Free The Second Winter by Craig Larsen Page B

bundle, he noticed, clanked when she moved with the unmistakable twang of silver.
    “This stuff will kill you, Gregersen,” the truck driver said. “It will rot your bones from the inside out.” Still, he shoved the tablet into his mouth and swallowed. The bitter taste made him grimace. “So you’ve got four hours,” he said to Fredrik, wiping his hands on his coat. “My crew is waiting for me in Sindal. I figure we’ll be passing back through Ulsted again at about ten.”
    Fredrik nodded. “Ulsted,” he echoed. “On the side of the highway.”
    “We won’t stop,” the truck driver said. “It’s too dangerous. If we see you, we see you. Otherwise, you’re on your own.” He lifted himself into the truck, slammed the door behind him.
    The Jews’ silver rattled in the old woman’s arms. Fredrik shouldered past Oskar, gave the old Jew a shove, started leading them toward the sea.

    Forty minutes later, the sky was laced with chalky phosphor. The mulched farmland rolled away from them beneath theirfeet, glittering here and there in the dark where slick stalks of scattered straw caught the first, nearly invisible rays of morning light. The old woman had long since abandoned her city pumps. After a hundred yards, the shoes were ruined. Another hundred yards farther, the heels had snapped off and the red leather had separated from the soles. Now her stockings were torn and her toes were bleeding. She dragged the bundle of silver behind her, no longer caring to possess it at all, only afraid that, if she let it go, Fredrik might lash out at her. The girl had stumbled more than a few times, and her feet and knees were bleeding as well. Like her mother, she hadn’t once opened her mouth. Her father hadn’t stopped complaining since they had begun the journey on foot. His litany had lost words, instead had become a series of groans and moans, squeezed from his lungs as if with every step another stone were being dropped onto his chest.
    “Shut up, will you?” Fredrik gave the old Jew a push. The old man stumbled and caught himself with another groan. “The sun will be up soon. Keep moving, faster.”
    Oskar slowed a step to help the old man through a dense marsh. Fredrik would have chastised his son, but at last the fence bordering Olaf Brandt’s property on the east stenciled the haze. They were almost at the coast. The wind picked up, blasting salt into Fredrik’s eyes. Beyond the fence, the flat, steel-gray plane of the sea hovered in the mist, no more than a thousand yards in front of them. The rhythmic lap of waves penetrated the gloom, punctuated by the shrill cry of seagulls.
    “That must be Johansson’s trawler,” Axel said.
    Fredrik followed the direction of the shorter man’s arm. Shimmering on the otherwise unmoving sea, a weak lantern cast a circle of light onto the water. Within the glow, tiny waves rippled. From this perspective, the pattern could havebeen the flutter of snow in a car’s headlamp. Fredrik traced a line back from the small fishing boat to the shore, where he located yet another lamp burning, this one even weaker. The Swedish fisherman was waiting for them on the sand with his rowboat.
    “Yeah, that’s Johansson,” Fredrik confirmed. In the distance, next to the rowboat, another flame sparked. The fisherman was lighting a cigarette. As far away as they were, Fredrik could practically smell the burning tobacco. The last time he had seen the one-eyed Swede, the fisherman had given him a Gauloises, something he had taken from a fugitive whom he had run across the straits. The cigarette had been as fat as a small cigar. He started forward again, allowing Axel to take the lead.
    Arriving at the fence, Axel steered them sideways for about thirty or forty yards, until he located a gap large enough to crawl through. There, parting a tangle of broken wires and rotted stakes, he directed Oskar through first, the old woman next. When he reached for the girl, though, Fredrik grabbed him