by Ben Stevens
And at once the Jewish inmates were upon them, kicking, punching, clawing and scratching at the two soldiers who’d been firing upon them just a few moments earlier. Weber looked briefly away, hearing the shrieks of agony as one of the men had his eyes torn from out of his head…
‘…You don’t like me,’ said the portly man, advancing upon Weber with the length of wood still held in his right hand.
‘I like you better than I did before,’ returned Weber simply. ‘Thanks.’
‘I’m Schroder.’
‘Weber.’
‘So – what do we do now?’
‘The plan is to try and get as many people out the back of the camp as possible – through the fences there that are still standing, and into the forest behind. But…’
‘But what?’
Weber shrugged fiercely as he cleared his weapon. He looked at Schroder with dark, sweat-smeared eyes.
‘We won’t do it, Schroder. I’m the only one armed – ’
‘We’ll take those soldiers’ weapons – they won’t be needing them,’ cut in Schroder. He motioned at the bloody and, by-now, very-dead bodies lying nearby. The inmates were starting to move away, panting with their recent exertion. Many had their hands and in some cases even their mouths and faces stained red.
Weber couldn’t help but feel a chill of fear as he realized he was wearing almost exactly the same uniform as the two men who’d just been stamped, punched and torn to death…
But when he met the inmates’ eyes, there was only that same plea for leadership he’d seen before.
‘Over there!’ cried out one inmate, pointing towards the front of the camp.
A number of the buildings had been flattened and destroyed by the rumbling tanks, and the shells they’d first fired before entering, which had opened up a much wider field of view. And there was Brucker, walking through the destruction as bullets deflected off his damaged armor. A machine with a face: implacable, determined.
‘Son of a bitch,’ murmured Weber almost admiringly. ‘Hit by a tank and he’s still alive.’
He glanced at Schroder.
‘You made him almost as tough as he was – before.’
‘I did my best,’ replied the half-Jewish scientist. ‘Now, let’s get these soldiers’ weapons and move on. We’ll all get to this forest – or die trying…’
‘You’re not wrong there,’ returned Weber grimly.
35
Mayer ran between the smashed buildings. He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his torn, filthy jumpsuit. What the hell had Amsel wanted that grenade for? No way of knowing. Amsel dead now. Unless Amsel, too, somehow came back from the dead, just as Brucker had –
‘Snap out of it,’ growled Mayer to himself. He had to stay alert and sane, if he was to have one chance in a hundred of getting out of this situation alive.
Those tanks… There were only two of them, but still they seemed to be everywhere, crushing first the buildings and then the rubble beneath their squealing tracks, Ackermann’s men spreading out around them. Bursts of machine fire, cries of the wounded… Smoke and fire… The chimney and its half-smashed brother stark against that grey wintry sky…
Mayer rounded a corner and saw two of Ackermann’s men smashing the butts of their weapons against a writhing figure on the ground. A third soldier lay on the ground nearby, cursing and holding a bleeding arm.
Looked like he’d been stabbed, by the… inmate (Mayer saw now the striped overalls) who was currently being beaten – roughed up as punishment, as it were, prior to being shot…
‘Hey,’ said Mayer.
The two men turned round in surprise, and Mayer’s sub machinegun chattered. Both men whirled round before falling to the ground, almost on top of the inmate.
The soldier who’d been stabbed stared fearfully up at Mayer.
‘You’re going to shoot an injured man, Mayer – a fellow German?’ he tried to demand, although fear made his voice shake.
Mayer stared at him for a few seconds, remembering his face. There hadn’t been that many men in Ackermann’s unit, anyway. They all knew one another other by sight.
‘Do you remember Rudolph Baer trying to snatch a baby away from its mother, back at that ghetto where we first saw the Metal Man, and you laughing? You remember – when Baer said how he was prepared to wring the baby’s neck?’
Mayer’s voice became tight with his final sentence, spittle escaping his lips as his eyes narrowed.
‘N – no…’ the soldier whimpered.
‘Well I do,’ returned Mayer, who then fired a short burst into the injured man. He slumped over to one side, his eyes fixed and staring.
‘Thank you,’ said the inmate, wiping the blood from his mouth as he rose slowly to his feet. Mayer went to help him, but the man waved him away.
Then Mayer started slightly in surprise – it was that young but tough-looking male, with the startling blue eyes. The Polish-Jew who Mayer had first made eye-contact with back at that ghetto he’d mentioned to the soldier who was now distinctly dead.
‘…I remember that, too,’ said the man now. ‘You and two or three others didn’t look like you belonged with the rest of those SS troops – I remember thinking that.’
‘You… you speak German?’ asked Mayer, feeling slightly dazed.
