The Decision of Those Left Behind
"Please calm yourself, Fräulein!"
Sarah's pistol spat fire several more times. Concrete fragments sprayed outward and brought the Imperial soldiers to a halt.
"We mean you no harm! We only wish to escort—ugh!"
—Bang. Bang. Bang.
Sarah ran.
She ran, and she ran again, following the white marks she had left along the corridor, never forgetting to throw a few rounds behind her whenever the pursuit threatened to close in.
"Zugführer, give us permission to fire!"
"We were ordered to take her alive—hrrk!"
Suppressive fire made the helmeted soldiers flinch. Even so, the squad leader gripping his submachine gun clenched his teeth and waited.
—Bang. Bang. Click. Click. Click.
"Fuck…!"
The instant her magazine ran dry, glances flicked between them as if on cue.
"She's moving!"
Riflemen adjusted their helmets and broke into a sprint. The rest of the squad and their leader thundered after them. The overlapping crash of countless jackboots climbed higher and higher until it pressed against Sarah's throat and forced tears from her eyes.
Yet the moment she rounded the final corner, a vivid orange glow awaited her.
"Dad! Dad!!!! Grandpa!!!!"
She screamed with every scrap of air in her lungs. Nothing stirred in front of that light. Two veterans already stood in ready positions, weapons trained and waiting.
"Down!"
At the short, iron command Sarah clapped both hands over her head and slammed herself to the floor. The men hard on her heels had barely time to shout—
"Wai—"
5.56×45 mm NATO rounds. Lumps of steel welded from scrap parts. Each impact turned living bellies and chests into bloody rags.
"Damn it, goddamn it—"
The pursuers dropped behind the fallen bodies for cover and could advance no farther. Sarah crawled steadily on hands and knees until she reached the barricade. She yanked a fresh magazine from her pocket, slammed it home, and racked the slide.
"I'm ready!"
"Hold!"
—Click.
The bolt locked back; an empty magazine clattered to the floor. Velcro ripped free from a plate carrier; a new magazine appeared. Its base was slapped once, the bolt release hammered. The motions were many, yet the ring of steel on steel blended into a single continuous sound.
"Move!"
The pistol that had pointed down the corridor found its holster; the hand that had held it seized the barricade. One running step and her body flowed cleanly over the top. James opened fire again.
"Where the hell is Hyunwoo?!"
"They got him. They caught him. That man—he really is a Nazi…!"
"Christ."
Spent casings rained onto the concrete. Orange muzzle flashes lit the corridor end to end. Tracer rounds burned red and painted the silhouettes of the hunters.
"Stop! Stop! Stop!!!"
A man's voice tore through the gunfire. At the far end of the corridor a single helmet waved. The finger on the trigger eased off.
"We have absolutely no intention of harming the young lady! Please—please listen to what we have to say!"
Muzzles stayed trained forward. Curtis's unblinking eyes tracked the slowly rising arm.
"Once you hear the explanation you will understand. We mean no harm whatsoever to the person we have secured. Do not—do not shoot!"
"Zugführer, you must not go out there!"
Murmurs rose, then a man in an immaculate gray uniform stepped into view at the corridor's end. Most people who knew nothing of history, or cared nothing for it, would have been struck only by how grotesquely clean he looked in the middle of an apocalypse. The old man whose finger rested on the trigger knew that uniform all too well.
"I am—"
A thunderclap erased the head that had begun to speak. The headless body took one or two more steps.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck…!"
"The Zugführer is down! Fall back, fall back!"
The last rifle rounds covered the squad as they fled like startled hares.
"That was their squad leader."
"…You understand German, Dad?"
"Even the Nazis managed basic English. Some of the officers were fluent. James—check that no one else is coming. I told you gunfire can draw the wrong kind of attention. Keep your ears open."
"Yes, sir."
Curtis caught his granddaughter's shuddering shoulders in both wrinkled hands and met her eyes.
"Breathe. Deep breath in, and out."
"F-Frau? Fräulein? What does that mean, Grandpa?"
"Fräulein. It means young lady. Those German bastards would get a look in their eyes the second they saw a pretty girl and keep crooning Fräulein, Fräulein in that oily voice… Did they do that to you too?"
"Hans. Hans. That man. Hans Schulz, he said."
