The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: The Dragon, the Wolf, and the Maiden, Part 2 of 12
The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: The Dragon, the Wolf, and the Maiden, Part 2 of 12
This week, Lucky Ford Friday sees the harried paratrooper bring his remaining squad together to organize a desperate defense. Little does he know that the forces they’ve awakened are more dangerous than anything he’s been trained to fight.
The Dragon, the Wolf, and the Maiden is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, or as a DRM-free ePub!
This is part two of The Dragon, the Wolf, and the Maiden. Stop reading now if you haven’t read Part 1 yet.
Content Warnings: Violence, Gun Violence, Gore, Death, Mild Swearing, Tobacco Use, Nazis
SATURDAY MORNING, JULY 10, 1943
AN UNIDENTIFIED VALLEY
THE ISLAND OF SICILY
The first thing they did was bury their dead.
Once the last scoop of dirt was tamped down they finally stopped to take a breath. The only sound on the air was death. The southern horizon pulsed with fire and explosions, and Lucky could hear the thousands of tons of iron being dropped on the island by ships and planes and cannons beyond the horizon.
Rodriguez had managed to scrabble together three wooden crosses, one each for Smith, Burke, and Parker. They couldn't scoop together enough of the latter two to leave much more than an arrow pointing to the rubble. They hoped that would show anyone looking where to find what was left of them.
O’Hare read a passage from his ever-present Bible, Psalm ninety-something. Even Grease bowed his head and crossed himself, and Lucky held the sheriff's cross tight, its cool silver somehow reassuring. As O'Hare read his verses, the three graves also stood in for their plane and the crematory it had become.
“'A thousand may fall by your side, ten thousand by your right hand, but it will not come near you,'” O’Hare recited.
The words hit Lucky hard. Somehow, again, he had escaped death by inches, but why? Wilson, the prop cutting him down right in front of him, Smith, catching the bullets meant for him? Or Parker, shot while taking Lucky's place by the door, stitched up with Nazi lead in his neck, and Sergeant Burke, incinerated trying to rescue already-dead Parker? What reason did they have to die while Lucky walked?
“'You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day,'” O’Hare continued.
Lucky'd been to the sheriff's church a thousand times growing up, but the words had just been a honey bee buzz back then. Girls went to church, so he'd gone to church. He hadn't really listened to the words until now.
'The terror of night.'
Lucky'd seen it in Parker’s eyes, heard the Nazi officer’s last laugh, smelled it in Burke's drifting ashes that'd stained his uniform gray, and felt it in Jonesy’s total mental crack.
“'Nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.'” O’Hare kept going, but that was all Lucky heard. He would've gladly taken the destruction at midday, if only to avoid whatever it was that was coming for them in darkness. It was just after one in the morning and they had a long night still to go.
The rest of O’Hare’s reading blurred by, and when it ended Lucky was still lost in dark thoughts. He eventually snapped out of it and noticed everyone looking at him, waiting for ideas, some kind of plan.
With Sergeant Burke gone and the lieutenant dead in the plane, maybe they thought he knew more than they did. It was true, he did, but he wished they understood how very little information that really was.
Lucky found his hand aching, and quickly realized that he'd been clenching the sheriff's cross so hard throughout the short service that it left an imprint in his palm. He tucked it back under his shirt and cleared his throat, readying a plan in his head. He looked around to see what they had to work with.
The flak emplacement was on the south end of a large field in a valley, bordering a thick forest which formed the eastern and southern perimeter. That treeline had been the squad's cover when they'd approached. The entire northern and western sides of the base were wide open, an expanse of gray wheat below black sky. A single-lane dirt road snaked through and around the fields, terminating at the base's western entrance, little more than a break in the earthen berm.
They were vulnerable on all sides. The woods would give anyone flanking them the same advantages that Lucky’s squad had taken advantage of. Their best best was to force the enemy to attack them the way they wanted to be attacked: via the road, where anyone advancing would do so with no cover.
Inside the ring of piled earth, the anti-air emplacement was small, almost quaint. The two story barracks was the southern-most position, with the FlaK cannon dead-center and the armory straight across from the barracks, to the north. To the east, at three o'clock, was the burnt-out command post. The three machine gun nests had been pretty well demolished during the assault, but one of their MG 42's was still serviceable.
While the Catholics had dug graves, the rest had inventoried their arms. They had a handful of pineapple grenades, a couple kraut stick bombs, the rifles they'd carried in, Burton's BAR, one MG 42 heavy machine gun, and one bastard of a FlaK 37 cannon, big enough to strip the treads off a Sherman.
