“I don’t know,” Cordelia said. “I need to learn more.” She thought of Eliza May Kristoff’s diary, which she had taken from the cave in the wall. It was still stuffed in her jeans. Maybe the answers were within, but now was not the time to check.
Back in the sky, the Wind Witch had met the other primary characters from Kristoff’s Assault of the Nazi Cyborgs: the Americans.
She was flying alongside an airplane, and behind it were two dozen others: an entire squadron of U.S. P-51 Mustangs with silver wings, crosshatched red tails, and big propellers spinning on their noses. The pilot of the lead plane stared at the Wind Witch through his cockpit window. She blew him a kiss, waved her arms, and started to move bits and pieces of the clouds, forming a white, puffy swastika shape. She pointed behind the pilot and down, emphatically. The pilot nodded and gave a thumbs-up, then rolled into a big U-turn and led the other planes back the way they had come, toward the Nazis. Once she was sure she had made her point, the Wind Witch flew that way herself, streaking toward the ground like a bird about to grab its prey. She plummeted faster, faster, and she couldn’t resist—she opened her mouth to let out a gleeful scream.
Cordelia heard it from the attic. “Look!”
The Wind Witch dove straight for the Tiger I tank, extending her arms, gathering a cyclone of wind that surely would have turned everyone inside the vehicle into sparking spare parts—
But the tank fired.
It was the same intense blast that had busted a hole in the Colosseum wall: a twenty-two-pound, armor-piercing ballistic shell. The Wind Witch was no match for it. At the last moment she redirected the air that was circling her to form a protective shield. This cushioned the blow, but only slightly. She was knocked backward in a tremendous explosion, flying away from the tank like a baseball cracked over the left-field wall. Screaming in pain, she disappeared behind a hill, where she presumably hit the ground more than a mile away.
“They got her!” Cordelia yelled. “She was our last hope!”
A cluster of Nazi cyborgs climbed into the attic and drew their pistols, pointing them at the Walkers, Felix, and Will. Volnheim was in the lead.
“Turn around and face the wall.”
Terrified, realizing that this was the end, they faced the back wall of the attic. Cordelia took Eleanor’s trembling hand. Will and Felix fumbled for Cordelia’s other hand—and they both ended up holding it.
They all closed their eyes, waiting for the blazing round of gunfire—but they heard a tremendous KABOOOOM outside that didn’t sound like a gun.
It sounded like a bomb.
Eleanor was hit from behind with a blast of splintered wood and a Nazi Shahlhelm, which bonged off her head. She turned, dazed, and saw that the front of the attic had been blown off.
Nazi cyborgs were crawling on the ground, some blown to pieces, one headless, wires bursting from the hole in his neck, blindly searching for his missing head. The place where the front wall had been was a gaping hole; outside and below, a crater smoldered. The buzzing in Eleanor’s ears became a different kind of buzzing: a plane overhead.
“Americans!” she yelled.
Everyone looked. The Mustang P-51s, which were so classic in their design that they seemed like toys, soared away from Kristoff House—and then turned around in long, beautiful arcs that made the stars on their sides glint and wink.
“Verdammt,” Volnheim said. “They’re coming back. To the trucks.”
The fritzed-out cyborgs began to rush out of the attic and jump to the ground, pulling their damaged bodies back to the truck convoy, but it was too late. The planes released two more bombs.
The oblong shapes fell slowly. It was almost as if time stopped while they were in the air. One of the Nazis yelled “Take cover!” as cyborgs scurried this way and that, but they didn’t have anywhere to go before the bombs reached the ground, and then—
The army of Nazi cyborgs got turned into a big pile of spare parts.
Up in the attic, the kids had been huddling scared, but now, in the sudden quiet, they crept forward and surveyed the scene.
The field in front of Kristoff House was a junkyard of burning robotic heads. The bombs had largely disassembled the Nazi cyborgs, leaving arms and feet twitching and torsos spattered in black oil.
“We did it!” Felix yelled. “We’re safe!”
“Well, we didn’t do much of anything,” said Will. “The American planes did.”