"…Tsk."
"Hyunwoo was right, Grandpa. The Nazis were real. They said they needed him—said he was valuable talent, and on and on…"
Curtis and James both scowled the moment they heard it. Hyunwoo's absolute refusal to let outsiders near the workshop. The pathological way he checked every place a "suspicious stranger" might have touched. It had never been paranoia. Or perhaps the one friendly "outsider" had simply softened a vigilance that should never have been lowered.
"We have to get him back. He bought me time so I could run—Dad, Grandpa…!"
"Do you know where they took him?"
"I left marks along the way. Quiet ones. They shouldn't have noticed."
"Should we move out right now, Dad?"
"…They called him valuable. They won't be in a hurry to kill him."
When Hyunwoo had explained things so earnestly there had always been a hard edge of wariness and fear beneath the words. The weapons those silhouettes had carried as they vanished down the corridor. Even in America not everyone walked around armed, and their gear looked properly issued and standardized.
"I don't think we're dealing with some bald cosplay Nazis playing dress-up."
"So what then?"
"A structured organization. They keep squad leaders and manage their people… an armed group that may include former military. That's closer to the truth."
The old man's mind spun. Bullets whispering past a trench. Miserable English and German ringing in the air. The concussion of shells, the rattle of small arms, the exhaust roar of tanks.
"…You said he kept ammunition in the workshop."
"Yes, Dad."
"Sarah—your shotgun?"
"They took it."
"…Bring the ammo first. James, load every magazine you can use until the springs bottom out. Grab a spare ammo can too. Sarah, go fill every magazine you own. All of them."
"Y-yes, Grandpa."
The steel door groaned open. Past the very threshold Hyunwoo had sworn no outsider would ever cross, Sarah and James smelled sour sweat, harsh adhesive, and the sharp salt-metal reek of steel.
"That must be it."
"…He made several boxes' worth."
The man who never left his seat, who moved only his hands. Empty cans that had once earned James a sigh now dragged hard at Sarah's grip the moment she took hold of them.
"They're all packed solid… I think."
She managed to lift two. Something clattered to the floor.
"Wait—what's this…"
Light leaking through the door crack revealed the outlines. A long steel tube. A crude receiver wrapped in bandage, rubber padding where a shoulder would rest. A trigger that looked more like a stripped hinge, yet still a trigger and hammer.
"A gun…?"
James worked the action a few times. He broke it open the way he would a double-barrel shotgun.
"…Single barrel."
"He made guns too?"
A prototype? Something for himself? Something for the girl who always carried a pistol? Or insurance against a day when guns and cartridges both ran out? The unmarked weapon simply lay there with no name and no answer.
"Dad."
"…Just how far ahead did he see?"
Besides the cans Sarah had already claimed, four more remained. Add the .50-caliber heavy machine gun he had hidden deep in the corner and the total rose to five weapons. Four of them could punch through body armor and kill a man.
"If you want peace, prepare for war…"
James murmured the old line under his breath, remembering the instructor who had once explained the origin of Parabellum while they were still in uniform. A faint moan from the corridor shattered the memory.
"…Still not dead?"
His hands tightened on the assault rifle, but Sarah's voice cut across him. She chambered a paper-cased shell into the single-shot shotgun and strode into the corridor, muzzle first.
"W-wait, please—!"
—Boom.
Smoke curled around the girl as she ejected the spent hull onto the floor. She drew the powder reek in like cigarette smoke, exhaled, and stared down the corridor with a face of stone while her father and grandfather watched.
"I'm ready."
"No. Not yet."
Curtis dumped the packed bags onto the floor and shook his head.
"Not going after him is also an option."
"…What?"
James's ears twitched; Sarah's expression changed as if someone had slapped her. Trust, respect, and loyalty drained away, leaving only the face called disappointment.
"If they took him because they need him, he'll be safe for a while."
"Grandpa!"
"Calm down and listen."
"If you're saying we should abandon him, I—"
"Listen!"
"No—this time you listen!"
"I know that already!!"
Shouts collided, but the young lion could not out-roar the old one.
"…A prisoner means they think he's worth keeping alive. If he'd been a Jew in my day they would have snapped his neck in front of you or put a bullet in his head. But if they took him for the sake of some facility, they won't kill him lightly—not until they have a replacement or a successor trained, and even then not easily."