Lucky cleared any second-guessing from his mind, then spoke:
“That road there is the only direct access to our position; I say we focus our defenses there. But we also know that you can sneak up on this place through that tree line easy enough.”
“We sure did,” Grease said. The rest of the squad nodded.
“Let’s eliminate that. Let’s find some gas cans. Light the forest up. Force the enemy to come at us down that one narrow road with nothing to hide behind. Then we hit ‘em with their own medicine,” Lucky said. The squad turned around to follow his gaze. They all grinned when they saw it was the FlaK 37 anti-aircraft cannon. They were more than happy to send some shells back at the Germans after having been on the receiving end of one themselves.
“We work together, we can hold out until backup arrives,” Lucky continued. “Squints, you should be on the barracks roof, highest ground around. We need you to keep an eye open for anything heading our way. You got your whistle? Good. Our best bets on the ground are the MG 42 and the BAR, we need those covering the road but ready to relocate. Burton, I need you, O’Hare, Doc, and Rodriguez to get those set. Grease, you and Richardson are going to start that fire. I want a wall of flame covering our six. Then we’re going to get this FlaK cannon working.”
“How about this lunatic?” Grease asked. He'd left Jonesy's limp body in a heap at his feet. Lucky didn’t have a good answer. The crazy bastard was still down, blood dried on his face and cremated Burke coating his skin. Lucky hoped he didn’t kill Jonesy, but he had no idea how to deal with him if he ever did wake up.
“We can’t have that crazy gringo running around our backs while we’re in a firefight,” Rodriguez said. He was right.
“Tie him up, stash him in the barracks. We’ll figure out what to do with him when we have the time,” Lucky said. They bound Jonesy’s wrists and ankles tight with belts out of the Italian barracks. Richardson slung him over his shoulder like a sack of feed and tossed him into a closet, then blocked the door with an overturned table.
No more planes flew over while they worked, but they could still hear the rumble of battle to the south. Operation Husky was going strong. The wind brought the news with it. It carried acrid smoke, even over all those miles. Black columns of it striped the horizon, and the air gradually grew hazy and stank of unchecked fires, burning petrol, exploded thermite, and spent gunpowder, even this far inland. It was so thick they could almost taste the sweat and blood from the fighting on the coast and, for all they knew, just over the valley ridge.
The haze gave the full moon an orange tint, bathing their precarious position in a sickly glow.
Lucky tried to keep busy and keep his mind from speculating on whatever was coming as best he could. He scoured the outpost for anything they might have missed while clearing, making sure to stay away from the circle of death the bleached Nazi’s weapon had left behind. Lucky found a few canteens, a civilian map of the area, a set of binoculars, and some dried German sausages in the barracks.
The lock on the armory door only took one round from Sergeant Burke's .45 to pick, and opened to reveal scores of FlaK shells, their brass casings catching moonlight, each explosive round precisely stacked with German particularity. Dozens of cases of 7.92 millimeter belts, thousands of rounds of machine gun ammo, were ready for use. They had what they needed to survive.
Lucky gave all the food he'd found to the squad, and a feeling of calm settled over them.
Through the excitement of the evening, most hadn’t realized they were hungry or thirsty until they were halfway done wolfing down the cold meat and bitter water. Burton mashed up a sausage and mixed it with water so Doc could slurp it down through his broken jaw. As soon as the meager meal was over, the men started a fire line, unloading FlaK rounds and machine gun belts from the armory in preparation for whatever the Germans might throw at them. With the ammo stocked and ready for their welcome party, Lucky went to join Squints on lookout.
The moon hung low in the sky. Lucky checked his watch; it was cracked, dead at ten forty-five, the instant of the crash. The sheriff had gotten the timepiece when Lucky was a kid, for ten years on the job if he was remembering that right. The sheriff hadn't told him stories about himself, everything he knew about his father he'd heard from other people. The sheriff hadn't been home much, only working day and night until he was dead at forty years old.
Despite its damage, Lucky carefully wrapped it up in his handkerchief and tucked it into his pocket. A watch-shaped shadow of clean skin remained on his wrist, framed by dried blood, oily smoke, and human cremains. He didn't have an exact notion of the time, but the kraut's radio call for reinforcements had to have gone out more than three hours ago.
Their defenses were ready, all they could do now was wait.
