Beck (BBW Bear Shifter Moonshiner Romance) (120 Proof Honey Book 4) (172 page)

My family had moved to French-speaking Belgium from South Africa a generation ago. I’d been brought up in a household learning both French and English. My two brothers were deployed elsewhere in Belgium. I was going to school to become a teacher, but instead I heeded the call to defend my nation against the invading Huns.

"Merci! Madam, I hurt all over," the man on the cot said. His hand grabbed my sleeve. He had been brought in earlier that day, one of dozens of casualties that filled beds, cots and mats on the floor in this makeshift hospital. The bullet had caught him in the leg and gone straight to the bone. I knew he was in agony, but I could do nothing for him. I could offer him no relief from his pain.

But I could put his mind at ease.

"The doctor is coming soon. He will have the medicine to make you better," I said. My hand gave his a confident squeeze, and he released me and lay back down. The most valuable skill I'd learned in my short time helping these dying soldiers was to lie. The truth was a poison, a cruel curse. There would be no medicine to save him. There would be no doctor who could afford the time to save him. But a lie.
 
A lie could give him hope. A lie could ease his suffering, could take his mind off the pain even for a brief moment.

That is all I could offer.

I moved down the hall the formed between rows of beds. I had to step over wounded and dying men several times to reach the back flap of the tent. Outside the sun was overhead bright shining down. Walls of smoke carried down the avenue, like wisps of ghostly soldiers. The streets were deserted, except for scattered militia units deployed down the sidestreets.

Civilians had fled weeks ago. Well, the civilians who had money fled weeks ago. There were still plenty holed up, boarding up doors and hiding in cellars. I didn't know what kind of existence they expected to have, living like rats under the boots of the vicious Germans. But i could not fault them, because I knew the feeling of terror when it grabbed you, when it didn't let go.

“Joan, got a match?” Frederique said, walking out behind me. His hand went to his neck and he loosened his priest’s collar. His hand dug into his coat pocket, pulling out a silver cigarette case.

“No, Freddy, but you’re out anyway. You’ve been out since yesterday,” I said, trying to hide how tired I was. My voice wavered with the need to rest.
 

His hands shook with exhaustion, and after opening the case he snapped it shut again with a sigh. He was ragged, his eyes bloodshot. The poor man had been little more than an altar boy a week ago. The town’s priest, who suddenly had means despite his oath of poverty, fled for Paris. But a town needs a priest, and soldiers need a doctor. He was the closest the town had to either, but that wasn’t saying much.

When news of the German advance came to Mons, everyone was caught by surprise. No one expected them to go so far north, to bypass the Maginot Line and flank the French Fifth Army. The bold General Von Klausen lead the Reichstag forces as it slammed through Belgium, a move no one anticipated. The French would be unable to pivot, to face the German threat in time. With their flank exposed, they would crumble. So instead they retreated, pulling their front line back.

Ahead of the invasion, most people fled. I should’ve fled. I had a little money, dwindling inheritance left to me by Papa after he joined Mama in the afterlife. But I didn’t want to run away from my home. I heard the British had landed to support us, to help push back the encroaching Germans. If a stranger from across the channel could come fight for my home, how could I not stay?

When the local militia began erecting a large canvas tent to house the wounded, I went down to volunteer. I thought I would be carrying water or cooking meals. The head of the militia asked me in quiet tones if I was a nurse. No, I told him. I wasn’t. He then announced to his men assembled there that they had the hospital’s first nurse. The twenty men gathered around on the street cheered.
 

And that’s how things are in war. In this new war. Concepts of chivalry and heroism vanish. Massive iron behemoths crawl across the ground, spitting death at targets almost across the horizon. There was no warning, no notice and no discrimination.
 

The day before a cafe on the other side of town had been boarding up, the owner wanting to secure the property before leaving town. The artillery shell pierced the wall in the apartment above his cafe, then detonated inside it. He and his family were turned into a fine red mist, nothing left of them to fit in a tin can.

“Fucking shit,” Frederique said, spitting onto the cobblestones.

