He stood outside the door. Listened to the guard inside making modest noises that Michel turned into the turning of pages in a book, a fork scraping a plate, a mouth grinding teeth across sauerkraut that did not need grinding, a fat man’s throat wheezing, a stupid fat man’s throat choking, a fat German’s throat in his hands and he should have waited for the man to finish and leave the building but the patience that had been his hard-won lesson from a month of injury and recuperation was gone, spent like small change on cheap trash, and so Michel reached out with a fist and he had to force himself to gentleness.
He knocked softly on the door. He waited and did not hide. He waited without a smile like a German postman with a bundle of letters.
The guard opened the door and looked at Michel, at an unfamiliar man in a familiar German soldier’s uniform, covered in blood, whose face was not a face with a perverse joke to share or that of a man merely annoyed at a hungry comrade’s dereliction of duty.
It was the face of a man in a full killing rage.
The German staggered back and wanted to, tried to, scream, but men were so poor at that, screaming for their life, screaming bloody murder high, loud and long—without dignity—so instead he squealed like a pig, not too loud, not loud enough, and Michel pounced.
He stabbed his knife into the man’s face, a violent act devoid of thought or purpose, just an act of stabbing for an act of killing. The knife sliced along the cheek, skipping across bone. Michel instantly stabbed again before the German could react with anything more than a twist of his portly body.
This time he found the eye. The blade pushed through the first few inches with barely any resistance before the tip gouged deep into the bone at the back of the eye socket and stuck firm. Michel lost his grip on the knife as the man dropped to his knees then crashed face first into the ground. There was a short and sweet tensile ping as the blade snapped off in the man’s skull.
Michel stepped back. The body jerked on the ground like the fitting of an epileptic, but fitting epileptics were alive and so was this man. All sorts of fucked, but alive.
It made no sense to Michel, and now his knife was gone, broken, the only keepsake from his father that he had not thrown away when he realized what a prick he was, how little he cared, how he—
Did not matter, a knife was a tool, a weapon, and now it was broken, so Michel became the tool, the weapon, lunging forward and raising his boot and driving it down onto the back of the man’s neck. There was a crunching noise, but not a snapping—not the right snapping—and so the man did not still.
Michel focused on finding the sort of hate a man needed for this—for hard killing, personal, as personal as it got. The type of killing that good farmers did, saving a one cent bullet on vermin by using hand, boot or bludgeon. The type of killing most men could not handle and so they put the mewing, scratching, pleading vermin in a bag and tied it shut, hid it from sight and from beating heart and sinking spirit, then turned as they threw the bag in water and walked away, denying to themselves the reality of the act. Denying the act its power. Doing everything to forget the killing that was murder, for men killed with eyes closed and murdered with eyes open.
Michel focused until his eyes were narrow slits filled with hate. He brought his knee high and gritted his teeth and snarled his lip, then drove with the heel of his boot, so much harder than before. There was a sound, unfocused and messy and savage, just the right sound. The German’s neck vertebra tore apart and he became immediately limp.
There was a wrong sound, too—a crunch and a pop—as pain shot though Michel’s knee and he fell down beside the dead man.
59
Neither of them, dead man or living, moved.
The door was open. The sounds of the night crept inside, seeming to grow with the very act of listening.
Cicadas, not many, clicking and whispering to the moon.
The tired groan of a frog.
Countless leaves jostling for position to win the sun when it returned at dawn.
The irregular pitter patter of paws on dirt.
The snap of a nightjar’s beak plucking a moth from the air.
A nose sniffing its way forth, sniffing murder, death, Michel, Axe’s scent on Michel.
A tail wagging, swoosh swoosh.
Michel muttering, “For fuck’s sake,” as Monster stood in the doorway, head scooting down and up, around, down and up, stealing guilty glances.
Faint cartilaginous pops of joints losing their torque as a German body unraveled; acidic plops and burbles from gut bacteria that knew nothing of their host’s death.
