The road to Germania was not straight. They backtracked to retrieve their abandoned potato sacks before navigating the route Henryka had advised. North first—up bare-bones country lanes. It was Miriam’s turn to drive, and though the purple beneath her eyes was beginning to match the dawn sky, she did so without complaint. Exhaustion had made itself at home in Yael as well, but between the discomfort of the files wrapped to her torso and the thought of what lay ahead, she could only sleep in snatches.
Westward, the roadblocks and the lines of refugees grew thicker, as did the urge to—GRAB YOUR GUN ARM YOURSELF—every time a patrol rapped on Yael’s window. Every time she fought it back, reciting the same “transporting potatoes for my uncle” story (the one that felt thinner and thinner with every telling) as she listened to the sacks receive more knife wounds, waiting for someone to ask her to roll up her sleeve.
It never happened. Always they passed.
“The informant must not have known about this truck. They would’ve stopped us by now,” Yael reasoned. “That rules out any leak from Molotov.”
Miriam grunted. Most of the morning had been quiet—interrupted only by the motor’s steady hum and patrols’ questions.
“I wish you’d told me about the phone call, back in the office.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“I know.” Yael’s hand slipped back into her pocket, found the smallest doll—uncovered so long that it was worn down to the grain. “It just takes some getting used to.”
“So does Herr Löwe.”
“You should call him Luka.”
Miriam’s lips pinched.
“So does Luka,” she relented. “If it had been him… would you have done what needed to be done?”
“You mean torture?” Vlad had trained Yael in this art as well. The practice stayed within her lines, but it was far easier to imagine breaking an SS-Schütze’s kneecaps than turning a knife on Luka. “It wasn’t him.”
That’s what I thought was written all over Miriam’s face.
The day turned grayer, cloaking most of the sun. The muddy back roads disappeared, giving way to pavement. (All smooth, asphalt autobahns led to Germania.) Their truck fit right in with the flood of Lebensraum refugees: common Volk crammed into Volkswagens, boys on bicycles, women walking in mud-stained dresses, even a few horse-drawn wagons. People were going to any lengths they could to avoid war.
All while running straight toward it.
It was well past noon, and rain had started slapping at the cracks in their windshield when the flow of feet and wheels slowed, forcing Miriam to downshift. They’d arrived at a crossroads, where a bouquet of white road signs shaped like arrows told them GERMANIA was close. Keep going 20 KM.
But the way was blocked. Barbed wire curled across the pavement—hastily strung. The SS soldiers next to it weren’t checking papers, but pointing to the alternate route with the muzzles of their Kar.98Ks.
“You can’t go this way!” Yael heard one of them yelling as she cranked down her window. “There’s a skirmish—”
A rumble—low, deep to the point of feeling—dipped out of the sky, cutting off the soldier’s words. Yael’s first thought was thunder, but there was no jagged light above, and soon she heard two more bellows: distant, close together.
Tanks.
If panzers and other armored vehicles were involved, then what lay ahead wasn’t just a skirmish. They’d reached the front lines. Or side lines, Yael corrected herself as she reenvisioned Germania’s battlegrounds as Henryka had described them to her over the radio. North of the river Spree belonged to the resistance. General Reiniger was still pushing beyond the capital’s borders, toward the North Sea.
But the SS were directing them south, back into the depths of their own territory. The refugees obeyed without question. Only fools would want to drive into battle.
Fools and Yael.
Her heart twisted left with the steering wheel as Miriam followed the rest of the traffic. She drove only a few kilometers—south, south, farther south—before pulling to the shoulder and cutting the engine. “This is as far as the truck’s going to go. Any roads west will be blocked. If we want to cross over to General Reiniger’s territory, we’ll have to do it on foot.”
If only it were so straightforward. But there was nothing simple about navigating their way across an active front with a convalescent and no intelligence on where units were placed, all while trying to avoid becoming target practice for Reiniger’s own men…
“We should wait until it’s dark,” Yael said. She hated to delay, but they needed the darkness. So far no one from the passing stream of refugees had spared their truck a second glance; once Luka and Felix climbed out from under the potato sacks, this anonymity would be short-lived.
“Night’s better. Get some rest. We’ll need it.” Miriam slid back into her seat, eyes shut.
