“And it’s ours. Now, grab it before it decides to fly off.”
Draja and his friend Marius took hold of the material, stretching the fabric between them.
“You’re crazy, Draja. They’ll never let us keep—”
The men froze, the lament over proprietary rights wiped from their thoughts by the insignia seemingly painted onto the silk: a red circle and within it a black swastika. The circle was enclosed by another symbol: the wide gape of a strange skeletal mouth.
Marius released the parachute as though it had stung him, and at precisely that second a gust of wind blew under the fabric and lifted it toward Draja until it clung to his face. The silk vibrated with a low, chilling moan.
I’m being swallowed! Draja thought, as he kicked and batted at the billowing chute. Logic had dropped dead. His instincts were turning toward panic.
Sergeant Karasev saw none of this. Nearby, an elderly soldier with Asian features had let out a shriek. The man had been leaning against the truck’s grill to warm himself when Titania gunned the engine to life.
“Private,” Karasev snarled, and the man snapped to attention. “How do you expect to protect the motherland with a load of shit in your pants?”
The man looked down at the ground, shamed, and for a moment the sergeant felt shamed himself, as if he had just shouted down his own father. Now Karasev noticed how thin the man was, even through his thick clothing. He appeared to be more a bird than a man, so recently and so horribly malnourished was he. And yet he had stiffened his spine and come voluntarily to the front lines. The sergeant bowed his own head briefly, then turned and called out to the two men who had chased down the fallen parachute. The idiots were struggling with it—and the parachute seemed to be getting the better of them.
“Bring it!” the sergeant shouted. “Clowns! What are you doing, making this your life’s work? Get back here!”
Karasev turned again toward the elderly, red-faced foot soldier and did not see the two men as they stopped struggling and sat down in the snow. Addressing the private, his tone softened. The sergeant noticed that the man’s face bore an irregular pattern of shrapnel scars that had become known as “German kisses.” He had also lost several fingers, probably to frostbite.
“Let’s go, soldier.”
But instead of falling in as ordered, the old man remained at attention. Cocking his head slightly to one side, he gave the sergeant a quizzical look.
I can’t believe this. Now what? Karasev wondered. These easterners—yellow Russians. So many dialects. “Where are the translators when you need them? Go! Go!” he said as firmly and respectfully as he could. But his words and gestures seemed futile.
The old man slowly raised his arm and pointed a trembling finger at him. The expression on his face sent a shiver down Karasev’s spine and made his knees feel suddenly loose. He looked down and noticed that a yellow film had coated his white-quilted pants and field jacket.
“What . . . ?”
Karasev sampled the gritty substance with a finger. It smells like flowers. He looked up at the sky, then at the private, whose clothing appeared to have been similarly misted. A trickle of blood ran out of the old man’s nose.
The sergeant sniffed loudly and tasted copper. His own nose was bleeding as well. He wiped at the flow with his sleeve and recoiled at the size of the red smear.
For a moment Karasev’s world went completely silent—no engines, his men no longer cursing or quarreling. It was as if someone had poured wax into his ears, so that the only sound he could hear was the rapid pounding of his own heart. Then, as quickly as the sensation had come upon him, it was gone. Karasev gave an involuntary flinch—for now his world was full of sounds.
No more than forty paces away, a horse reared up and overturned the crate-laden sled it had been pulling.
“Easy, Sasha—easy, boy!” the young sled driver cried but the animal’s eyes rolled back into its head and it let out a surprisingly human cry that startled its driver and anyone else near enough to hear. The boy tried to utter more words of comfort to his horse and was rewarded with an immense sneeze that hit him squarely in the face. As the sled driver wiped his eyes, Sergeant Karasev watched him stiffen with fear, unable to comprehend what had just occurred and unable to utter any more words.
The boy’s face and hands were covered with blood. In shock and stunned silence he stepped back, just in time to avoid being crushed by his horse as it collapsed in a red gush and the sickening wet sound of ribs snapping. Dying, the animal whipped its head back and forth—blood and pink lung tissue spraying out of its nose in great arcs.