Slaughter City

by Len Levinson

  “Sure she did.”

  “Well,” Butsko said, “I don’t give a fuck what you say. I’m going in there. You can wait here if you want to, or you can come in, too.”

  “But Sergeant Mahoney’s waiting for us.”

  “Fuck him. Let him wait a little while longer.”

  Kubiak wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know, Butsko. This doesn’t sound right to me.”

  “Just wait for me in the hallway up there. I won’t be long.”

  “What’re you gonna do?”

  Butsko winked. “I’m gonna fuck her.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Wait for me in the hall, okay? I won’t be any longer than fifteen minutes.”

  “I don’t know.” Kubiak didn’t want to get into trouble with Mahoney, but he didn’t want Butsko to think he was chicken-shit, either. “Oh, what the fuck—okay.”

  “Maybe I can talk her into giving you a little, too.” Butsko winked lasciviously.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  They carried the crate of hand grenades up the steps of the building and into the hallway. Kubiak sat on the crate and lit another cigarette while Butsko stomped off in the direction of the room where he’d seen the girl.

  ~*~

  Butsko opened doors and passed through hallways, looking for the blonde. The rooms reminded him of the one Captain Anderson had been in, with expensive furniture and lots of space. Rich people must have lived here, Butsko thought. That blonde probably is one of those fancy bitches.

  He turned a corner and saw her down the end of a hall. She leaned seductively against the opening of a door, a faint smile on her face. Butsko couldn’t believe his good fortune. She wants to get fucked, he thought happily

  “Hi,” he said, quickening his pace.

  She winked and disappeared into the doorway.

  He went after her like a big husky bear. At the doorway, he saw a flight of stairs leading to a cellar. It looked dark and gloomy down there, but he didn’t hesitate a moment. He hopped down the stairs, the bandoliers of ammunition jangling around his neck. The blonde had looked beautiful and sexy. Butsko was excited as he peered through the darkness and tried to find her.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  She replied in German and didn’t sound far away.

  Butsko went crashing through the cellar, pushing aside a baby carriage and an old wooden chair. The cellar smelled damp and musty and was cluttered with old furniture.

  He entered a room and saw her standing beside a cot, unbuttoning her blouse. Her head was cocked to the side, and she wore a seductive smile. Butsko stared at her for a moment, then leaned his rifle against the wall.

  “Hi,” he said with a big smile.

  He took off his helmet, showing his thick blond hair. His face looked greedy, like a fat wolf about to enjoy a meal. Unbuttoning his shirt, he stepped toward the blonde.

  Suddenly, the room filled with thunder as lights flashed from a door on the other side of the room. Butsko felt bullets slicing into him, and cried out as he dropped to the floor. He pressed his hands against the gashes in his body and howled in pain as SS men in black uniforms entered the room through the door and stood around him.

  One of them said something in German and chuckled as he bent over and aimed his pistol at Butsko’s head. He pulled the trigger, and Butsko’s head shattered like a rotten watermelon.

  ~*~

  Lieutenant Shroder looked up at the girl and smiled. “Good work,” he said.

  She nodded, pleased to receive his approval. Five other SS men were in the room.

  “He had someone with him,” said the girl, whose name was Heidi. “Should I get him, too?”

  Shroder nodded his head. Heidi buttoned her blouse and moved toward the doorway. She was tall and slender, with thin lips and an upturned nose. She left the cellar room, and the SS soldiers carried away the bleeding corpse of Ambrose P. Butsko.

  Kubiak had been sitting on the box of hand grenades; he jumped to his feet when he heard the volley of gunfire. He grabbed his rifle and pointed it in the direction of the gunfire, wondering what was going on. The gunfire was far enough away so that he knew he was in no great danger; on the other hand, it was close enough to give him cause for concern.

  He realized that Butsko was somewhere in that direction. Had he run into some Germans?

  Kubiak tiptoed toward the door through which Butsko had passed. “Butsko!” he called out. There was no answer. “Butsko!” Still no answer. Kubiak didn’t know what to do. If he waited around, he might find himself in the middle of a war, but he didn’t want to leave Butsko. He tried once more. “Butsko!” But still there was no response.

