Bullets rained down on Posey from every direction. Wherever she turned, she found herself under fire. Zig-zagging her way through the chaos, she prayed that her time wasn't up yet, that fate would decide she still had unfinished business and spare her another day.
She pushed into the first unlocked door she came upon and raced up the stairs. There was no need for stealth with the cacophony outside, so she opted for speed. She checked each room and found a pair of machine gunners, taking them both out quickly and without a second thought.
It was clear to see why the two Germans had chosen this as their vantage point - view the window had on the street below was perfect for such an occasion. These two gunners had probably been picking Americans off like fish in a barrel.
Once upon a time, Posey thought distantly, she'd have judged the view from a window based on how pretty the buildings opposite were, or how far into the horizon you could see. That time was gone. She crouched by the window, kicking the bodies of the Germans out of the way, and began to pick off snipers in windows as she saw them and stray krauts racing across the street below.
The building shook every few seconds with the impact of explosions. Tanks on both sides were firing relentlessly at each other by now. German soldiers began to flood the streets and Posey worked tirelessly to pick them off, just as they'd been doing to her friends before. She kept her eyes peeled at both ends of the street to watch for Second Platoon. She hadn't been able to find them on the left where Webster had said they were.
Feeling as though she'd exhausted her current vantage point, Posey pushed out of the room and into one on the opposite side of the building. It offered a view over the field they'd come in through and she threw herself down before she'd checked outside of it.
She readied her gun and rested the barrel on the windowsill before wiping some sweat from her brow. When she finally looked outside, her face fell.
"Oh no."
Men in khaki were loading onto trucks, getting ready to retreat. A few of the trucks had already left and the ones remaining were waiting only for the final few stragglers to get to them. Posey stood to her full height and turned, racing her way back through the house and down the stairs; if she was left behind she knew she'd be facing a death sentence. She'd never survive in a prisoner of war camp, not after they found out she was a woman. John had told her plenty of stories about what the Nazis were rumoured to be doing to downed airmen once they found them, branding them political adversaries and sticking them in work camps. She didn't know whether they'd do the same to her if they found her but she certainly didn't want to find out.
Posey ran outside and had to run straight back in again. The Germans were out in full force. Rethinking her plan of escape, she turned and began to run in the opposite direction to where the troops were leaving, zig-zagging under the shower of bullets fired at her. There was no way she could get through the town and make it out alive. She'd either have to go around or wait it out.
Running around the back of a burning tank, she threw herself into a ditch on the outskirts of the town and crawled as fast as she could. She recalled the PT course at Toccoa and crawling for what felt like hours beneath barbed wire. She imagined that Sobel was shouting at her, that she'd be out of the Airborne if she didn't speed up. She kept her head down, crawling nonstop until she thought she'd put enough distance between herself and the Germans in the town.
When she looked up, she found she was right in front of a bombed out church. It was crumbling on one side, the glass in its windows all shattered, but it would do the job she needed it for. Posey put her head back down and crawled as close as she could, then hopped up and ran the rest of the way.
It was eerily quiet inside. Her footsteps, no matter how quiet, seemed to echo all around her. Posey dropped to her knees and crawled across the floor, taking refuge in a corner and hunching in on herself.
It was late afternoon by now but just as bright as it was at midday with wartime daylight savings. Sunlight broke through the gaps in the church wall behind her and shattered across the floor, painting pale yellow streaks across the murky dark grey. Posey retreated into herself even more, trying to conceal herself entirely in the shadows.
If the Germans came here she'd have a perfect view of them crossing the field through the collapsed wall and hopefully just enough time to make an escape. She was hoping, however, that it wouldn't come to that. In an ideal world the Germans would leave Nuenen behind now that the Americans had retreated and Posey would be able to set off in the direction Easy had gone. In this dream scenario, she'd find them somewhere close to nightfall and laugh with them about how stupid it had been of her to set herself up in a building without telling anyone.
The longer Posey sat there, the more her adrenaline wore off. She looked around at the bombed out church around her, at the collapsed pews and the caved in wall and the rubble, and began to feel cold. It was warm outside but cold in here. She didn't know how that was possible.
Her breaths came hard but shaking, stuttering out of her chest and onto the dust in the air, destroying the natural rhythm of things. She had always felt safe in churches but in this one she felt desperate, frightened, alone. The kindness had been ripped from this one, the safety and love and sanctity. It was difficult to pray when the air was so cold, so unforgiving.
Please, please, please, don't let me die.
