There was never a moment in his life when he wished he could trade in time-hopping for aging. But he did now. Because the twenty-five-year-old Corey, he knew, could lift this dead weight a whole lot better.
Stanislaw was not budging. His eyes were shut. He was muttering something in German.
“How did you do this?” Corey murmured under his breath. “In actual history, you got through the forest on your own. Without me. How?”
Corey tried to remember the details from his mother’s story about Stanislaw. He had gone to pee. He had escaped being shot. He had made the long walk—this long walk—until he reached a road to civilization. And just before getting there he’d found a dead soldier and taken his gun.
Emerging onto the road, he saw a convoy of Nazi vehicles approaching. He could see they saw him. So in panic, he shot at them. They shot back. . . . The convoy was captured vehicles. . . . Resistance fighters soldiers were driving them.
Taking a deep breath, Corey braced himself. He had to be prepared. If he was able to keep Stanislaw from dying of exposure, right here, he’d still have to watch out for the convoy. For the death his great-uncle was destined to have. He could not let Stanislaw be killed like that, at the hands of Resistance fighters because of a mistaken identity.
“One more time, Stan,” Corey said, squatting behind his great-uncle and pulling upward. “U-u-u-u-u-up!”
This time, Stanislaw jerked himself to his feet. “Gaaaah!” he gasped.
Corey fell back with the momentum, landing on his rear. He followed Stanislaw’s glance to the edge of a wooded glade not thirty yards away. A silver-gray wolf was loping toward them with slow, graceful steps. Its head was heavy and low to the ground, its fur thick and mottled.
It stared at them, its eyes yellow-green in the reflected moonlight, growling softly. And then it sat on its haunches and threw its snout straight up, revealing a thick white neck. Its howl echoed, high and fierce.
“D-d-d-does it attack humans?” Corey asked.
“I don’t know! Maybe it’s trying to tell us something. But I do not want to find out! I am very much afraid of wolves. And this one is a monster!” Stanislaw reached into his own jacket, but his hands were flailing. “The gun. Use Heinrich’s gun!”
As the wolf loped closer, Corey dug his hand into Stanislaw’s jacket and pulled the gun out from the inner pocket. It was about five times heavier than he expected, and it dropped into the snow.
“Hurry!” Stanislaw said.
“I don’t know how to use it!” Corey said, scooping up the weapon.
“Just shoot it!”
Now the wolf was picking up speed. Corey lifted the gun. He pointed it toward the wolf but the barrel wobbled. Now he could hear the wolf chuffing, sending puffs of breath. The sight of the gun didn’t seem to frighten it one bit.
“Aaaaghhhhh!” Stanislaw yelled.
“Aaaaghhhhh!” Corey echoed.
He lifted the gun to the sky and squeezed the trigger as hard as he could.
CRRRRRACK!
The shot rang out, and Corey recoiled backward. As he fell into the snow, he took Stanislaw with him. Lying down, they might as well have been flashing a sign saying EAT DINNER HERE, WOLVES WELCOME!
Corey scrabbled to his feet and braced himself. He fumbled with the gun again, sure the wolf was in midleap.
But the creature was sitting on its rear. Staring. Startled by the noise and assessing its next move. It was so close Corey could swear he smelled dead meat on its breath.
“Gehen wir,” Stanislaw said, grabbing the gun from Corey. “We go. Now!”
Corey pulled Stanislaw to his feet and tried to hook his arm around his shoulders again.
This time, his great-uncle didn’t need the help. For a badly injured man, he was moving up the slope just fine.
The wolf was far behind them when they reached the river. Stanislaw’s burst of energy had sapped him in more ways than one. As they slogged along the banks, he could not stop talking. “We will vanquish all of them,” he said, his voice slurred. “Goebbels, Hitler, Himmler, Rommel, Hanftstängl, Gitler, Hommel, Pretzel . . .”
At some point, Corey thought, he was just making up names. His head looked about two sizes too big. He prayed that the doctors in Kurtstadt would be able to treat this infection before it was too late.
In the middle of his list of names, Stanislaw let out a scream. “What?” Corey asked. “What happened?”
“D—d—da!” Stanislaw said, pointing toward the reeds. “There!”