  Kubiak decided the best thing to do would be to go back to Mahoney and let him decide what to do; after all, that had been real gunfire he’d heard. He decided to leave the crate of hand grenades behind because he couldn’t carry it himself.

  He slung his rifle over his shoulder and was about to leave when the blonde appeared in a doorway, smiling at him.

  He was relieved to see her. “Where’s my friend?” he asked.

  She motioned to him with her finger. “Kommen,” she said with a lewd smile.

  “Where’s Butsko?”

  She ran her tongue over her upper lip, rolled her eyes, and moved back. Kubiak looked at her long, slim body, and his rational thought processes broke down. She turned and walked away, and Kubiak caught a glimpse of her rear end, which he thought had a nice shape to it. Had Butsko sent her up here to get him? Was Butsko lying sated on a bed someplace, smoking a cigarette.

  Kubiak went after her. He entered a large room and saw her pass through a door at the other end. He’d always been attracted to slim girls like her. The closer the bone, the sweeter the meat. He continued to pursue her through the opulent rooms of the apartment, and finally she descended the flight of stairs to the cellar.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Kubiak asked.

  He followed her down the stairs and through the shadows of the cellar rooms. She came to the room with the cot and stood beside it, unbuttoning her blouse.

  “Where’s Butsko?” Kubiak asked.

  She winked and crooked her finger toward him.

  Kubiak hadn’t been laid in months and couldn’t resist this lissome beauty. He moved toward her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She raised her face, and he kissed her lips, thrilled by the taste of young woman, a taste like sour candy.

  He heard steps behind him. Pulling his tongue out of her mouth, he was about to turn around when suddenly he felt a shaft of steel enter his back between his shoulder blades. He shrieked with pain, and the blonde girl jumped back. Kubiak staggered, the pain almost unbearably fierce, and coughed blood. The dagger was pulled from his back, and he turned around to see the SS soldiers. “Oh, my God,” he mumbled as blood dribbled out of his nose. The German with the dagger in his hand raised his arm and brought it swiftly down. Kubiak tried to raise his hands and fend it off, but he had no strength left. The dagger plunged into his heart, and Kubiak felt a split second of horrible pain. Then the pain and everything else went away as he dropped lifeless to the floor of the cellar.

  The Germans looked at his bleeding body. Heidi buttoned her blouse and turned to Lieutenant Shroder.

  “You did well,” he told her.

  She smiled modestly; in her heart, she was proud to be a German maiden, fighting for her country.

  “Someone should come looking for these two pretty soon,” Shroder said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mahoney glanced at his watch, wondering what had happened to Butsko and Kubiak. They should have been back by now. Fucking assholes. Can’t trust them with anything.

  Mahoney looked around at his men, who were smoking cigarettes and cleaning their rifles. He knew they ought to get back in the war, but they were low on ammunition, and where were Butsko and Kubiak? A sliver of pain th
robbed above Mahoney’s left eye, the result of the morning’s tension. He thought it would be wonderful if he could relax someplace without worrying about ways to keep from getting killed. Maybe I should move to the country when the war is over, he thought. Maybe I should become a farmer. Maybe Cranepool and I can do something together; he knows all about that stuff.

  He turned his thoughts to the problem at hand and decided that the only thing to do was take the men with him and try to find Cranepool.

  “All right, saddle up!” he said getting to his feet.

  “Where we going, sarge?” Pulaski asked.

  “To find the first and second squads.”

  “What happened to Butsko and Kubiak?”

  “How the fuck should I know?”

  The men got up off the floor and put on their packs and cartridge belts. Riggs stood beside Mahoney, holding the walkie-talkie to his ear. Mahoney spat on the floor and cursed Butsko and Kubiak. He’d given them a simple task to do, and they’d fucked it up. He took out a piece of paper and wrote a message stating that he and the others had gone to look for the first and second squads, laying the message in the middle of the floor.