“And the Wind Witch,” reminded Eleanor.
“Yes, that is strange,” said Cordelia.
“Where’s the tank headed?” Will asked. The Tiger I was crawling down the road, making a hasty retreat.
“Volnheim!” Felix said. “He’s leaving his men. Or his cyborgs. Coward. Even if the men are made of metal, that still makes him a coward.”
Cordelia and the group went downstairs and outside as six American planes touched down: five near the house, one far down the road to block the tank. Pilots stepped out of the planes and started to deactivate any Nazi cyborgs that were still moving, unscrewing power panels in their lower backs and pulling out their batteries. Then one of the pilots noticed the kids. The American pilot was Sergeant Jerrold “Jerry” Hargrove: square-jawed, with a three-day growth of beard, a shearling-lined flight cap, a brown bomber jacket, and killer aviator shades.
“Who the heck are you?” he asked.
Cordelia stared to answer him: “We—”
“Allow me to explain,” Will interrupted, stepping forward. He couldn’t let his friends botch this up. He was absolutely stunned at the quality of the American planes. He thought maybe if he showed his leadership and courage, he’d get a chance to fly one.
“I’m Wing Commander Will Draper, sir,” he said with a salute. “Royal Flying Corps, Squadron Seventy.”
“Hold on,” Hargrove said. “The RFC hasn’t been around for years.”
“Right, bear with me, sir, it’s going to take some time to explain.” Will took a deep breath and laid it out—who the Walkers were, the fact that they were all trapped in novels by Denver Kristoff, the fact that those novels were coming together, and the manner by which Felix had joined the group. When Will finished, Hargrove scrunched his brow, turned, and called, “Lieutenant Laramer, sir? You gotta hear this.”
Lieutenant Laramer was a tall, rangy type. His shiny brass buttons meant he outranked Hargrove by quite a bit. He came over holding what looked like a water gun pointed at the back of Volnheim.
“Look who I found! The lead unit. You can tell from his Nazi stripes.” Lieutenant Laramer shook his head and chuckled. “Trying to outrun a plane in a tank. He ain’t the brightest ’borg in the bunch.” Laramer had the same cool-looking aviator shades as Hargrove. If Brendan were here, he’d be trying to get his hands on those, thought Will. I miss him.
Hargrove explained the implausible story to Laramer. Volnheim listened in; as crazy as the explanation was, it made sense to him: The Great Time Disturbance had, in fact, been two fictional worlds coming together. And the real world was the world these children were from. Volnheim’s robot mind began to spin with possibility.
Lieutenant Laramer shook his head: “You know, Draper . . . a guy tells me a story like that, usually I’d figure him for a crackpot . . . but do you know why I decided to strike against this Nazi force?”
“No, sir.”
“We were running recon,” said Lieutenant Laramer, “and a flying bald woman appeared in the air. Now I’ve seen plenty of nutty stuff in this war—after all, we’re fighting a bunch of robots designed by Hitler—but a flying bald woman? Anyway . . . she waved at me and made a signal in the clouds, pointing to the exact location of the Nazi cyborgs. This woman sounds a lot like your ‘Wind Witch.’”
“It was the Wind Witch!” said Eleanor.
“Plus,” continued the lieutenant, “I find it pretty odd that yesterday we were fighting in Salerno and now we’re almost three hundred kilometers northwest. I don’t have a single memory of us flying that distance or receiving
orders to fly it. Do you, Hargrove?”
“No, sir.”
“I think these kids are tellin’ the truth,” said the lieutenant. “They’re real American heroes! Jerry, I want you to transport them wherever they want to go—”
“Rome,” said everyone at once.
“Rome, why?”
“To find our brother,” said Cordelia.
“Not just her brother, one of my best friends,” said Will. “Brendan Walker.”
“You got it,” said Laramer. “Hargrove, take them to Rome.”
“How?” said Jerry. “They won’t all fit in the plane, sir.”
“Take the Tiger.”
“I—excuse me, sir? You want me to take the tank?”
“That’s right. If you encounter any German ’bots, they’ll think twice before attacking their own tank. Heck, they’re practically tanks themselves.”
