Robert Conroy - Red Inferno

“Steven,” she purred, “you are one in a million and I’ve waited a long time for someone like you.” She guided him back on top of her and into her, wrapping her legs tightly about him. She smiled, biting her lower lip. He was aware of a bead of sweat on her forehead as she moved her hips in response to his thrusts. She took a deep breath.

“Do you love me, Steven?”

“Yes,” he gasped.

“Now that I’ve found you, I have no intention of letting you go. When you go to Europe you will always remember who is waiting here for you, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Steve answered as their bodies moved in primal tune with each other. “Yes, yes, yes, yes!”

Tony the Toad squatted alone in the living room of a little house outside the Spandau district of Berlin. He didn’t count the two corpses upstairs in the main bedroom. They didn’t stink too badly yet. For a little while, he had been puzzled, since they didn’t show any signs of wounds. Then it dawned on him-they had taken poison. They’d either been Nazi bigwigs who couldn’t deal with the fall of Hitler and the Third Reich, or they were ordinary Germans who saw themselves dying in agony at the hand of the Russians.

Either way, he didn’t give a shit. They had died and left him with a house that wasn’t too badly damaged, and a storage room full of food they had probably hoarded while other loyal Germans went hungry. Fuck ’em, he thought. They probably deserved to die. Even if they didn’t, it didn’t make a helluva lot of difference.

Tony shifted his rifle to a more comfortable position and again looked out the window for a sign of the returning American army. As usual he saw nothing, only the lengthening of shadows that preceded the coming night. There was no sign of the Russians, either, which somewhat cheered him.

Count your blessings, he told himself. He was alive and unhurt. He was also safe and had a roof over his head. There was several weeks’ worth of food in the basement, maybe more, and he had a rifle with some ammunition. It could have been a lot worse.

Tony stiffened as he heard a noise. It was a soft and gentle scratching. A cat? Possibly. A dog? He didn’t think so. He quietly slipped off the safety on his weapon.

The sound of a window opening in the next room sent a chill down his spine. Should he run? Should he fight? If intruders were inside, they were probably outside the house as well, and, besides, where could he run to? He hunched over and walked to the doorway, took a deep breath, and lunged in, his rifle at the ready.

A small, thin, ragged man sat on the floor while another dangled awkwardly from the window, his head and chest inside the room and the remainder of his body still outside. They were both dirty and emaciated, and his first impression was that of human rodents. They were wearing what he immediately realized was some kind of prison uniform. The second man slid onto the floor and they both raised their hands stiffly in surrender and glared at him and his rifle in feral anger. Tony had never seen humans who looked so much like tortured animals.

For what seemed an eternity they stared at each other. Finally, the first man inside muttered something at him that Tony didn’t understand but thought was German. The man then followed in what Tony took to be French. Perplexed, Tony asked if either man spoke English.

The man who had just come through the window responded, showing a mouth full of rotten teeth as he looked down the barrel of the menacing rifle. “I do,” he said with a heavy accent that Tony didn’t recognize.

They seemed to relax slightly, although they never took their sunken eyes off Tony’s weapon. Apparently, English-speaking people were not their enemy. “Now,” asked Tony, “who the hell are you and what are you doing here.”

The English-speaker responded, talking hesitantly, as if he was trying to recall the words. “We are refugees. The Nazis forced us to leave our homes and work for the Germans in their factories. We are both from Poland. As is apparent, I speak English somewhat while my friend speaks it only a little. My name is Vaslov and his is Anton. Are you British?”

“American,” Tony answered, and they both looked incredulous, fear immediately disappearing.

“The Americans are here?” Vaslov asked, disbelief evident in his voice.

“We were,” Tony said ruefully, and explained that the Russians had ambushed the column. The information appeared to stun the two Poles.

Vaslov spoke solemnly. “If the Russians and you Yanks are fighting, this war could last a very long time and make our lives very, very dangerous.”

Tony hadn’t thought about the time factor. For some reason he’d felt his ordeal would be a short one. Now he had to rethink his position. “Are you Communists?” he asked.

“No,” they answered quickly. Vaslov explained that they feared the Russians as much as they feared the Germans, as both had taken turns devouring their country. “Either will kill us,” he said. “They are both beasts. One of the reasons the Germans imprisoned us was because we were part of the democracy movement. The Russians would not be gentler. They hate and fear the intelligentsia.”

Vaslov curled his lips. “What’s that smell?” When Tony explained about the bodies upstairs, both Vaslov and Anton smiled grimly. “Good. When it is real bad, no one will come in here. If we can stand it, we can remain here in some safety.”

Tony thought about it and agreed. “Hell, we can always go out and find some more corpses if we have to, to sweeten the joint.”

The two former slave workers chuckled at the macabre thought of dead Germans protecting them from discovery by the Russians. Cautiously, they talked through the afternoon. They decided they were in a fairly strong position. They had a weapon and they had food, although it would now have to be split three ways. They had a house and it would serve as a place to hide. They would stay there until they were either rescued or they thought it might be safe to try and head west from Berlin.

Tony asked, “What do you suggest we do while we are waiting?”

“Well,” said Vaslov. “I would suggest we kill Nazis, although I think they are fast disappearing. It seems that the new enemy is Russia. Would you like to kill them?”

Tony the Toad smiled. He thought about Ernie and his buddies burning to death while trying to get out of the Sherman. Brentwood had died as well. He’d been an asshole, but he didn’t deserve to bake. Killing Russians would be dangerous and they must not be so reckless as to invite discovery, but he thought they might be able to hurt the Commies and get some small measure of revenge.

Yes, he would indeed like to kill Russians.

Outside, the spring sun was bright and warm. This made the air inside the squad bunker stifling and hot, a foretaste of what the summer would bring.

First Sergeant Stan Krenski hunched down and entered the bunker through the low and small entrance in the rear. An angular and raw-boned man, he was not as tall as he sometimes appeared, and was only slightly taller than Logan.

“Jesus, it stinks in here,” Krenski said in mock dismay. “Doesn’t anybody shower anymore?”

Logan looked blandly at the others. He knew they were all pigs. “Why, I bathed just a little while ago. How about you guys?” The remainder of the squad assured Krenski that they had not only bathed but generously doused themselves with cologne in the last hour. It was a running gag. They all were filthy and stank to high heaven.

Krenski laughed and wiped his own dirty, sweaty brow. “Nice job,” he said admiringly as he looked around. The bunker was roofed with metal beams over which there were thick layers of sandbags and earth. The walls were similarly constructed and firing slits faced in all directions in case someone infiltrated behind them. Much of the material for this and the many other fortifications had been liberated from the nearby buildings. There was additional joking that the American army had done more damage to Potsdam than the American air force.