  “Let’s go,” Mahoney said, “and don’t bunch up.”

  They walked through the building and stepped out the rear door into a courtyard. Explosions were taking place a few blocks away, but the neighborhood around Mahoney was quiet. They entered the building behind the one they were in and found heaps of dead Germans lying around.

  “Looks like Cranepool’s work,” Mahoney said.

  They passed through that building and entered another, where they found more dead Germans. They made their way through several more buildings and finally heard explosions and gunfire next door.

  Mahoney decided to take his men over there and investigate.

  ~*~

  Cranepool charged into the attic, his carbine blazing and his teeth bared like a wild animal. German soldiers fired wildly at him, but he was a moving, dodging target, and his finger held the trigger back. His carbine bucked like an angry living thing in his hands, and the Germans fell at his feet, bleeding from wounds all over their bodies, as the room filled with smoke.

  Germans entered the attic room from another door, and Cranepool cut them down with his carbine, enjoying the fight and sense of danger. When his carbine ran out of ammunition, he swung it around and used it like a baseball bat, rushing at Germans and battering them to the floor. Cranepool’s men were behind him, and they shot whoever Cranepool missed.

  Cranepool swung his carbine like a maniac and felt exhilarated. The floor was greasy with blood, and part of somebody’s brain was stuck to the front of his jacket, but he kept plowing into the Germans, who were crowded together and not eager to fight. All of Cranepool’s pent-up frustrations and anger were turned loose on the Germans, and he felt as if he had become indestructible.

  Finally, no Germans were standing in front of him. He flicked the bit of brain off his field jacket and looked around. His men stared at the bodies lying on the floor. Cranepool took off his helmet and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He had captured some German hand grenades but was running out of rifle ammunition. He had no idea where he was and wished Mahoney was there to tell him how to proceed because he didn’t want to stop and think about it himself.

  “Somebody’s coming up the stairs!” one of his men shouted.

  Cranepool felt pleasure at the thought that more Germans were coming. He ejected the empty clip from his carbine and inserted a fresh one.

  “We’ll throw some grenades down their throats,” he said, “and we’ll see how they like that.”

  German hand grenades were fashioned like potato mashers with long wooden handles. Cranepool pulled one out of his boot and was about to arm it when he heard a familiar voice calling from below.

  “Any Americans here!” shouted the voice.

  “Isn’t that Mahoney?” asked Private Croom.

  Cranepool smiled, “It damn sure is!” He rushed toward the stairs and shouted down. “Mahoney, it’s me—Cranepool!”

  “Any krauts between you and me?”

  “I don’t think so!”

  Cranepool heard Mahoney and his men trudge up the stairs, glad that Mahoney was there to help out with the fighting. Mahoney came into view on the stairs below, followed by eight men.

  “Where’s everybody else?” Cranepool asked.

  “Dead or wounded,” Mahoney replied. “How many you got left?”

  “Ten.”

  “Shit.” Mahoney climbed to the attic landing and looked at Cranepool’s men. Nearly all the new replacements were missing. “How’s your ammo situation?”

  “Bad, but we found some of these.” Cranepool held up a German hand grenade.

  “Let’s spread those grenades around, boys, because we don’t have any.”

  Cranepool’s men shared their grenades with the third and fourth squads, and Mahoney jammed the handle of one into his boot.

  “I think we’d better go look for Captain Anderson,” Mahoney said. “You eat yet?”

  “A little while ago.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  They descended the stairs and went out into the street, heading in the direction where they thought Captain Anderson might be. They heard explosions and sounds of bitter fighting in front of them, but to their rear all seemed placid. Patrols of soldiers marched toward the center of the city, and tanks rumbled over the streets, but evidently there wasn’t much fighting in that neighborhood anymore.

  Mahoney looked for familiar faces among the soldiers on the street but couldn’t find anybody he knew. He decided that the battalion probably had moved toward the center of the city along with everybody else and headed in that general direction.

