Page 75 of Across Eternity

“No?” he repeats. His hand flies out, striking the side of my head, and then he pushes me to the ground. “Do you really think you can just tell me no?”

He plants one boot on my chest and shouts something in German to the others that makes them both freeze in place. It’s not until he withdraws his gun that the youngest comes forward, with absolute dread on his face, and drops to his knees between my legs, pushing my skirt around my waist. With eyes shut, he whispers something in German that sounds like an apology. He is a child following orders. His pants fall to my bare thighs, and then two things happen so close together it’s hard for me to determine which is first: the blast of a gun, and the spray of something solid and damp across my face. The soldier’s eyes go wide and he falls on me—his eyes now sightless—as the gun blasts again and again.

Suddenly, Henri is there, pulling the soldier off me, his eyes as wide and shocked as my own. The three Germans lie dead on the ground around me. “Are you alright?”

The rage is still so strong inside me I shake with it. I nod, wrapping my arms around myself.

His hands go to the top of his head and he tugs at his hair. He’s furious, but not only with the soldiers. “You didn’t even jump!” he explodes. “You told me you’d leave if something went wrong and you didn’t move a muscle!”

I close my eyes and try to hold myself together. “I panicked,” I reply, grinding my jaw. “And I couldn’t just leave the children inside, undefended. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to say that you won’t panic next time!” he shouts. “That you’ll use your head!”

My arms fold around me again, but when I feel the dampness of the blood on my sleeves I jerk them away. It’s smeared now, all over my coat. There’s a vicious piece of me that likes it. That likes that they’re all dead, even the innocent one.

Henri goes to the German soldiers on the ground and lifts one up by his hair. The man’s eyes are still open, his jacket so soaked with blood it appears to be black. He’s the one who was polite, initially. Just following orders. I can’t look at his face.

“Grab his knife,” he says. “If you’re going to survive this war, you’ve got to stop being so precious about death and the idea of harming anyone. He’d have raped you and killed all of us, given the chance, but you panicked and now you’re standing there, unable even to look at his corpse.”

I press my hands to my face. “You don’t understand,” I hiss. “Just leave this alone. I’ll be fine when the time comes.”

He drops the German and grabs the knife himself, pushing it into my hands. “The time just came and you failed!” he cries. “Stop making promises you won’t keep. If you’ll be fine, then prove it. Show me how you’ll kill him the next time.”

The adrenaline and rage inside me gather to a head, then explode. I grab the knife from him and slice the soldier’s jugular vein. Blood pours from the wound and I feel absolutely nothing. I grip the knife harder and bury it in the soldier’s back, hearing the slight hiss of air as his lung punctures. I pull it out and send it whistling ten feet away, where it buries into the base of the commander’s neck.

Henri’s jaw hangs open.

“What just happened?” he asks.

“I did what you wanted,” I reply. My voice doesn’t sound like my own. “Put them in the jeep. I’ll be right back.”

I go inside and get the keys to the truck. When I return, he’s loaded all three bodies into the jeep and waits for me, still astonished, still wanting answers to questions I wish he wouldn’t ask. I’m made of the ugliest things, Henri. Please don’t make me say it aloud.

I push away my self-pity. I don’t deserve his forgiveness and there’s not time for it anyway. If this isn’t executed perfectly, it will blow up in our faces, and it needs to be done before the children wake. I throw him the keys to the truck. “Follow me,” I tell him, climbing into the jeep.

“What are you doing?” he demands. “If anyone sees you...”

“I can time travel away and the jeep will crash.” I don’t wait for him to continue questioning me but push down the clutch and take off, heading for an embankment about a mile down the road.

I’m terrified, my heart beating too fast, but that feeling is pushed down hard as the jeep picks up speed. Something cold and methodical comes over me—maybe it’s the Coron blood. Maybe it’s simply that a part of me thinks it might be easier to die right now than tell Henri the truth. Either way, it’s a relief to feel something other than fear. I drive toward the sharp turn at the top of the hill and focus hard on the embankment. The car slows as my feet disappear but has enough momentum to continue without me. I fade entirely just as the jeep tips over the side of the hill and land, naked, twenty feet away.

Henri’s brakes screech to a stop nearby. “Sarah!” he cries as the jeep rolls into the ravine and lands upside down at its base.

I ignore him, scrambling toward my clothes, which flew out of the jeep before it rolled over, thank God. I clutch them to my chest and reach into my coat pocket for the matches I placed there. The match is struck and thrown toward the brush near the jeep. There’s a risk that it will die out before it reaches the gas tank, but I’m hoping to give myself some time to get away. I run hard up the hill, feeling the heat of the fire behind me. For a moment, I’m back in 1918, climbing a ladder in the pantry that may or may not lead to safety. Henri pulls me over the edge just as the jeep explodes, staring at me like I’m someone he doesn’t know, a demon who’s possessed the girl he thought he loved.

“What in God’s name were you thinking?” he shouts. “If that jeep had caught fire a moment sooner you’d have been blown to bits!”

Now that it’s over, my hands are shaking. I cut it close—ridiculously close. I lean over, certain I’m going to vomit but simply shake instead, cold sweat dripping from my forehead. “There will be an investigation into the deaths,” I reply, forcing myself to pull it together. I grab the dress and tug it over my head. “If they found bullet holes, they’d be looking for culprits. Now they might believe it was just a dangerous turn taken too fast.”

“I thought you were dead!” he shouts, grabbing my arm. “I watched the jeep go over the edge and I was certain—”

“Yell at me later,” I say, jerking away from his grip. “The smoke will attract eyes. We’ve got to get out of here.”

He follows me to the truck and drives home in silence, but once we arrive, he slams his hands against the steering wheel. “I want answers,” he says, his jaw tight. “I’ve known you for two years. You stay awake all night worrying when our daughter has a cough. You can’t watch me break a chicken’s neck, and gag at the sight of dead rabbits, but suddenly you know how to kill, and how to disguise a killing, with ruthless efficiency. How is that possible?”

Finally, I feel something. Despair. Because the truth is vast and ugly and he’s making it unavoidable.

“I don’t have time for this,” I reply. I channel my mother, using that haughty, imperious tone she intimidated me with a thousand times as a child. “The children are going to wake soon and I’m covered in blood.”