Women Of Courage: Daisies Are Forever Part 28

They pa.s.sed skeletons of homes, gla.s.sless windows vacant, staring silently on the scene. What trees had not been cut for fuel stood barren, stripped of their young leaves. Awnings, just unfurled, had burned, the charred metal framework forlorn.

Bleak. Desolate. Foreboding.

Gisela, clinging to Annelies's hand, willed her frightening thoughts away, pushing them to the furthest corner of her mind as she picked her way down the once-vibrant street. Her pulse pounded in her neck and her breath came in short gasps. Building after building in their neighborhood reduced to a pile of bricks. The gla.s.s in the streetlamps lay shattered on the ground.

She handed Annelies to Mitch and increased her pace.

No sound reached her but the whooshing of blood in her ears. Destruction flanked her to the right and the left.

Mutti's neighbor-she didn't remember the woman's name-approached them, her eyes distant, unblinking. Gisela grasped her arm. "What happened? Have you seen Mutti?"

The woman gave a quick shrug and hastened away.

Fear wrapped itself around Gisela like a straitjacket.

She sprinted now, her arms and legs pumping. The buildings, or what was left of them, were a blur.

She turned the corner onto their block. Screams burst from her burning lungs. "Mutti! Mutti!"

The home she had left this morning no longer existed.

Carrying Renate and dragging Annelies behind slowed Mitch's progress. He lost sight of Gisela as she rounded the corner.

He knew what the news would be.

Piles of red bricks and white stone were heaped where flats, homes, and small businesses once stood.

The buildings' residents would have been in the shelter. While they liked to pretend that would protect them from a direct hit, Mitch knew that wouldn't be the case. When a three-story building crumbled around you, it didn't matter whether or not you were in the bunker.

He continued down the street. People stood in the rubble. Bloodied. In shock. Terrified. He turned the corner and the sight confirmed his worst fears.

Every building on the block had been destroyed. The Cramers' garden had become a huge, smoldering crater.

A direct hit.

Gisela ran ahead of him, stumbling on the debris lining the street. Filling the street.

Her screams echoed the ones he suppressed. Echoed the cries of those in his regiment as they died on a field in Belgium.

He saw no sign of her mum. Or any of the others.

Gisela dropped to her knees and dug through the rubble. In a full-blown panic, she ripped her hands open against the jagged hunks of concrete. "Mutti! Mutti!"

Her cries pierced his heart. He sat the girls on the concrete step-all that remained of what this morning was a home. Mitch went to her and held her.

She shuddered beneath his touch, then pounded his chest. "Let me go. I have to find Mutti. She's not here. She's not here."

"We'll find her, love. Don't worry."

"We have to dig to the cellar. She might be trapped down there. She was in the bas.e.m.e.nt doing the laundry. Why did I ever leave? I should have stayed and helped. A good daughter would have done her duty."

"You offered to stay. She wanted you to go."

She wrenched herself from his embrace and resumed her frenzied search. He joined her.

"And what about Audra and Kurt and the old ladies-where are they? Down there with Mutti?"

"Hey, hey, slow down. You have to be careful how you go about this. If you move the wrong brick, you could rain more rubble on them."

For a moment, she attempted to heed his warning, moving the remains of the building a little slower. That didn't last long. She soon resumed her frenetic search.

Blood covered some of the bricks she tossed to the side. Hers? A victim's?

Time crawled. Time flew by. He couldn't decide which. His stomach growled. The girls held on to one another. Shadows lengthened and the air held a distinct chill.

"Well, dearie, what is this? Why are people digging like that? I believe the shovel was invented years and years ago."

Mitch shot to his feet, the world spinning as the blood rushed from his head. Down the street and around the rubble, Kurt and Audra led Bettina and Katya. He slid over the pile of discarded bricks and hurried in their direction. "Look, Gisela."

She paused a brief moment, scanned the group, then resumed her work, her only goal reaching her mum.

He met them several meters down the street. "Where were you?"

Audra bit her lip. "You didn't wait for us like we asked. We've been looking for you."

Bettina patted Audra's hand. "Ja, she took us up and down the Spanish Steps and around the Piazza Venezia. Oh my, what fabulous Roman architecture. Don't you agree, Sister?"

Katya nodded.

Mitch pressed the matter. "What about Frau Cramer? Did she go with you?" Audra stared at the building's ruins, as if seeing the destruction and understanding what it meant for the first time. He reached out to steady her as she wobbled and she clasped his wrist. "She didn't want to come with us. When we left, she was down there, wringing out the clothes."

Just as they feared. The same cold in the pit of his stomach that had gripped him as he raced across France grabbed hold of him now.

Kurt scampered over the rubble pile and rushed toward Gisela. She turned at his approach, her eyes wide and wild. Tears traced a path through her dirty cheeks. "My mutti. Oh, my mutti."

She allowed him to hold her. A hot rage surfaced in Mitch, a jealous possessiveness he didn't know he had. He pulled Audra along with him and clambered over the debris to Gisela, almost tearing her from Kurt's grasp. "Let us not waste more time. Start digging."

The old ladies took their places beside the young sisters, offering them candy they didn't have.

Night fell. Darkness closed in until they couldn't see where to dig next. He knelt beside Gisela and spoke to her in English. "We have to stop. There's nothing more we can do tonight. We'll come back in the morning and see if we can locate anyone."

