play like nice boys. Don't shoot nobody?"
"Hans." Dieter said, his voice weaker.
The whip came down on the middle of his back and down past his belt, his pants protecting him from some of it.
"Again." Dieter said.
His left shoulder took the brunt of the second stroke, and a third and fourth landed, threatening to pitch Kirby into darkness. It wasn't the pain but the panic of not being able to drag a breath into his lungs. It was impossible to breathe while his body was trying to run away, his arms were practically dislocating themselves against the ropes and the damn pole kept his diaphragm pressed to his spine. Kirby nearly went to his knees, before two of Dieter's guys braced his elbows and forced him up again. Only after the panic ebbed, and the full body charlie horse began to subside could Kirby feel the damage to the skin on his back.
"You have family, yes?" Dieter asked.
Face pressed to the pole, Kirby muttered to the affirmative.
"They are still alive?"
Kirby wanted to call the kid every dirty name he knew but he didn't have the breath, and despite himself, he was terrified that the next beating would suffocate him. He nodded, finally forcing his left eye open. With his head turned he could see some of what was going on behind him. Some of Dieter's men were starting to look queasy.
"How would you feel, if while I held you here, in your own country, on your own land, your family was dragged from their home, molested, tortured, and murdered?"
Kirby couldn't conjure the image. It was preposterous to think that any part of the Axis powers could have reached mainland USA, and even more preposterous that his family could have come to harm. The danger had been thousands of miles away. Kirby didn't feel the rage or fear that Dieter was hoping to conjure, but he did feel relief. The war hadn't been in his backyard.
Kirby managed to straighten his back. He rolled his shoulders against the tension, knowing that it was very likely one of them would pop out before all was said and done. He turned his head and called, "Hans. Shut him up, will ya."
He heard stunned silence, followed by a number that sent a chill down his spine. "Fifty, Hans. Make sure he lives."
After the first ten strokes Kirby started beating his own head against the pole, praying he would knock himself out. He was successful on stroke fourteen. They revived him with buckets of ocean water, dragging him to his feet and tying the ropes again so that he stayed upright. Dieter had been guided up to the pilot house and stood on the narrow landing, patiently waiting for the whipping to continue.
When Kirby preempted it by rapping his head against the pole again Dieter shouted for the men to stop him. A man was assigned to stand in front of Kirby, forcing his head back. Kirby stared at him as the strokes fell, watching him go green. Sometimes the whip missed and would catch the man's side or arms. When Kirby had the clarity to do it, he would grin at the guy.
It was his new buddy that put an early end to the beating. He walked away from Kirby without a word, ignoring Dieter's outraged commands. Hans stopped, panting audibly behind Kirby, waiting and listening as the argument started, then escalated. When Dieter pulled a gun, Kirby knew it because the guy who'd been holding his head started screaming, "Nicht Schießen."
The nurse heard the shout and came running. From the sound of her voice, she'd been crying. She let out an outraged scream and started arguing with Dieter, her voice so broken with emotion that Kirby even had a hard time listening to it. Behind him, Kirby listened to a miniature mutiny and power change without understanding a word of it. The boat's engine was turned off and the anchor dropped. The nurse ordered men to cut Kirby down and he was dragged out of the sun and back into the cabin.
He caught glimpses of Dieter, clinging to the frame of the door that led into the pilot house, staring bitterly down at the blood splattered on the aft of the ship. The man who had been assigned to hold his head was bent over the railing vomiting into the ocean below. Kirby was dragged into the cabin and laid face first on the half of the bed that Saunders wasn't currently occupying. The nurse screamed at the men, orders that came out tortured and plagued by tears and a fury that Kirby could have matched if he had the energy.
"Thank you…thank…"
The nurse forced her words through an agony that was threatening to choke her, weak with sorrow and strong with anger in the same moment.
"It wasn't for you." She bit out, then rested a surprisingly kind hand on the back of Kirby's head. She began to sob and he felt her fingers stroking across the short fibers of his hair. He did what he could to narrow his focus to those five points of contact, breathing in precious oxygen that came surprisingly easy now that he wasn't being pulled in four different directions.
The longer she did it the more Kirby understood that she needed the contact almost more than he did. He opened his eyes and studied her face. Her fingers came down to the creases in his brow, over the arch of his ear and sent a shudder down his spine when they came to rest at the base of his neck.
She turned the fingers of her left hand and brushed over the bruises he'd given himself trying to escape the pain. She brushed her thumb over splatters of blood on his cheek and neck, studiously avoiding what had been done to his back and shoulders. The damage was distant and numb for the moment and Kirby could only feel the glorious rush of oxygen in his abused lungs, feather light touches from a German nurse who seemed to hate him, even while she brought him comfort, and a single spot of warmth from the sunlight streaming into the cabin.
He wanted to know her name, but he could feel instinctively that speaking up would turn her against him. In his head he called her Squirrel.
The men returned, hustling into the room with what he assumed was supplies and Squirrel's attention turned to giving more orders. He heard the word for food, and water, and lay quietly while Squirrel checked on Saunders.
After the men left again, Squirrel helped him to sit up, pulling the tattered remains of his shirt from his torso. She cleaned and wrapped his wrists and his ankles, then helped him lay down again. She began to work on the damage done to his back, starting at the center and moving outward, clockwise. It was an odd pattern but it gave Kirby an idea of when it would all be over. As she cleaned each area she put a salve down, gently spreading it over the abused skin before covering the salve with a square of gauze.
In his mind's eye Kirby saw his back as a patchwork quilt, or a puzzle, nearing completion when she got to his shoulders and neck. She stayed with them into the night hours, monitoring temperatures, changing bandages, cleaning and redressing. The other girl brought food that was clearly meant only for Squirrel, but was shared between the three of them.
