Liberated

by Steve Anderson

  A figure followed him up. It was Colonel Spanner. He flashed his big white teeth. I lowered the knife and stood.

  Spanner had Horton’s tommy gun slung on his shoulder. He wore his nondescript uniform but under a stiff, rubberized GI rain coat.

  “Colonel,” I said. A charge of purest fear had shot through me, like hot sterling metal injected right up my asshole and on up to my neck. It was all I could do not to show it. I grinned and, having no idea where the sheath lay, kept the fighting knife loose in my hand. “What’s the big idea?” I said. “You scared the wits out of me.”

  “It’s good to be scared,” Spanner said. His voice had lost its supposed Southern cant altogether. “Anyone says they’re not scared, they’re lying. Even your so-called hero. They all lie. It’s the only way to make it. At first, it is …” His rain slicker hung open. I saw the butt of my Colt sticking out his trouser pocket.

  Horton kept staring down, at his feet.

  “We got through the checkpoints,” I said, trying to force eye contact out of Horton. “Your man Horton here did a fine job.”

  Spanner looked to Horton. “That right, goof?”

  Still, Horton didn’t look up. He only shook his head.

  “Go stand down in that doorway, keep watch,” Spanner said to him.

  Horton looked up at Spanner with slow, tired eyes. He trudged down into the stairway, his boots dragging, and his shoulders shifting, his hands feeling at the walls.

  Spanner unslung his tommy. He fired down the stairs, the punching roar like a jackhammer on steel, flames belching from the barrel. The shots tore through Horton’s back and legs, smacking flesh and blood and soft chunks against the stairway walls with thwacks and thuds. Yet Horton held on. His hefty arms and legs had pressed to the steps and wall as if expecting the blow. He swayed, dripping, ragged, like a shredded drape. Spanner bounded over and kicked him out, the sound like a smack on mud.

  I had dropped to the floor.

  Spanner lunged at me. He pulled me up by an arm. “Take cover! Good. You know how. You know what to do. You might have made it past that first goddamn day up on the line.”

  “Jesus,” I said. I still had the fighting knife, in my other hand.

  Spanner handed me the sheath. “Here.”

  My will had seemed to dissolve once Spanner fired. It had gummed me up. I had gone numb, except for a heat in my legs. I might have pissed my pants, and I even glanced down to check. No, not yet. My muscles squeezed at my bones, wanting to snap them. I felt paralyzed inside, but so open to suggestion. So I put the knife back in the sheath, just as Spanner wanted. He took the sheathed weapon and slid it into another pocket.

  I straightened up, hoping my petrified spine wouldn’t snap. “What the hell are you doing here?” I muttered.

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know.”

  I looked down the stairway. The steam fog had cleared. I saw Horton’s body out along the tracks, looking like a smashed sack of beets. Spanner eyed me, looking for a tell, so I shook my head and muttered, “All I know is, this was not part of the plan.”

  “It never is, son. That’s the problem with going all in. Never goes according to plan.”

  “I see that.”

  “Do you? You got to. You got to keep moving. That’s what you learn, up on the line. Never freeze up, bunch up. Fuck it up. Or you’re dead. Everyone’s dead.”

  “Horton’s dead. Why?”

  “Like I says: You know why.” Spanner had re-slung his tommy gun so that it hung level, the barrel forward for shooting from the hip. He gestured for me to head down the stairs.

  I kept my feet planted. “After you.”

  Spanner smiled. “Sure, sure.” He went down, tiptoeing around the mess he’d made. “Careful, it’s slippery,” he said as I followed him down and out.

  He walked me along the freight cars, to the first one. Ushanka and the engineer watched us from up in the loco cab but pulled their heads in when we got closer. I followed Spanner, stealing glances at the deep woods. The steam fog filled the spaces between tree trunks. Spanner might have guards out there. I could not be sure. I couldn’t make a break for it. That was suicide. Tracking me out there in the woods would have been his delight. In such a place he had surely embraced the horror of war and discovered how much it fueled him, pushed him to his limit and beyond until he had become unearthly, warped, sociopathic.

  He stopped at the doors of the first freight car, pivoting to face me. He handed me a key. “Open it. Go ahead.”

