Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [40]
"Goddamn Berliners," another roared. "The countryside is sucked dry to fill Berliner's bellies while we starve."
An old man atop a horse cart cried, "We've given them our sons and our grandsons, and they still aren't satisfied."
A woman dropped her cloth bag to shake a fist. She raged, "My boy starved to death in the east. And look at that truck. Look at all the meat."
The crowd had transformed into a mob. Fists were raised and oaths yelled. The swarm moved tentatively, then, fed by its own momentum, it surged toward the truck.
Sergeant Richter raised his Schmeisser until the stubby barrel was pointed at the sky. He squeezed the trigger. The submachine gun bucked and brayed. Spent shells flew to the roadway.
The mob instantly halted.
"I'm not going to have to use this goddamn gun in earnest, am I?"
The refugees stared at him with fear and hatred and hunger, but slowly the crowd ebbed from the meat truck. The corporal held his carbine at the ready while the refugees listlessly reformed their line at the barricade. Sergeant Richter stepped onto the Opel Blitz's bumper, then into the cargo bay.
The cattle carcasses had been skinned and dressed out. They hung by their rear legs. Short poles passed between the two bones of each hind leg, and the poles were hung from hooks on short chains. Some of the animals were bulls, with torsos much larger than the others, reaching from the hook almost to the truck bed. As hunger mounted, the Reich had begun slaughtering its breeding bulls. Richter pushed the carcasses aside. He searched the length of the bed, looking behind each swinging bovine cadaver, making sure no one was hiding behind the suspended carcasses. Blood from the carcasses stained his uniform. He also checked the corners of the van.
He peeked back out the truck, then stepped behind a side of beef, drew his service knife, and cut a dozen jagged sirloins from the hanging beef. He was no butcher, and he struggled with the beef cuts, taking several minutes. He tucked them into his coat under an arm. For a month his men had been eating nothing but Eintopfgericht, a wartime stew consisting of butcher-shop sweepings, the men suspected. Tonight would be different. Richter made his way between the rows of hanging beef carcasses back to the door. Holding the sides of his coat so he wouldn't drop his prizes, he jumped down to the road and closed the truck's cargo doors.
Sergeant Richter returned to the cross arm to lift it, then waved the driver through the checkpoint. He placed the beefsteaks on the front seat of his troop transport. The sergeant again began checking the refugees, one at a time, occasionally glancing at the photo of the American to refresh his memory. When the woman who had shouted that her son had starved in the east passed for inspection, he returned to the transport to slip her one of the sirloins. Her startled and grateful expression almost made the war worthwhile for the sergeant.
When the meat truck was two kilometers west of the checkpoint, Jack Cray's knife emerged from between the breastbones of a bull carcass. The blade slashed through the twine he had used to tie the ribs together after he had entered the organ cavity. He wrestled with the bones, grunting with the effort. He slithered out of the bull, dropping like a newborn calf to the truck bed. He was covered with blood and offal. His hair was matted with pieces of sinew and blood. His clothes were sodden. A veil of red slime covered his face.
He squeezed between the swaying and jolting carcasses to the cargo door, then slipped his knife between the door edges to lift the hasp. He pushed open a door, waited until the truck slowed for a corner, then leaped into the overgrowth at the side of the road. He rolled twice before finding his feet. He put his knife into his waistband, then pulled a compass from his pocket.
The compass had been made by the Colditz escape committee out of a molded phonograph record, a sewing needle, and a magnetized strip of razor blade. Cray sprinted across the road, climbed over a pole fence, and entered a glade