The cold was a master sculptor. It chiseled away the unnecessary parts of a man—the hope, the fear, the conversation—until only the motor functions remained. Lift boot. Place boot. Repeat.
Peter, Hanke, and Schultz moved through the industrial outskirts of Bautzen like sleepwalkers. The dawn had brought light but no warmth. The wind whipped off the river, freezing the sewer slime on their uniforms into stiff, cracking armor.
They were no longer a squad. They were a procession of ghosts.
Hanke was stumbling. His hands, wrapped in sodden, filthy bandages, were held against his chest like broken birds. The infection was already moving up his wrists; Peter could see the red streaks disappearing into his tunic sleeves.
"We need shelter," Peter rasped. His lips were cracked, bleeding with every word.
"The brickworks," Schultz pointed. His voice was steady, oddly calm. The boy who had wept in the crypt seemed to have left his tears in the sewer.
Ahead lay a sprawling complex of red brick factories, their chimneys broken, their windows staring like empty eye sockets. A sign, riddled with bullet holes, read Hermann Göring Werke.
They crossed a rail yard, stepping over the twisted steel of bombed tracks. They found a foreman's office on the ground floor of the main kiln building. It had three walls and a partial roof. It was a palace.
They collapsed onto the concrete floor.
Peter leaned his head back against the wall. He closed his eyes. The darkness behind his eyelids was not black; it was a blinding, brilliant yellow.
Ukraine. July 1943.
The memory washed over him, warm and golden. They were halted near a village whose name nobody could pronounce. The sun was high, a white disc in a blue china sky. They had parked the trucks in a field of sunflowers that stretched to the horizon, a billion yellow heads nodding in the breeze.
They were young then. Or at least, they felt young. The war was still a game of maps, not a meat grinder.
Vogel—loud, brash Vogel—had found a watermelon. He had smashed it open on the hood of the Opel Blitz, laughing as the pink juice ran down the fender. He cut slices with his bayonet, handing them out like a priest distributing communion.
"Eat, boys!" Vogel had roared, juice dripping from his chin. "Sweet as a girl's kiss!"
Klein was there, shirtless, sunbathing on the roof of the cab. Weber was writing a letter. Hanke was playing cards with Muller.
And Schultz... Schultz was just a replacement then, fresh from the train. He was sitting on a jerry can, looking at the sunflowers with wide, terrified eyes.
"Hey, kid," Peter had said, handing him a slice of melon. "It's just fruit. It won't bite."
"It's so big, Sergeant," Schultz had whispered. "The field. It never ends."
"That's the East, Schultz," Peter had smiled, clapping him on the shoulder. "Big fields. Big sky. And we are the kings of it all."
They had laughed. A pure, unburdened sound that belonged to a different species. For an hour, amidst the sunflowers and the sugar-sweet melon, they were not soldiers. They were just men on a summer holiday.
"Sergeant?"
The yellow field vanished. The grey concrete returned.
Schultz was standing over him. The boy's face was smeared with mud, but his eyes were clear. He was holding Hanke's water bottle.
"It's frozen," Schultz said. "Solid ice."
Peter sat up, the joints of his knees popping. He looked at Hanke. The corporal was unconscious, shivering violently, his breath coming in shallow rattles.
"He has a fever," Peter said. "The burns are septic."
"We need a fire," Schultz said.
"If we light a fire, the smoke will kill us. The Russians are patrolling the perimeter."
"If we don't light a fire," Schultz countered, "the cold will kill him in an hour."
It was a simple equation. The logic of the front.
"There is wood in the kiln room," Peter said, standing up. "I saw pallets. We can make a small fire. Smokeless. If we use dry wood."
"I'll get it," Schultz said.
"No. I'll get it."
"Sergeant," Schultz said. He put a hand on Peter's chest. He didn't push, but the resistance was firm. "You are the leader. You stay with Hanke. You have the map."
Peter looked at the boy. Somewhere between the sewer and the factory, Schultz had aged ten years. The terror was gone, replaced by a fatalistic acceptance. He had seen Muller die. He had seen the cost of the ticket.