  I took the key, pulled myself up onto the steel running board, and unlocked the padlock hanging from the door latch.

  “Pull the door open,” Spanner said, looking up at me. “Watch out though, the contents may have shifted.”

  I grabbed the handle and pushed at the door, but something blocked it. I pushed harder, with both arms, legs. The door rolled open and banged to a stop.

  I saw crates, trunks and suitcases, much like we had placed them, only a few dislodged. Something fleshy caught my eye. I looked down. A leg lay bloodied and bent in the wrong direction, the knee twisted. White bone protruded through cracked skin—a shin bone hung out. Blood dripped out the car now, thick and dark like a cherry syrup.

  “Drag him out,” Spanner said. “Swiss don’t like it messy,” he added, chuckling.

  I had gone petrified again, and mechanical. Did what Spanner said. I leaned over the corpse. An Army blanket shrouded the body. He was naked under it. I knew who it was. I pulled the blanket away. It was Maulendorff. His face had bloated up on one side, so swollen that the eye had submerged. He was cut up and bruised all over, his body streaked with blood and soiled from what looked like mud, but I soon realized, with a harsh blast up my nose like ammonia, was his own shit. One foot was mangled, two toes missing. He was handcuffed. His stiff hands still clenched a black hood.

  I was only glad for one thing: Spanner could not see my face from here. It had cramped up beyond my brain’s control, my teeth biting down and wanting to gnash my uppers and lowers into chips, bits, a powder. My heart panged. I wasn’t sure what would happen when the anger hit me. I had to hold it in, for now.

  “I’m not gonna catch him.” Spanner stepped back. “Just toss him out.”

  He was too heavy to pull out and had snagged on something. To get him loose I had to step further inside the car, almost slipping on the blood and foul smudges. I backed up against a crate marked “Melmer,” using it as leverage to push him out. One of his arms had been smashed under a dislodged crate, I saw. I heaved the crate up an inch and kicked the arm free, but rigor mortis had started. The arm resisted. I forced it away with my boot and didn’t like the sound it made. “Sorry, Freddy,” I whispered, “I’m so sorry,” not caring if Spanner could hear me or not. I had to drag him to the edge because the death rigor in his limbs wouldn’t let me roll him there, and got on all fours to shove him out. He hit the gravel and tumbled away, off into the long grass along the tracks.

  I climbed down. But Spanner, shaking his head, gestured for me to pull the door shut again. I climbed back up. I pulled the door closed, set the latch and locked the padlock.

  The anger had found me, releasing my bones from their muscle clampdown and surging through my veins, nerves. I jumped down and should’ve broken an ankle but didn’t feel a thing.

  I squared my shoulders at Spanner. “Tell me why.”

  “Get back in the car first. We got to get a move-on,” he said.

  “Have it your way.”

  The locomotive rolled on, with fits and starts. Spanner and I had clambered back up into the passenger car, and here we rode. The trees had receded and then the clouds, revealing green valleys that sparkled from the rain still in them. The sun grew warm for the day, heating up our car like a greenhouse. I didn’t want to hear it from him now, all his twisted bullshit. I sat on a bedroll, but the locomotive’s black smoke swirled in and bit at my nostrils like burnt peppers.

&n
bsp; Spanner sat next to me on the ammo box. I could smell the sweat coming off him, out from under that rubber slicker, a little sweet and sickly pungent, somewhere between rotting vegetables and the smell of Freddy’s corpse. But I couldn’t see a speck of blood or guts on him. For all I knew, he liked to do the deed as naked as his victims. That or he had a supply of rain slickers, one for every murder.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Spanner said. “He said it was all his idea. He said no one was helping him. I didn’t believe him.”

  “What was?”

  “Ah, look. You can tell me. You did one hell of a swap, switching out those freight cars.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m doing a job for you.”

  Spanner sighed. He placed a hand on my shoulder, his right hand. I felt its warmth even through my Ike jacket. “And it is an excellent job, Kaspar. Fucking genius, you ask me.”

  “What?”

  “It was not all his idea. He’s not capable. He doesn’t have the brass balls. Not like you.”