Corey squinted. Lying by the stream was a body. And Corey once again remembered a crucial detail of his mother’s story:
. . . just before he made his way through to civilization, he found the body of an armed Nazi soldier hidden in the bushes. To be safe, he took the man’s pistol.
This was part of Stanislaw’s destiny. But they already had a gun, and Stanislaw wouldn’t be needing another. In the darkness, Corey could spot the faint amber glow of a settlement along the river. “Come,” he said. “We’re almost there. We’re heading into friendly territory.”
“Ja, the Resistance,” Stanislaw said. “Kurtstadt. I know this. I—I want them to see me walk on my own.”
“Are you serious?”
Drawing himself up, Stanislaw yanked his arm off Corey’s shoulders. He took a few deep breaths, his eyes trained forward. And he began to walk. “The ground is level,” he said. “I am serious.”
Corey couldn’t help but smile. Stanislaw was a bear of a man.
“Okay, I’m going to tell you something really important,” Corey said as they approached the village. His mom’s story was racing through his thoughts like a chyron. “Um, just a thought. Remember, the Resistance fighters are all over the place. Some of them are pretending to be Nazi sympathizers, to trap the Nazis themselves. So if we see a car with a swastika, it may be them.”
Stanislaw nodded. “So we are careful, yes? We do not shoot?”
“Exactly,” Corey said with relief. “Just hide and let them go by.”
Corey looked at his watch. It was nearly three in the morning. He could see a lone streetlamp now along a dirt road, casting a sickly yellow light. A distant rumble sounded from their left.
But this was the puttering of a slow-moving car, its headlights dimmed. It wasn’t a convoy. Just one car. One car about to pass two total strangers on the road in wartime. It would be risky to just stand there. It was a better idea to lie low, wait for it to pass, and then continue to Kurtstadt. Corey glanced at Stanislaw, then eyed a thick copse to his left. “We hide there?” Stanislaw asked.
“Yeah,” Corey said. “But no shooting.”
They slipped into a deep ditch beside the road. There, they hid behind a bush and kept silent as the car slowly rolled past. There were no swastikas. It wasn’t a grand black Nazi sedan, just an old Mercedes. The windows seemed black in the darkness. But the front passenger-side window rolled down as the car pulled closer. It stopped right in front of them and a man in a plain tweed coat called out, “Hallo? Wer ist da? Hallo? Wir haben uns verlaufen!”
“Good hiding skills,” Stanislaw said.
“What are they saying?” Corey asked.
“They’re lost.”
“Do you trust them?”
Stanislaw was shaking. “I don’t trust anybody. I left a Nazi guard unconscious in the woods.”
Now the driver was stepping out of the car. He was heavyset and wore a plaid cap. He had a puffy pink face and a broad smile. “Grüß Gott!” he called out. “Bitte, können Sie uns helfen?”
Corey stood tentatively, peeking up over the ditch. “I don’t speak German,” he said.
“Und dein Vater?” The driver was looking toward where Stanislaw was hiding.
Corey’s great-uncle stood slowly. “Onkel, nicht Vater. He thinks I am your father.” He answered the man stiffly in German. As the conversation continued, the driver’s smile never faded. But Stanislaw seemed to get more and more agitated. “They want to see our paper
s,” he said.
“What?” Corey shot back. “I don’t have papers. Who are they anyway?”
Stanislaw shrugged. “This man says that one of the passengers in the back wants to talk to you. He knows you.”
Corey laughed. “I seriously doubt it.”
At that moment the rear window rolled down. It revealed a man wearing a floppy black hat and a shabby trench coat. He was also wearing sunglasses, which seemed a little ridiculous considering the hour.
Corey leaned in. “Hey, I’m Corey. Sorry, but I’m new here. I don’t know German. Just walking to town with my uncle.”
A heavily accented German voice answered, “They want me to kill you.”
“What?” Corey said, recoiling.
“But I want to see you up close. It is amazing, mein Junge. You have not aged. Not a day.”
As the man removed his sunglasses, Corey found himself staring into the cold, bloodshot eyes of Adolf Hitler.
31
“>Mein Gott.”
