He tried to remember what little he’d been taught about nuclear weapons during basic training, but very little of what he could recall was actually helpful. His instructors had talked about blast effects in some detail, yet they’d said next to nothing about radiation poisoning and nuclear fallout. He wasn’t even sure what they were. But then, no one had seriously expected the Americans to launch a nuclear strike on the Reich. Everyone had known the Americans didn’t have the stomach to start a nuclear exchange…
And they didn’t, he told himself. He had no doubt of it. We dropped the bombs on ourselves.
The small party came to a halt — it felt as if they’d been walking for hours — near a camp by the roadside. Hennecke felt a flicker of relief, mixed with concern, as he saw a set of armed stormtroopers standing by the gates, wearing the same protective gear as the others. He kept inching forward anyway, even though part of him kept insisting that he was going to die in the next few moments. The stormtroopers might have orders to gun them down…
Cold water came out of nowhere, drenching them to the bone. Hennecke barely had a moment to turn his head and see men holding hoses before they were drenched again, water soaking through their uniforms and leaving them shivering helplessly. He saw a man drop to the ground like a sack of potatoes, just as the gates were opened and they were ordered forward, into the camp. Behind him, he heard a single shot.
“You’ll remain in this tent,” the officer said, as he led the way towards a large tent. “Do not attempt to leave without permission.”
Hennecke scowled at his back. The other officers and soldiers in the camp were staring at them, as if they weren’t quite sure what to make of twenty-five stormtroopers dripping water as they marched. They were being isolated, Hennecke saw, and he wasn’t quite sure why. He was feeling better, wasn’t he? But not all of the men looked better. He stepped into the tent, cursing under his breath as he realised there was nothing there beyond a pile of looted blankets. They’d need to undress before they could even think of taking a nap.
His head started to pound again as he struggled to undo his battledress. His fingers refused to cooperate; he started to shiver, helplessly, as he finally managed to get undressed and take one of the blankets to dry himself. He wasn’t the only one to manage it, he saw, but several of the others had just collapsed, either through tiredness or radiation damage. Gritting his teeth, he lay down and closed his eyes. His head was spinning helplessly…
…He started awake, hours later. The tent was dark, the only light coming from a lantern mounted over the flap. And it stank, of shit and piss and vomit and blood. He heard a faint moaning, the sound so close that he wasn’t sure who was moaning. It might have been him… he just didn’t know. His head was pounding like a drum, his body so utterly dehydrated that it was hard, so hard, to roll over and crawl naked towards the tent flap. He needed water, desperately. He’d been told to stay in the tent, but he couldn’t stay in the tent, not if he wanted to live.
Outside, it was dark; rain and snow lashing down around the camp, mocking him. What was the snow bringing, but death? It was hard to see the shape of any other tents, even though he knew they were there. The cold gripped him, slicing into his naked body… he was torn between staying where he was and freezing to death or trying to make his way back into the tent. Surely there should be a guard, someone who could help? But there was no one…
“Hey,” a female voice said. “What are you doing outside?”
Hennecke turned his head and stared. His vision seemed to have blurred… an angel was standing there, wearing a white uniform. And it was tight in all the right places, revealing curves a man could stroke and fondle to his heart’s content. A surge of lust flashed through him, only to fade just as quickly. She wasn’t a nurse, he was sure. There was no way she was a nurse. She was probably an officer’s lover… the shithead had brought her with him while his men suffered and died…
“Water,” he croaked. His head was a mess. Part of him wanted to grab her and make love to her, part of him wanted to snap her neck just for daring to exist. It was hard, so hard, to sort out right from wrong. “Please…”
“I’ll bring you water,” the girl promised. She had a voice he would have found reassuring, under other circumstances. Now, he merely found it annoying. “Stay inside.”
Hennecke stumbled back inside and crouched by the tent flap, feeling utterly helpless. He couldn’t even walk. If the girl was an officer’s lover, rather than a nurse… his head kept spinning, tossing up hundreds of possibilities that faded almost before he could get a grip on them. But he was dependent on her now… his body twitched, as if he wanted to cough but couldn’t muster the energy. If she wasn’t a nurse, he knew he wouldn’t live through the night and see morning. Not again…
The tent flap opened. Hennecke looked up as the girl, looking even more angelic than before, stepped inside, carrying a small glass of water in one hand. She knelt in front of him and held the glass to his lips, as if she were feeding a baby. Hennecke sipped gratefully, unable to keep his eyes off the rise and fall of her breasts. His feelings were so conflicted that he couldn’t even keep track of them himself. He wanted her, yet he knew he couldn’t muster the energy to have her. And his head was still pounding.
“Stay still,” the girl advised. “You’ve been through hell.”
Hennecke grunted. It was hard, too hard, to form actual words. He had been through hell for the Reich, risking life and limb so that Karl Holliston could march back into Berlin and sit down in Adolf Hitler’s chair. And then the offensive had failed and he’d found himself penalised, even though the failure hadn’t been his fault. He’d worked as a penal soldier, only to be drenched in radiation by his own side and probably condemned to a long, lingering death.
And it just wasn’t fair!
The bitterness became rage. He stumbled back, thinking of the pistol concealed within his wet clothes. It would be easy to take it and start killing officers, to kill and kill until he was killed himself, but he knew he didn’t have the strength. He looked up at the girl and felt another surge of rage, the desire to throw her down and just take her mingling with the urge to kill her. Here she was, young and pretty, utterly unaware of what he’d done in her name — and in the name of German womanhood everywhere…
“You will recover,” the girl said, quietly.
Hennecke reached out with sudden strength and grabbed her wrist. She gasped in pain, but — even weakened as he was — she couldn’t pull free. He yanked her forward, honestly unsure himself what he intended to do. Force her down or snap her neck? The girl opened her mouth to scream; he clamped his other hand over it, slamming her lips together. She tried to bite him, but it was futile…
“Recover?” He asked. Savage hatred welled up within him. How dare she stand next to him in her clean uniform and mouth such platitudes? “Do you really think I will recover?”
He let go of her wrist and caught hold of her throat. It felt strange to the touch, strong and weak at the same time; he tightened his grip, pulling her closer and closer to him. Her eyes started to flutter helplessly; he felt a surge of sudden power, as if he was draining her strength into his, as she weakened. She couldn’t fight him, she couldn’t stop him, she was utterly in his power.