  Either I was a dead man or his Einstein. The goat or the hero.

  “You’re right,” I said. “It was my idea.”

  “Good. Great!” He slapped me on the shoulder.

  “It is? How is that?”

  “It’s smart thinking. It doubles the loot. Let’s you do another deal. Just what I woulda done.”

  “It’s fake. It’s bogus. You do know that?”

  “Who gives a shit! It’s just commodity, son. Look. I know what you’re thinking: Why are you not lying along the tracks back there too?”

  I grunted.

  “I gave you a chance to rub me out. You were holding a fucking M3 fighting knife in your hand. You did not assault. That tells me something. You’re even smarter than I thought. You off Membre and then get to keep his spoils, fake or no, and go and double them to boot. That’s one hell of a coup right there. And do not tell me you did not off him, because my hand could not have done it without your hand.” Spanner pressed his deformed left hand to his heart, his claw-thumb tucked under. “I, Sheriff, am simply your humble deputy.”

  “Says you.”

  Spanner lowered his hand. He straightened. “Either that or you’re just a goddamn coward. You’re a fucking pansy. You can’t take it. You never could.”

  He was forcing me into it. I was forcing myself into it. I would have to do it here, right now, somehow. It was like he wanted me to. But first, I had to bide my time, keep him thinking I was still his man and his cohort and no different than him.

  I didn’t have to feel for that pocket knife in my inside breast pocket. I could feel it stroking my heart.

  Spanner said: “Now, all you have to do, is tell me where my real cargo is. Excuse me—our cargo.”

  “No. We have to renegotiate this deal,” I said.

  “Is that right?” Spanner grinned.

  I was stalling. Then I wasn’t. I did need something—there was one thing I had to be sure about. I said: “You have to tell me where Katarina is.”

  Spanner let out a deep breath and it carried that smell as if it emanated from his very gut. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “I know you. You gather bargaining chips, sure, stacks and stacks. She could be one.”

  Spanner smiled. “You want to negotiate? Parley? How’s this? It seems CID uncovered a plunder ring. One insidious racket. They got all the ringleaders right around Heimgau. Sure. Half of them or more offed each other.”

  “And you still get away with at least half the take? I think you’re bluffing. I don’t think you got much pull at CID left, not any more. Times are changing fast, Virgil.”

  Spanner jerked back. It made him sit up, puff up. “Don’t call me that. How do you know that name?”

  “We all have secrets, Tercel.”

  His temple twitched. He leaned forward. “Now you listen to me. You don’t know what I can do. Who I can alert. What will your parents think of the news? Your parents will be real proud of you. What are their names? Manfred, and Elise?”

  “Fuck you. Where’s Kat?”

  “You’re going to have to find out. Aren’t you? Don’t give me that smug look. You think that you’re nothing like me. I was like you once. Now I’m not and good riddance to that fucking milquetoast do-gooder. You don’t want to become like me, like this? You’re going to have to do something about it.”

  I was going to have to kill him. I was going to die trying. It didn’t clench up my asshole or clamp down on my bones or muck up my insides any more. Something had clicked inside me. A lever. Automatic. My own death was not a factor. Only taking action mattered. Keep moving, Spanner had said himself. So I would be his combat Joe. I would kill with robotic, unfeeling toil.

  “Where’s Kat?” I repeated.

  Spanner stood. I stood. We faced each other in the middle of the car, our boots planted and legs shifting to compensate for the rocking, quaking rolling-along train.

  “She’s there, at the end of the line,” he said. “I got word. She made it there in the baron’s woodburning cream puff. Oh, and her little refugee girl Marta came along. Tiny thing hid down in the back seat, apparently. Your Kat was none too happy about that part.”

  Were they dead or alive? He would not tell me, I knew that much. This was it, for good. He had clinched it. He was practically begging me to do it.

  We stood about five feet apart. He still held his barrel out, pointed at my hip.

  The car darkened. We had entered the woods again. Light and shadow flashed, painting and mottling our faces. Spanner smiled again, those big teeth flashing white.

  “A Jewish gang has it,” I said. “Ringleader by the name of Emil Wiesenberg. Death camp survivor. Cousin of one Abraham Beckstein, also a survivor. Until he got to Heimgau. To you.”

