Monday, October 09, 2017

Secrets and Shadows: Day 7

Word Count: 42,007

Summary of Events:
After his mother made significant efforts to prevent their departure, Emil, Zygfryd, their two younger brothers, and their father left to go help in the defence of Warsaw, with the Germans having arrived on the southwestern side of the city. Having guns, Emil and Zygfryd were pressed into backing up soldiers, but only until Zygfryd got shot in the ear; Emil then worked to get Zygfryd home — despite their being pursued by a German soldier with Emil's gun empty and Zygfryd unarmed — for which he commandeered a car that the German shot one of the tires and the rear window out of . . .

Excerpt of the Day:
"When he saw the opportunity to turn to the east — which happened to be to his right — he took it, only to have the car seemingly surge out of his control and slam itself into the wall of the building he'd been trying to go around.
"You've just made things worse, you know that, right?" Zygfryd asked.
"Does it really matter at this point?" Emil demanded. "I'm trying to get you to safety!"
He hauled Zygfryd out of the car and hurried for a sheltered place to hide.
Zygfryd moaned and suddenly became a dead weight in Emil's arms, nearly pulling him to the ground.
"Zygfryd!" Emil cried, cold fright seizing his breastbone.
He lowered Zygfryd to the stone and looked at him. Zygfryd's eyes were closed and he laid quite still. Emil put a finger to his neck and felt a throbbing that was rather feeble.
"No," Emil whispered. "No Zygfryd; you can't do this."
Quickly Emil took his shirt, wrapped the body of it around the shoulder yoke, and wrapped his shirt around Zygfryd's head, tying the sleeves together so that the part he'd wrapped was around Zygfryd's ear.
He then managed to haul Zygfryd to his feet, lower himself so that his shoulder was at Zygfryd's abdomen, and haul Zygfryd over his shoulder.
In spite of his brother's dead weight, Emil did his best to run. He had no idea how close the German might be to him, and at this point in time he wasn't really all that inclined to find out.
Several gunshots sounded behind him. He was pretty sure it was the German, but he couldn't really run with Zygfryd's weight on his shoulder.
Suddenly pain shot through his lower back and the back of one of his legs, causing Emil to stumble, with Zygfryd's weight only pulling him down faster.
He reached for Zygfryd's head and felt a terrible pain in his hand when Zygfryd's head slammed his hand against the stone.
Quickly Emil rolled over and laid himself down on top of Zygfryd. He didn't even bother trying to reload his gun, knowing that his hands would be much too shaky for that sort of thing to be remotely successful.
The German strode toward them, his face emotionless and cold, like it'd been chiselled out of stone and was incapable of showing any sort of expression.
He cocked his gun and put the barrel of it against Emil's forehead, where it felt warm, not cold, which Emil guessed was from the fact that it'd been fired repeatedly recently. It soon felt like it was burning his forehead.
Suddenly there was a shot, but no searing pain went through Emil's head, pulling blackness with it as he'd feared.
Instead the German's face suddenly spread out into a surprised and alarmed expression and he fell down on Emil hard — a hardness that was only worsened by Emil's position overtop of Zygfryd."

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