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In der Fremde

How are we going to find anything in this beat-up car, at this time of night, going in the general direction of an anonymous voice? Hermann wondered to himself. This thing doesn't even have a stereo; we're stuck with no GPS…no music even….and shot-out suspension until we come across something interesting. It isn't good enough to serve as a go-kart. But the urge to figure out what had happened overrode his reservations about driving in the old Mercedes. The moon was still in the sky, not quite full, but giving off more light than he had ever thought possible. He was taken once again to his musings on Joseph von Eichendorff and his verses on moonlit nights, recalling in particular how the writer had once used the word Blütenschimmer, "shiny as blood", to describe the Earth's famous satellite. How strangely ironic, he surmised, that he had just thought of that word in that poem, and now he was off in someone's old car, trying to find what very well might be a murder victim. In fact, Hermann was not entirely correct as to the nature of who he would eventually find, but before he could reflect further on the poetic implications of what he was seeing through the car's dusty windshield, he was brought back to the immediate present by a sudden shout from the passenger side:

"Halt!"

Hermann skidded the rusty car to a stop and instinctively reached for the revolver, only to find that it was already in his companion's hand. "Ja, was ist?" he asked. "What is it, what do you see?" Markos simply pointed in front of the car, trying to aim the revolver with the other hand. "Nicht schiessen! Don't shoot!" urged Hermann. "You'll just blow a hole in the windshield, plus, I don't even see anything!" Markos reached over to the dashboard controls with his left hand and flipped on the car's high beams.

"See it now?"

Hermann now saw what had caused their unexpected stop. A large animal stood in a low crouch in front of the Mercedes, with blood all over its mouth and two front feet. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, Hermann finally spoke up. "I think…we've found our attacker, or our assassin, depending on how this whole thing ends up. And if it's the second one, it's a job for the buzzards, not us. That thing could easily have taken on someone our size and won." Markos watched ahead as Hermann ran the engine up to no effect, in an attempt to scare the blood-covered creature away. He was about to tighten his grip on the revolver 's trigger (forgetting that a shot would do no good coming from inside the car) when the animal he was aiming at left its former position and slunk away, all the time starting at the car and its occupants.

"I swear it had a grin on its face," Markos whispered to Hermann as he put the Mercedes back into drive. "What was that, a lion? A tiger?"

"Couldn't be…there aren't any tigers here to begin with."

"Whatever the hell it was, it had teeth."

As much as the prospect of running into another such creature intimidated him, Hermann was determined to continue on until he found something conclusive. "Let's keep going toward those rocks," he said. "There's a chance that our friend back there didn't quite finish the job. If we don't find anything once we get to the rocks, we'll turn back."

"Yeah," agreed Markos, but I'd hate to be whoever got on that cat's bad side, if he's even alive when we get there, if we get there. Lucky thing you've brought all this stuff along; how did you manage to get a hold of all this again?" Hermann laughed, remembering how just earlier that day, Markos had been berating him over the exact same thing.

"Well, if you must know, I put laxatives in the janitor's coffee, then I took 'em from the supply closet during his lengthy visit to the commode…how would you have done it?"

"Spoken like a true professional."

Meanwhile, somewhere nearby…

Hermann and Markos had been quite correct about one thing: they had indeed come across the attacker, even though situation she was responsible for creating had not become a murder scene just yet. Unfortunately, however, the fact that this attack had been unsuccessful in achieving its end goal was rather irrelevant to the victim on the receiving end. He lay on a rock floor, inert and immobile, while those around him did their best to tend to his many wounds, and he could feel nothing but pain, that sort of white-hot searing that so easily overpowers all else. His eyes could not focus, nor could those of the many who had gathered around him in an attempt to keep him still while help was sent for, as their efforts were of little use. Apart from this group, two hopefuls stood away from the group on a nearby outcropping, watching the approach of the unsuspecting men. They did not know that Markos and Hermann had actually seen the attacker, nor did the two doctors realize that they were quite close to finding what they had set out looking for.

"Over there, behind the rocks. See them? I think they have a car. Yes, they're getting out of the car now, with flashlights…"

"What's keeping them? How can they not see us from there?"

"I don't know, they don't even speak our language. I can't understand anything they said…where did you say they were from again?"

"Somewhere in another country, on a whole other continent. It had a strange name, not like anything I've ever heard before. But I heard they work at healing other people; they're the best we can possibly do."

"I don't trust them. We have had others like them around here before, and it never ended well."

"What have we got to lose? If we do nothing…wait, I can hear them now, they 're right on top of us."

"Hermann, we're getting nowhere."

"Can it. We're not stopping until we find something, good or bad."

"That must be what one of them calls himself. What a strange name…'Hermann'.

"In ten seconds I'm going back to the car."

"In ten seconds I'm pounding your head in."

"They don't sound very happy."

"Aus der Heimat hinter den Blitzen rot da kommen die Wolken heeeeerrr…."

"No singing! Stop singing! Wait, where've you run off to now? Where are you? Hermann? HERMANN? Damn it, Sterlitz, this isn't funny!"

Hermann had crept behind his unobservant friend, and assumed his best Spanish accent.

"'Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to…'ouch!"

He had switched into English for that one exchange.

"That wasn't their normal language, was it? It sounded like ours."

"Did you catch the second one's name?"

"No, that was the same person talking as before, and…now they're both wrestling on the ground. One is bonking the other over the head with some kind of walking stick…I, I think they're going to kill each other."

"Well, send someone out to get them; we need them here, now! Go back inside and tell the rest that we've got help on the way."

One observer ran out to where the two men were still engaged in their own version of professional wrestling, while the other went back inside. "Keep him going, we've got help on the way," she said.

"Hear that?" another said. "We have someone coming for you. Stay with us a bit longer." The words went in one ear and out the other unprocessed.