Burton had placed the MG 42 and BAR well, with the berm providing cover for both gun crews while still giving them an interlocking field of fire and easy bug-out routes. Up top, Squints was in place on the roof, scanning the horizon through his sniper scope. Grease and Richardson had figured out the FlaK 37, its eighty-eight-millimeter barrel now completely depressed and its aim settled on the moon-lit road. The forest was about soaked in gasoline. One tracer would light it up.
With everyone settled into their places, the night grew quiet and ominous once again, with only whispered prayers, tense breathing, and half-hearted jokes from Grease cutting through the permeating dread.
Lucky hauled himself up the barracks ladder and took a plate of cold sausage to Squints. He could see far across the empty flat fields, and over a mile down the narrow road. Squints ate in silence, typical of him. He cared more for food than conversation. Lucky understood that he’d gone hungry more times than not during the last few years.
While he ate, Lucky tried to make any sense of an Italian map he’d found. Despite intense studying and rotating it to try reading from every angle, Lucky had no idea where they were. He couldn’t find any identifiable landmarks and the map was so old that this emplacement, and even the clearing it was in, wasn't marked.
“We’re screwed sideways, ain’t we, Ford?” Squints’ accent was thick, the words like molasses in his mouth. Once his plate was clean, he could focus on his other priorities. “I know you ain’t telling us everything. What’s got you so spooked?”
Lucky couldn’t think of anything to tell him besides the truth. The SS officer, the radio call, the look in Parker’s eyes, the glass weapon that burned without flame. Squints listened quietly, cleared his throat every so often, and cracked his neck. It was a couple minutes before he said anything.
“Best you don’t tell the others all that tonight,” he said, then spit off the edge of the roof.
“I’ll tell them in the daylight, we’ve had a long night already. I don't know what's out there, but if it's coming, it's coming whether we're pissing ourselves or not,” Lucky figured. He watched the road and stared into nothing, darkness encroaching on him from all sides.
“Sounds about right,” Squints agreed.
Squints punched Lucky in the shoulder to wake him up.
Lucky didn’t remember passing out, and when he took a second to try to remember, Squints hit him again. Lucky's hand was throbbing again, and he forced it open to find the silver cross and chain wrapped tight around his whitened knuckles.
“Ford,” Squints said, desperate and insistent, “Ford, wake up. We got some company.”
Lucky snapped to full consciousness and scrambled for his rifle and binoculars. Squints hissed:
“We got a rooster tail coming up from the road, a couple miles down.”
“Ah, hell. Any chance it’s the wind?” Lucky'd never hoped so hard for a breeze in his life.
“No way, gotta be heavy machinery kicking it up. Tank maybe, definitely something big,” Squints said calmly, like he was just bird watching or something.
“Grease, Richardson, eyes up!” Lucky shouted. “We have incoming armor, five minutes out, we need shells downrange now! Burton, Doc, pull back to our building, set up in a window to cover the cannon. O’Hare, Rodriguez, get to the armory, Grease'll need a steady stream of shells coming his way. Let's get moving, they’re on our asses.”
The men got to work, and Grease cranked the FlaK cannon into position.
“Sounds big, Lucky, like one of them new diesel panzers,” Grease yelled as he worked the big gun. Lucky could just see a gray puff of dust in the distance, but Grease could hear it well enough to identify it in an engine lineup. Best ears in the Eighty-Second.
“How many are there out there?” Lucky asked Squints.
“Just one.”
“One, are you sure?”
“You gotta take a look at this thing, bo. Ain’t never seen a thing like it.”
Lucky whipped the binoculars to his face and studied the growing rooster tail. An unrelenting dark shape thundered forward ahead of the rising brown cloud. It gave the impression of a bull, massive power hunched down and charging forward. Lucky could hear the engine clearly now, a powerful mechanical howl that made no attempt to muffle its earth-shaking bass. They wanted their targets to know they were coming. The steel beast's engine roared again.
The FlaK cannon roared back, challenging it decibel for decibel. The first shell hurtled toward the oncoming enemy like a hunter’s spear. The round exploded into the earth, missing near right. The tank did not so much as swerve.
Richardson popped the smoking case out and had a fresh shell in before the spent brass rolled to a stop. The second shell exploded in the road, gouging a crater directly ahead of the oncoming vehicle. Dirt and smoke boiled skyward, concealing the machine.
With another tremendous howl, the thing gunned its engine and crested the shell crater with a spray of earth and bore down on the outpost even faster. Richardson reloaded and Grease fired again, this shell exploding inches to its side, throwing it up to balance precariously on one of its massive tracks.
