The Heart of Stone Read online

  *

  Gunfire.

  Nothing could be heard over the gunfire save for Donald's screams of pain.

  His own gun was somewhere on the behind him, forgotten. All that Halen knew for certain was that his best friend in the entire world was balanced precariously on his broad shoulders. There was the bright blood of life streaming down his back and legs. Halen could see it mingling with the soil at his feet as he trudged along desperately, unwilling to stop.

  Unable to stop.

  They were technically safe, meaning that they were back within the Allies' compound. Never mind that enemy mortars were flying erratically through the air, destroying tanks, tents and everything else they hit along the landscape.

  In the near distance was the medical tent, just under two hundred yards away. Halen's knees started to buckle at just the thought of carrying his friend that much farther.

  Donald was past screaming now, too much of his blood had drained away for him to have much energy left. As it was, his body had started to go limp. "Donald!" Halen shouted over his shoulder, right into his friend's ear. "Stay awake! Please buddy, we're almost there!"

  Donald's eyes fluttered open weakly, a small grin spreading across his lips. A bloody froth bubbled up at the corner of his mouth as he exhaled.

  Halen shifted his friend up higher on his shoulders and focused his eyes on the medical tent. With great effort, he shoved aside the pain and weariness in his legs and plodded on towards the tent in a shambling run.

  Shells started to go off all around him, destroying vehicles to his right and tossing fellow soldiers into the air to his left. The return fire from the Allies quelled the sudden Nazi upsurge, sending them back behind the own lines.

  Overhead a fighter jet lost an engine, it was an Allied plane. The frighteningly human howling noise the plane made as it plummeted earthward sent such a shiver down Halen's spine that he had to turn and watch it crash behind the German lines. The eruption blew skyward in a massive ball of flame that seemed to stretch to the heavens.

  Halen never saw the pilot eject.

  Swallowing thickly, Halen continued to stumble towards the tent.

  Lying on the ground in front of him was one of their own, someone that Halen never got the chance to meet. There were wide gashes throughout the body where the blood had dried and darkened until it was almost black in colour. The man could have been his father if he'd guessed the age right.

  Just another reminder that Halen shouldn't even have been out there, never mind Donald.

  Finally, they stumbled through the medical tent's flap and into a scene out of a horror story. Screams of pain permeated the air as dozens of patients were being administered even as Halen frantically looked around for a place to put his friend down.

  Halen dropped to his knees, accidentally losing his grip as he did so. Upset beyond words, Halen grabbed a double handful of Donald's blood-soaked flak jacket and tried to haul him up with what little strength was left to him. Donald's face was slack and very, very pale.

  "Medic!" Halen cried out, his voice cracking from the strain. "Medic!"

  There was no one available. Halen could see that as he looked around. Every surgeon there was moving as fast as they were able, trying to save as many lives as they possibly could. All of them were desperately busy.

  Rationally, Halen recognized this.

  He wasn't feeling terribly rational at the moment however.

  Using the last of his strength, Halen scooped Donald's limp body up in his arms and gently placed him on the nearest table. Halen was crying, he could feel it now. The tears were rolling down his face in great tracks, mingling with the sweat, grime and blood already there.

  "Medic!" he weakly cried again, though not really expecting anyone to answer this time.

  Grabbing the collar of Donald's flak jacket, he tore it open, revealing the multiple gunshot wounds in his friend's chest and belly. There was no hope, even Halen could tell that. There were two gaping wounds in his chest on the left side and another in his belly.

  But he couldn't just let him die. Not without a fight.

  Halen scooped up a handful of cotton balls from the next table and began to press them into the wounds, trying to staunch the flow of blood. Absently he realized that Donald's blood had already stopped flowing and that he was no longer even breathing.

  But he had to do something!

  Anything.

  Even if it broke his heart ...

  At long last, Halen gave it up. There was just nothing he could do.

  Taking his friend's cold hand in both of his own, Halen dropped down to his knees and pressed it to his forehead, weeping uncontrollably. "I'm sorry," he mumbled between sobs of loss. "I'm so bloody sorry."

  How long Halen stayed like that, he couldn't have said. He couldn't have cared. There was nothing else for him to do.

  It could have been minutes later, it could have been hours later. His perception was shot. Someone placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. He started, flinching away from the human touch and pressing his face into his dead friend's hand, unwilling to meet anyone's gaze. He was still murmuring continual apologies under his breath as the hand touched his shoulder again.

