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Excerpt from THE CHILDREN’S WAR
“As
the London divisions of the glorious troops of the Fatherland march proudly past the Gauleiter’s podium, they salute the Thousand
Year Reich!” the announcer intoned pompously. “Following them, in impressive formation, are the noble soldiers of our great
allies, the Red Army! Together our victorious armies will defeat the evil empire of Capitalist gangsters across the Atlantic
and claim our rightful place as the only Superpower of the millennium!”
It was enough to make him get up and turn the television
off. The room went dark, illuminated only by the thin strip of orange light which scattered off the night fog to find its
way through the gap between the shade and the window frame. The ominous thump, thump, thump of a police helicopter flying
low overhead rattled the thin glass of the window pane. Neither of them took any notice of it.
Allison slumped onto the
pillow on his bed and took a deep drag off the cigarette he had momentarily abandoned. “Did you go?” she asked, waving her
hand at the television to indicate the parade which they had just seen on the news.
“Of course! You know me, always the
patriot!”
“Yes, our little blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan-boy!” she enthused comically.
“There’s more brown than blond,”
he sniffed, “and my eyes are gray!”
“It has always bugged you, hasn’t it, looking like one of their poster boys?” she guessed
with an indulgent smile.
“No. Other people have always bugged me, trying to convert me, trying to get me…” He stopped,
suddenly aware that she had been teasing. He smiled sheepishly at his folly and she laughed in response.
“So why did you
go to the parade?” she asked.
“It ran right past the restaurant, so I didn’t get much choice. We all stepped outside, waving
our little flags. Look.” He pointed at the bedside table, “I brought one of each back for you.”
She glanced at the two
flags lying intimately one on top of the other, the hammer and sickle obscuring most of the swastika. “Ah, yes, so we’re allies
again,” she observed.
“Seems so.”
“They did the switch rather fast this time.”
“That’s because nobody gives a fuck
anymore,” he guessed as he returned to the bed and gently removed the cigarette from her fingers. He stubbed it out, then
turned to look at her suggestively. “I certainly don’t, do you?”
“What’s this?” She picked up an official looking piece
of paper that was lying underneath the little flags.
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“Ach, a notice from the neighborhood committee.
I’ve missed three meetings this month. Don’t worry, I’ll get the restaurant to say I was on the evening shift.”
“I do worry,”
she countered. “You should go to these things. It doesn’t look good to miss so many.”
He waved his hand in exasperation.
“Every time I go, the local matrons swoop down on me like vultures so they can introduce me to eligible and near-eligible
women. ‘Not married! How are you ever going to get a flat?’” he mimicked. “Sooner or later they’re going to march me and some
other poor unfortunate to the Registry office and we’ll be married before we can sober up enough to object.”
“Maybe you
should get married. Find someone you could trust, you know, from the organization.”
He sat next to her on the bed and gently
curled one of her dark locks around his finger. “Then there’d be two divorces necessary, wouldn’t there?”
She smiled wanly.
“Isn’t it about time we go pick up those papers?”
He shook his head. “No, I was warned off our contact this morning. May
be tainted.”
“So there’s no work for tonight?” she sniffed. “I cancelled going to a concert with…”
“Your husband?” he
asked as he leaned into her and kissed her neck, then her cheek, then her lips.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean to mislead you, I only just found out this morning. There’s still time if you want to go.” His hand slid
down her arm to clasp her hand.
Her fingers wove into his. “I’d like to stay,” she murmured.
“Do you have any idea,
how much I love you?” he whispered, choking back the intensity of his need for her.
She reached out and pulled him onto
her and there, in the darkness, in the privacy of the simple room he rented under an assumed name, there, where no one would
find them, he made love to her, to the woman he loved, to the woman he loved more than life.
To a woman who was dead.
Dead for four years.
His thoughts choked on this paradox and gasping with the inconsistency, he opened his eyes. There
was nothing but darkness surrounding. He frantically searched for a meaning to this part of his dream but he could see nothing,
not a hint of light. Jarring memories swept through him: fighting for his life, crashing noises, dizzying pain. Blackness.
A nothingness as horrible and irremediable as Allison’s death.
With a slow, burning terror, he realized he was not dreaming…
Buy it now at your bookstore or online.
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