The seconds it hung there seemed like forever, but as quickly as it had been lifted it slammed back down, the impact so great it could even be felt through the roof of the building Lucky was on. It was barely a quarter-mile off now, and it seemed unstoppable, bearing down on the emplacement with murderous determination.
Grease watched, waited, then squeezed off another shot when it was no more than two hundred yards out. This one flew true. The shell lanced out and blasted into the oncoming monster's pointed prow, engulfing the whole thing in flak and flame. Its battery of smoke launchers burst at the same instant the shell did, inking like a dying squid and fouling the air. Lucky couldn’t hear the rumbling engine any more.
Grease cheered but Richardson loaded a fresh round into the cannon all the same.
Lucky stood up, watching the swirling, melding smoke. Black from flak swirled together with the tank's own white phosphorous discharge. The boiling cloud drifted toward the emplacement, quickly spilled over the berm and flooding the outpost.
Grease smacked Richardson on the back and started yelling and dancing around, overwhelmed by victory. Richardson took a moment to be convinced, but eventually he shook Grease's hand, a broad smile splitting his grim face. Rodriguez and O’Hare cheered from the armory, a half-loaded cart of shells in front of them. Lucky didn't celebrate yet, he only stared into the smoke. Nothing was moving inside the gray miasma. Squints stayed quiet and still.
“Jones is out! The goddamn maniac!” Burton yelled, causing Lucky to jump. Jonesy wandered into the middle of the emplacement; his empty hands spread open on either side of him, dripping with red but showing any surviving Nazis that he was unarmed. Jonesy approached the drifting smokescreen, step by step, staring into its depths.
“I'm with you!” he shouted into the smoke. “I knew we should've been on your side!”
Lucky was struck dumb by Jonesy's betrayal. Even with Jonesy's weeks of mumbled misgivings and German sympathizing, Lucky could not imagine siding with a Nazi, not after reading about everything they’d done and wanted to do.
“Ford! Ford!” Burton's cry snapped Lucky out of his trance. “Doc’s dead, I don’t know how Jonesy got out, but he got a knife. He killed Doc!”
Lucky snapped into action, pulling his Garand to his shoulder to draw a bead on Jonesy. Gray tendrils began to curl around the murderer’s feet. Lucky's finger squeezed the trigger and his rifle barked, but Jonesy was gone; his bullet only kicked up dirt. Jonesy had disappeared into the smoke, yanked in like a fish on a line.
Jonesy’s scream cut through the night. He sounded like a barking fox: half territorial predator, half cackling child. His cry became frantic within the cloud, rising in volume and pitch until a second howl howl tore through the darkness, drowning Jonesy out at last. It was blood-curdling, bestial. Something in the back of Lucky’s mind froze, like he was a rabbit faced with a coyote.
The tank gunned its engine, roaring back to life and covering the animalistic cry. The black metal monster tore into view, shoving through the thick smoke and ramming through the berm and barbed wire in a shower of dirt.
It tore into the emplacement like a bull, driving its armored prow through the FlaK cannon. Gunmetal bent and snapped under the impact. The tank's jagged treads kept churning, grinding apart metal and man alike. Richardson disappeared screaming into the meat-grinder beneath the tank, while Grease got off easy: it ripped one of his legs clean off then tossed him aside like the evening paper.
The tank ground through the ruined cannon and rammed straight into the armory, crushing O’Hare and Rodriguez where they stood. The barn-sized building collapsed on top of it. The tank shuddered into reverse and hauled itself out of the rubble. Beams and corpses slid off its steel skin.
A warm wind picked up and cleared the smoke away, revealing the vehicle. It looked like the chassis of a heavy tank, though no turret crowned its roof, or any other guns that Lucky could spot. Matte black coated its innumerable layers of heavy armor. The front of the tank was a sculpted heavy blade, a spear point of solid steel that smashed through concrete and metal as easily as it demolished wood and earth.
The thing roared to life again, turning in place until it was lined up on the barracks. Burton opened up with the MG 42 from the second floor, sparking tracers off its armor. The bullets didn't so much as scratch its paint.
Gray moonlight glinted off the silver insignia emblazoned on its ram. It bore the death’s head emblem worn by the SS officer Burke had killed, but the grinning, haloed skull was replaced by that of a beast, with sharp fangs and demonic eyes that stared dead ahead as the tank kicked up rubble and surged forward.
It collided with the barracks at top speed, unleashing an explosion of airborne splinters. The building buckled under the impact, throwing Lucky off his feet and sending him tumbling. He gasped at the shingles, but couldn’t find a grip. He held his breath as he slid over the edge.