  They turned a corner and saw army ambulances in front of a building. Orderlies unloaded wounded men from the vehicles, and a big white flag with a red cross upon it was hung out one of the windows. Mahoney and his platoon approached the building and noticed the numbers of his battalion and regiment stenciled on the bumper of one of the ambulances.

  “Hey,” Mahoney said to Cranepool, “that looks like our battalion aid station. Maybe somebody in there knows where Captain Anderson is.”

  They entered the building and saw that it was a gymnasium, its floor covered with bleeding American soldiers. Mahoney spotted an orderly and walked over to him, asking if he knew where Captain Anderson was.

  The orderly pointed. “He was about six blocks that way last time I saw him.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mahoney stood up, making a mental note of where Captain Anderson was.

  “Hey, sarge!” shouted Pulaski.

  Mahoney spun around. “What now?”

  “Look!” Pulaski pointed down at the crumpled body of a soldier. “It’s Kubiak!”

  Mahoney stepped over dead and wounded men, making his way toward Pulaski. The aid station smelled of antiseptic and intestines; doctors, nurses, and orderlies rushed about. Cranepool placed a lighted cigarette between the lips of a soldier he knew, and Private Gomez fed a friend of his a Hershey bar because the friend had no arms left.

  Mahoney drew closer to Pulaski and looked down. Sure enough, it was Kubiak lying on the floor, stiff as a board.

  “The Germans must have got him,” Pulaski said.

  Who the fuck else would have got him? Mahoney thought as he kneeled beside Kubiak. He saw the ugly stab wound in Kubiak’s chest and noticed that Kubiak’s shirt was half unbuttoned. Why is his shirt like that? Mahoney wondered. Was he undressing? Then Mahoney caught a whiff of perfume. At first, he didn’t know where it was coming from, but as he bent closer to Kubiak, he realized that’s where it was coming from. What the hell’s going on here? Mahoney thought. Did a broad kill him? And where’s Butsko? Weren’t they supposed to be together?

  “See if Butsko’s around here!” Mahoney told his men.

  They went to the part of the room where the dead bodies were stacked side by side. Mahoney walke
d along the rows, looking into the faces of dead soldiers. He recognized some of them, but death no longer astonished him or filled him with sadness. It had become a common occurrence.

  “Here he is over here!” said Private, First Class Greene.

  Mahoney strode toward Greene and looked at the bulky corpse at his feet. It was Butsko all right, shot to shit with bullets. Mahoney wondered what had happened to him. If he’d stayed on the street, he shouldn’t have run into Germans. Where had he gone?

  The survivors of the company gathered around Butsko. He hadn’t been very popular because he’d been a bully, but now many of them felt solemn in the presence of his corpse. Mahoney didn’t feel anything except surprise. He’d thought Butsko was a good soldier and couldn’t imagine him walking into an ambush. Mahoney hadn’t liked Butsko very much, but he didn’t like most people, anyway. He thought it easier to deal with dead soldiers if he hadn’t liked them when they were alive, so he made it a point not to like them.

  Then he noticed that Butsko’s shirt was partially unbuttoned, also. What the fuck is going on here? he wondered. He kneeled close to Butsko and sniffed around but couldn’t detect any perfume.

  “Does he stink already?” asked Pulaski.

  Mahoney stood up and took out a cigarette. “Let’s go find Captain Anderson,” he said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  General Otto von Neubacher stood at the map table in his headquarters, located in a subterranean room beneath a public building in the center of the city. He noted the positions of his troops and the Americans and thought his troops were doing well considering that they didn’t have access to reinforcements as the Americans did. He realized that despite his preparations and defense strategies, the Americans were too much for him. They would capture Metz eventually, it was only a matter of time.

  “If only I had more tanks,” he said to his chief of staff, Colonel Rolf Knoedler.

  “What would you do with them if you had them?” Knoedler asked. He wore wire-rimmed eyeglasses and looked like a professor.

  Neubacher stroked his Hitler moustache. “I would use them to break through the American lines and cut off their supplies. The Americans have expended a great deal of men and material to get where they are. If we could stop their replacements, we could stop them.”