“Father!” I said. “That is language unbecoming of a man of the cloth.”

“I hate this. I hate this waiting. I hate knowing that something is coming, something terrible,” he said. He looked up at the sky. “Is it the suffering, you think?”

“What?” I said. I’d been looking at a rat crawling along the other side of the street. It had a small piece of butcher’s paper in its mouth. It darted into the crumbling brick wall laced around an estate across the street.
 

“The point of all this,” he said.

“The point of what?” I said.

“The point of all this shit,” he said, waving his hands around. He was at his wits end. “Are we just meant to suffer? To make us better people?”

“What does the Bible say?” I said, trying to keep him focused.

“The Bible says precious little about artillery and poison gas,” he said, quietly. “What if we just ran?”

I laughed, full belly howls reverberating on the empty street. “Oh Frederique, I think it’s a little too late to do that.”

“Le Guin says he can arrange a boat. Right on the river,” he said conspiratorily.

“Le Guin is full of shit, and you’re an idiot for believing him. No boat is coming anywhere near this town,” I said. Frederique looked hurt, but I was too tired to care. His naivette was going to get him killed, sooner rather than later. “Besides,” I said, pointing to the tent behind us, “We have responsibilities.”

“What can we do for them? Joan, I had a man make me promise I would give this letter to his mother!” he said, pulling a letter out of his coat. “I don’t know who his mother is. I don’t know his fucking name! He’s dead now. What am I supposed to do?”

“Just be there for them, Frederique. That’s all any of us can do,” I said. The rat darted back into the street and ran down the gutter. Brave little bastard. Brave or greedy.

The next street over, machine guns guarding the bridge spun up, spitting lead at the Germans. They were joined by more small arms fire from our side, which intensified and didn’t let up. We heard screams coming from the canal, and we bolted through the estate garden to see what was happening.

Across the Mons-Conde canal, the outskirts of Mons was ablaze. The Germans had sacked and looted the few buildings, and now the smoke from the wreckage had obscured the German front lines. Under this cover, they’d regrouped and led a charge across the bridge half a mile down the canal.

Piles of German dead and wounded lay over the bridge, like a spoiled child who took too many lead soldiers from his toy chest. It was hard for me to grasp that those were all people, that so many lives could be extinguished because some general back in Berlin demanded it.

As the British guns began to relax, the Germans pulled back to lick their wounds and try again. The British soldiers cheered and hollered in triumph, taunting the retreating Germans. Their celebration was cut short as two hollow thuds emanated from behind the German line.

The telltale whistle of incoming artillery gave everyone notice to dive for cover. Frederique and I lay down next to the brick wall encompassing the garden. I covered my head and concentrated on my breathing.

The ground shook violently, and I crouched to peek over the wall. The British sandbags on our side of the canal had taken a direct hit. The machine gun nest had been obliterated, and the street was covered in tan uniformed bodies. A battlecry erupted from the German side as they ran across the bridge, closing the distance on the dazed and dying British soldiers.

I grabbed Frederique, but he was frozen in place, looking behind me. I spun around, and could see dust and smoke coming from the street where our hospital was.

I turned and looked over the brick wall. Further down the canal I could see German units advancing across the other bridges. Massive swarms of brown uniforms surging across towards our side of the canal. The sight filled me with terror and dread.

Frederique started to stumble back towards the street where our hospital was. I stood up and ran after him, grabbing him by the arm as he tipped sideways and almost fell into a patch of blackberry bushes. The smoke ahead was still thick, and the surge of screams and gunfire behind us was growing in intensity.

As we ran past the brick walled garden, our eyes fell upon our makeshift hospital. Or what was left of it. A massive crater filled the center of the street, and charred ashy smoke choked our lungs, making it hard to breathe. I put a hand up over my eyes trying to see. I tried to see if there were any survivors, but I couldn't even make out any bodies. All those men were gone, all those men no longer existed. It was as if they never existed.
 

"Frederique," I said, not sure what else to say. I brought my hand up to my face, my vision going blurry. Damn these weapons and the men who use them straight to hell!
 