Michel grunting, leaning over, touching Monster, leaning back, grunting.
The scrape and crunch of distant footsteps.
The sharp creak of a huge, rusted warehouse door.
Voices.
60
Kranz’s examination of the gassed specimens had continued late into the night. He worked in the warehouse, dead dogs laid out in front of him, many of them flayed or cut into pieces. They were not ideal conditions, but one made do. If the dogs did not complain, then neither would he.
Kranz heard footsteps outside. A sloppy walk that became conspicuously crisp the moment the man hauled the huge rolling door open and entered the warehouse. It was his driver. He had sent the rest of his laboratory and warehouse staff home, and otherwise there were only four soldiers on the grounds, stationed as guards.
Kranz had a dog’s lung in his grip. It was white and floppy, spilling over his hand. Kranz raised his head. “Yes, private?”
With a sweep of his eyes, the young man took in the bloody organ in Kranz’s hands and the dismembered carcasses laid out on the tables amid pools of blood and unidentified fluids. The smell of dog and viscera was strong. The private’s nose twitched and he suppressed a cough.
“Excuse me, colonel, will you be returning to your quarters in town tonight? Or would you like me to prepare a bed for you here?”
Kranz’s jacket and holster were set aside on a clean table with his notes. He stepped across. With the lung still in one hand, he wiped his other on his apron then carefully drew a watch from his folded jacket’s pocket. He held the silver in front of his face.
Ten at night.
“Are you tired, private?” said Kranz.
The private hesitated. “I am … at your disposal, colonel.”
“But are you tired, private? Be honest, it’s all right,” said Kranz.
“Yes, colonel, a little. Of course, that is of no importance, colonel.”
“I see. Remind me, what is your name?”
“Private Grossman, colonel.”
“Private Grossman, do you know what we have done here today?”
Grossman opened his mouth to answer, “You …” and then shut it. His eyes darted. He gulped air and tried again. “You have conducted an artillery ranging, colonel. So I believe.”
“No, Private Grossman. We have conducted history. History. But on this historic night, you are tired. I understand, I’m keeping you from your bed. Is that right, Private Grossman?”
“I apologize, colonel. I—”
“Come here, private,” said Kranz.
The private obeyed, walking forward.
“Hold out your hands. Take it,” said Kranz.
Private Grossman did so, and Kranz deposited the lung in his palms.
“Good. Now go ahead, open it up. I’ll show you what we are doing here,” said Kranz.
The private’s face had taken on the same white coloring as the lung. He placed the organ on a table and reached for a knife. He slowly and carefully cut down the middle of the lung, separating it in two.
“Good. What do you see?” said Kranz.
“I see … it’s a lung, colonel. A lung from a dog.”
“That’s what it is. But what do you see? Look closer, private. It may be from a dog, but it won’t bite you.”
Private Grossman bent down. “I see the meat of the lung. It’s a different color in some spots, colo
nel.”
“That’s right, Private Grossman. Good. You’re seeing the bronchioles and alveoli. They’re the chambers for air before blood sweeps through and collects the oxygen. It’s a remarkable mechanism. The core of all animal life. In this specimen, those chambers have filled with my mustard gas—that’s the yellow you see—and burned them to a cinder. They’re little more than corpuscles of pus now. Tell me, Private Grossman, what do you think happens if the blood cannot be replenished with oxygen?”
“I … do not know, not exactly, colonel. We need air. Dogs need it the same as us. And oxygen, I suppose. Did the dog die, colonel?”
“The man holding the dog’s lung in his hands, who sliced that lung in half, asks if the dog died. Yes, private, the dog died. It’s that big mutt you see there. A German Shepherd; a mix, not pure. You see, without oxygen, there is no respiration. That sounds like a special word, but all respiration means is to burn fuel. Same as a fire. Without oxygen, there is no respiration, no fire. Without fire, there is no heat. That’s what energy is—heat. That vehicle you drive. If no oxygen gets to the engine, what happens?”
