Disgusting.
Behind that macabre view, a cell door.
Skuld.
Ishmael looks for the keys. He's searching the two dead men. He finds them. They ring like tiny silver bells. The keys. They are on a thick, shining ring. Ishmael gets closer to the door.
He tries the first key. It doesn’t work.
The second. Nothing.
The third, nothing.
Shit!
The fourth.
Click.
Finally!
The armoured door opens. My eyes dig into the darkness of that cell.
“Skuld, come out,” I say. “Driscoll sent us. We are here to rescue you.”
Seconds revolve in the air like slices of eternity. Come on, I think. Show yourself, you bastard. Ishmael’s eyes tell the same story.
We nearly got killed for you, you son of a bitch. We have transmitters under our skin, we killed, we dismembered, we burnt, I climbed the smoothest wall I’ve ever seen.
Then, as Ishmael and I think that, Skuld finally appears.
And – believe it or not – when I see her, there’s only one thought in my mind: Well, that was worth it.
Ishmael
That is Skuld?
Oh.
Colour me impressed.
The greatest warrior ever seen, a woman? If that Jerry doctor says so…
She's blonde, with a crew-cut that seems gone to the dogs on top but still under control on the sides.
One eye is covered by a patch that reminds me of bloody Blackbeard the pirate. The other eye, blue like the sky when it’s wounded by the sun, is examining the word with a feral glare, the eye of a raging beast looking for a prey.
She's wearing what's left of an American uniform, the shirt covering up much less than it should.
I offer her my jacket. Not much because I think she might be cold, mostly because I want to avoid being distracted. She doesn’t answer. She just looks at me. I keep my jacket – and my eyes – to myself. No need to thank me… Skuld.
“We need to go back,” says Jericho. True, we do. The same way we came. In the dark tunnel. Skuld takes point. As if she knew exactly where we are going.
Not that there are many alternative paths, true, but I don’t think she knows. Probably she just wants to get out of here. Can’t blame her.
Jericho and I follow her with our torches, trying to light her way too. She doesn’t seem to need it.
Skuld stops at the secret passage door and crouches down, as if to listen. Then she pushes the door open.
The cave is still empty. Maybe the Jerrys don’t even know about it.
Behind us, some Nazi starts to bark orders. He must have found out that the prisoner is gone.
We get into the cave and I lock the door behind us.
Jericho picks up everything he had dropped here earlier while Skuld seems to be studying the manhole we came up from when we got here the first time. I look around. No other way out. That passage and the door. Behind which, there are now voices.
I get ready to shoot, in case they break through.
Something hits the door.
Again.
And again.
The door holds.
Some genius shoots, probably at the lock. I hear the bullets hitting the door and bouncing back. Someone shouts “Du Arschloch!” I hope he was hit by the ricochet.
The door won’t give any time soon. We're fine here. But we need to get out.
I notice that Jericho's ready, so I start climbing down the well. Skuld follows me, and the Italian takes the rear.
Climbing down is easy, but falling is even easier. I keep my focus.
I aim my light at the wall, just a little down from where we are. I don’t want the Jerrys that must be waiting for us at the bottom to notice us before it is strictly necessary. Which means before they're too busy dying to bother us.
The climb down is long. It felt shorter on the way up, maybe because that damned Italian mountain goat was climbing at lightning speed. It wasn't easy to keep up with him.
He may be a good soldier, but he's a fuckin' amazing climber. He looked like a spider going up that wall in the cave above us. From where I stood it looked perfectly smooth. And he could still climb it.
Impressive.
I see a light below us. And in the circle of light, the head of a Nazi. He's talking to someone else. I can’t hear what they are saying.
I show my open hand to Skuld and Jericho. They understand and stop. I go further down. Slowly. In perfect silence.
Two voices.
I listen carefully.
Yes, two voices.
I show two fingers to the others. I can’t see Jericho, but I see Skuld starting to climb down.
Her feet reach my head. She doesn’t even slow down. Leaning her back against the wall behind us, she skids past me.
When she brushes against me I have to confess that I have, if only for a second, a reaction that a soldier in battle shouldn't have. But there's nothing I can do about it.
