Chapter 12: This Is the First Resurrection

PASSCHENDAELE RIDGE, FLANDERS, BELGIUM

November 1917

Freddie had found a tin hat; he scrabbled with it at the wet earth until he could hardly move his hands, and then he and Winter took turns, inhaling mud and water, scraping at the mud and broken concrete, only occasionally encouraged by the fresh air coming in. Useless, Freddie thought. Still he dug. Liquid earth slid down and tried to choke him. He’d never been so tired in his life. He and Winter didn’t talk anymore, except for grunts as they squirmed to change places. More than anything, Freddie wanted to stop. To rest. Perhaps he was tired enough to die, if he fell asleep. But Winter kept on, utterly silent now. Freddie didn’t want to go out whining like a child.

Then, suddenly, he thrust a hand forward, and there was—nothing. Was that light? Was he dreaming? It was Winter’s voice, panting but still matter-of-fact, that steadied him. “Can you put your head and shoulders through? You are not so big.”

Freddie crawled forward. Wriggled. Realized that there was more air. Sucked it in. The gap was narrowing— “Push me!” he called back over his shoulder. “Winter, can you—?”

Winter was already shoving at Freddie’s feet. Even exhausted, with only one good arm, he was strong. Freddie pushed back at him, clawed at wet earth and stone with the final strength of desperation—oh, there was light—not daylight but light, sourly red, but better than their muddy tomb, and so he reached for it.

And stuck.

He writhed, panicking. A freezing hand closed round his calf, and Winter snapped, in a voice like a Lewis gun, “You will be calm, boy, or I’ll kill you after all. Calm.” Freddie forced himself to go still. Winter’s voice seemed to speak to him from some underworld. “Go slowly, Iven. Slowly.”

Freddie moved. His head. His shoulders. His hips. Squirmed. Squirmed again. Felt his clothes tear. And then his shoulders were past the narrowest point, and he was scrabbling through the foulest oozing mud and out into baleful night. He turned at once and reached back down.

The opening was not wide enough for Winter, but he shoved the tin hat through to Freddie, who widened the hole until finally a groping hand emerged. Freddie seized it, heedless of Winter’s wound, and pulled with everything he had.

Winter slid out.

They collapsed, half-sunk in near-liquid mud, as though the earth were trying to finish what the pillbox had started. Freddie realized that he was whispering to himself without being aware of it, thought for a moment he was praying. Realized that he was just whispering Fucking hell, over and over. He wasn’t sure how long they lay there, just two dirty smudges, invisible. But the whistle of a falling shell rattled Freddie back to alertness. He raised his head. Grew properly aware, for the first time, of their surroundings.

It was night. Night and cold. It had been warmer in the pillbox. Now they lay out under torrents of almost frozen rain, and enough wind to riffle Freddie’s hair. A million craters stretched from one horizon to the other, full of water that reflected a sky glittering with shellfire. No landmarks but the ruined pillbox. Just holes and water, right to the flame-limned horizon. He couldn’t see any people, although he could hear grenades and small arms and trench mortars, the sound muffled by the wet air. There must be people. But they were hidden by the night and the rain and the lips of innumerable shell holes.

It was too wet, too dark, to tell their direction. They could as easily have been looking toward Germany as Canada. Could they wait until dawn? No, Freddie thought. They’d die. The rain was close cousin to snow, and already he was trying to catch it on his parched tongue. He’d be starting on the water in the shell holes soon, never mind the spent explosives and dead bodies. And Winter was wounded.

“Winter,” he whispered.

The German didn’t answer.

“Winter,” said Freddie again, seized with sudden terror. That Winter had died and left him alone. It was as though they were still in the pillbox, each the only thing in the other’s shrunken world. “Hans,” he said, loud and clumsy, catching the other man by his sodden shoulders, half-dragging him upright.

Winter raised his head just as a star shell went up and filled the darkness with cold light. Freddie realized with a shock that this was his first sight of the other man’s face. He saw close-cropped hair, matted and filthy. Helmet gone. Broad features, deep-set eyes, sunken with exhaustion. Generous mouth, stubbled jaw, hollow cheeks. All color bleached to bone by the white light overhead. Except for his eyes, dark as blood. It had been easier, somehow, to think of the German as only half-real: a bony shoulder, a voice in the dark.

Freddie wondered what Winter saw. Russet hair, he supposed, turned to black by filth and by night, face sprayed with freckles, his beard coming in bristly, nose a babyish snub that Freddie had despised, back when that kind of thing mattered.

The light went out, and Winter was just a dark shape again, a living presence beside him. “We can’t stay here,” said Freddie.

“I know.” Winter didn’t need to say anything else. They were both bareheaded, wet. Weakened by thirst and confinement. They’d crawled out of their tomb. But they weren’t back in the land of the living. Not by a long chalk.

“Do you know which way is which?” It didn’t occur to Freddie that they might separate. The only thing worse than this place would be to face it alone. He’d fall into a shell hole and drown, and no one would ever know what had happened to him. The rain fell stinging into his eyes. His hands were still on Winter’s shoulders.

“No,” said Winter.

“We’ll have to chance a direction. We’ll die if we stay here.”

Their eyes met, just as another star shell faded, and in the dark Winter asked, “Am I your prisoner? Or are you mine, Iven?”

And wasn’t that just the bloody question? Freddie let him go. “Christ, each the other’s, I suppose. But I’ll follow, if you choose the direction.”

He couldn’t see Winter’s expression anymore, just the general shape of his features, the loom of him against the insane sky. But he could almost feel Winter’s surprise. Maybe Freddie didn’t need to see him, after all that time in the dark. Awkwardly, he added, “You saved my life.”

“Very well.” But still Winter hesitated. Freddie understood: It was a guess. Whichever way they went, there was danger. Stray bullets. Stray shells. Drowning, in that mud and oily water. Simply being shot on sight, by whichever side they ran into first.

“This way, then,” said Winter at length. “But do not speak, Iven, until we know where we are. I won’t either. If the wrong side hears German—or English—they’ll…”

“They’ll shoot first,” Freddie finished, and wiped half-frozen rain from his eyes. “Ask questions later.”

“Stay close,” said Winter, and started to walk.