Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [60]
"It could be worse," Enge laughed, eager to please the sergeant. "Our truck could have stalled right on the tracks."
"Here they come, poor bastards." Keppler leaned against the truck's fender. "Blown up, shot, burned, and broken, the lot of them."
Private Enge watched the train approach. The red cross on the boiler front rippled in the wind. Smoke from the stack blew across the field. Enge's view was along the length of the tram as it came toward them. The cars rocked sideways on the unstable track. The locomotive's main rod rose and fell. A coal tender followed the locomotive. The engineer leaned out the cab window to stare at the track ahead. He lazily saluted Enge and Keppler. The locomotive was a monster of rivets and cylinders and hoses and rods and plates. It seemed to roar by them, even though it was only traveling at fifteen kilometers an hour.
Six cars passed, each with a red cross on a white banner below the windows. Keppler scanned the sky for enemy planes. He had lost two trucks to them in the past week. Whipped up by the tram, wind cuffed his face.
Enge squinted at the tram. Window glare hid most of the train's passengers, but Enge could see a few bandaged heads as they sped by. The last two cars were converted cattle cars used for the wounded on litters. The cars' slats had been covered with tarpaulins and the red cross. The train had no caboose. The last car rolled by.
"Let's start walking." Sergeant Keppler pulled Enge's rifle from the Krupp's floor and passed it to him, then reached for his own Mauser.
As the last cattle car pulled away from them, a mound on the track caught Enge's eye. The train had left something behind A lump between the two tracks. As Enge watched, the lump rose from the ties and gravel and transformed itself into a man. Someone had been run over by the tram maybe. The man rose, turning toward them.
Enge was relieved. The man couldn't be hurt too badly, even though he had a bandage at his neck. The man's Wehrmacht uniform was soiled. He was an officer, a major. Enge and Keppler hurried toward the man.
The major staggered and fell. Then as the soldiers neared him the man rose again with something in his hand.
Private Enge gasped when he saw the major's face. Enge awkwardly grabbed for his Mauser. Sergeant Keppler also brought his rifle around.
The man moved with startling speed, two steps toward them, bringing his hand around in a vicious arc. Enge saw only a crease in the day, a horizontal blemish against the background, and then heard a solid thump. Keppler collapsed to the ground, a stone the size of a fist hitting the ground next to him. The man had thrown a rock at the sergeant.
Enge's rifle strap snagged for an instant on a shoulder button. He yanked it free and brought the barrel up, wildly searching with his finger for the trigger, too late. The man in the Wehrmacht major's uniform moved so quickly he seemed to be a haze rather than a man, and he grew in front of Enge, a wall rushing at him.
The day blinked out. Nothing but blackness.
The private woke a moment later, his nose in the mud, the side of his head a mass of pain. He coughed raggedly, blowing dirt from his mouth. He pushed himself up with one hand. Sergeant Keppler was still on the ground, his forehead bleeding. Many Sergeant Kepplers, swimming in front of Enge, whose eyes refused to focus.
"Is this all you have to eat?" the voice above him asked in German with a flat accent.
Enge rolled over, and shaded his eyes with a hand. The man was backlit by the dull sun, and his features were obscured, a dark mountain hovering over Enge. The man rustled around in Enge's pack. The private pushed himself to sitting, and carefully probed the side of his head. No blood. Not too bad, he vaguely decided. Sergeant Keppler moaned.
Enge tried to rise, but dizziness kept him on the ground. The man's hand reached under his arm to help him up. Enge shuddered and stepped back. The man's face seemed cut from wood with an ax, with cheekbones so prominent they threw shadows on his face below. His chin was