The young lion still burned with courage and fight.
"So we just leave him? With the Nazis? After everything he did for me—for us—while we're standing here surrounded by all of it?"
The steel plate wall that kept the radioactive spider-monsters out. The barricades built against men and man-sized beasts. The faint lingering scent of soap in a space that had once reeked only of corpses and cordite.
"I won't accept that."
"This is the apocalypse, Sarah. Law, morality… they've been gone a long time."
"You both said it mattered that we didn't become monsters like them."
"But those rules only have value if we stay alive to keep them."
"Hyunwoo threw himself away so I could live."
"…And he survived while still keeping that principle."
"Where did the grandpa and dad go who were so happy we could finally live like people again?"
James drew a slow breath. A wife who had left. A marriage that had failed. The only thing left from that life was one daughter.
"…Pretty things like that aren't required for survival."
"Ha."
If they ran they would lose their daughter's trust and the life they had now. Against a well-armed, well-trained pack of racial supremacists they stood to lose far more. James's scale was already tipping.
"That's why I'm giving you the choice."
Curtis settled himself in front of the bags.
"…I abandoned comrades who were calling for help. In the war. On the very day we hit the beach."
He was back there again—watching friends charge because someone had said the machine guns were noisy but inaccurate, watching even the veterans who shouted "Forget the book, keep low and move careful" get cut down.
"I threw myself behind a little rise that barely covered me and listened to the rounds going over my head when—"
"—so you're about to tell us you left your buddies and lived? You used to brag about carving up Nazis."
"—there were survivors who gathered around me. They forgot what squad or unit they belonged to, sorted out a chain of command on the spot, and got ready to take orders from whoever was senior."
Curtis kept talking, fingers restlessly stroking the shotgun as if it were an M1 Garand and the paper shells were an eight-round en-bloc clip.
"But there are always stragglers. A little squad was pinned behind the steel obstacles that kept the tanks off the beach. And of course the machine gunner had spotted them and was hosing them down."
"…"
"Trapped under that fire, one by one they took rounds in the arm or the leg. The next burst turned them into meat. When the flying blood and flesh made someone flinch and move, he died too. Then a man in a helmet, plastered with mud, yelled at me to cover them."
A sigh. A head that would not lift.
"Getting that man and his little squad to us would have been simple. Pull the trigger on the bunker right in front of me and every eye would have swung our way. Whatever the new senior said, we might have saved at least four lives. But."
The finger that never quite reached the trigger was still trembling. The soldier who had killed enemies bit his lip and shook.
"I'm alive here. They stayed there. That's what a choice is."
"…"
"And it looks like that same kind of choice has come looking for you right now."
The muzzle nudged the bags.
"Everything's packed. If we run the other way starting now, the friends of the ones we killed won't find us. They'll be too busy looting this place."
Then his finger pointed back down the corridor.
"There's an M2 Browning in the room. Heavy. Probably needs two people to move. Set it up in a good position and use it on the way out with Hyunwoo and you could buy plenty of time. Of course that only matters if we can find him in a place we don't know, and if he's still alive when we do."
"If it matters."
Sarah snorted once and kicked the bag.
The long explanation had not changed the time it took her to decide.
"Did it 'matter' when he made me the antidote? Did it 'matter' when he risked his life to smash those church freaks? Did it 'matter' when he went after the monsters alone? When have we ever properly paid him back for any of it?"
"…"
"All we know how to do is shoot and cook. And even the shooting—who made it so we could do it freely?"
She picked up the gun, slapped James's hand aside, and walked into the room. Grunting. The repeated scrape of steel dragged across the floor. Parts of the heavy machine gun spilled out of its wooden crate along with the ammo cans.
"You're the same, Dad. You were happy you could finally act like a father after we came down here, but both of you are hopeless at showing anyone a real family. You know that, right?"
"Sarah."
"Veterans who take the kindness, eat it, and wipe their mouths clean—how shameful. You look exactly like the people Grandpa used to curse at on TV every single day."
She turned her back, dumped the bags onto the floor, stuffed two ammo cans inside, and snapped them shut.
"I'll go alone if I have to. When the spider bit me I was already dead if Hyunwoo hadn't been there."
And with that, the decision was made.