Mark

The moment stretched, an eternity caught between breaths. The German soldiers stared up at him, surprise etched on their faces. Four of them crowded the main room, surrounding Mark's companions. Francois struggled in a submission hold, snarling curses through bloody lips, and Wight lay on the floor, unmoving. MacDougal and Rogers stood with their hands up. The man behind the Sergeant held a rifle pointed at his back, while Rogers stood frozen with a pistol pressed to his temple. He clutched the codebook in his right hand; it hadn’t made it into the fire.

Of course the beggars were gone, Mark thought, kicking himself. There’s a bloody gestapo team sitting in our living room! He knew he should be afraid, but all he could feel was a blank emptiness. It might have been calm, if it had been anything.

The tallest of the men, the only one not occupied with a team member, stabbed a finger up at him. “Don’t move!” He barked in rough French. “You are under arrest. Put your hands up.”

Mark almost did, but no one was pointing a gun at him yet. He still had the grenade in his hand, out of sight behind the doorframe. A dud grenade, yes, but still... The lead man had his pistol holstered, and the other two were focused on MacDougal and Rogers. The last man wrestled with Francois, grunting with exertion as the Frenchman struggled wildly with him on the floor. He and Johnson, still out of sight, could break and run. In the twisting alleys, the bastards would be hard pressed to catch up with them.

Fat chance of that, he thought. Instead, he popped the pin of the grenade with his thumb and let it fall to the steps. “I surrender!” He said, dropping the grenade and raising his hands high. It landed with a soft clink of metal on stone. “Here, I give you my weapon!” He kicked the grenade down the stone steps. It bounced, once, twice, three times, and rolled to stop at the feet of the commander, who frowned down at it in confusion.

Mark marked the exact moment that the man realized that the pin was missing. His eyes widened in a deeply satisfying way, and his mouth twisted in horror. “Granate!” he screamed, kicking it away, and all hell broke loose.

The grenade bounced back off the bottom step, skittering towards the man holding MacDougal. He cried out in alarm and pushed his captive towards the explosive. MacDougal spun on him, seizing the rifle and twisting it, trying to force it from the other man’s hands. The officer wrestling with Francois lost his grip, and the French fighter headbutted him full in the face, smashing his nose to red ruin. Mark charged down the stairs towards the lead man, who was stumbling away from the grenade. The man fumbled for his sidearm as Mark tackled him headlong into the wall.

A shot rang out, deafening in the close confines. Mark flinched, but kept moving. He locked his hand onto the officer’s wrist, putting his shoulder into the man and carrying him to the floor. Distantly, through the ringing in his ears, he heard Johnson throw himself down the stairs into the melee, bellowing like a bull.

The officer beneath Mark struggled, grunting hot breath into his ear. He scrabbled at Mark’s face with his left hand, probing for his eyes, and Mark ducked his head grimly. He could not let go, he had to keep a hold on the man’s other hand, the one with the pistol. Squeezing his fingers tight around the man's wrist, he slammed the hand against the wooden floor. It glanced awkwardly off the wall, and he tried again, smashing the man’s fingers against the planks of the floor until the hand spasmed open and Walther skittered away, lost in the melee.

A feral growl clawed its way out of the man’s throat, and his fingers found Mark’s nose. They tore at him, his fingernails tearing strips of skin away and blurring Mark’s vision with tears of pain. Mark howled, animal rage flashing through him, and slammed an elbow into the man’s jaw. Something crunched and crumbled, moving beneath Mark’s elbow in a way that God had never intended. It sounded like a chicken leg being torn free at Sunday dinner.

The man screamed and flailed, bucking as he tried to throw Mark loose. He caught Mark in the stomach with a foot, kicking him off. Mark landed heavily on his back and rolled clear, sucking for breath. His hand knocked against metal, solid and cold against his skin; the gun. He scrambled for it, fumbling at the unfamiliar grip and turning back to the fight.

Something hard smashed into his temple, and lights danced before his eyes. He toppled onto the floor face first, his bottom lip dragging against the splintered wood. In the distance, he thought he heard more gunshots, and men screaming. Hard metal edges jammed into his ribs, digging into his flesh. The pistol, he realized dimly. He rolled off it, clumsy fingers scrabbling like a spider for the gun. Why weren’t his hands working properly?