Afternoon turned to evening and Posey remained as still as she could. In the hours that she'd been there, watching the town and the sporadic movement of the Germans in the hopes they'd eventually leave, she'd only moved twice, once to pick her gun up off of the floor and place it in her arms and once to relieve herself. She was too frightened to eat, found that she wasn't hungry, and took only small sips from her canteen when she felt she couldn't not. Through everything she did, her eyes remained locked on Nuenen, willing the Germans away.
She wondered what her friends were doing right now, wondered how many of them were still alive and whether they were worried about her. She thought about Bill and imagined he was losing his shit, which made her want to laugh but she couldn't. She pondered whether Johnny thought she was dead; he'd seen her run into that first house but she'd left through the back just before it had collapsed.
Her blood ran ice cold. No one would be worried about her because Johnny probably thought she was dead. No one would be coming to look for her. No one would be telling the officers to stay behind to wait for her to catch up.
She had to work to keep her breathing steady, consciously telling herself to draw air in through her nose and release it slowly through her mouth. Tears stung in her eyes but she forced them back. Now was not the time to cry.
Her fingers brushed against Teddy, still tucked snuggly against her chest, and she nodded to herself. She could do this. She just had to wait the night out and then as soon as the Germans left she'd be able to go, too. She'd go on foot for as long as she had to until she found some Allied forces or Resistance fighters or maybe even Easy. She wouldn't be stuck here forever. She was not sitting in her own grave.
When night eventually fell, Posey had to resort to looking at the town through her scope. She watched for metal glinting in moonlight and silhouettes moving in the streets. Her view of the town was somewhat limited through the crumbling wall of the church, but it gave her enough forewarning to leave when the first German patrols were sent out and one was headed straight for her.
Posey got to her feet briskly and clutched her rifle close to her chest. She plastered her back to the wall, keeping to the shadows as she made her way around the church to what would once have been the main entrance.
The night was cool outside. The grass was cold when she threw herself down onto it. Her eyes were set on a barn across the field, largely shielded by a farmhouse.
Slithering through the grass, Posey kept to the edges of the field and rolled into the first ditch she came across. The rim of her helmet hit the dirt when she put her head back down after checking her direction. It made her pause.
She'd first caught sight of the German patrol by the glint of their helmets under the starlight. Her helmet would give her away if they caught sight of it. Posey shoved her face into the mud and wrenched her helmet off, keeping low so the movement wouldn't be caught above the ditch. She ripped the American flag armband off of her ODs while she was at it - the stark white would surely be visible even through the darkness.
Posey buried both as well as she could in the mud before continuing on. She tried not to think of the time she'd been stopped as wasted, for she couldn't risk leaving breadcrumbs behind her, but, upon glancing up, the barn still seemed endlessly far away.
She crawled hard and fast through the dirt, keeping her head down and her teeth gritted. Her elbows burned where she was constantly digging them into the ground for leverage and her knees protested every time she projected herself forwards off of them. She army crawled her way past the farmhouse until she came up beside the barn. Throwing a glance behind her in the direction of the church, she rolled up onto the ground and crawled around the barn, too, until she came upon a side door.
The door to the barn was big, old, and wooden, though it gave way easily and silently. Posey inched in on her hands and knees, squinting into the darkness to check for signs of life. She held her breath, listening for any indication she wasn't alone.
All was quiet.
She closed the door behind her gently before pushing up to stand, and crept towards a row of stalls. She headed for the last one right before two hands grabbed her, one around her waist and the other clasped over her mouth.
"American," a muttered voice observed, sounding distinctly American itself. She was let go and spun around. "Duckie?"
"Bull?"
"What the hell are you doin' here?" he asked, his voice hushed as he nudged her towards the stall she'd been headed for before.
"Got left behind," she murmured back. "I think they think I'm dead."
"Me too," Bull replied.
Posey entered the stall to find a man and a girl already cowering there.
"What -?"
"Dutch," Bull explained, cutting her off. "They were tryin' to help."
She nodded and sat down beside the girl, offering a smile before she let herself slump back against the wall of the barn, finally feeling somewhat safe. When Bull sat beside her, she smiled anew. "You have no idea how happy I am to see you," she whispered.
Bull chuckled to himself. "Think I got a good idea."
The group of four sat in silence, listening to the activity outside. From the field, the barn had looked like it was isolated with the farmhouse, out in the open and away from the town. What Posey hadn't realised was that it bordered part of the town the Germans were still occupying; the angle had been deceiving. A tank rolled by outside and Posey's shoulders stiffened immediately. She'd had enough of tanks. She'd had more than enough of Germans.
"We might have to move," Posey mumbled to Bull, her words so quiet she wondered whether he'd even heard them.
"They're right outside," Bull objected with a quick shake of his head. "It's safer here. Just gotta wait it out."
