She-Wolf

Part Four

"We should go home right now," Elke's face is pale, her voice insistent.

Sophie glares at her. "Why's that, then? Huh? Shall I tell the Kreisleiter you've run away?"

Elke does not answer. She seems to shrink before Sophie. Or Sophie seems to be getting bigger.

"Did you not hear what the man said?" Theresa cuts in before she can stop herself. "For all we know, the Kreisleiter is gone. Ran away."

Sophie scoffs. "So you think we should run like the Kreisleiter did? Are you that stupid? If what you say is true, then he's a coward. You're not a coward, are you, Baer?" A pause as Sophie leans in so that she and Theresa are breathing the same air. The rifle is clenched tightly in Sophie's hands. "Are you?"

Theresa is frozen in place. She sees Father hanging from that lamp post. And herself and Kristina hanging with him, with Mother sitting on the ground, underneath them, head bowed in despair. Götz is there, too, looking angry as if she had betrayed him, disgraced his memory. She unconsciously glances at the dark shape of the man's corpse, facedown in the dirt with that hole in his back. Then back at Kristina, but rather than the scowl that Sophie has Theresa instead sees her looking as though she is having second thoughts.

Sophie chuckles disparagingly. "That's what I bloody thought. Who else is scared? Eh?" Sophie holds her rifle up threateningly.

For a while, no one speaks, not even Kristina. A satisfied, derisive smirk plays across Sophie's lips. But then, Johanna shouts in a loud, insistent voice, "I'm not scared of them! I'm not, I'm not!"

"Good," Sophie snaps. She then goes about ordering everyone to take up positions, shift it, now. Theresa and Kristina scoop up their rifles, sliding down into their ditch, while Elke racks a belt of ammunition into the MG 34. Sophie has her own ditch on the other side of the road directly opposite Theresa, just behind Elke and her MG 34. She gets the luxury of having a fallen log as extra cover, while the rest of them have only dirt to protect them against enemy bullets.

Johanna is given a Panzerfaust and ordered to lie in wait in the treeline by the road. For a girl who so brazenly proclaimed that she will stay and fight, she looks pale when she is given the order by Sophie, a look that nearly makes Theresa laugh. But she nonetheless takes it, jogging towards a small spot in the treeline where she can hide and set an ambush.

The wait is painful, full of angst and foreboding. The noise, the relentless clanking is growing louder, clearer. But through the slowly deepening darkness she can see nothing. Not yet. But with each passing second she feels as if, piece by piece, her world is slowly beginning to collapse. She can see her whole world pass before her eyes, a reflection on her life, a life that was once lively and free of war.

Off to her right she notices Kristina looking at her. They say not a word, but just look into each other's eyes, long and deep. But there is neither disdain or nurture in either of their gazes.

And then, there they are.

They emerge from around the bend, three of them, one after another, rolling up the road: Churchill tanks, their giant tracks grinding the mud beneath them, their cannons seemingly narrow, stunted things compared to the rest of the tank itself. There are soldiers riding the tank, most crammed in a circle atop the turret, and some she can barely make out on the back.

Already Theresa feels faint, the hopelessness of their situation hitting home in full force. She knows it in her gut: against a tank, a great unthinking monster made of metal (let alone three) with nothing but a rifle, she stands no chance. She feels as if the tanks are laughing at her, mocking her, a vulnerable thing of flesh and blood with her measly little rifle. But the tanks are not laughing but growling, grinding forward through the mud towards them, slowly closing the distance. Any minute she expects Johanna to fire the Panzerfaust and destroy one of the tanks, but the longer she waits the more she feels as if Johanna had lost her nerve, like the tanks will keep pressing forward, unchallenged, unimpeded.