Stanislaw backed away from the car. His leg collapsed beneath him, but he managed to stay upright.
Corey felt frozen in place, holding Hitler’s glare. In the years since 1908 those eyes had lost any softness and doubt. They had hardened into an evil bloodlessness, sucking in the light around them. His face had sagged into crevices like stone. Corey knew that if he blinked even once, if he allowed even a morsel of fear, this man would reach into him and yank out his soul.
In that moment Corey knew Hitler’s evil genius. In one statement Hitler had tried to own him. He’d said I know you. I am not shocked you are here. Not even time travel is more powerful than I am. All of that in four words:
You have not aged.
“Well,” Corey said, “you have.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Corey saw movement farther down the road. In the distance, a line of cars approached with lights out. As they came near, Corey could make out the image of a white-and-black figure. A swastika.
The convoy. The disguised Allies.
Hitler broke Corey’s glance and turned toward the cars, too. He muttered one word softly to the others, and both doors of the Mercedes flew open.
As two soldiers jumped out, Stanislaw pulled out his gun. “Zurück, Corey!” his great-uncle screamed. “Get back!”
Corey jumped into the ditch, tumbling to the snowy ground. For the first time since they’d left the hut, he felt the pain of the back injury from Vienna.
Stanislaw let off two shots. One of the Nazi soldiers howled in pain, dropping his rifle and falling to the ground. Crouching behind the vehicle, the other soldier took a potshot at Stanislaw that went way over his head.
Hitler’s window rolled up, and Stanislaw shot again. The bullet cracked the Führer’s window but bounced off. “Bulletproof glass,” Corey said. He had no clue it had been invented yet.
As Stanislaw blasted the windshield of the Mercedes into fragments, Hitler let out a frightened squeal in the back seat. Now the convoy was moving closer. For a moment Corey’s heart lifted. With so many Allies disguised as Nazis, the Mercedes didn’t stand a chance. And neither did Hitler.
A distant shot rang out from one of the cars, then another. Corey could see the third shot slicing through the air in front of his eyes. All of them flew way over the top of the Mercedes. Now the driver was screaming something into a walkie-talkie in German, and an answer crackled over the line.
The convoy picked up speed. More shots flew, but none of them seemed aimed at the Mercedes. And the soldier was gesturing toward Corey and Stanislaw.
They were following his instructions.
“They are Nazis!” Corey shouted.
“Aaaagh!” Stanislaw shrieked, as a bullet hit him in the arm.
As the big guy collapsed, Corey ran toward him. He crouched as low as he could. Behind him, one of the soldiers in the Mercedes was frantically opening the car’s trunk. It was loaded with explosives.
“They must be ambushing the town,” Corey said.
“That is what they think,” Stanislaw said, struggling to his knees.
Now the remaining soldier was reaching into the back seat to pull Hitler to safety. “The coward,” Stanislaw muttered. “He lets everyone else do the fighting for him.”
Stanislaw fired at the soldier, the shot grazing his arm. As he fell away, an explosive flew over Corey’s head from the convoy. It hit the ground, sending up a spray of dirt. In the back seat of the Mercedes, Hitler was screaming. Corey dived into the door, slamming it shut. He crawled his way to the back of the Mercedes, to the open trunk. The only thing he even vaguely recognized was a hand grenade. He’d seen those on TV. Crouching, he snatched one from the trunk, pulled the pin, and tossed it toward the caravan.
It exploded on the road, digging a violent-looking pothole.
As Corey spun around, a bullet whizzed over his shoulder, directly between him and Stanislaw. He leaped to the ground in the other direction and rolled away. He was on the other side of the car now. There, the first soldier Stanislaw had shot was flat on his face, not moving.
“Stanislaw?” Corey called out.
“Pass auf, Corey!” his great-uncle called from the other side.
“What does that mean?” Corey replied.
His only answer was a click, directly above him. “It means,” said a voice in a thick German accent, “watch out.”
Corey turned, looking up into the barrel of a pistol.
32
Corey knew in a flash that a Throwback could die in the past. Because a bullet was a bullet, and flesh was flesh.
It was sheer physics.