Another tank going past had Posey gripping onto Bull's sleeve. "I can't be a POW, Bull," she said, her voice interrupting the rhythm of the tank tracks.
"We'll be fine, Duckie," he assured her. His eyes, which remained locked on the door, betrayed that he didn't entirely believe this himself.
"No, I really can't be a POW."
Something in her voice made Bull look down at her, perhaps the fear or perhaps the pleading. "Duckie, what's wrong?"
Posey chewed on her bottom lip, contemplating whether to tell him. She knew he needed to know, really, to fully understand the stakes, but what if telling him just made him more worried? Being stranded in the middle of a Wehrmacht-occupied town was one thing, but being stranded there with a girl was an entirely different one.
But she didn't think Bull would be like that. Not really. They'd been through training together, experienced combat together. He knew her. She knew she was making her own excuses.
"Duckie," Bull said, yanking her back to reality.
Posey drew in a deep breath. In her native accent and her normal voice, she confessed, "I'm a girl," and hoped the Dutch civilians couldn't speak English. "A British girl."
Bull didn't say anything for a few moments. He looked at her hard, his gaze heavy through the darkness, before he mustered a brief nod. "You ain't gonna be a POW," he told her, his voice leaving no room for argument. "We ain't gettin' caught."
Conversation outside cut the interaction short. Multiple voices were conversing in German, their footsteps heavy and unmistakably approaching.
Bull was on his feet in an instant and peering through a shattered window. When he turned back, Posey knew what to do from a single look in his eyes. Whilst he was leading the two Dutch civilians around the stalls to the side door she'd come in through, Posey made her way to the end stall at the opposite end of the barn, crouching just behind the wall and strapping her rifle. She adjusted her sights, lifted her gun, and clicked off the safety. She couldn't look through her scope and risk being seen; she could only shoot if they found her or she'd risk alerting the rest of the krauts to their position.
The Germans entered clearly not expecting to find anyone inside. They were loud and boisterous, joking and laughing and likely a little bit tipsy. Posey thought of Easy and what they would have been like had they been able to take the town - they'd have found whatever food and alcohol was about as their first order of business and would likely have been doing patrols in much the same state. Thinking about it made her heart ache.
A torch shone light over the barn, a lazy, sweeping arc to double check that it really was empty, before they were on their way. Posey fought against every instinct which told her to check they'd really gone - the last thing she needed was to be the reason all four of them got caught.
A plane flying overhead muted whatever noise any lingering Germans might have been making. Still, Posey remained frozen to the spot. Her gun was up and aimed at thin air, ready to shoot at the first sign of a kraut crossing her path. She would only move when Bull told her it was safe.
A crash from the other side of the barn made Posey hold her breath. She could only assume the civilians hadn't made it out in time; she knew Bull wouldn't have made such a blunder. If there really were Germans still inside, they were all about to be done for.
"Hallo?" called a voice into the darkness, sounding about as scared as she felt.
One of the Germans had stayed behind.
"Hallo? Ist da jemand?" asked the voice, sounding like he was edging closer by the second.
More planes flew overhead, covering the sounds of whatever footsteps he was taking.
Posey's palms were sweating. She adjusted her grip on her rifle.
"Hallo? Ist da jemand?" the soldier asked again. Posey felt just slightly better knowing he was scared as well.
A bird flapped its wings from somewhere up in the rafters. The jumpy German's voice went up an octave. "Hände hoch!" Whatever else he said was covered by the noise of the planes overhead. Posey had never been so grateful to be beneath bomber planes.
The distinctive clang of metal on metal burst into the air.
Bull must have tried to attack him.
Posey slipped out from behind the wall concealing her and lifted her gun to aim, but Bull and the German were too close together. She couldn't risk it.
Hand to hand had never been her strong suit. The German was so much bigger than she was. All she was good at was shooting.
Posey pushed the thoughts from her head and unsheathed her bayonet.
The fight between Bull and the soldier increased in vigour. The German screamed and wailed. Bull must have gotten him with his bayonet.
The pair of them used their guns like swords, the kraut edging forwards and backing Bull out of the barn. If Bull got pushed far enough outside, the other krauts would see him. They'd be finished.
Posey slashed wildly with her bayonet, one big downward arc across the German's back. Bull slammed the butt of his rifle into his face and Posey stuck her bayonet into his neck. Blood sprayed over her as the German went down. Bull buried his own bayonet into his stomach. The German went limp.
It took a moment for Bull to meet Posey's eyes. When he did, a switch seemed to flick in his brain. He turned and ushered the two civilians out of the back door, leaving Posey standing alone over the body of the man they'd both killed.