“But I don’t know how to drive a tank, sir!” said Hargrove.
“Jerry . . . how many times have we had to sit in some trattoria, after a couple jugs of vino, listening to you brag about being the best pilot in the squadron?” Laramer changed the tone of his voice, doing a very good impression of Jerry. “‘I can guide any vehicle made by man!’”
“Well, yes, sir, but that was a figure of speech—”
“Airmen in my squadron don’t make figures of speech, Jerry. They make commitments!”
“But sir, the dials and controls are in German!”
“Then take Volnheim with you.”
And that was how Cordelia and Eleanor found themselves walking toward the Tiger I, getting ready to take a trip back to Rome. Volnheim, handcuffed and clanking his wrists against his cuffs, approached the two girls.
“I have a proposition for you two,” he said with a perfect smile.
“Leave us alone, you creep,” said Cordelia.
“I could,” said Volnheim, “or I could tell you about the treasure map.”
“What?” asked Eleanor. “What treasure map?”
“One of the spoils of our battle victories,” said Volnheim, “is the great treasures—paintings, jewels, gold—that we have taken over the years. This map will lead you to the place that stores all of these great treasures.”
“No, thanks,” said Eleanor. “We don’t want your Nazi gold. That’s a disgusting, awful—”
“Great idea,” interrupted Cordelia. She looked around to make sure that Will, Felix, and Jerry were out of earshot. They were standing by the tank. She leaned close to Volnheim and whispered: “Where’s the map?”
“What?” cried Eleanor. “You’re gonna actually talk to him?!”
Cordelia gave her a look: Gimme a sec, I’m working on something. Eleanor backed off, although she didn’t trust her sister. Volnheim whispered, “The map is hidden in the walls of the tank. But if I show you where it is, you must promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You will take me to your world—to the real world—when this is over.”
“It’s a deal,” said Cordelia.
“Have you totally lost it?” Eleanor hissed as Jerry came over, grabbed Volnheim, and led him to the tank.
“Calm down, Nell,” Cordelia said. “You know it’s really true that there’s a lot of treasure never recovered from the Nazis? If that guy has a real treasure map and we can bring some treasure home, there will be a huge reward for returning it to the rightful owners.”
“That’s horrible, Deal. That’s really kinda greedy.”
“No,” argued Cordelia, “it’s about helping our family survive—and protecting our good name. What if we do manage to save Brendan and get home? What kind of home are we going back to? Dad’s gambling away all our money. I don’t want to go back just so we can get kicked out of Kristoff House!”
“I do. I want things to go back to how they were before.”
“You mean when Dad got fired and we had nowhere to live?”
“Okay, maybe things weren’t so great. But here’s another issue. . . . You just promised a Nazi you’d take him back to our home!!”
“That’s all I promised him,” said Cordelia. “What I didn’t promise him is that he’d be free. As soon as we get home I plan on turning him over to the authorities for perpetrating hate crimes. Or maybe I’ll give him to a museum and they’ll unplug him and put him on display. Not many people have seen a Nazi cyborg.”
Will called from the tank: “Cordelia, Eleanor! Come on, then.”
The girls climbed inside the Tiger I. Will was sitting in the driver’s seat under the turret. It wasn’t like the driver’s seat of a car; there was no windshield. The only way to see was through the telescopic range finder in front of Will. Once again, he thought, Brendan would love this.
The tank was a lot like a submarine, a tight maze of protruding metal, endlessly complex and requiring careful movement to navigate. Volnheim took the gunner’s seat. Jerry took the commander’s seat behind him, so he could keep tabs on the Nazi. Felix got in the mortar seat below. Cordelia and Eleanor scrunched together uncomfortably in the radio operator’s position.
“Let’s go!” Jerry said, closing the hatch. Will hit a button and the tank came to life with a deep thrumming. It sounded like the inside of a factory, and after a few minutes they were moving down the road, past the field where the Nazis had suffered their losses.
“Farewell, Kristoff House,” Will said.
“Can I see?” asked Eleanor, climbing up to Will and trying to peek through the range finder.