  "Leave me alone," he whimpered. The hand was joined by a second. They were gently pulling him away from Donald's body.

  "Please, come away," a gentle voice insisted soothingly. "There's nothing more that you can do for him."

  Slowly, and with great reluctance, Halen allowed himself to be pulled away. Peering up through murky, tear filled eyes, he saw two doctors, crimson staining the front of their surgical smocks, sadly pulling a mostly white sheet up over Donald's pallid face.

  This started a new wave of guilt and sorrow for Halen. He lurched to his feet and buried his face in his palms, trying to get away from the comforting hands. He didn't want to be comforted, he wanted to be left alone with his guilt until it killed him too.

  Something solid struck him in the belly and knocked the wind out of him. He absently realized that he'd run into an empty surgical table. The hands were back at his shoulders, trying to turn him around. Numbly, Halen allowed himself to be turned, the frantic feeling he'd been experiencing suddenly gone with the air.

  "What's your name?" the gentle voice asked.

  Clenching his fists at his sides, Halen closed his eyes and didn't answer.

  "What's your name," the voice asked again, more softly than before.

  He forced his lips to mouth the words, "Halen Marcus."

  "What was that?"

  "Halen Marcus," he repeated, just a bit louder and with the barest tough of the frustration he was feeling.

  One of the hands gently cupped his chin and angled his head up. He stubbornly kept his eyes closed. "Look at me, Halen Marcus."

  With great reluctance he opened his eyes. Not six inches away from his face was one of the nurses. That's what Halen assumed anyway, seeing as how she wasn't dressed in a surgeon's scrubs. She had long red hair that was tied back, to keep it out of the deepest set of green eyes that he'd ever seen.

  "Are you all right?" she asked, flicking her gaze over the rest of his body, checking for a wound or an injury.

  Halen shook his head disjointedly. "No."

  Her face became more concerned. "Where are you hit? I can't see."

  He tapped the knuckles of one hand over his heart and felt his stomach twist into even tighter knots than before. "The minute Donald got shot ... " He couldn't bring himself to continue.

  The nurse placed both of her hands on either side of his face, forcing him to look her in the eyes. "You did everything for him that you could, Halen Marcus. You have to believe that."

  He shook his head adamantly. "No, I didn't," he insisted. "I allowed him to enlist with me."

  The woman Blinked at him in confusion. "He didn't have anymore choice than you did, Halen. In case you hadn't noticed, there's a draft in effect."

  Halen avoided her eyes and stared at the floor for a l
ong moment. Slowly, with great resignation, he met her gaze. "What's your name?" he asked her quietly.

  "Shannon," she replied softly, confused at his sudden question.

  He held her gaze a moment or two longer before once again looking away. "How old do I look to you, Shannon?" Halen asked as he ran his sleeve across his face, trying to wipe away the tears.

  She played along with the question although the look on her face said that she suspected what he was going to say next. "I don't know, maybe twenty-two? Twenty-three?"

  At any other time, Halen would have smiled. "I'm sixteen." She nodded in resignation. "When I heard that the army was drafting men from eighteen and up, I told them that I was eighteen. They gave me a funny look when I couldn't produce any proof but they accepted me anyway." He shrugged minutely. "I guess they were running low on cannon fodder."

  "But, why?" Shannon asked, the confusion evident on her face. "Why on earth would you want to come here?"

  Halen's eyes grew flinty, the old anger cutting through his sorrow like a knife. "I got tired of my father's constant abuse." He rolled his head in a weary motion. "I guess I just wanted to be able to fight back against ... something. Whatever that means."

  There was a look of pity on her face that on any other day would have angered Halen further. "Does your father hit you?" Shannon asked quietly.

  Halen shook his head minutely. "Not since my mother killed herself. He started blaming me for her suicide. He kept saying that it was all my fault! That if I wasn't such a rotten ... That if I had been a better child ... it's not my ..." He forced himself to calm down.

  "Anyway," he continued, vaguely gesturing his head towards Donald's corpse, purposefully not looking at it. "When Donald found out that I was joining the army, he insisted on joining too. I tried to tell him that it made no sense. He was too young, too smart ... He had a future ..." His voice caught in his throat, choking off the rest of his thoughts. He covered his eyes with one hand as his guilt and sorrow washed over him once again.

