Free The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies Page A

within grenade-throwing distance. Karsten recalls the sound of them hitting the walls of the bunker--he'd thought, for a moment, they were throwing rocks--and then one had flown through the slit and Heino chased it around the concrete floor like a mouse. He heaved two more back while Karsten wrestled with a jam in the breech, before the first bright spear of the flamethrower lanced through the firing slit, boiling across the ceiling.
    A moment later a second shot unfurled down the passageway to the rear of the bunker. Karsten heard the breathy roar of it first, felt the warm gust of oily fumes, and just had time to push Heino aside, knock Schiller down before the
    flower of flame bloomed in their midst. He and Schiller lay there, one atop the other, even after the fire washed back down the corridor, watching the flames dance on Willi's head. They looked so lively, licking his ears and temples, it was hard to believe he was dead, until they smelled the singed hair.
    Schiller had clutched him then, started screaming. Karsten stared at his lips, trying to make out what he was saying, deafened by the stammering guns. And then Schiller had put his lips to Karsten's ear: "You have to tell them. You're the only one. With your English. You have to tell them we surrender."
    Karsten had tried to shove him away when he understood, but Schiller hugged him like a drowning man.
    "If not for me, for the boy!"
    Heino was huddled in the far corner, shaking. Karsten thought he was wounded, crawled to him. "Where is it? Where?" He tried to pull apart the boy's arms, wrapped tight around his knees, and then he saw Heino had soiled himself. The boy's face was dark with smoke below his close-cropped fair hair; the tears rolling down his blackened cheeks looked like oil.
    There seemed to be a lull outside. Maybe the enemy thought the last burst had killed them all, maybe they were summoning up their nerve to rush the bunker. In the stillness, Karsten heard the thought distinctly: I can save him .
    Climbing to his feet, sagging against the blackened doorway, he tried to call out, but broke down coughing in the stink of gasoline from the charred walls. Schiller was there at once, pushing their last canteen on him with fumbling hands, making him gulp the water down. Karsten tried again, hanging his head a little farther into the passage this time, the English thick as paste on his tongue. "Can you hear me?" But there was nothing, no reply, though no flame either, and he knew he was going to have to go down the passage to make himself heard, down the narrow concrete tunnel in which there'd be no
    way to dodge the fire.
    He put a hand out to steady himself and jerked it back. The walls were hot, and when he sucked his fingers he tasted soot.
    He looked back at Schiller, saw he was gripping his rifle, and for a second Karsten thought he was going to force him out at gunpoint, until Schiller shook his head, a sick expression on his face. "For me," he mouthed, and Karsten knew he meant to put his lips around the barrel, to kill himself rather than face the flames.
    Karsten stumbled down the passage then, every second expecting the rush and flood of flame to wash over him, calling out as he went, wondering if they could understand him. The slit of light ahead, tinged red by the sun, looked like tensed lips. Finally he heard something from the end of the tunnel: "Come on then, if you're coming!" And it seemed miraculous
    to speak the same language as men he had just been trying to kill, who might kill him any second, the words passing
    between them faster than bullets.
    He hurried the last few steps into the light, remembering at the last moment to raise his hands.
    It was so bright after the dimness of the bunker. It made him think of those long summer evenings when he'd come out of a theatre, shocked to find the day still blazing, as if it should
    have somehow ended, faded to black, with the film. The light made his eyeballs feel swollen and raw, and he