Yael did the same, listening to the sounds of rain tapping glass and distant battle song. Mausers spitting, panzers booming, death descending along with the storm. It was strangely lulling.
She slept off and on. There were not so many nightmares. Instead of aiming a gun at Adolf Hitler’s face, she held her picture up to a camera lens. All her wolves sat beside her in the Reichssender studio while she introduced them one by one to the all-hearing glass. An ON AIR light hung red above them. She was just introducing Aaron-Klaus when Miriam nudged her awake.
“Time to go.”
Twilight made the whole world heavier. Rain kept falling, and semiautomatics rattled the air. The sounds were terrible, but Yael took heart in their consistency. It meant Reiniger’s forces remained strong enough to hold their ground.
Now their merry band just had to get to it.
She climbed into the truck bed and wrenched the holey potato sacks aside one last time. Miriam had parked the truck far enough off the road to avoid the displaced Reichlings’ headlamps. Shadows were their ally as Yael opened the hidden compartment.
“How are you feeling?” was her first question to the pair.
“Wet.” Luka was, indeed, sopping when he sat upright. His hair plastered over his face and into his beard. Madman chic. At least there was no rice this time. “We there yet?”
“We have to take a walk first.” Some kilometers away, another round of bullets punctuated Yael’s sentence for her. “We’re going to try and reach Reiniger’s men on foot. Felix, can you keep up?”
“Do I have a choice?” he asked.
“We could try using the stretcher.”
“No.” Felix winced as he propped himself up. “You don’t have to drag me. I can walk.”
More shots in the distance. “If we’re spotted, we’re going to have to run.”
“Then a stretcher is definitely a bad idea.” Felix was emphatic. The boy was just as soaked as Luka. Blue-lipped and miserable in a way that made Yael want to wrap him up in a blanket.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“It’s his fingers that are gone, not his feet. He was trotting around the barn yesterday like a prize pony,” Luka told her. “How far do we have to go?”
“No idea. Could be we only have a few kilometers to crawl. Could be there’s an SS patrol waiting in those trees.” She nodded to a huddle of pines, drooping with the day’s rainfall. It was hardly large enough to hold a person’s attention, much less a patrol. But, as Vlad had told her, sizing up your enemy means accounting for every possibility. Underestimation gets you killed.
“Pass those up.” Miriam appeared, motioning to the guns.
Together, Luka and Felix delivered the arsenal. They had a sufficient amount of weaponry: a rifle and a handgun each, along with enough bullets to hold back a sizable onslaught. The ammunition pouches had been covered and were still dry. Yael strove to keep hers that way as she strapped it to her person.
The Doppelgänger Project papers were even more precious. They couldn’t muck their way through such a wet night without damaging them, so both girls stripped the documents from their bodies. Yael took the waterproof tarp that covered the ammo and swaddled the files (along with her own portrait and pocket talismans) three times over before stuffing them into a pack. This she handed to Miriam, who, they’d agreed, would take the lead. If she fell, Yael would be more likely to reach the bag.
“Weapons are a last resort,” Miriam said as she swung the pack over her shoulder, flanking it with her Mosin-Nagant. “You start shooting and your chances of getting killed jump up by a hundred. Understood?”
All nodded.
“Know this”—Miriam’s quelling-soldiers-to-their-knees stare shifted to both boys in turn—“If I think either of you are turning your iron sights on me or Yael, I’ll shoot. I will not hesitate. I will not miss.”
Luka took the warning in stride, securing his own gun to his shoulder. “Trust me. You’re the last person I want to pick a fight with.”
“That’s the problem,” Miriam pointed out. “I don’t trust you.”
“Let’s get moving,” Yael urged, eager to have this conversation, this night, done with. One at a time they slipped out of the truck. Yael brought up the rear, wishing hard for her not-Lebensraum-bride outerwear as she squelched through soggy earth. Hosiery and Mary Janes made terrible tactical gear.
Rainfall meant cover against enemy detection, but it also meant Scheisse visibility. No moon, no stars, all clouds. Yael’s twenty-twenty vision strained to keep up with Luka’s back as their group slunk through the dark, managing only a few yards before Miriam signaled a halt. It took a few flashes of artillery (far off, in the direction of the town) for Yael to gather why. The trees had ended, a field stretched out in their place: mud as far as the night would let her see. Yael noted a few hedges dotted the ground—large enough to take shelter in, thick enough to cloak an ambush. Dangers out here would vary by kilometer. SS patrols on this side. Reiniger’s men on the other.