  Shannon gently took him in her arms, leaning his head against her shoulder and soothing him with her soft words. Trying to make him believe that he had done all that he could. Halen heard the words, but all that he could see was the image that had been etched into the back of his mind. The image of Donald, happy, smiling faced Donald. All excited about being in his first actual confrontation with the Nazis only to be negligently cut down in the opening seconds of battle. Halen would never forget the look of horror on Donald's face once he realized what had happened, his rifle slipping from numb fingers to fall into the trench he had just climbed out of ...

  Halen forced the image from his mind and carefully pushed himself away from the helpful nurse. "I'm sure that you've got other people to help ..." he began, trying to avoid her gaze.

  She laughed slightly, bitterly. "Well, not exactly." It was her turn to avoid his gaze. "I'm certainly no doctor. Hell, the very sight of all this blood makes me queasy."

  Halen glanced at her curiously. "Then why are you here?" he asked, vaguely gesturing around the tent with one arm.

  Shannon grimaced and looked down at her hands. "I just ... I just couldn't stand the thought of staying home in Toronto, safe as could be while all of the people that I grew up went off to their deaths," she explained, pushing a loose strand of her hair behind one ear. " I just felt that I had to do something. So, I signed on as a medical aide and, while I know everything from CPR to how to bandage most minor injuries ..." She sighed regretfully and purposely avoided looking around the tent. "Well, let's just say that there's nobody coming in here with anything resembling a minor injury."

  There was an uncomfortable silence for several moments

  "Well," Halen began reluctantly, hitching up his belt and settling his flak jacket about his shoulders. "I suppose I'd better get back out there."

  Shannon grabbed him firmly by the arm and shook her head. "Not in your condition, young man. You're way too distraught to take part in the fighting. You'd be dead in seconds." Halen opened his mouth to protest but Shannon covered it with one of her slender hands. "And I've seen too much death already today to allow you to become one of the nameless masses. And that's an order, soldier-boy."

  Halen bowed his head silently in acquiescence even as the feeling of relief spread to every corner of his body. He had a moment's guilt for feeling the relief and tried to push it aside. He'd had enough. "Thank you," he croaked weakly. More than enough.

  "For what?" she asked with a wan smile.

  He shrugged slightly, not wanting to feel better about himself yet but wanting to express his gratitude. "For giving a damn about a dumb kid who's in over his head."

  She smiled more openly. "Anytime," she said as she squeezed his arm.

  Nothing was said for several minutes. Patients of all shapes and sizes flowed in through the tent's flap at an alarming rate, but not a single surgeon called for Shannon's assistance. Halen didn't mind the comparative solitude any more than Shannon seemed to.

  "Where's Toronto?" Halen asked suddenly.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Which part of the States is Toronto in? I've never heard of it."

  She laughed. A real, genuine laugh. "I'm not from the States. Toronto's in Canada. You know, that big country north of the forty-ninth parallel?"

  "Oh." Halen could feel himself blushing. "I didn't know ... You ... you sounded American."

  Shannon smiled reassuringly. "It happens all the time, my English friend. Our accents are usually a bit less definable than yours are."

  Halen actually found himself beginning to smile. "I suppose. But I can't really tell ..."Over Shannon's shoulder, Halen saw one of the surgeons get ripped open as machine gun fire split the air with staccato thunderclaps. Three exhausted Nazis lurched into the tent and began laying down a cover fire. Patients and doctors alike were toppling under the barrage.

  His instincts taking over where his training had failed him, Halen grabbed Shannon by the waist and dove over the nearest table, tipping it over as they tumbled past. Bullets ricocheted off of the metal legs and base of their impromptu shield.

  Mist and steam burst into the air as stray shots caromed off of various compressed oxygen tanks and the like, rapidly reducing the visibility inside the tent. It was a small miracle that none of the tanks had burst into flame.

  All of the sorrow and guilty feelings fled Halen's mind as a sort of cold fury washed over him. He pulled his bowie knife from out of one boot and handed it hilt first to Shannon. "Stay down," he hissed to her as he tried to survey the tent through the clouds, peering carefully over the edge of the table.

  "What are you doing?" Shannon hissed frantically.

  "Just stay down!"

  Halen began to crawl away, trying to circle around to where he had last seen the Germans.

  The Nazis appeared to be controlling their gunfire now, being more selective with their shots. If anybody else in the tent was still alive they were making surprisingly little noise. Every person that Halen came across as he slithered along the floor was either dead or dying by the looks of things.