“It stops running, colonel.”
“Exactly. The fuel cannot be burned and the car stops. Same with the bodies of we animals. The body stops, and then the brain. What do you suppose happens when the brain stops, private?”
“We go to sleep, colonel?”
“We die, boy! We end up blood and vomit and feces! The body loses control and then the very ability to live. That is death, Private Grossman. And that is what we have done here today. Discovered death.”
Kranz sighed in exasperation. “Tell me, what is war?”
“War? Ah, it is fighting the enemy, colonel. Defeating the enemy on the battlefield and taking their soldiers prisoner and claiming their territory.”
“No, private. It is nice that you believe that, but no. War is the purposeful slaughter of the most by the least. War is expedited death. That is all. For three years the mightiest nations of Europe have been at war, when we—you and I—set forth and somehow discovered the rarest and most precious of things. We discovered death—a death nobody has ever seen before. We are de Gama. Columbus. Humboldt. We are the great explorers and discoverers of this new age of death. You and I, private.”
Kranz took a deep breath. “Now, let me ask you again. Are you tired, Private Grossman?”
The private did not hesitate. “No, colonel.”
“Of course not. For having discovered death you are filled with life. Is that right, private?”
“Yes, colonel.”
“I thought so. Then you will have no problems waiting at the ready until I am finished here. Dismissed. You may leave the lung.”
Private Grossman spun on his heel and walked with fierce crispness out the door, then pulled it shut with force. This time, he did not resume the laconic, dragging gait of the common man as he continued along the thoroughfare.
Kranz listened to the footsteps and congratulated himself on putting a little fire into a young man’s belly. But then the pounding walk—distant now and barely audible—suddenly stopped. Kranz thought he heard a short, cavernous sound, then a heavy thud. Then four more thuds, like a pestle pounding an oversize nut in an oversize mortar.
Kranz froze. He waited and listened. He could not be sure, but he thought he heard fresh footsteps. Different, softer and less even. He dashed to the table and drew his pistol from the holster, then ducked behind a set of shelves.
“Guards! Guards!” yelled Kranz without reserve, without the fear of humiliation and loss of dignity that restrained the average man who had learned to be stoic and quiet and manly, average men like those who had already died quietly that evening.
“Guards!” he called again, then fired a single round of his Luger in the air.
Pop!
He waited. The footsteps were no longer so quiet, no longer seeking to hide their approach. They stopped outside the door to the warehouse.
“The guards are dead, Kranz. There’s no one left. Just you. And me,” called the voice. A familiar voice, though Kranz was not sure.
“But I don’t want to shoot you, Kranz. I will if I have to, but I don’t want to. When I kill you, I want to feel it, with my own hands. Evil cocksuckers like you … a bullet is not enough. I need to sink my fists into your face. I’m going to punish you, Kranz. I’m going to fucking destroy you!”
The big door rolled open, but the man did not come.
“All right. Good. Good! We fight with our hands. That is fair. I am only an old man, but I will commit to that. I will put my pistol down,” called Kranz.
He made a point of ramming the pistol down on the table next to a dog’s head so that it made a loud noise.
“I put my pistol down! I have no weapon. So come. If you want to fight, come. I will not run. You have my word. I am a man of honor. We will fight like the old days. Now show yourself,” said Kranz.
“You have no honor,” said the figure that emerged from the pregnant black of night, that became the outline of a man holding a rifle to his shoulder. He hobbled forward into the doorway and the light. His face was tucked low by the stock of the rifle.
Kranz pulled the spectacles from his pocket and fixed them on the bridge of his nose. He thought he knew the voice and now the face, but it was a man who should not exist—not here. The apparition he had imagined in Roeselare. The man from the dream two nights ago—dreamt and then forgotten, till now.
“It is you! The French President’s bas—”
Crack!
Michel pulled the trigger and shot Kranz through the head. His body crumpled.
“No honor. None of us do.”