Miriam readjusted the cinches of her pack. “Let’s take it slow. No talking. Follow my lead.”
With the gunfire so distant, and the rain falling so fully, and the darkness so hard, there was no need to crawl. Miriam guided them out into the open, followed by Felix, then Luka, then Yael. Every step into the field the mud grew worse: toes to ankles to shins. Yael’s flimsy shoes didn’t last long. (Good riddance!) She squelched stocking-first into the marks Luka’s boots left.
They reached the first set of bushes without incident. No helmets or Kar.98Ks melded into the leaves. To their right, the contested town lit bright. Its silhouette was ravaged, as if a dragon from lore had swooped from the clouds and taken great bites out of its gabled rooftops. They were still some kilometers from drawing even with the lines of battle. Only a few more kilometers after that and they’d encounter Reiniger’s men.
The field was an eyeless, soulless wasteland. Miriam forged the way to the second, third, fourth hedges. A few times Felix stumbled—palm-first, face-first—protesting Luka’s attempts to help him up. (The victor did anyway. Back muscles clenching through his soaked undershirt.)
Yael hoped, very much, that they would not have to run.
By the fifth set of bushes, she was beginning to think they wouldn’t. Most of the field was behind them now, and they were parallel with the town’s war-lit center. Soon they’d be out of SS territory.
Miriam must have been thinking the same thing. Their march became bolder.
Too bold.
The sixth mound of foliage wasn’t empty. When Miriam burst onto the scouting party, both sides were stunned. Black uniforms flinched in front of the storm-drenched fräulein, not knowing what to make of the sweater clinging to her hourglass waist, the blouse whispering around her breasts. They hesitated a moment too long.
Miriam swung her rifle forward and fired.
There was too much rain and chaos to count their opponents. All Yael could make out was the Sieg rune badge on the sleeve of the closest soldier. SS. These men had killed and killed and killed to earn their rank, and they would kill Yael if she didn’t end them first. This was the ugly, unforgiving truth. This was why Vlad had taught her to fight.
Yael was not a monster. She was a survivor.
Life or death was not a question this time.
—FORWARD FAST FIND HIS THROAT—
Yael lunged, stockinged feet screwed into the mud as she twisted around, grappling the nearest soldier in a choke hold. She held and held. Shots darted this way and that. The dragon devouring the town roared. Yael could feel its fire—hot against her side. The man’s breath rattled into her inner elbow, thrashing.
More shots. One of the bullets found the soldier. He went limp in Yael’s grip: no fight, all dead. She dropped him. Next target. A helmet and a set of wide eyes. This soldier was ready, turning along with Yael as she leapt, using his strength to throw her to the earth. She hooked her legs under his as she fell. Gravity dragged the second soldier into the mud alongside her. Yael grabbed her pistol and fired.
The shot was hasty, but true.
She kept her finger on the trigger, searching through the downpour and shadows for a third target. All her sights found were more bodies and Luka.
“It’s me!” He threw his arms over his head. “No shooting!”
Miriam was close by, scraping tendrils of hair from her cheeks. “Everyone alive? Uninjured?”
“Yes and yes.” Luka dropped his hands. “Glad I have a gun now, m’lady?”
Miriam grunted.
“I’ve been shot,” Yael told them. The firefight’s adrenaline was ebbing, and the burn against her rib cage had worsened. A dozen red bees all wriggling to get through her pores. Yael fully expected when she bunched her blouse away to find a hole—as open and pouring as the ones from her nightmares. When she looked down, she saw the soles of the dead man’s boots, so close to her toes.
Taking a life takes something from you.
It had taken flesh this time. Not a hole, but a line of absent skin, carving along Yael’s side. The wound throbbed, but the bleeding seemed minimal. She pronounced it “Just a graze.”
“Are you sure?” Both Miriam and Luka asked this, stepping toward Yael in the same moment. Each looked at the other as if they were intruding.
“Yes.” Yael let down her shirt. “Where’s Felix?”
“Here!” Adele’s brother was a meter away, face full of mud, rifle flung to the side. Rain streaked through his electric hair, washing dirt away. “I couldn’t work my gun left-handed. Lay low to make myself less of a target.”