  The Nazis stopped what they were doing and spoke to each other in German for a brief moment. Halen's German was terrible, but he thought they said something about splitting up. Carefully peering up over a table, Halen saw one of them heading in his general direction. He began to look around for something to use as a weapon and came up empty. There was nothing useful within immediate reach. For the first time in minutes, Halen's own mortality began to have an impact on his thinking and he started to get scared. But he shoved it aside, knowing that he'd expected to die from the minute that he signed up for this war. Every Second after that was borrowed time and it was up to him to make it count.

  One of the other Nazis barked out something and fired his machine gun. Somebody screamed. The Nazi closest to Halen turned to make a comment to his friend.

  Halen surged forward.

  He leapt from his hiding spot and caught the Nazi from
behind, driving him headfirst into a table. The man's helmet took the brunt of the impact, but Halen was a big boy and very strong. The German was still groggy.

  Not giving the man a chance to react, Halen placed one of his hands under the Nazi's chin while his other hand grabbed an ear. Halen wrenched powerfully and heard the man's vertebrae snap grotesquely, feeling the bones separate beneath his fingers.

  Gunfire riddled the table in front of him, dangerously close. Halen scooped up the dead Nazi's machine gun and quickly scooted away on his hands and knees.

  Both remaining Nazis were advancing on him, firing sporadically. To make matters even worse, the air was rapidly clearing up as his options for cover became fewer and fewer.

  Racking his brain for some sort of a plan made him just slightly careless. One of the Nazi's spotted him and shouted to his friend. They both opened fire on as Halen scrambled away. Bullets passing so close to him that he could feel the wind as they shot past.

  Red hot lead rocketed past Halen's large frame on all sides as he desperately tried to find someplace to hide. Bullets ricocheted with bright sparks and with loud noises off of the metallic tables and objects all around the young man.

  Suddenly the gunfire ceased. Both Nazis seemed to be swearing in German as they started to casually reload their weapons. Hope lit up Halen's face like a switch. They don't know that I've got a gun!

  He was in motion even before he realized what he was doing.

  He too two powerful running strides slid feet first at the Germans, firing his machine gun as he dropped. He clipped one of the Nazis in the side but pumped lead full into the chest of the second man before his weapon stopped firing. When the bloody corpse fell to the floor, Halen discarded his empty gun and scrambled towards the lone remaining Nazi at top speed.

  The German threw his gun at Halen and took a step back, wincing at the pain in his side. Halen ducked under the flying weapon and swung a massive uppercut at the Nazi's jaw. The man narrowly avoided the blow and drove a fist into Halen's belly, following it up with a cruel blow to the young man's throat.

  Halen dropped to the ground, gasping for breath through his now swollen trachea. He started to get to his knees when something thin and sharp started to dig into his neck. Garrote! his mind shouted at him as he desperately clawed the wire, fighting for air.

  The Nazi was shouting in German, speaking words that Halen couldn't hope to comprehend as he fought his way to his feet. Both men jockeyed for position as Halen slowly began to lose consciousness.

  Ignoring the wire, Halen's hands groped around until they found the back of the Nazi's head. Using that as a handhold, Halen pushed up to his feet and began to thrash around wildly, trying to do anything that could break the German's hold on the garrote.

  Apparently desperate himself, the Nazi, a smaller man than Halen, jumped high onto his back to keep the pressure on Halen's neck. With the dexterity of a prize winning bull rider, the Nazi wore Halen down.

  His strength swiftly leaving him, Halen did the only thing that he could think of. He leapt up into the air as high as he could and landed flat with the Nazi beneath him.

  The German lost his grip on the garrote and started to cough, painfully gasping in pain. Halen tore the wire away from his throat and stoically ignored the fact that he was bleeding as he too fought for air.

  The Nazi got to his feet first and withdrew a small knife. He reversed his grip on it and held it over his head, ready to drive it down. Halen caught the man's belt with one hand and cruelly punched the Nazi in the groin.

  The Nazi's voice cracked as his knife slid from numb fingers. The man's knees wobbled and he looked like he was about to topple forward when Halen surged up, hammering his fist into the point of the descending Nazi's jaw. There was an audible cracking sound as Halen felt something give under his fist.

  The Nazi's body was launched almost a foot into the air before it collapsed to the ground never to move again.

  Halen dropped to his knees, one hand pressed against his bleeding throat and the other on the ground to steady himself. Shannon had appeared from behind the table and was running over to him when the room began to spin ...