“Sorry, dear, it’s a tank, not a tour bus.”
They rolled through the Italian countryside, with Volnheim instructing Will on how to maneuver the tank.
Soon the sun began to set. Everyone started feeling hungry.
“Is there anything to eat in here?” asked Will.
“In that compartment,” said Volnheim. Will opened a small door to find several cans of motor oil.
“Motor oil?!” asked Will. “You call that food?”
“That’s the only food we need,” said Volnheim.
“Bloody cyborgs,” said Will as he slammed the compartment door shut. “And by the way, it’s getting too dark to see.”
“Just continue to follow the instrument panel, and you should be fine,” said Volnheim.
“But what if there’s a person in the way . . . or a harmless farm animal?” asked Eleanor.
“We will feel a slight bump,” said Volnheim with a mean-spirited chuckle. He was the only one who found this amusing.
As the tank continued on, it got much colder inside. Eleanor and Cordelia were glad that they were sitting with each other, because they could keep warm. Felix could suddenly see his breath.
“What’s going on?” Will asked. “My temperature reads zero.”
“Zero?” Eleanor said. “We’re gonna freeze to death!”
Cordelia explained, “It’s Celsius, not Fahrenheit, so it’s only thirty-two—”
“That’s still pretty cold!”
“This shouldn’t be happening . . . ,” Volnheim said. He looked at the instruments in the gunner’s chair. Particularly the compass. The arrow indicating which way they were going pointed southeast. But it was turning, creeping toward north.
“Are you turning the wheel?” Volnheim asked.
“No!” Will said. “I’m going completely straight!”
But the compass was moving, inching up . . . and then it began to spin as if someone had hit a spring inside. The arrow circled past west, south, east, north—
“What is this? What’s going on?” Volnheim screamed.
“You tell us!” shouted Jerry. “Is this some sorta Nazi trick?”
“No! Stop the tank—”
“I’ve already stopped it! I’m not touching anything,” said Will. “And look at the altimeter!”
“What?” asked Cordelia.
Will explained, “It measures the altitude of the vehicle in meters—”
“I know, but isn’t that a strange thing
to have on a tank? This tank stays on the ground, right?”
“The Third Reich is very thorough!” said Volnheim.
Jerry pointed: “Look!”
The altimeter’s small dial was moving past twenty.
“Twenty meters in the air?” said Will. “How is that possible?”
But the needle kept moving, past twenty-five, thirty. . . .
“We’re flying!” Eleanor yelled. “What can you see, Will?”
Will looked through the range finder, but all he could see was blackness—and something that looked like white static rushing past.
“I don’t know. We could be in the air. . . .”
“Tanks don’t fly!” Jerry said. “Volnheim, you’re opening the hatch to see what’s going on.”
Jerry removed the steel handcuffs from Volnheim’s wrists. The altimeter kept climbing. Will announced as it went past forty-five, fifty . . . and then the needle started just swinging back and forth, useless—
Suddenly a huge jolt rocked the tank.
The vehicle went completely still. Everyone was thrown forward in their seats. The compass stopped spinning; the temperature gauge read minus two. But the altimeter was still acting very strange, swinging back and forth from zero to fifty, as if the tank was moving up and down regularly. As Will looked at it, he realized he could feel the tank moving up and down, almost as if it were on the end of a yo-yo.
“What’s causing that?”
Jerry shoved his water pistol into Volnheim’s back. “We’re going to find out. Open the hatch.”
“Excuse me, Sergeant,” said Will. “But . . . is your weapon . . . is that . . . ?”
“Yeah, it’s a water pistol! It might look kinda silly, but it’s the only thing that works against these things!” shouted Jerry.
Volnheim obeyed.
A terrific wind poured into the tank.
Everyone gasped. They had somehow been brought into the middle of a raging snowstorm. The cold was so severe, it threatened to knock them out with the force of pure shock.
“Close the hatch!” Jerry yelled. “Close the hatch!”
“But look!” Volnheim stared at the front of the tank. Jerry did too—and saw with horror why the altimeter was moving back and forth.
Battle of the Beasts Page 17