A figure loomed over him. A man, blurry and indistinct in Mark’s eyes, swinging a rifle around to bear. Mark stared cross-eyed up the barrel, a dark pit threatening to swallow him up. He felt that he could see all the way to the chambered round. He should try to get his own gun up, try to shoot the man, but he knew he couldn't possibly manage it in time.

I’m going to die, he thought, and then the shot rang out. He flinched, throwing his hands up in front of his face with a futile cry of despair.

Instead of a bullet, the whole gun hit him, falling across his chest. The man followed it, toppling heavy and limp onto him, pinning his arms. Something wet and hot poured over his face.

In the echoes of that shot, the room fell silent. Or almost silent: Mark heard a rhythmic thumping, and the heavy panting of men flushed with battle. He thrashed, rolling the dead man off him with an effort and struggling to his feet. His head was pounding, and when he touched it his hand came away wet with blood. How much of it was his and how much the dead man’s he couldn’t say. MacDougal stood before him, clutching a rifle; the man he’d wrestled for it lay dead across the room, staring at the ceiling. Johnson was helping a dazed Wight to his feet, one arm supporting him.

The thumping had taken on a wet quality that sent the hairs on the back of Mark’s neck up. He turned, searching, and saw Francois crouched in the corner, kneeling over another limp uniformed body. He gripped the man’s head by the ears and hammered it into the floor with another squelching thud. The man did not so much as twitch.

“Francois!” MacDougal barked. “Francois!” He had to shout the man’s name twice more before Francois dropped his victim and turned to stare at them with wild, feral eyes. “We have to go, now! One of them got away.”

With a start Mark realized it was true; the fourth soldier was nowhere to be seen. MacDougal turned his gaze back to Mark. “Get the bags, leave everything else.”

Mark nodded and staggered towards the stairs, head pounding. His hands shook as he grabbed their bags from the room they slept in, looping the straps over his arms. His arms too, every part of him trembled like the last leaf on a tree. He felt it deep in his chest, a shivering that he could not still. Stopping in the room, he hugged himself, trying to quell the shaking.

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MacDougal bellowed up the stairs. “Mark! Now, you bloody fool, we have to go now!”

Right. He straightened and wobbled back down the stairs under the weight of the bags, leaning against the banister for support. He handed a bag to Wight and Johnson, and dropped another next to Rogers where he sat against the wall. Francois had his already, and an antique rifle that he must have held onto since the last war, produced as if from thin air. Johnson tossed Mark the Walther pistol; the others had already taken the German's other weapons.

Mark caught it, surprised. “Why this one?”

“Little less obvious.” Johnson grinned at him, scars stretching in a hideous way. “And besides, you earned it.” He gestured to another body.

Mark blinked, looking at the man he’d fought. He was dead, his jaw drooping in a way that made Mark sick, but that wasn’t what had killed him. Someone had shot him in the chest.

“Take any of their uniforms that aren’t too torn up.” MacDougal ordered, pointing to the one that Francois had battered to death. “Francois, we need an exit, someplace safe to hide and regroup.” The Sergeant stuck his head out the door, peering around to see if anyone else was coming. “That last one will be back any minute with half the Reich behind him.”

Francois nodded, but his face clouded like a thunderhead. “I can get us out of here. But you have cost me my home, my family’s home, with your carelessness. You must have been followed.”

“If we’d been followed, they’d have sent more men than they did.” MacDougal snapped back. “This was just pure, bad bloody luck.”

Francois’ face twisted in a sneer, but he let the matter drop. He turned, striding across the room, kicking the big rug in the center aside as he went. Underneath, the thick wood flooring showed years of wear, stained so dark it was almost black. The Marquis fighter seized a pry bar from the stack of tools, hefting it in one hand as though testing the balance. He stomped back across the room, dragging it behind him, and for a horrible moment Mark thought he meant to use it on one of them. Instead, he slammed it against the floor, hammering hard on the individual boards as he went. One made a hollow noise, and at this one he stopped, driving the point of the pry bar into the gap between it and its neighbor. Throwing his weight against the bar, he levered it up, old rusted nails coming free with squeals of protest. He dropped to one knee and began to tear up the surrounding floorboards, heaving them out of the way.

Mark stared at him, confused, but as the Frenchman stripped the planks away, he revealed a dark opening. Steep, narrow stone stairs dropped away into darkness beneath the house. Johnson leaned over it, whistling a low note of amazement.

“Is that…?”