  Spanner’s eyes blackened. He grimaced at me, the strings of his saliva stretching in the light.

  Now I was the one forcing him into it.

  “Stupid, stupid move,” he said. “That’s what they call a death wish up on the line. When a man’s pushed too far. When he’s all out of change …”

  The car lurched, and we stumbled into each other. We pushed back, found our feet again. We had come around a corner, and the train descended, the grade increasing, forcing us to shift our stances onto the higher hip. I glanced out, saw rocks of a ravine just feet from our passing car, then all dark forest again, the branches brushing at the windows with great slaps.

  The car turned into another tight bend, the cacophony of creaking and screeching like below the deck of some ancient sailing ship adrift in a storm.

  Spanner unslung his tommy. I tensed up. He tossed the machine gun down the stairway, where it clunked down against the door. In that moment I reached for my pocket knife, pulled it out, and got it yanked open somehow.

  Spanner laughed. “Military Government issue, that’s what that is.”

  I held it out in front of me. It felt even smaller like this.

  Spanner drew my Colt from his pocket.

  The train pitched, the cars banging together at their ends. Our car reeled. We tottered and staggered for footing.

  I charged. He got a shot off, it ricocheted and I kept coming screaming with knees up and elbows out and I pinned him to a wall. Something seared me down low. He had the fighting knife out, I saw blood. The Colt had fallen away. I kept coming at him with all I had, kicking, howling, my elbows and fists thrashing. He got a grip on my neck, clamped his claw-thumb. I kept pummeling, stabbing.

  I saw his knife skip across the floor.

  I got on top of him. I kept stabbing, puncturing stomach, chest, shoulders. He gasped, shrieked. My hand was one with the knife, the blade a sixth finger, plunging, piercing, the blood sticky. Spanner kept shrieking, but the sound stopped coming out. I stabbed faster, thrusting into him, into hot wet flesh and thumping against bone, slimy ribbons flinging out, red strands of who knew what. My veins pulsed, my nostrils blew snot, my heart and lungs throbbed from the effor
t.

  He wheezed, choked. His back had arched up. His right hand was pushing on my chest, but it lost its force. I pressed my body down on it, like stepping on a pedal. The blood sloshed inside his rubber slick, seeping out onto the floor under us. My vision had blurred. Blood had spurted into my eyes and onto his face, casting his skin amok with threads of red. He lowered all the way down, me pressing against his chest, feeling it give and soften against mine.

  He eyed me, or rather pointed his eyes as if directing me. I came in close, my cheek pressed to his and inserted the short, dull blade into the base of his neck, prodding, twisting. I felt a spurt pass by my ear. My fingers had gone in, his tubes pulsing hot and slurping wet. I could have ripped the insides of his throat right out. I pressed the blade, depressing it. The tip resisted, and then could go no more. I must have hit the floor.

  I pulled back. Sat up. Blood dripped as strings from my hand, both my hands, wrists. I threw the knife. I gasped a pop of air and another, and might have laughed.

  His eyes had stopped on mine. He made a clucking sound, as if trying to get something out. Gurgles came up. Bubbles of blood.

  “… a favor,” he gasped.

  His face turned to wax, and his mouth stayed open, gaping.

  Twenty-Eight

  AT LEAST IT HAD SOUNDED like “a favor.” So I had done him a favor? That would have been about right. It had been too easy as if he had wanted me to do it. To become like him. He had gotten his licks in. My ribs ached, and at least one was probably cracked. My trousers were shredded along my left thigh. I cleared the blood with water from a canteen and saw a slice of flesh hanging off. The car had a first aid bag. I ripped open my trouser leg, cleared away more blood, threw on a sulfa packet and pressed a bandage to the wound. My neck stung and had stiffened up, whiplashed at the least. That grip of his was about to snap it. How many men had he killed up on the line like that? I wondered. Men more steely and fierce than me, I was sure of it, and only a few more scared and green than I. But he did not do it. Had he stopped himself? Did I really stop him? I could tell myself that I had taken him out just in time, that I had acted before he got set and ready. The truth was, I would probably never know.