“Our Father . . . ,” Frangie whispers.
“What?” Pepper looks at her, baffled then slowly alarmed.
“. . . who art in heaven . . .”
“Are you . . .”
“. . . hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come . . .”
Pepper says, “They aren’t gonna . . .”
“. . . Thy will be done . . .” The words catch in Frangie’s throat. No, no, not Thy will, I want to live. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. “. . . on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread . . .”
The canvas at the back of the German truck rises suddenly. Frangie sees SS soldiers hunched over a machine gun. Her breathing is sharp gasps. Her heart hammers. No, no, no!
“. . . and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive . . .”
B-r-r-r-r-r-t!
Soldiers scream and twist and fall.
B-r-r-r-r-r-t!
Americans try to run and are cut down.
B-r-r-r-r-r-t!
The cries go up. Mom! Jesus! No! God save me!
B-r-r-r-r-r-t!
Men and women stagger. Blood explodes as mist from punctured bodies.
Pepper turns terrified eyes to Frangie, and a bullet hits him in the hip. He falls. Frangie, even now on automatic, a medic first and last, drops to her knees to help him as all around people fall.
B-r-r-r-r-r-t! B-r-r-r-r-r-t! B-r-r-r-r-r-t!
An officer in the squad car has his pistol out and shoots crawling, wounded soldiers with no more concern than if he’d been shooting rabbits.
B-r-r-r-r-r-t! B-r-r-r-r-r-t! B-r-r-r-r-r-t!
Frangie feels a sharp blow against her knee and falls.
It stops. The machine gun falls silent.
The pitiful, fearful, pain-wracked cries of the wounded do not. Men and women are crawling across the snow, leaving blood trails behind.
Frangie hears shouted orders in German. SS soldiers advance across the field, their tall boots crunching snow, chatting among themselves. Laughing.
Laughing as they stand in front of a crawling man, kick him onto his back, and shoot him in the face.
Laughing as a wounded woman breaks for the woods and they shoot her in the back.
Laughing as they step on a writhing man’s stomach and bounce on him, forcing fountains of blood from his mouth before shooting him.
Frangie is half beneath Pepper who still breathes. Frangie can feel the rise and fall of his breath.
“Play dead!” she says in a terse whisper.