‘But of course. Fluently. I was studying philosophy at Humboldt University, until it became obvious that being a Jew in Germany wasn’t a good idea,’ returned the man. ‘So I returned to Poland – not knowing that you’d then go and invade my home country, of course.’
‘Let’s move,’ said Mayer. ‘We’ll get to the back of this camp and into the forest.’
‘To hide, Herr – ?’
‘Mayer – yes, to hide,’ returned Mayer determinedly. ‘We can’t fight twenty-something men and two tanks.’
‘We can try,’ said the blue-eyed man, staring at the SS soldier.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Aron.’
‘You can fire a gun?’
‘Yes. I learnt that living in the ghetto. But you already know that…’
‘Well then, Aron, pick up one of those and let’s get moving,’ said Mayer, motioning at the guns, previously belonging to the dead soldiers, which were now lying on the ground.
36
Two members of Ackermann’s unit turned the corner and came across the body of a fellow SS member. The man was lying on his front, his features concealed. The churned up snow around him was heavily stained with blood.
‘I think that’s one of those guys who deserted with Mayer,’ said one soldier. Then he became aware that the man lying on the ground was quietly counting –
‘One… two…’
‘What?’ said the other soldier. He moved over, roughly turning over the bleeding man on the frozen ground.
‘Three… four…’ continued Amsel.
The other soldier had walked over to stand by the dying man.
‘Shit!’ he shouted then. ‘He’s got a grenade!’
‘Five…’ gasped Amsel, in the split-second before the grenade tore him and Ackermann’s men apart.
37
Brucker caught up with one of the tanks almost at the same moment as it ran out of fuel and so came to a sudden halt. His metallic fingers (the right hand still working – just about) clawed at the hatch on top of the vehicle.
There came a great screech of metal as he then tore it open. The five men inside the cramped, hot, oil-smelling interior gave a yell of terror, Brucker’s frozen face staring in at them.
‘Get out,’ said Brucker. ‘Now.’
‘You’re dead!’ shouted back one of the crew, his face almost as white as Brucker’s own. ‘I saw your body!’
‘Yes,’ returned Brucker, his voice flat and measured. For a moment he stared up at the brick-built tower directly behind him. ‘Yes, I was dead. But then I came back…’
*
…A short distance away, Ackermann saw what was happening as he stood beside the
other tank.
Quickly, he said to the tank’s commander –
‘You have that bazooka, Berg, in your vehicle?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Give it to me.’
Doing as ordered, Berg’s face then registered shocked surprise as Ackermann aimed the weapon directly at the Metal Man.
‘Sir!’ called out Berg. ‘The men in the tank – if you fire that, they’ll also be – ’
‘They’re as good as dead, anyway,’ barked Ackermann, opening up the bazooka’s sight.
Then, taking aim, he fired…
*
…Almost abstractly, Brucker felt himself being lifted up in the air. Some part of his brain – that of it which still existed – registered: More damage.
The tank, also, was blown almost on its side, the men inside screaming as the flames from the explosion consumed them. Brucker landed on top of the tank, a strange feeling almost of detachment coming from his left leg. He lay, dazed. He looked up at the towering chimney, which to his numbed senses seemed almost to be swaying…
No – seemed was the wrong word. It was swaying. Then it suddenly collapsed, the thousands of bricks slamming into Brucker en masse, burying him…
All was darkness, Brucker now registering catastrophic damage to his titanium-armored body. His human brain swam in and out of conscious, Brucker desperately instructing whatever part of him still existed from before not to die, to stay focused – to try and claw his way out of this tomb which had landed upon him; to get back out and –
It was hopeless. There was now absolutely no response from his right arm. He felt himself slipping away. The machine side of him was only so powerful, no matter how thick the armor. The tank colliding into him – and now this – it had been too much…
‘Finished,’ he murmured, somehow knowing that his synthetic face had been torn apart by the tons of rubble which had just fallen upon him. ‘I’m finished…’
*
With a grunt of satisfaction, Ackermann put down the bazooka. The Metal Man – Brucker – had been completely buried by the falling chimney. Along with the tank and its crew. But that was a worthwhile price to pay for the destruction of Brucker, thought Ackermann vaguely.
But still he could hear the chatter of machineguns being fired; the shrieks of the wounded. The inmates of this camp – and perhaps some of his men, also. Ackermann knew that his unit had taken casualties. Whoever was left of Brucker’s men (Ackermann thought there were now only two of them – one of whom was that traitor Mayer) were too experienced as fighters not to sell their lives dearly.
Then Ackermann realized what he had to do. The simplest course of action for bringing matters to a head, as it were.
‘Everyone – out of that tank,’ he barked at the Panzer’s crew.
Berg and the four other men clambered out, still shaken by the callous attitude shown by their officer towards the lives of the crew of the other tank.
