The Undaunted (Book 2 of The Undesirables)

Chapter 8: The Organ-Grinder

Petr heard a gunshot and then Yuri's screams went silent.

"Angel," Josef observed.

"Angel," Petr nodded. He knew Josef was admiring what Karen had done. Josef was one of the few fellow veterans in the platoon. As a veteran, he had seen his fair share of defeat.

There hadn't been very many victories for the Russians. Wherever the Germans went they won. Which meant, if you were a veteran, you weren't very optimistic.

Especially in Stalingrad.

Until now, a Russian's best chance for survival was to run. But you couldn't run immediately. If you did, you'd be shot by the communist political officers for cowardice.

So instead, you had to fight, but not forever. You just had to fight long enough for the political officers to panic, too. Once they ran, so could you.

As a result, Russian veterans were cynical, but they were also tenacious fighters. They had to be, because they had to fight off the Germans until the men behind them routed. It was the only way they could survive.

Petr was a veteran. He'd even participated in a rare Russian victory, helping to destroy several German tanks on the Leningrad front. But he'd also been a part of Second Shock Army, one of the Soviet Union's most disastrous defeats.

So he knew the value of being a veteran, and he welcomed Josef's experience beside him.

But he also knew why Josef so admired Karen. Retreat was no longer an option, not from this city. Stalin himself had forbidden anyone, even civilians, from escaping. And, more importantly, the Volga River prevented that escape more effectively than a thousand communist political officers. For the moment, Stalingrad was a prison.

And they all knew that soon it would be a graveyard.

None of them, especially not the veterans, expected to survive.

That isn't to say they were without hope. They held out great hope for two things. First, they hoped to send at least one hated German to hell before they met their own fate. And two, they hoped that their deaths would be quick and painless.

That's why Yuri's screams caused so much anguish among them. It shattered their hope. Yuri's death wasn't quick and it was far from painless.

But Karen's mercy killing revived that hope. They hoped that she would do the same for them.

All except Petr.

Petr was in love with Karen, and the last thing he wanted was for Karen to see him die. That's why he had requested that she be assigned to a different squad.

Petr had been in love with Karen since he first set eyes on her outside of Leningrad. She was dirty, and starving, and bloody, having just beaten an NKVD officer to death with Petr's own fighting shovel.

Petr didn't realize he was in love at that time. He argued with her, he mistrusted her, and he even feared her. After all, she'd just killed a government agent. Was she an enemy of the state?

Logically, Petr couldn't be sure. But emotionally he believed she was innocent. When Petr was a boy, his own father had been arrested by the NKVD. Petr's father had been innocent, too. So, Petr never trusted the NKVD, either. Still, just because his father had been innocent didn't mean Karen was.

Petr's emotions and logic struggled with each other for days. But eventually Petr's heart won out. Eventually he and Karen learned to trust each other. They opened up to each other. And from that point forward they'd been inseparable. So much so that Karen had given up her chance for safety in favor of staying here with Petr, in favor of dying with him.