But before he could react, the soldier’s body jerked, as he were doing a sudden dance. His eyes never moved from Corey. He lowered his pistol slightly, then raised it again. With a nasty squint, he opened his mouth for one last statement. One last gloat.
But all that came out was a stream of blood.
With a last wheeze, the soldier fell to the ground, dropping his pistol. Corey crawled around the Mercedes to the other side. There, a few feet away, Stanislaw held a smoking gun.
“You—you did that?” Corey cried out.
“And now I will do something that I have been wanting to do for this whole war,” Stanislaw said, reaching for the handle of the Mercedes’s rear door. “Guten Nacht, Adolf!”
But before he could pull the door open, the rear window rolled down. The barrel of another pistol peeked through.
Stanislaw’s eyes widened. He tried to jump away, but another shot caught him in the shoulder. He spun and fell to the ground again. Corey leaped after him, pulling him into the ditch. “Are you all right?”
From the caravan, a bottle-shaped missile flew directly toward them. An explosion sent up a geyser of dirt, not ten feet from them.
But Stanislaw’s eyes were on something behind Corey. He whirled around to see Adolf Hitler running away, heading toward the Nazi caravan with one of the other soldiers who had been in the Mercedes. The caravan’s lead vehicle, a nasty-looking Nazi truck, was stuck in the pothole Corey had made.
“Stay down, Corey!” Stanislaw said.
He let off a couple more shots toward Hitler, but they missed. The two other Nazi soldiers were lying in the dirt. Stanislaw sank to his knees. He dropped his gun and supported himself on his hand.
Corey turned to Stanislaw and pulled him away from the road. “Come on, we have to get out of the line of fire.”
He ran toward a gully just beyond the road, pulling Stanislaw along. Staying low, they descended into it. Stray bullets whizzed way over their heads as they flopped down into a snowbank. “We have to get you to a hospital,” Corey said.
Stanislaw reached for his gun and tried to scramble upward, but Corey yanked him down. “What are you doing?”
“I want to personally kill that monster!”
“Are you crazy?”
Corey wrestled the gun from Stanislaw’s hand. Blood was oozing again from the head bandage, from his arm, from his shoulder.
He collapsed against the side of the gully, breathing hard. Corey heard the sound of heavy footsteps on the road and gripped the gun with both hands.
Peeking over the top, he saw Adolf Hitler catching up to the caravan. At least five other soldiers, dressed in flak jackets with guns at the ready, were racing toward him.
Corey thought of shooting, but he knew they’d both be killed in an instant.
He waited until the men ushered the Führer out of sight. In a few minutes they’d figure out how to get past the grenade hole, and the next stop would be Kurtstadt. “They’re planning to blow up the village,” Corey said.
“A spy . . . must have . . . told them . . . about the Allies . . . occupying the village,” Stanislaw said through clenched teeth.
Keeping low, Corey pulled Stanislaw along the ditch, which followed the road toward Kurtstadt. By now, the noise had drawn a crowd. In a moment three Jeeps sped toward them, followed by a group of armed men running toward them. “Was ist los?” one of them called out.
Stanislaw, grunting through his pain, explained what had happened. The men listened, pointing the Jeeps toward the caravan. One of the men was picking up the wounded Nazi soldier from the road.
A strong-looking, sandy-haired woman in a heavy wool coat approached them. “I am Dr. Feder,” she said, taking Stanislaw’s other arm. “I will help you with . . .”
“Stanislaw,” Corey said.
“We were not expecting an attack,” she said. “If we had not heard the noise, they would have arrived into Kurtstadt.”
“They have . . . much explosives,” Stanislaw said.
“Where did they get you?” Dr. Feder asked.
“My . . . left arm . . . and oh yes, my left shoulder,” he said, turning to show the two growing bloodstains. “Just . . . a couple of small pieces.”
Dr. Feder was now eyeing Stanislaw’s head and ankle injuries too. She removed a bulky walkie-talkie from her belt and shouted something in German.
In a moment, one of the vehicles veered toward them. As it neared, Corey could see the Red Cross symbol of an ambulance. It screeched to a halt, and a team of workers scrambled to remove a stretcher from the back.
The Chaos Loop Page 16