61
Michel limped forward, past the tables littered with dog parts. He worked the bolt and chambered a fresh round. He stopped at the body. It was small, fallen in on itself. It could have been the body of a boy. Michel put the barrel on the side of Kranz’s head.
He pulled the trigger. The gun recoiled into the air as blood, bone and brain splashed high. Michel dropped the rifle on the body and stared at what was left of his enemy.
Monster poked her head through the doorway and looked about. She hopped forward. When level with Michel, she sat her rump down and twisted her head as she stared at the man Michel was also looking at. The man was boring, because he was dead. Good to sniff, but that was all.
She looked up at Michel, then at the man, then at Michel and kept looking, until he glanced down and met her eyes and Monster looked away. She sniffed the air. Sniffed the smell of other dogs, rotting meat, something strange similar to the stink men made in sheds, but worse. And Michel. He smelled of many things now. Some of them were his smells. Some were not.
Michel bent to touch Monster. The movement flared sharp pain in his knee.
“Fuck,” he grunted.
He looked at Monster.
“Let’s go.”
Michel knew what he had to do. He stole the car that had been Kranz’s and drove it a few hundred yards to the patch of flat land upon which five seventy-seven-millimeter artillery cannons on large wheels were arranged. They looked out across the open grassed valley that ended, somewhere in the distance, with a field of dead dogs. Michel heard no baying or howling and figured only one specimen had survived the day’s test. She hopped happily beside him.
With difficulty, Michel manhandled a cannon until it wheeled around to face the opposite direction. He used line of sight to adjust the aim for the warehouse where the body of Kranz lay. Where hundreds of shells containing mustard gas were stockpiled. He rammed a single shell with no colored snout—a standard explosive munition—into place.
“May you burn, and then burn in hell for eternity, you cocksucker.”
Michel pulled the pin. Long tongues of red and yellow flame spat from the cannon’s mouth and the whole contraption rolled backwards with the recoil. Almost simultaneously, the warehouse exploded—and then exploded and exploded and exploded.
Michel limped to the c
ar as fast as he could, conscious of the danger of the poison gas Kranz had been manufacturing. He hoped it would not spread beyond the farmlands Kranz had turned into a manufacturing plant, but he did not know. It was the lesser of evils—possibly endangering a few Belgian farmers versus leaving the poison stockpiled, waiting to be sent beyond no-man’s-land where it would burn eyes, lungs and skin of thousands upon thousands of Allied troops.
With Monster sitting in the passenger seat, he sped away.
62
“We must do it now,” whispered Axe.
Sven, already slight and frail, was made even tinier by the weight of what Axe proposed. His face was a silent plea: there must be another way, we cannot do this, this is madness …
It was wasted on Axe. Only one guard remained stationed inside the prison. The barracks next door, containing perhaps half a dozen soldiers, had been silent for hours. The town was asleep, and she was ready.
They had discussed the various ways to get the guard into their cell. Feigning illness was a possibility, but Axe feared it would be suspicious to the guard. They could try to talk him inside. He seemed bored and lonely, left on his own by the others. He had divulged his name—Volny—and the fact he was Bavarian, so he was willing to talk. But he would have to be wildly gullible to enter the cell just to chat.
Axe returned to the illness ploy, but with a twist, something that would throw the guard’s natural suspicion. Something that appealed to instincts powerful enough to overcome his training. Yetzel had shown her what that thing was.
Axe began to unbutton her shirt. “Do it, Sven. Now,” she whispered.
Axe wore no corset or brassiere. She opened her shirt and rolled her shoulders back; the shirt dropped away, leaving her upper body naked. The skin of her chest, stomach and back was of a light russet complexion. Her breasts were small and pert and surprisingly pink, though her nipples were dark and large.
Sven stared.
“You have seen these before, Sven.”
“Yes, I know, I’m sorry,” he whispered, and looked away. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Michel And Axe Bury The Hatchet (The French Bastard Book 2) Page 24