Gunfire rattled to the southwest.
“And we’re in the Grunewald, Herr Leutnant,” Muller said, pressing his luck. “That’s the regiment shooting. They’re behind us.”
“What is your name, jäger?”
Muller came to attention. “Jäger Yohann Muller, Herr Leutnant.”
“We will wait here for the regiment, Herr Muller. In the meantime, investigate the trucks and let me know if they are operational.”
“Jawohl, Herr Leutnant!”
“Then it is back to heimatkurs for us, eh?”
Heimatkurs, the way home.
The Fallschirmjäger were on the move again, again homeward bound.
For the first time, Muller felt like he had truly joined their ranks.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
REICHSAUTOBAHN
The regiment marched out of the Grunewald Forest onto Reichsautobahn 2, one of “Adolf Hitler’s Roads” built by the Nazis after they took power in 1933. Lined with trees, this major east-west national highway cut through Berlin and would lead the Fallschirmjäger directly to Tiergarten.
Toting his machine-gun over his shoulders, Gefreiter Steiner looked around Berlin’s Charlottenburg district like an awed tourist. The German Opera was nearby, as was Kurfürstendamm Avenue with its shops and restaurants. In the Golden Twenties, the district was famed for theater, music, and dancing.
For a small town boy like Steiner, the west side of Berlin and its notorious decadence before the puritanical Nazis seized power represented some fabled age of fun, debauchery, and easy women.
Now it was a dead place.
Violence had devastated the district, both from Allied bombing and the draugr plague. The buildings stood blackened, scarred, and derelict. Many were in ruins, only partially standing and filled with bricks and dust. Charred motorcars and military vehicles stood silently, surrounded by abandoned luggage and garbage.
The apokalypse had come to Berlin.
Muller grimaced at the sights. “If we don’t stop the plague, all of Germany will look like this soon.”
“God,” Steiner mused, “you spend a few hours with the leutnant, and you’ve got a wasp up your ass, just like him.”
“I grew up here. This is my city.”
His chiding smile disappeared. “Ah. Right. Sorry, Yohann. Whereabouts did you grow up?”
“Schöneberg. It’s in the south side of Berlin.”
“It looks like there was an exodus. I’m sure your folks got out.”
Muller glowered and said nothing. He looked like a soldier. Overnight, it seemed, the kid had grown up.
The paratroopers ahead relayed the signal to halt.
“What’s happening now?” Steiner said. “Can anybody see?”
Nobody answered. They’d find out when the officers saw fit to tell them. Then they’d march again. March, halt. March, halt. It was the soldier’s life.
What Steiner couldn’t see, he heard. The growl of engines.
Somebody was coming.
An officer blew a whistle. Noncommissioned officers relayed hand signals down the ranks. Wolff wheeled and chopped his hand to the right.
Off the street.
The squad rushed to cover with a clatter of gear. The distant growling grew louder, joined by the shriek of armored vehicle treads.
Steiner found himself with the rest of the squad in the charred ruins of a cafe. Churned up by their boots, ash floated in drifts. The air tasted like charcoal. The other squads in the platoon pounded upstairs to occupy apartments overlooking the autobahn.
Just a minute ago, he’d felt completely safe in the middle of a column of heavily armed, elite light infantry. Not anymore. This didn’t feel right.
The squad looked to Wolff, who said, “Sichern und laden.” Lock and load.
Steiner exchanged a wondering glance with Animal. “They’re not going to ask us to shoot Reserve Army, are they?”
Because of its strategic importance as the center of the Third Reich, Berlin was a heavily militarized district. Steiner thought it as likely they’d run into a battalion of the Reserve Army as a battalion of draugr.
Schneider shrugged. “They might be SS. In which case, we might have to shoot if they shoot at us first.”
“I don’t want to hurt any German who’s alive.”
The big soldier patted his flamethrower. “Anybody shoots at me gets torched.”
Schulte adjusted the scope attached to his K98. “I’d rather not be ordered to shoot you next, Steiner. So do what you’re told.”
“Get that ’42 set up!” Wolff snarled.
Steiner mounted the gun on the cafe countertop and raised the belt feed cover. Weber fed it the end of a fifty-round belt and slammed the cover shut. Steiner pulled the cocking handle and braced the stock against his shoulder. While firing, he’d hold the stock with his left hand as well for even more stability.
Times like this, he felt popular. The Wehrmacht placed enormous tactical importance on the machine-gun as the central player in an infantry unit. In a sense, the other men in his squad were there mainly to provide him security and carry extra ammo for him.
That popularity extended to the Americans he’d fought, however. Whenever they heard the distinctive ripping sound of an MG42 in action, they threw everything they had at it. If he paused to reload or change out an overheated barrel, they often chose that time to rush and try to kill him.
Every soldier at some point took the impersonal act of combat personally. Why are they shooting at me? They’re trying to kill me! Why me?
In Steiner’s case, however, it was real. They really were trying to kill just him.
He didn’t want any of it. He didn’t want a war. He didn’t want to save the world. He wanted a girlfriend. A decent job. A normal life in a normal world.
“Feuer auf mein kommando,” Leutnant Reiser said. Fire on my command.
The shriek of the treads grew in volume. The big engines let out a throaty growl. The building trembled. One of the surviving windows shivered in its pane. Ash danced on the floor. The vibrations crawled up Steiner’s legs and settled in his chest. He licked his lips and waited for a target.
A gaunt soldier in a belted brown coat shambled glumly past, followed by a motley crowd of the same. Some carried rifles. Dust puffed from their coats with each step.
Then the first tank appeared, a massive T34.
They were Soviets, a long way from the Eastern Front in Poland.
Still following their last orders by advancing westward, ever westward.
Seven meters long and two and a half tall, the medium tank advanced sluggishly on the blacktop, breathing a cloud of exhaust that wafted over the crowd of bloodied Russian and German soldiers marching around it. A massive red flag bearing the hammer and sickle of the USSR flowed from a slanted pole protruding from its turret.
Then Steiner heard the hum.
At first, he thought it was the tank engines. The deep baritone hum resonated in the air, a dirge expressing an ancient sorrow.
The Russians were singing.
The tank disappeared from view, followed by another. The army of the damned thickened and now included civilians, even women and a few kids in Hitler Youth uniforms. The women sang as well, adding a single eerie soprano note to the ghostly chorus.