Free Souvenir by James R. Benn

could manage to do that, but he saved and saved for that ring, feeling it would set him apart from everyone else, put him up there with Mary Lou and her father, a young man who was industrious and thrifty, but also knew his way around things like rings and fancy jewelry. He’d had great plans, but that was before things fell apart.
    Jake felt the weight in his pants pocket as the grenades banged against his leg with every step. Too many in there. He pulled two out and hung them on his web harness, something he did only when he had to. It was dangerous to go around like that, except in the movies. Hanging grenades off your gear was an invitation to get them stuck on something and pull the pin—while you were wearing it. But if they were going into a village he’d need grenades, plenty of grenades. You had to toss grenades into a house to be sure, unless you wanted to risk your neck busting down the door.
    He knew civilians too dumb to see what was coming sometimes hid in the cellars. He had tried not to grenade cellars, until Samuelson, that kid from Brooklyn, said he heard voices in a cellar on a street in Eperany that sounded like children. A small casement window was open an inch or so. It would have been easy to shoot out the glass and toss in a grenade, send any surviving Germans stumbling dazed up the stairs into their sights as they covered each other going in. But Samuelson was sure it was children. They tossed one grenade in the first floor window, went in, checked the first and second floors out, found nothing. Samuelson lifted up the door in the floor of the kitchen that led to the basement, called out for them to come up, it was safe. No one knew any French, but he said it slow and calm so the kids wouldn’t be scared. The darkness in the cellar lit up with fire as a burst from a Schmeisser submachine gun hit Samuelson in the chest. A Kraut came up, boots loud on the wooden steps, spraying bullets around the kitchen, the noise piercingly loud, bullets cracking wooden cabinets open and ricocheting off hanging cast iron skillets. Jake spun around the corner into the hallway, and waited until he heard the Schmeisser stop. He turned and caught the Kraut, an officer, putting in a fresh clip. The German froze, his mouth open in surprise. Jake dropped him with one aimed shot to the head, taking his time, letting the bastard see what was coming. The shot thundered inside the hallway. Jake saw a blur of red as the Kraut’s head exploded, the back of his skull splattering against the wall. He stepped over the dead officer to check Samuelson, but it was no good. He was a mess, his neck ripped open, holes in his chest, blood everywhere. Jake turned around, and fired his M1 into the officer’s body again, again, again, until his empty clip ejected and bounced on the linoleum floor with faint metallic sound. Jake didn’t feel anything except the pounding in his head, his own blood vessels pumping away, keeping him alive. He couldn’t hear anything, except that damn pounding in his ears. Then a shuffle. Sounds from the basement, more of them. Panic grabbed him by the throat, he fumbled for another clip, hand shaking, feeling like he was dreaming, stuck in slow motion while everything around him sped up. The next thing he knew a grenade was in his hand, he was pulling the pin, tossing it into the blackness and hearing it bounce down the wooden stairs.
    A screech, a thin shrilling voice, a girl’s voice, a child. It carried up the stairs and stabbed him in the gut, forcing him back until he fell against the kitchen table, went down on the floor and felt the force of the explosion against the floorboards from the small basement below.
    Clay found him there, lying on the floor next to the two dead bodies, his hands pressed over his ears. Clay got him up and out of there, sat him outside with Tuck and Shorty watching him. He went back in, found a candle, and went down the steps to the basement. He hadn’t even made it down