Mila 18 - Leon Uris [261]
Simon handed his flashlight to Deborah and pulled the bricks away which led into the sewer. He poked his head through and flashed the light up and down. There were no Germans, but billows of poison gas floated in from both directions.
With Alex and a dozen Fighters forming a chain across the Kanal to Mila 19, Simon and Deborah passed the children out of the room one by one to the old bunker across the Kanal. Some of them were swept up by the rushing sewer waters. Others doubled over, gagged and blinded, as the cloud of gas enveloped them.
Outside Majdanek, frantic people tried to batter past the bayonets of the Fighters to get to the dubious safety of the death-filled sewers.
“Hold your breath, children. Duck under the water! Keep your eyes closed!”
German machine gunners at the head of the entrances shot down the panicked civilians, and then poison gas and lashes of fire from flame throwers ate up what little oxygen was left in Mila 18 and the bunker became a huge gas chamber filled with a screaming, frantic doomed mass.
Chapter Twenty-one
CHRIS AND ANDREI FROZE for the rest of the day in the second floor of a gutted structure from which they could watch the Germans methodically move over the area inch by inch, dragging the dregs of humanity from beneath the ground. The Germans were finding bunkers quickly now. Thirst-maddened people who had to live in silence for days on end broke.
Often at dusk there was a respite as the Germans pulled their forces off the streets and out of the ghetto to give it a working over with artillery, picking out for target practice the diminishing numbers of skeletons of buildings.
Andrei used this lull to make the final lunge for the Franciskanska bunker. Andrei always looked forward to seeing Wolf, for there was always an air of frivolity, jokes, songs, poems.
Not this night.
When Chris and Andrei arrived, Wolf and Rachael and Ana were sprawled glassy-eyed on the floor of the big room. Andrei looked around. There were only twenty-odd Fighters present. Everyone seemed only half conscious. There was no greeting for them. There had been no guard at the bunker entrance.
Wolf’s head hung between bunched-up knees, and Rachael lay on the floor beside him, her face in his lap. Ana looked up for an instant and half recognized Andrei and sagged again.
“What happened?” Andrei demanded.
No one answered.
Andrei turned to Ana. He didn’t like looking at her these days. All the tall fine hard round woman that had once been Ana was gone. She was wasted.
“Ana! What happened!”
Ana sniffled and mumbled incoherently.
“Momma ... Daddy ... Momma ... Daddy ...” wailed a woman Fighter. “Momma, I’ll be with you soon.”
Andrei turned abruptly in all directions. Living dead.
He reached down and jerked Wolf Brandel to his feet Wolf slumped at the end of Andrei’s arms like a rag doll. Andrei shook him. Wolf blinked his eyes.
“Fool’s gambit,” he mumbled. “Fool’s gambit ... fool’s gambit.”
Andrei’s hands let Wolf go, and Wolf fell to the ground again and he lolled on the floor, smacking his lips for water. Rachael groveled for her canteen, turned it over. It was empty. Wolf pulled Rachael to him and propped his back against the wall and looked up at Andrei.
“What the hell do you want?” Wolf said. “The canteen is empty. We have no ammunition left.” His hand flopped and hit the accordion beside him. “Even this thing won’t work any more.”
“Get on your feet, you son of a bitch,” Andrei bellowed in a tone that shook the bunker. “Get on your feet! You’re a commander of the Jewish Fighters!”
Wolf Brandel was shocked back to life. He dragged himself up and hung laboriously before Andrei Androfski, swaying back and forth ... back and forth.
“Now, what happened?”
Wolf licked his lips. “Germans ... got close to the bunker ... we all came up. We were committed to fire by a fool who opened up on them. In ten minutes we were out of ammunition ... not a