The ground surged upward. For that long second, Lucky hoped he would land on his neck. He did not want to count on whatever mercy these Nazis might provide. Before he felt the impact he jerked to a sudden stop, dangling yards above the tank embedded in the building's first floor.
“Don’t just hang there, Ford,” Squints grunted. He was holding Lucky aloft by his collar. Lucky opened his eyes and looked down: the tank was idling five yards below his dangling boots. Squints wheezed: “Help me out here.”
Lucky twisted around and got a grip on the edge of the roof. Between the two of them, Squints was able to haul him back up. The monstrous engine roared again, erupting with black exhaust that made Lucky's eyes tear up and rasped at his lungs. Lucky got his elbows up on the roof, and Squints grabbed his belt and dragged him the rest of the way.
The tank slammed into reverse and exposed the massive hole it had made in the wooden wall. The barracks fell in on itself, dropping ten feet from under Squints' and Lucky's feet. Lucky held on for dear life, but something slipped past him and hit the ground with a solid thump and a breathy groan.
“Squints?” Lucky asked. The sniper was below him, splayed out on his back in the dirt.
Metal squealed from the rear of the tank. A massive door dropped open and slammed into the tread-churned dirt, releasing six black shapes onto Squints like a pack of starved dogs. He had no chance, even if he hadn't had the wind knocked out of him. His scream only lasted for a second, until the sound of breaking bones cut him off.
All six things ripped into him, growling and going at him with their claws, and their teeth into him. The things slashed and snarled at each other as much as they ripped their way through him.
As quickly as it began, the frenzy halted. The largest of the black things roared and clawed at the other five, pushing them away from splatter of flesh and blood on the ground. It looked to the moon and howled over its kill, crimson dripping from its jaws and hands.
Sizzling tracers roared from the MG 42 and blasted into the circled monsters, enough firepower to demolish a house.
“Die you monsters!” Burton shouted. He had the machine gun propped in a window of the collapsed second floor, damn near pouring fire onto the things point blank.
The creatures didn’t flinch.
As the dozens of rounds slammed into and around them, the largest one grinned, its blood-stained yellow fangs flashing in the moonlight. It howled again and made an effortless leap from the ground into Burton’s window, pouncing down on him and silencing the MG 42 instantly. The five other beasts followed within seconds, and the sounds of a feeding frenzy again haunted the night.
Lucky risked a peek at Squints’ corpse, what was left of it. He was torn apart, limbs, skin, organs, and clothes littered like they had been dumped from a mixer. Lucky almost vomited, but realized that the night was quiet again; the monsters were no longer tearing through Burton. He forced his stomach to settle.
Floor boards creaked below him. They were coming.
Lucky scrambled for a weapon. He'd lost his Garand when he took the spill off the roof, but he still had Sergeant Burke’s 1911, locked and loaded.
He couldn’t run: they had been on Squints like lightning, so it didn't matter whether or not he'd break his legs leaping off the roof.
His hand throbbed again, and he realized that the sheriff's cross was still in his palm, its chain wrapped tight around his fingers. He kissed it, like he'd seen the sheriff do every morning before he went to work.
Another creak brought him back to the present, this one emanating from the far end of the roof. Lucky spun around to find the six things gathered on the southern edge, staring at him. The largest, still grinning, stepped into a beam of pale moonlight and snarled, its bloodshot eyes locked onto Lucky's.
It was taller than a man, and, like the rest, was covered in thick black fur, now stained with dripping red. Razor-sharp fangs protruded menacingly from its twisted, misshapen mouth and powerful jaws, and a stink like rotten beef made Lucky gag, even in the open air.
One of the beasts in the back of the pack howled, awakening a deep instinctual terror in Lucky's gut. The grinning monster standing at the head of the pack raised its bloodied hand in a fist, silencing the howling one instantly. Lucky recognized the military hand signal. These weren't animals, these were men. Ice frosted Lucky's spine and his rabbit instincts kicked in again. His whole body was locked into place.
The lead thing watched Lucky, looking him over like a menu, fangs bared in its brutal, flesh-shredding sneer.
It was halfway across the roof when Lucky remembered it wasn’t some monster, and he wasn’t a rabbit.
Lucky didn't care to see which part of him the Nazi took a bite of first: he raised the forty-five and popped off into the approaching man’s snarling face.
He stood still while Lucky fired, his grin never wavering. Lucky pulled the trigger until the slide locked back, the pistol's magazine emptied.