Gisela slapped Mitch's hand away when he tried to pull her from her digging in the demolished apartment building. Didn't he understand that she had to find Mutti? Had to help her? She was in that bas.e.m.e.nt. That's what Audra said. She was down there, perhaps suffocating as they worked.

Why did she leave her? Gisela wouldn't make that mistake again. "I'm not going anywhere."

His voice was gentle but insistent. "It's too dark to see. We'll look more in the morning. You need to rest."

She couldn't. "Where will we go? We don't have a home. There is nothing to do but continue searching."

Mitch rubbed the top of his head with both hands, his dark hair sticking up in every direction. "I hadn't thought about that."

"Just a small problem."

"Dearies, there is a nice hotel not far from here. Cla.s.sy. Attracts the right kind of clientele. Why stay here when we can go there?"

Gisela's skin itched in irritation. "Get them out of here. Take them all away so I can work in peace. By myself." She thumped her forehead a few times. Who did she know in the neighborhood anymore? "Mutti's friend Frau Mueller lives nearby." She gave him directions. "Mention that you know me and she'll take care of you."

Mitch persisted. "You have to come with us. Have a hot meal, wash up, get a little rest. You can't continue working at this pace. You'll be no good to your mum if you fall over."

Gisela leaned on her haunches. "I can't leave. What if she needs me? What if she did go somewhere and comes back? Then she won't know where to find us."

"If the first place you thought to send us was a friend of your mum's, then that's the first place she'll think to look."

Her exhausted brain attempted to comprehend what Mitch said. Did it make sense? Would Mutti search for them at Frau Mueller's? Perhaps she was even there.

"I don't know." She was giving in to her desire for a bar of soap and a warm bed and hated herself for it.

"Come on." Mitch pulled her to her feet.

She stopped before they took a single step. Held her breath. Detected a faint cry. "Wait. Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

She hushed him. "A noise. From downstairs."

They didn't move for a couple of minutes. She strained to hear that noise again, any little sign that Mutti was alive under this rubble.

Mitch dared not to breathe. A direct hit on a building meant death. Gisela couldn't have heard a noise there. Could she?

He didn't detect a single sound. Not a peep. Not a scratch nor a bang. "Gisela, you didn't . . ."

She turned on him, her light-brown eyes alive with fire. "I did."

Better not to argue with her. "We'll dig a little longer. But the night raids will start soon."

"Take the Holtzmanns to Frau Mueller."

Mitch climbed from the pile of rubble and nodded to Audra and Kurt. "That would be best." He lowered his voice. "I will stay and make her go soon."

Kurt puffed out his chest. "I'll stay with her. You take Audra and go."

Mitch looked at Gisela. Her thick brown hair, rolled on top of her head, had come loose from its pins and hung around her face, covered in powder. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. She radiated fear, longing, determination. He couldn't leave her.

He nodded at Audra. "We'll come soon. Take Annelies and Renate with you."

Gisela whipped around to face them. "Nein. You cannot take the girls. They have to stay here with me."

Annelies and Renate sat huddled together on the step, dust turning their pale faces ghostly white.

"Let them go. Audra can get them washed up and fed at least. You will be there in time to tuck them into bed."

She directed her gaze to the sky, then to the ground, then to him. "Fine. Let them go." Her voice was weak, raspy.

Kurt went to her side. "You come too. Let me take care of you."

"I know I heard a sound. I won't stop until I reach the person who made that noise."

Audra gave her a hug and whispered in her ear, then paraded down the street with the two sets of sisters. If not for the fact that they stepped around the remains of buildings, they might have been comical.

Kurt stayed at Gisela's side and held her hand.

"I won't leave Mutti."

He drew her closer. "And I won't leave you." He kissed her forehead.

Mitch clenched and unclenched his hands. He wanted to be the one to comfort Gisela. What hurt the worst was that she didn't draw away from Kurt. Instead, she leaned into him.

After a moment in silence, the three of them resumed their digging. Crazy, really, because they couldn't see their hands in front of their faces. Mitch moved bricks here and there, mostly listening to hear if he could detect the noise Gisela heard.

Nothing.

A sliver of moonlight cast pale shadows across what had been a building. His hands hurt, still not healed from the last search he had conducted, his one hand still not healed from the Russian's bullet. Blood ran down them, though they had been callused by the farm work he did during his imprisonment.

His calluses were no match for the sharp edges of gla.s.s from cups and mirrors mixed in with the debris. Nothing but adrenaline propelled him forward.

They must have worked for at least an hour. Clouds covered the moon in the thick darkness.

"Josep?" Gisela collapsed in a heap on top of the ruins. Her moan-like weeping tore through him like a bullet.

"I'm here."

"I don't think I heard anything. I don't think there is anyone alive. What am I going to do? What am I going to do?"

He let her cry for a while, Kurt adhered to her other side. Mitch had watched Dad with Mum a time or two. Gisela needed to weep.

When she had spent herself, he helped her sit and Kurt offered her his very dirty handkerchief. The air-raid sirens broke the stillness of the night.

"I can't go."

Hoping the family friend she mentioned did indeed live around the corner, he stayed by her side. They would have to leave in a little while. He didn't want a repeat performance of this morning, but they had a few minutes.

"Is Mutti even here?" She rubbed her eyes with her filthy hands.

"I don't know. I can't answer that."

"I'm afraid to dig."

"We should stop for the night." Who knew what they might uncover? He didn't want Gisela to see the ghastly sights he encountered digging through the neighbor's rubble. Didn't want her to find her mum like that.