"Oh God. Oh God," Frederique said his, his hands pulling at his hair like a madman. He wailed in the street, kneeling at the edge of the crater.
 
He looked around as if the twenty wounded men he cared for minutes ago would just walk out from behind a building. "This is not a battle for men. This is a battle for demons.“

"Frédéric, we have to go!" I said. I could hear more gunfire, it was getting closer. But more urgently, I began to hear German voices. Orders being yelled by officers. They were on our side of the canal, and they were going to sweep through to clear out any remaining resistance. "We have to go. Now," I said, pleading.

"Why?" He said in a whisper. "Where are we going to go?"

My hands went under his arms and I lifted him up. I began to run with him by my side, running as fast as we could. We darted down the street and ran between a pair of houses, trying to cut through the residential areas to make our way across the city as fast as we could.

I could hear Frederique crying next to me. It was the most sad sound that ever heard. The cries of a man who felt despair deep into his soul, who felt like his God had abandoned him. Shuddering moans escaped his lips and tears fell like from a faucet. We ran out across another thoroughfare, and Frederique stopped.
 

"I'm not going any further, Joan," he said. There was a bench next to us, the kind that people would sit upon as they strolled up and down this lush green thoroughfare. Lovers would sit on benches like these, scandalously close and whisper their promises into each other's ears. But now, Frederique sank into it like a prisoner sentenced to death. "I'm tired of running."

I heard rifles going off on the street behind us. "Frederique, we have to go. We can't stop moving now. The Germans will kill us." I said. My hands grabbed his arm but is he locked his hands around the arm of the bench. My knuckles went white, my arms pulled as hard as they could. I could not dislodge him.

"Go Joan!" He said. "Get out of here."

"Please," I said. I felt tears drip down my face my nose running in a blubbery mess. I hadn't considered I would have to go on alone. I couldn't go on alone.

I heard footsteps behind us advancing quickly, voices speaking sharply in German. I looked down at Frederique: his eyes were closed. He looked calm, resolute. At peace with his decision.

I crouched and ran behind a merchant's cart abandoned on the side of the street. Some sacks of grain were loaded into the back and I got into the cart, pulling the sacks over me. I saw Frederique sitting on the bench as calm as if he were waiting for a friend. He took out his cigarette case, and opened it.

As if slammed from an invisible blow, he folded forward as three rifle shots hit him from behind. His cigarette case flew out of his hand and clanked onto the cobblestones. Two German soldiers emerged from the gangway we had just come through. They spread out to check the rest of the street.

I put my hand over my mouth and screamed. Moments ago he’d been scared and tired, just like me. Now he was gone. All his dreams and hopes extinguished.

The soldier closest to me ran over to Frederique’s body and grabbed his cigarette case. Seeing it was empty, he threw it down onto the street. The other soldier called to him and they went further down the block.

As soon as they disappeared, I crawled out from the cart and ran the other way down the block. I ran from the Germans, from Frederique’s body. Lying in the street, accusing me of leaving him to die alone.
 

I never stopped crying. I wept for Frederique. I wept for Mons. But most of all I wept for myself. Even if I did escape Mons, what then? Was anywhere safe from these damned artillery shells? Machines that could throw death miles away, without regard for the victim.

At the end of the street I came to an intersection. I knew my only chance was to stay ahead of the Germans, to rush to the other end of the city and flee into the farmland on the outskirts. The thick foliage of the grape vines would hide me as I kept going, The grapes would feed me, and eventually I’d make it to Paris.

This was good, I told myself as I ran down the street. I had a goal, something I could work towards. Farther down the street, I saw a couple running away as well, suitcases in their hands. They reached the crossing of the next street and the woman screamed.

Someone shouted at them in German, and they ran into the middle of the street. Rifle fire tore through their clothes and suitcases, tiny puffs of fabric erupting out of them. They wilted onto the cobbestone street.

I dove into a stairwell leading to a building basement. I landed hard on my shoulder, bending my head sideways at a painful angle. Fire shot up my forearm all the way to my shoulder. I held my arm close to me, listening for the Germans to move past.