Walter Miller - Dark Benediction

The sergeant swallowed solemnly. “I lost all my men except Price and Vittorio, sir. They were wounded and went to the rear.”

“Damn! Well, they’re sending up replacements tonight; and we’re all going back for a breather, as soon as they get here. So you might as well march her on back yourself.” He glanced thoughtfully at the girl. “Good God!” he murmured.

Marya was surrounded by several officers. They were all looking at her hungrily. She thought quickly.

“You have searched me,” she said cooly. “Would you gentlemen allow me to put on my skirt? I have submitted to capture. As an officer, I expect…”

“Look, lady, what you expect doesn’t matter a damn!” snapped a lieutenant. “You’re a prisoner of war, and you’re lucky to be alive. Besides, you are now about to have the high privilege of lying down with six…”

“Quiet, Sam!” grunted the captain. “We can’t do it. Lady, put on the rest of your clothes and get going.”

“Why?” the lieutenant yelled. “That damned sergeant is going to…”

“Shut up! Can’t you see she’s no peasant? Christ, man, this war doesn’t make you all swine, does it? Sergeant, trade that Chicago typewriter for a forty-five, and take her back to Major Kline for interrogation. Don’t touch her, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain scribbled an order in his notebook, tore out the page, and handed it to the sergeant. “You can probably hitch a ride on the chow wagon part of the way. It’s going to get dark pretty soon, so keep a leash on her. If anybody starts a gang rape, blow his guts out.” He grinned ruefully. “If we are going to pass it up ourselves, by damn, I want to make sure nobody else does it.” He glanced at the Russian girl and reddened. “My apologies, lieutenant. We’re not really bastards. We’re just a long way from home. After we wipe of this Red Disease (he spat out the words like bites of tainted meat) you’ll see we’re not so bad. I hope you’ll be treated like an officer and a gentlewoman, even if you are a commie.” He bowed slightly and offered the first salute.

“But I’m not—well, thank you, Captain,” she said, and returned the salute….

They sat spraddle-legged in the back of the truck as it bounced along the shell-pocked road. The guns had fallen silent, but the sky was full of Ami squadrons jetting toward the sunset. Pilotless planes and rocket missiles painted swift vapor trails across the heavens, and the sun colored there with blood. She breathed easier now, and she was very tired. The Ami sergeant sat across from her and kept his gun trained on her and appeared very ill-at-ease. He blushed several times for no apparent cause. She tried to shut him out of her consciousness and think of nothing. He was a doggy sort of a pup, and she disliked him. The Ami were all doggy pups. She had met them before. There was something of the spaniel in them.

Nikolai, Nikolai, my breasts ache for you, and they burst with your milk, and I must drain them before I die of it. My baby, my bodykins, my flesh torn from my flesh, my baby, my pain, my Nikki Andreyevich, come milk me—but no, now it is death, and we can he one again. How wretched it is to ache with milk and mourn you…

“Why are you crying?” the sergeant grunted after awhile.

“You killed my baby.”

“I what?”

“Your bombers. They killed my baby. Only yesterday.”

“Damnation! So that’s why you’re—” He looked at her blouse and reddened again.

She glanced down at herself. She was leaking a little, and the pressure was maddening. So that’s what he was blushing about!

There was a crushed paper cup in the back of the truck. She picked it up and unfolded it, then glanced doubtfully at the sergeant. He was looking at her in a kind of mournful anguish.

“Do you mind if I turn my back?” she asked.

“Hell’s bells!” he said softly, and put away his gun.

“Give me your word you won’t jump out, and I won’t even look. This war gives me a sick knot in the gut.” He stood up and leaned over the back of the cab, watching the road a head and not looking at her, although he kept one hand on his holster and one boot heel on the hem of her skirt.

Marya tried to dislike him a little less than before. When she was finished, she threw out the cup and buttoned her blouse again. “Thank you, sergeant, you can turn around now.”

He sat down and began talking about his family and how much he hated the war. Marya sat with her eyes closed and her head tilted back in the wind and tried not to listen.

“Say, how can you have a baby and be in the army?” he asked after a time.

“Not the army. The home guard. Everybody’s in the home guard. Please, won’t you just be quiet awhile?”

“Oh. Well. Sure, I guess.”

Once they bailed out of the truck and lay flat in the ditch while two Russian jets screamed over at low altitude, but the jets were headed elsewhere and did not strafe the road. They climbed back in the truck and rolled on. They stopped at two road blocks for MP shakedowns before the truck pulled up at a supply dump. It was pitch dark.

The sergeant vaulted out of the truck. “This is as far as we ride,” he told her. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way. It’s dark as the devil, and we’re only allowed a penlight.” He flashed it in her face. “It would be a good chance for you to try to break for it. I hate to do this to you, sis, but put your hands together behind your back.”

She submitted to having her wrists bound with telephone wire. She walked ahead of him down the ditch while he pointed the way with the feeble light and held one end of the wire.

“I’d sure hate to shoot you, so please don’t try anything.”

She stumbled once and felt the wire jerk taut.

“You’ve cut off the circulation; do you want to cut off the hands?” she snapped. “How much farther do we have to go?”

The sergeant seemed very remorseful. “Stop a minute. I want to think. It’s about four miles.” He fell silent.

They stood in the ditch while a column of tanks thundered past toward the front. There was no traffic going the other way.

“Well?” she asked after awhile.

“I was just thinking about the three Russky women they captured on a night patrol awhile back. And what they did to them at interrogation.”

“Go on.”

“Well, it’s the Blue Shirt boys that make it ugly, not so much the army officers. It’s the political heel snappers you’ve got to watch out for. They see red and hate Russky. Listen, it would be a lot safer for you if I took you in after daylight, instead of at night. During the day there’s sometimes a Red Cross fellow hanging around, and everybody’s mostly sober. If you tell everything you know, then they won’t be so rough on you.”

“Well?

“There’s some deserted gun emplacements just up the hill here, and an old command post. I guess I could stay awake until dawn.”

She paused, wondered whether to trust him. No, she shouldn’t. But even so, he would be easier to handle than half a dozen drunken officers.

“All right, Ami, but if you don’t take wires off, your medics will have to amputate my hands.”

They climbed the hill, crawled through splintered logs and burned timbers, and found the command post underground. Half the roof was caved in, and the place smelled of death and cartridge casings, but there was a canvas cot and a gasoline lantern that still had some fuel in it. After he had freed her wrists, she sat on the cot and rubbed the numbness out of her hands while he opened a K-ration and shared it with her. He watched her rather wistfully while she ate.

“It’s too bad you’re on the wrong side of this war,” he said. “You’re okay, as Russkies go. How come you’re fighting for the commies?”