"Be careful," Peter said. "Stay in the shadows."
Schultz nodded. He unslung his rifle. He checked the bolt. He didn't look back. He walked out of the office and into the cavernous main hall of the factory.
Peter knelt beside Hanke. He rubbed the corporal's shoulders, trying to generate friction heat.
"Stay with me, Hanke," Peter whispered. "Remember the melon? Remember the sunflowers?"
Hanke mumbled something unintelligible. Mutti... Mutti...
CRACK.
The sound of a rifle shot echoed through the factory. It was sharp, singular, and followed immediately by the distinctive zing of a ricochet.
Peter grabbed his MP40 and scrambled to the doorway.
"Schultz!" he hissed.
He saw the boy. Schultz was pinned down behind a stack of bricks in the center of the main hall, about fifty meters away.
"Sniper!" Schultz yelled, his voice echoing off the iron girders. "High up! The catwalk!"
Peter scanned the upper levels of the factory. High above, in the shadows of the gantry cranes, he saw a glint. A scope.
"Don't move, Schultz!" Peter yelled.
Another shot. CRACK. Dust exploded from the brick stack inches from Schultz's head.
The sniper had the angle. Schultz was trapped. If he tried to run back to the office, he would be cut down. If he stayed, the sniper would simply dial in the shot and punch through the bricks.
"Sergeant!" Schultz called out. "He's watching me! He's focused on me!"
"I'm going to flank him!" Peter yelled. "Keep your head down!"
"No time!" Schultz shouted back. "There's a patrol! I hear them! Outside the loading bay!"
Peter froze. He heard it too. The crunch of boots on gravel. Voices. The sniper was the anvil; the patrol was the hammer.
Schultz looked back toward the office. He looked at Peter. Then, he looked at the door leading to the kiln yard—the opposite direction from where Peter and Hanke were hiding.
"Schultz, no!" Peter realized what he was doing.
"Tell Hanke!" Schultz shouted. "Tell him I get the motorcycle!"
"Schultz!"
The boy stood up.
He didn't run to cover. He ran into the open. He raised his rifle and fired a shot toward the catwalk, screaming a war cry that was half-fear, half-defiance.
CRACK.
The sniper fired.
Schultz spun around. The bullet took him in the shoulder, spinning him like a top. But he didn't fall. He kept running, stumbling toward the loading bay doors, drawing the line of sight away from the office.
CRACK.
The second shot hit him in the leg. Schultz went down.
But he crawled. He crawled out into the sunlight of the loading bay, directly into the path of the approaching patrol.
POP-POP-POP-POP.
The sound of PPSh submachine guns erupted from outside. A storm of fire.
Then silence.
Peter stood in the doorway, his knuckles white on his weapon. He waited. He watched the catwalk.
The sniper shifted. He was looking at the loading bay, watching the patrol finish the job.
Peter raised his MP40. He had a clean line of sight now. The sniper had exposed his silhouette against a skylight to watch Schultz die.
Peter squeezed the trigger.
Brrt.
Three rounds.
The figure on the catwalk jerked, flailed, and fell. A long, silent drop to the concrete floor below. Thud.
Peter lowered the gun.
He looked at the loading bay. The Russians were shouting, laughing. They had killed the "fascist." They were distracted.
Schultz had bought them the exit.
Peter walked back into the office. Hanke was still shivering, lost in his fever dream.
"Peter?" Hanke rasped. "Where is the kid?"
Peter sat down heavily. He felt the letters in his pocket. They felt like lead plates.
"He went to get the bike," Peter whispered. "He went to get the Zündapp."
Hanke smiled, his eyes closed. "Good boy. He's a good boy."
"Yes," Peter said, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face. "He was."
Peter stood up. He grabbed Hanke under the arms.
"Up, Hanke. We have to move."
"The fire...?"
"No fire," Peter said. "We have to run."
They stumbled out the back exit, away from the loading bay, away from the sunflowers, leaving the youngest of them on the concrete floor of a dead factory.
Two men left.