“There might be other scouts around,” Miriam warned as Luka hoisted the other boy to his feet. “We need to move.”
They kept slogging through the field. The bees in Yael’s side turned into hornets—angry, nest-stepped ones. She ignored them, fixing her stare on Luka’s back. Every few steps, the victor looked over his shoulder, as if double-checking her very existence. Every other few steps, he stopped and pulled Felix upright by his shirttails. The mechanic’s stumbles were getting more and more frequent.
They should have brought the stretcher.
Yael’s rib cage hive whipped into a fury. How long had they been walking? Where was the morning? How much colder could the rain get? Hadn’t they gone far enough?
(Hadn’t she gone far enough?)
Luka looked to her again. Through a flash from the town, Yael saw that his face was as translucent as his shirt, stripped down to emotions and veins. Blue, blue, shock and fear. “Behind you!”
When Yael turned, she saw movement in the direction of the bodies they’d left. The gunfire must have drawn the attention of another scouting group. Yael couldn’t tell how many, there was too much rain-blurred distance between them. A good thing—for the second SS patrol hadn’t yet spotted their group.
But sight went two ways. If she could see them…
—HIDE RUN FIGHT—
Yael had no time to decide which was the best course of action.
“There!” A wail pierced through the rain. Hounds of bullets followed.
Shots spit into the ground by Yael’s feet. The rainfall made for sloppy aim, which she discovered when she hoisted her own rifle to return the favor. Fighting in these conditions was out of the question. They were too exposed for a bullet not to land in the second or third volley.
Hiding was also out of the question. They’d already been spotted, and Yael saw no hedges nearby.
Their only chance was to “RUN!”
She screamed this as she squeezed the trigger.
The others obeyed. Miriam paused to add her own BOOMing protest to the mix. Felix slipped. This time Luka didn’t just lug him upright. The victor lifted the other boy over his shoulder with a Herculean scream, becoming a stretcher of sinew and bone. His footsteps plunged deeper than ever as Yael trailed them.
She ran, waiting for another thousand bee stings to ram through her back. But the death that always lingered there did not fold forward. She ran and ran, until the pain in her side became nothing, and the field suddenly ended. Trees and their witch-claw twigs snapped up Luka and Felix. Yael barely had time to shield her face as she dived into the underbrush. Bullets clamored at their heels, hit the bark with sullen thuds.
Hercules was done, collapsing into the vegetation with Felix and the rifles.
—TIME TO FIGHT—
Luka grabbed a Mosin-Nagant, pressed the buttstock into his shoulder, and spun around to face the field. Miriam did the same, using a trunk for cover. Yael hunkered by her own tree, pulling back her rifle’s bolt to free it for another shot. She could tell by the number of bullets and their steady onslaught that this patrol was larger than the last. Much larger.
She peered into the glistening rain, waiting for the next flash. It came, bringing with it the outlines of their approaching enemy. Ten fleet-on-their-feet shadows. Yael let the image burn against her eyelids, aimed from memory at the nearest man, and fired. She did this three more times, though the next flash revealed she’d only stopped two of the ten. Her Mosin-Nagant needed reloading, but there were eight men charging the trees and seven bullets left in her TT-33.
A shot from Miriam brought one down. Luka’s bullets were wild cards. Felix was trying his best to bring his hands and his pistol to a truce. Yael fired another bullet. The trunk by her face splintered with a close call.
Three men down. Seven descending. The patrol was only yards away, closing in fast. The artillery flashes weren’t coming quickly enough for Yael to pick out her marks.
When she fired the next bullet, it sounded as if every tree around her had decided to fall. SO MUCH NOISE. Too much for a single handgun. Or even a handgun plus Luka’s rifle. It was coming from behind them. Shots being fired from the trees!
The next jag of light showed the SS patrol stopping, uncertain.
The one after that painted them in full retreat.
Yael looked back into the trees to find shadows that hadn’t been there before. Several gathered around Felix and Luka. Their uniforms were nondescript—neither black nor swastika-ed. It was too dark to tell, but Yael was certain, if she looked, there would be frays and tears identical to Ernst Förstner’s.
These men were resistance fighters.
They’d reached Reiniger’s line.
She was just about to exhale her thanks, when the men lifted their Mausers again, aiming their guns straight at Luka’s and Felix’s heads.