‘Get out there – find the others – tell them I want prisoners,’ instructed Ackermann. ‘You hear me? Prisoners. As many as you can; round them up and bring them back here.’
‘But, sir, excepting my pistol, we’ve no weapons,’ said Berg doubtfully.
‘You need weapons against some unarmed kikes?’ spat Ackermann.
‘No, sir,’ returned Berg. He nodded at the others, and they began to move cautiously away from their vehicle.
‘Remember,’ said Ackermann, ‘prisoners. As many as you can get – bring them back here. And quickly.’
38
Brucker was dead. Of this Mayer was certain. He’d seen the rocket being fired at him, the half-machine, half-human being blown up in the air along with the tank. And then that great chimney collapsing on him, completely burying him – along with the tank – under thousands of bricks.
A great dust cloud now hung in the air, while the roaring noise made by the falling rubble still reverberated in Mayer’s ears.
The blue-eyed man who’d given his name as ‘Aron’ was at Mayer’s side. He carried one of the guns which had belonged to the SS soldiers. Neither of the two men had much ammunition, however. The dead soldiers hadn’t had much on them, either.
The men crouched low, peering round the sides of buildings before running across any open spaces. Mayer’s boots crunched on the filthy snow; Aron, who was wearing the clogs given to all the inmates of this concentration camp, made slower progress.
The camp was destroyed and smoking. Gunshots and yelling sounded frequently. But the menacing squealing noises, coming from the tanks, had at least stopped. Mayer didn’t know who’d fired the rocket that had first exploded Brucker up in the air and then caused him to be buried alive – but whoever had fired it must have known that it would also destroy the tank Brucker had been in the middle of tearing apart with his metal hands.
Only Ackermann, thought Mayer, would have such a callous disregard for his own men. This was, after all, the same man who’d stabbed a fellow SS officer to death in cold blood.
With such thoughts running through his mind, Mayer turned a corner and almost collided into Weber and Schroder.
‘You saw… what happened… to Brucker?’ asked Weber, panting for air.
‘Yeah,’ returned Mayer, his own chest heaving.
‘Amsel?’ Weber then said quietly.
‘Dead. Bach?’
‘I don’t know, but I think he’s also…’
Mayer nodded, his face grim. He was certain there were only two of them left, now. Plus Aron and this podgy, Jewish-looking man. How many of Ackermann’s unit were left? And how many of the camp’s inmates had been killed?
Trying to shepherd them to the rear of the camp had proved a hopeless task. They’d scattered, got separated. Mayer had been forced several times to exchange fire with other SS soldiers; and when he’d returned to the group, it was always to find it smaller than it had been before…
Mayer and Weber then exchanged a confused look. For there was hardly any gunfire now; someone was shouting out in pain, but otherwise an almost eerie stillness hung over the smoking and shattered concentration camp.
Then Ackermann’s voice, coming loud and strident –
‘Mayer? I believe you’re still alive. I have approximately fifty Jews here. For every ten seconds that you – and whoever’s with you – don’t surrender to me, I shoot one of these kikes in the head.’
‘Shit,’ murmured Mayer. He exchanged another look with Weber. Was Ackermann serious?
‘… three… four… five…’ – the SS officer was already counting. His voice was coming from one side of the camp, near the quarry. The fences along this stretch had been all but torn away by the tanks.
‘What do we – ’ began Weber.
‘… ten…’ finished Ackermann. There was then the noise of a single gunshot.
‘One kike down, and – Oh, here come my men with some more prisoners,’ called out Ackermann. ‘Looks like we can carry on doing this for quite some time! The Yid I just shot was male, by the way; I’ll try a woman this time.’
‘Ackermann!’ yelled out Mayer – but he didn’t know what else to say. He’d no doubt that the SS officer would kill every single one of the inmates he’d caught, if he – Mayer –didn’t surrender himself.
‘I’ve just been informed that it seems as though there is one other traitor with you, plus the man who built the Metal Man, and perhaps another man – an inmate of this camp,’ said Ackermann then, his voice sounding almost jovial. ‘They also need to surrender, along with you.’
And then began the count –
‘One… two… three…’
At once, there came the awful noise of a woman screaming. Mayer pictured her on her knees (he’d no doubt that all the captured inmates were on their knees, hands behind their heads, guarded by whatever number of Ackermann’s troops were still remaining), the barrel of Ackermann’s pistol pushed against her right or left temple…
‘…six… seven… eight…’
The wo
man began babbling something in Polish, her voice high-pitched and hysterical.
‘…ten…’
The crack of the pistol suddenly silenced the woman’s voice. Weber swore, and Mayer called out suddenly –
‘Ackermann, you – ’
Again, his voice choked. No words could begin to express what he was currently feeling.