A firm, feminine voice called back to him.
“My family needs me!” Peiper yelled back indignantly to whatever was responsible for this hallucination.
After another ‘ZAP’ Jochen found himself back in his own world. Perhaps the Valkyries themselves were talking to him. Whoever it was, it was fortunate he came back, especially to a location where there were no Americans in sight. He looked around to see a snow-capped mountains with pines and firs all around him. The forest’s edge sat in the distance. Behind him was a desolate, frozen river.
“Commande—” a familiar voice carried through the cold air, but Jochen saw no one.
“Commander!”
A tall, bald man flashed before him, then disappeared like a flicker on a film reel.
“Knittel?”
Yes, it was Gustav Knittel, an officer who walked with him to Bavaria, and his voice was wracked with panic. Knittel appeared again and was thrown violently to the ground by an unseen hand. His body flopped down and then was still. Jochen bound over to Knittel and looked down at the unconscious, uniformed body.
“No…”
This was his fault. Somehow. Peiper knew that he caused Knittel’s suffering here, but he didn’t know why, and he didn’t know how to fix it. Sick to his stomach, he considered getting on one knee and praying, but to what? Even in the worst moments of Kursk he never believed praying would do any good.
“………Don’t take this man’s life on account of my insolence. Take mine instead if you must.”
He’d never prayed before in his adult life. Those words just flew out.
There was no response, but a dune of snow kicked up in the distance. Was that an omen?
Knittel groaned and then put his bare hands in the snow. Jochen got back to his feet and stared down at him. Unable to to get up, Knittel reached his hand up from the snow. Jochen reached down and pulled him up. The stricken soldier stood gaudily for a moment, then reached out to shake his hand, but Peiper grabbed the 6’4” man and hugged him anyway.
“This was my fault. I’m sorry about this, Knittel. Something was speaking to me, but I’m not sure how. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“It’s fine, sir…”
Just as he patted Knittel on the back, more zapping sounds went off, as if some invisible electrical current was running through the land. This time he saw Koechlin, then Roettlinger. Then Paul Guhl appeared.
“Is this—Is this Valhalla?” Guhl shouted. Seeing old friends made Jochen beam.
“Guhl! No, I don’t think this is Valhalla.” He chuckled. “We might actually be alive…”
“Alive? So it’s the five of us again? Just like in Austria.”
“I don’t know. Where were you last? I was at Dachau.”
“At home, Stuttgart.” Guhl replied.
A loud series of hums went off like a biblical hoard of locusts through the distant forests. The five of them stared at the woods’ edge and saw nothing, but the stillness was only there for a moment. Gray-uniformed men began emerging from the treeline. He recognized each individual face. There was Paul Zwigart, Hennecke, Felps the Volksdeutsche from Romania, Arndt Fischer, Motzheim, Hans Siptrott, Neve.
His black officer trench coat swayed in the winter wind as he looked on to watch dozens of men emerge from the trees and make a trail through the knee-high snow. All of the men had placards around their necks. Then it made sense to him: The defendants were here, too. In one collective motion, the 71 of them tore off their placards and threw them into the ground.
Without even a word, each of them formed a semicircle around Peiper. There had to be some 80 of them in total.
“Everyone…” Jochen raised his voice. They were already silent.
“I don’t need to tell you what the situation is. The war is supposed to be over, but the enemy has decided to continue their personal war against us. The Americans use whatever false pretext to circumvent convention. It’s on us to make them regret that.”
“As far as what’s going on east of the Oder, god only knows. But I know one thing, and that is I know what we are and what it is we must do. Our lives. They’re forfeit. There’s nowhere for us to run and we’re not going to be able to disappear quietly into civilian life. Not at least until every last one of these occupiers are dead. I’ll tell you what our fate is: We start killing them when they’re not looking. And we don’t stop until they are gone.”
He paced around, looking at each of the men in the front row. He saw the Alsatian, Marcel Boltz, straggle in to the crowd.
“Comrades, there are other cells operating here in the Fatherland. One of them was so kind as to break us out of Dachau. However, as far as we do things, it is only us. If you don’t want to be a part of this endeavor, that’s fine. You may leave now and I won’t trouble you further. But if you stay, you are the resistance.”
The silence continued. Not a single one of them left. For them, the war was back on.
“Shhhh! What’s all the noise outside?!”
The sleeping snow leopardess rubbed her eyes and stood upright to look beyond her thicket. Someone in the nearby glade was talking about some very weird things. Tail swishing about, she clutched to a tree trunk and stared out into the snow.
“H-humans?”
Humans! Almost a hundred of them! In gray uniforms, some in black too. She stared out into the crowd and saw a man in the center of them wearing a long black coat. He was tall and had a thin face. She saw his steely eyes from all the way in the trees. He looked like an angry, angry man!
The snow leopard suddenly felt stricken with fear. Why so many humans? How did they get here and why were they angry?
“T-t-they might hurt me! I need to hide!”
She cried to herself and scampered off into the dark.
Nacht und Nibel
The day’s preparations were complete and now the forest raid could begin. Werner Poetschke once again had a reason to live. A handful of wolven fleers bolstered the numbers of their week-old pack. Some of them came from the forest village that was the target of tonight’s raid.
While none of the wolves protested Dietrich’s plan, Poetschke could tell that the young wolves were frightened of seeing the Raiders in battle again. As for himself, Poetschke had never seen a ‘Grimeskin’ before, but it didn’t even matter. He’d long accepted that he’d die at some point. Maybe that day would come when he was old. Maybe it would come in the raid tonight.
The ten of them fanned silently through the forest until the wolves came upon a break in the trees where moonlight poured in. Before them was a collection of straw huts circled around one great hall. Poetschke mounted the propellant tanks on his back, and charged up the pressure of his flame thrower.
Dietrich tapped his shoulder and Poetschke made a fist. Dietrich looked back and nodded, then Poetschke stalked to the other side of the village. The homes looked like mushrooms made of straw, with grains bunched up at the top in the center.
From the snowy ground he stalked forward. Yes. He neared the furthest hut in a corner of the hamlet, yet he still had the cover of the evergreens. Adrenaline coursed through his body and he shook in anticipation. Just a few more seconds…
His tension was interrupted by a blood-curdling scream from the other side of the village. Poetschke knew that scream. He heard it too many times in Hungary.
“Come on you little pieces of shit. Just a little, little longer now…”
He crawled closer. “Almost there you—” he muttered something under his breath.
The screams became rhythmic, and his hands shook beneath the flame thrower, but now it was time.
A click of the trigger heralded the vengeful fire that erupted onto that helpless straw shelter.
“Sieg-Fucking-Heil! Die!”