There were four or five of them, Tommy didn't have time to count, didn't have time to check their locations, their formation, potential weaknesses or exposed areas, defensible positions, their weapons, nothing. He only had a split second, enough time to shout, "Get DOWN," to his other, horrendously outmatched, troops; the girl, the old man, the Jew. Only enough time to react, to respond to impulses that should have been driven by the innate, intuitive reflex of self preservation above all. But in that moment, he did not listen to the deepest, most archaic instinct of survival. Instead, during those tiny, comparatively insignificant microseconds, he made a choice, one that upon later reflection he realized he would have made over and over again, a hundred thousand times, a choice that was never really even a choice at all and therefore required no hesitation or deliberation on his part. Her or me? He threw himself on top of Tessa, knocking her behind the kitchen counter with the force of his tackle, shielding her head with his arms. Bullets popped off of surfaces like a child's dropped marbles, sending debris flying through the air, bits of cabinet and wallpaper, a pantomime of celebratory confetti.
"Stay down!" He yelled to Tessa, over the noise over the gunshots, returning fire from behind the kitchen counter to ensure the Germans did not try to advance. One. He could see the black legs of their pants from his crouched position on the floor, quickly retreating behind walls and doorways and overturned furniture to shield themselves from his responding bullets. He shot again, and one went down, but he hadn't had a clean target and doubted the hit would kill. Two. He shouldn't have given his other pistol to Beck. Four bullets left. He would run out before the Germans even got to them. He shot again, but had to duck back before he could even see if his shot had landed so that he didn't have his brains splattered against the dingy farmhouse wall. Three. He braced himself, back pressed against the counter, letting the Germans waste their ammunition. He thought of France again, his brother's breath floating in the cold air as they sang their swan song. He glanced at Tessa, for the briefest moment, and she had her hands covering her head, to protect her ears from the explosive noise or as a last, feeble defense, he did not know. He peeked around the corner again, as quickly as he could, pistol aimed. There was a body on the floor only a few feet away from them. A body could mean a gun. He needed another gun.
"Tessa," he said, taking her arms in his hands, still holding guns in both, pulling them down and forcing her to meet his eyes. "Take this," he handed her the German's semi, and she looked so scared, "and cover me."
"I- dont know how-," she said, her words trembling, barely decipherable over the continued gunfire.
"Hold it like this," Tommy said, taking her hands, forgetting about her thumb, "point, shoot."
"Tommy-," he cut her off with a kiss, brief and hard, and he got some the blood on her lip in his mouth.
"I meant what I said," he told her, and he needed to go, he needed to fend the Germans off, he needed to protect her, but he also needed her to know. "By the lake. I meant it." He looked in her eyes for just one moment longer, just one second, trying to memorize them, the indecisive blue-green-grey like the waves of a stormy sea, a ring of yellow around her black pupils like a sunflower. She pressed her lips together like she was trying to lock his kiss inside of them, and nodded, and held the gun up to her chest.
"That's my girl," he said, and then he moved out from behind the counter, the bullets falling like the rain outside.
If Tessa had been asked to explain the following seconds, the sequence of events, she doubted she would be able to. The moments became less memories than vague impressions, sounds, feelings, with a warped kind of film over them like they had been packed away by her mind in the attic of her thoughts, in a box somewhere they couldn't hurt her. The first shot she fired blasted off into the ceiling across the room, yanking her unprepared arm upwards with the force of the recoil. She had never so much as held a gun before. Her uncle had gone hunting, and occasionally taken her brother along with him, but she had been strictly forbidden from accompanying them or being allowed near the firearms. Her father was firmly against guns, and never kept them in the house. They were a man's tools, her uncle had said. She fired again, almost completely guessing, shocked at how easy it was to pull the trigger, how immediate and intense the reaction. The Germans were hunched behind various defensive positions- behind the open back door, an overturned table which bore the mark of Tessa's most recent shot, hiding in the hallway that led to the parlor. There were at least two bodies on the floor, and Tessa almost, almost let herself think the horrible, heart-wrenching, world-stopping thought, what if, but she stopped herself, pulled the trigger over the counter in the vague direction of the man lurking in the hallway, ducked down again. She had lost track of Tommy the moment he dove out from behind the counter, and she had to know, she had to see him, had to make sure he was okay, there were still shots being fired but her ears were ringing so badly she could no longer make out what direction they were coming from. The Germans were wearing all black, and their shiny boots flashed at her when she took as quick a glance out from behind the counter as she could, like deadly animals hiding in wait, ready to strike. She heard another shot and heard a body fall, and she knew she shouldn't, knew she was more likely to get shot than to get answers she wasn't even sure she wanted, but she looked out, and Tommy had made it across the room, somehow, taken the German's place behind the swinging back door and was using it as a shield, firing back with two guns, and she couldn't even keep track of where he had gotten them from. Where is my father she wanted to cry, wanted to scream, probably could have without having her voice be heard over the bang bang bang of the pistols, but she took a deep breath, leaned out, aimed, shot. This time her arm didn't jerk, she held her hand steadier. From behind the corner to the parlor hallway, the man went down. She thought she might have hit him in the arm. A man stood to a crouch from behind the heavy oak table, leveled his gun at Tommy's hidden form behind the bullet-ridden door, and Tessa froze and watched, with a detached, abject horror she had never before felt, but a bullet sheared directly next to her cheek, so close she thought she felt it brush through her hair, and she ducked reflexivley, and by the time she looked up over the counter again, the German man was on the ground, shot in the side of the head, bleeding onto the ground, and Tommy was still standing, checking his remaining rounds, recocking the slide. She was breathing so quickly through her nose she thought she might make herself pass out. Where is my father? There was only one German left firing, somehow. She wasn't sure when that had happened. She wasn't sure how Tommy could have managed it, there had been at least four, and she remembered, a bit belatedly, that he was a war veteran, that he had won medals. This was what he was good at. She wasn't sure how she felt about that, but doubted she would live through the night so decided she might as well not worry about it for the time being. Her hands pressed against the dusty floor, pistol trapped under one, back against the cabinets, and suddenly it was silent in the destroyed kitchen, deafening, louder even than the ringing in her ears. She wondered if this was how it felt for Tommy all the time, a silence that, after the cacophony of bullets, pierced louder than the steel against skin, because only in contrast to the quiet could the noise be truly felt. She stood, ever so slowly, glanced around the corner of her life saving counter, to the grisly scene in the rest of the dining room. There were no more shots cracking out from the other side of the room. The last man remained hidden behind the dark wooden table, it's once-handsome legs snapped, covered in little round holes. She looked at Tommy, who was back down to a single gun, held firmly up by both hands, at the ready. He looked back at her, jerked his head at the German, mouthed, "Shoot". She winced a bit, raised her gun, and shot.