“The catacombs, yes.” Francois tossed another board aside. “My father’s father carved this tunnel when he fought with the communards.” A fond smile ghosted across his face. “He used to tell us such lovely stories about executing royalists down there.”

Mark shared an uneasy look with Johnson as Francois cleared the opening of the tunnel. He was not at all sure he wanted to go into anything that dark and cramped, let alone following someone who thought stories of executions were “lovely.” But MacDougal nodded, grim faced, and pointed down into the shadows.

“In. We’re abandoning this position.”

“Won’t they just follow us?” Mark asked, struggling with one of the gestapo’s boots. The man’s body was horribly heavy and warm, and getting the clothes off him was harder than trying to dress a squirming toddler. He wrenched the man’s pants off, trying not to look at pale flesh underneath; the skin of his hand crawled where he brushed the corpse’s leg. “With these uniforms, we might be able to pass...”

“They will not follow us.” Francois said as he went back to the tool chest and produced a can of kerosene from its depths. He set to splashing it liberally across the floorboards and over the furniture. “Not for a while at least, and not ever, if we are lucky.” The fuel stank, pungent and oily. Francois emptied the last of it over his chair, pausing only long enough to pocket the book he’d left propped open on the cushion.

Johnson started down the steps, helping support Wight as they went, a few pieces of German uniform sticking out of his bag. Mark made to follow before he noticed Rogers. The radio operator still slumped against the wall, his head bowed in exhaustion, his glasses on the floor next to him. Mark leaned down and grabbed the glasses, then took Rogers’ arm. “Come on Rogers, get the radio and let’s go.” He pulled, meaning to drag the man to his feet.

Rogers’ head lolled, limp. A giant hole in his skull was missing, and blood and other things best left unmentioned leaked out of it.

Mark stared, still tugging uselessly on the man’s arm. Rogers, who knew everything there was to know about the radio. Rogers, who never wanted to play cards, but would give you as many games of chess as you wanted. His unbroken glasses dangled in Mark’s hand, but all his learning was spilled out across the wall and floor behind him in a smear of red and gray.

Mark felt his gorge rising, but he couldn’t look away. That’s not right, he thought. That can’t be right. When did he get shot? But he knew the answer, even as he thought it.

It was that first shot. The one that went off when I came down the stairs.

Someone else yanked at him, pulling him away. MacDougal, his hands calloused and tough as iron. “Leave him.” He said in a rough voice, thick with emotion.

“We still need the radio.” Mark said stupidly, but when he turned to it, he found it smashed to pieces, the table destroyed.

“Leave that too.”

So he left both the radio and its operator, stumbling down into the dark behind Johnson and Wight. MacDougal followed him. Francois brought up the rear, and he turned back when he was halfway down to light a match. He touched it to a rag and held it there until flames licked up the cloth, then whipped it up into the living room. The kerosene-soaked wood caught immediately, but Francois did not stop to watch. He came back down the stairs without so much as a second glance, his eyes hard.

The five of them traipsed into the darkness, as the inferno roared up behind them to devour the house. Light and heat pressed at their backs, but faded quickly as they wound down into the damp, cool tunnel. Francois had an electric lantern, and he pushed to the front of the group to light the way. Mark made to open his own pack and found that he still had Rogers’ glasses clutched in his hand, the lenses smeared with blood. He hesitated; leaving them felt somehow wrong, so he stuffed them into his bag with the purloined uniform, swapping them for his own small flashlight. It was a “survival” light, meant to run without batteries. Instead, it had a long trigger that fit in the palm of his hand. Squeezing the trigger down produced a soft whirring noise and a faint light. He held it in front of himself like a ward, trying not to trip over the uneven floor.

MacDougal pushed past Mark, following Francois. “You should have told us this was here!”

“You would have torn up my floor.”

MacDougal snorted. “Come off it. That’s not why you kept it secret.”

“No, it’s not.” Francois admitted. “But these tunnels are one of our key strengths, and I…was not ready to trust you with them.” He sighed. “I can see that was an error.”

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Francois didn’t fully trust them. After all, Mark wasn’t sure how much he trusted the Frenchman, in spite of what they’d just been through. Still, it bothered him. In the silence that followed Francois’ admission, their footsteps echoed in the dark, accompanied only by the quiet whirring of Mark’s flashlight.

“I see,” MacDougal said finally, his voice tired. “And where are we going now?”

“To see the Fleur-de-Lis.”

“So you knew where he was this whole time?” Mark asked.

Francois did not deign to repeat himself.