The man cocked his warped head, as if asking Lucky if he was done, mocking him. He shook his head, letting the flattened lead fall free from his fur and clatter against the wooden shingles.
Lucky dropped his arm, letting the Colt .45 dangle from his fingers. It had to be impossible, he'd shot him in the face.
He looked up in time to see the unhurt Nazi arcing through the air in a predator's pounce, jaws wide and claws extended. Clumsy with shock, Lucky tripped and fell backwards, lashing out instinctively with a fist. He knew that punching it wouldn’t save him, but he wasn’t thinking in that moment, just flailing like a drowning rat.
The impromptu right hook he threw would have made Joe Louis proud. It impacted with the left side of the Nazi’s hairy muzzle with all of Lucky's desperate strength behind it. The man’s face burst with a hiss of steam the instant he made contact, like Lucky had smacked it with a red-hot branding iron.
Lucky landed on his rear while the Nazi howled with anguish. He scrambled back across the roof to his pack, paw clamped over his steaming wound.
The other Nazis cowered while their leader wailed. Their growls had changed to whimpers, but they didn't sound any less dangerous. The leader glared at Lucky with primal rage and savage intelligence burning behind his blood-red eyes. He dropped his hand to its side, revealing his still-hissing wound: a horrible burn in the shape of a small cross.
Lucky found the sheriff's silver cross wrapped around his punching hand’s knuckles. Sizzling hair and flesh bubbled on its gleaming surface.
The Nazi didn’t give Lucky time to figure what was happening. He dropped to all fours and roared with terrible fury, setting his pack to howling, too. He crouched and prepared to pounce, to finish Lucky off in one fell stroke.
Their eyes locked and Lucky steeled himself for what would be his last seconds, cross or no. The just-in-case letter he'd written for his beau back home, or former beau, had been in Smith's pocket, so she'd go to her last days never knowing how he felt, and he'd be some MIA statistic tallied at the end of the war.
The kraut behind the leader snarled, shoving aside its comrades to get at Lucky first. It tensed its muscles then fell to its knees, a fountain of white flame exploding out of its chest. The flame grew into a roaring inferno that spread across the man’s whole body, eating through fur, flesh, and bone and reducing fluids to steams and tissues to sparks. The blaze was too intense for Lucky to look at directly and cast light bright enough to signal a passing plane. Their leader pointed past Lucky, growled an order at his surviving pack, then leapt off the roof.
A geyser of shingle splinters launched into the air where the Nazi had stood an instant before, a near-miss from a massive bullet that left a fist-sized hole in the roof and pierced the floors below.
The Nazis landed on the ground like cats and rushed into their strange vehicle. One of them broke off from the pack to track down Grease's still corpse. It tossed him over its shoulder like a sandbag, letting the slow ooze of blood from his severed leg drain down its back. Grease's hung there limp, but his eyes were open, his pupils following Lucky before he disappeared into the strange tank's hold.
He was still alive.
Something reminded Lucky of the time, right after he and Grease had graduated from basic training in Louisiana, that they'd had a few too many and clocked that Navy ship rat straight in the sniffer. It didn't matter that the guy was harassing the cocktail waitress, when an Army man punches a Navy man, that Army man is about to get dog-piled by a bunch of swabbies in white slacks. Sure enough, Lucky's face was down in the peanut shells before he could think twice, but Grease was in there with him, splitting lips and blackening an eye or two.
MP's kicked in the front door of the bar and began dragging those Navy guys out by the scruffs of their necks, but Grease had Lucky up and out the back. Never left him behind.
The tank's steel hatch slammed shut, sealing Grease away.
The tank vomited exhaust then tore off into the field, leaving the demolished emplacement in its wake. While it retreated, Lucky pushed himself up to his elbows and dared to look behind him to see what had saved him, what could have scared men like that.
In the distance he spotted a single Jeep dangling from three red parachutes, drifting slowly to earth. Lucky collapsed to the shingles and rolled onto his back. A dozen other red parachutes flared to life above him and an oddly quiet C-47 with insignia he didn’t recognize flew low overhead.
He studied the Jeep again. His eyes stung with sweat and smoke, but he could have sworn that someone waving a sword and dressed in a safari outfit was standing on its hood, with another man holding a rifle damn-near as long as he was tall perched in the driver seat.
Lucky took a deep breath and decided that he was tired of crazy things for the night. He closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see a single other one and passed out right there on the roof.
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Copyright © 2022 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.
Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres.