Frangie does not yet expect to die, but she expects to be hurt, she expects a second boot and it is not long in coming, this time smashing her tailbone. The electric agony she’d felt before is worse now. Her stomach heaves, but it is empty. She gasps and inhales dirt, which starts a coughing fit. She pushes at the ground, trying to rise, knowing it will just set her up for another blow.
But the next blow does not come, and she manages to get to her knees, head hanging down, lungs burning for oxygen, nerve pain zapping through her, tingling her hands and feet.
Someone new is in the tent, and his presence has calmed the excitable soldiers. Frangie twists her head and sees an expensive-looking pair of leather boots. They are caked with mud and adorned with spurs—she’s only ever seen spurs in cowboy movies and their presence here seems like a hallucination.
Powerful hands grab her shoulders and haul her to her feet. Blood sheets down over her eyes, and she wipes it away with her arm. She cannot stand fully erect, not yet, leaving her to look and feel even smaller than usual.
She tries to look at the man in the boots but her eyes will not focus and all she can make out is that there are three soldiers in butternut-colored uniforms, and the spurred man wearing dusty black.
The man in black speaks. Is it German? No, the words are accented but familiar. English, but pronounced like a war movie villain. She struggles to make sense of it, to get her brain to work properly, to understand—
A hard slap across the face knocks her against the table. She is almost facedown in the captain’s ruined belly.
“Where have they gone?” the spurred man demands.
“Gone?” she mumbled, uncomprehending.
“Your unit. Your men. Where have they gone? Where is their rendezvous?”
She blinks and wipes away more blood and turns with slow, arthritic dignity to face her interrogator. Her vision focuses on silver collar patches, each marked by the SS lightning bolts.
She does not then recognize the significance of those emblems, nor can she decipher the insignia of rank on his uniform, but she knows him to be an officer by the stiffness in the poses of the soldiers.
“I will strike you again, if—”
“They ran off,” she says.
“Where are they going? What is their destination? Are they joining another unit?”
She shakes her head and cries out sharply at the pain that swarms her. “I’m just a medic. Just trying to sew this man up.”
“You stayed behind to care for him?”
“Leave her alone, she’s just a Nigra,” the captain says from the table.
The German officer jerks his head, and before Frangie can protest, one of the soldiers steps close, presses the barrel of his rifle against the captain’s head, and fires once.
Bone and brain explode from the opposite side of the captain’s head. A piece of skull shatters the hanging bottle of plasma.
“Damn it!” Frangie cries. “You didn’t have to do that! You didn’t have to do that, he was dead anyway!”
“Then no harm has been done,” the officer says, and grins, revealing uneven but bright-white teeth.
He snaps orders to the soldiers, who immediately begin to gather up what medical supplies remain.
His next order will be to shoot Frangie, unless rape is on the menu first, and from the look in at least one of the German soldiers’ eyes, it is. He is anxious, she can see it, anxious lest the officer order that she be killed before he can have his fun.
The officer says two things, neither decipherable, but it makes the soldier with the hungry eyes grin. The officer laughs indulgently, as though he’s jolly Saint Nick handing out presents, then he turns and leaves.
Before he has cleared the tent flaps, Hungry Eyes’ belt is unhitched and the other two are crowding in close.
“No, don’t,” Frangie says, knowing it won’t help, knowing in her heart that the officer has told the men to have their fun and be quick about it, and then shoot her.
The tent flap opens again, a second officer, this one in gray. His uniform is stained with blood as well as mud. He speaks in German, as harsh as the first officer, but with more irritation in his tone, more like a stern schoolteacher addressing stupid pupils.
The soldier with his pants down around his ankles remonstrates, but this just sets off a torrent of derisive abuse. Reluctantly and angrily he pulls his pants back up, creating mirth among his fellows, who follow him as he rages out of the tent.
“I am Oberstarzt Hefflewezen. Doctor-Major to you,” He leans over the dead captain. “These are your sutures?”