Skuld gets to the bottom of the well and stops.
She grabs a rung tighter with her hands and lets her feet dangle, still inside the well.
Then she drops.
And then it’s all a blur.
I think I see her wrapping her long legs around the neck of one of the Nazis and twisting them. I hear the crack of the Jerry’s spine being broken as the momentum makes him fly, head down and legs up, like a grotesque human wheel.
In the meanwhile, as she's snapping the neck of the first soldier, she twists around and grabs the head of the other with one arm. Another twist, another crack, another corpse.
Bloody Hell.
She lands on her feet, looks up at us and nods. Looks like she's smiling.
Jericho and I get down to the main tunnel.
“It will probably be full of Nazi from here on,” I tell her. Then Jericho hands her one of his FNAB-43. He must be impressed, too. How can he not be?
Skuld takes the Italian’s submachine gun, seems to be weighting it, then nods.
This time I take point. Jericho led earlier, now it’s my turn. That’s what you do in war. When you care about the other guy. Which is what I didn’t want to happen.
But it’s happening. I’ll have to live with it. I hope I'll have a chance to. Live, I mean.
We walk on at a steady pace. We don’t run, but we don’t dawdle. When we reach the point where Jericho’s grenade painted the walls red with the blood of the Nazis, Skuld doesn’t seem in the least bit disgusted. Actually, she seems satisfied.
Bloodthirsty beast.
And now, finally, some voices ahead of us.
Yes, finally. Because they must be somewhere. And it's better to know where they're waiting for you.
And they're just behind the next corner.
The Jerry’s quiet whispers are giving them away.
I turn towards Jericho. “Got another candy?”
He smiles with his eyes. He takes out another grenade. Driscoll’s candies. Takes the pin out. The Jerrys don’t even hear it. Disappointing.
Then he throws it just round the corner and leaps back. Skuld and I do the same.
Satan’s farts can’t be much different.
An unbelievable wave of heat hits us. Then the smell. Flesh, hair, clothes, weapons.
As soon as the heat wave starts dying down we attack. A three-headed monster vomiting lead.
There are no friends between us and the door. Every human being we’ll meet until we get out is there to kill us. So, we will kill them. All.
We turn the corner.
The walls are crimson with some grey stain. I don’t know if those are pieces of the stone not touched by the blood or whole brains. Or bones.
Someone is moving on the floor. We mow them down. They wouldn’t have survived anyway.
We are close to the two side tunnels we'd taken shelter in on our way towards the cell. The last obstacle.
We stop.
Jericho peek
s into the tunnel to our right, I take the one to the left. Skuld will cover us.
I realize that I'm trusting her with my life. And it feels fine.
Not much noise from the side tunnel. Just one sound, actually.
Someone throwing up.
I killed someone taking a dump, earlier. Now it’s the turn of a guy throwing up. Oh, the high life.
I peek around the corner. Looks like a boy.
A boy in a Nazi uniform, holding a rifle. A boy throwing up. A boy who will be dead very very soon.
I turn to look at Jericho. He rises his fist and starts counting.
One.
Two.
Three.
And we both shower whatever is around the corner in lead. Then withdraw the weapons.
Nothing shoots back.
We look again.
Nobody alive.
We get close to the door. Weapons at the ready again. Nobody is visible through the hole.
We get to the threshold.
Deep breath.
Then we step out and we all shoot in a semicircle, high and low.
Ten hit the ground. We don’t.
We stop and listen.
We are out.
Skuld
Driscoll’s men got me out. Finally.
And I already got the chance to snap a couple of necks and to hold the sweet, sweet power of a submachine gun.
Life is looking brighter now. I have no idea how long I spent in that hole, being fed someone’s leftovers.
After cutting down the bastards waiting outside the tunnel I take a minute to focus.
I smell the snow. I smell the blood. I smell the mountain. I smell the gunpowder. I smell my freedom. I smell my prey.
I look at the two men flanking me. I haven’t spoken to them yet. There were more pressing matters at hand.
And anyway, I don’t talk to food. But I'm realizing that probably they're not meant to be my dinner.
So I finally say something.
“Guys, we're going north.”
THE END
POPCORN
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