Oh brother, where art thou?

Sicily | 1943

5:38A.M

“Rosalie? Rosalie, can you hear me?”

She stirred at the sound of her name being called to her from beyond the darkness. She could not see who was calling her, so she continued to follow the sound of the familiar voice until the small ball of light off in the distance bubbled into the room’s dangling, ceiling light bulb. Garret’s tired face blinked in and out as her eyes adjusted to her surroundings.

“Rosalie, can you hear me?” Garret asked again, while gently stroking her hair away from her mouth.

“Garret?” She said, groggily.

“I’m here.”

“What happened? Where are we?”

Garret helped lift her head from the wooden pews with his hand, assisting her drug riddled body to regain control of itself.

“After those two religious imposters saved us from getting arrested, the nun stuck a hypodermic needle into the nape of your neck. The tall man then cradled you in his arms, while the nun marched me at gunpoint. Seeing how I was unarmed, and the fact that you were unconscious, I needed to play this out. Using the cover of the massacre, they brought us here. It’s another church. Much older and far less fancy as the others I’ve seen so far in Sicily. You’ve been out for almost twenty-four hours, Rosalie, and as far as I can tell, we’re at the edge of town, but we’re nowhere near that drainage system.”

Rosalie looked around, studying the interior of the small church. She had no idea where they were, and was fuming with questions. So she started with the most obvious.

“Where is Corrado? I have this horrible memory of him. Please, tell me it’s not true.”

Garret sighed, then placed both of his hands onto her shoulders, “Rosalie, I need you to listen to me. Corrado’s -”

“Dead,” Nadine said, as she stalked into the room from a hidden door beyond the nave’s final marble pillar, “Left to bleed out on the street.”

The insult was unnecessary, prompting Garret to lunge at the woman. A quick flick of her arm, and the barrel of a Luger kept him from making any such pathetic attempt. She flicked the barrel again, this time with her wrist, and Garret stepped back, and sat down onto the pew next to Rosalie.

“Good boy,” Nadine snarled, “It’s nice to see you again, Rosie. However unfortunate the circumstances may be.”

“Who are these people, Rosalie?” Garret asked.

“Has she not told you? How rude of her,” Nadine said as she pranced from pew to pew, swaying the pistol back and forth.

The hidden door Nadine had entered through opened again, and Ulrich stepped forward from the shadows.

“Ah, Ulrich, my love. Just in time. Rosalie was about to tell her friend here who we are.”

Ulrich’s eyebrows raised, crinkling the thin skin in his forehead. He plucked a long, unfiltered cigarette from behind his left ear, then inserted it between his teeth, “Do not mind me, then. I wouldn’t want to spoil anything.”

He removed a pack of matches from his pants pocket, lit the cigarette, then quietly sat four pews down from Rosalie and Garret.

“The stage is yours, Rosalie. Go on, tell him who we are.”

Garret was confused by the theatrics these two were putting on, but he had seen what they were capable of in the field, and he knew that they were both German, so he was forced to respect their formidability. He looked at Rosalie, who was crying from both eyes, and allowed her to speak.

“They are Nazi hunters. The ones I told you about. The ones who kidnapped our parents. They’re the ones who blew up the road, and nearly killed you. Now they’ve killed Corrado.”

Nadine clapped her hands together three times, filling the church with eerie reverberations.

“Nazi hunters, you say? What do you think, my love?”

Ulrich puffed out a ridiculous amount of smoke in front of his face, nearly blotting out his feral eyes staring intensely behind his oval glasses.

“I like it. It is a child’s understanding, but it’s accurate and appropriate given her perspective.”

Rosalie watched as Ulrich finished, and flicked his cigarette, then popped a small pill into his mouth from a small, red and blue tin.

Garret wanted to throttle both of them. They had tried to kill him, and would have succeeded if it wasn’t for a bout of impossible luck.

“Your assessment is quite illuminating, Rosalie, and impressively accurate. Save for one small detail,” Nadine said.

“What detail? Rosalie asked, now fully conscious and aware of her surroundings.

“We did not kill Corrado.”

“Just because your hand wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger, you are still responsible. You’ve forced us to travel this path. you forced us to be on that street on that day during that riot. You forced him to go inside of that warehouse. You forced that soldier to fire his rifle.”

“You’re still not seeing the whole picture, Rosalie,” Ulrich said, standing to his feet, “Those soldiers fired for a reason. They fired because of an accidental gunshot. A mistake made by someone searching for the same thing we are. A mistake made by someone you know. Someone close to you.”

Rosalie’s head pounded from dehydration, and she could barely make any sense of what Ulrich was telling her. Then the hidden door behind the last pillar in the nave opened for a third time, and the face of the dark figure that stepped into the candle light disturbingly began to connect all of the impossible dots in the mystery.

“Rosalie, my dear. How are you feeling?” Father Burgio said, “I want to apologize for sedating you, but some of us believed it was the only way to get you here.”

Rosalie stared in amazement as the man who she saw get shot through the neck, and bleed out in the grass beside her, was now standing in front of her with a simple bandage wrapped around his neck.

Garret was sharing her shock because he too watched as this man got shot through the neck. He was sure it was a kill shot, considering the amount of blood he had lost. Yet here he stood. Alive.

“You look surprised to see me,” Burgio said, sitting two pews down from Rosalie and Garret.

“You got shot…through the neck,” Rosalie said, struggling to voice each word as she relived the moment, “I’ve never seen so much blood. We thought you were dead.”

“And yet, here I am. A miracle. Wouldn’t you say?

He turned his head towards Garret, “And what about you? Sergeant McLaughlin. As I was laying there in the cool grass, bleeding out beside Rosalie, the last voice I remember hearing before blacking out was yours, screaming, He’s gone! Are you just as surprised to see me?”

“There was no time,” Garret shot back, standing his ground, “We were being fired upon and your wound was beyond my repair. We had no choice.”

“I see,” Burgio said, rising from his pew.

“How?” Rosalie asked, “How did you survive?”

Father Burgio stepped back into the aisle and approached Nadine who was holding another syringe in her hand. She handed it to Burgio, who then slowly turned back around and began stalking towards Rosalie and Garret - keeping the needle tucked between his fingers behind his back.

“Purpose, my dear. I am just a servant. We are all just mortal servants to his eternal mercy. I was simply not yet ready to be received by his grace. I have been sent back to continue my work.”

“Your work?” Rosalie said, looking around at all three of her adversaries, “Corrado is dead. Are you telling me…that you were a part of that? All of this time? You’ve been a part of it?”

Nadine began clapping from her pew, congratulating Rosalie for finally landing on the correct conclusion.

“I confronted Corrado in the alleyway outside of the factory,” Burgio began, “I tried to reason with him. Encourage him to come with me. Unfortunately, he too thought I was dead, and attacked me when I reached out my hand. He stole my gun and shot at me as he ran back out into the main square. I believe you know what happened next.”

“That’s a bullshit story,” Garret said, pushing himself to his feet, slightly dislodging the pew in front of him.

Nadine rose from her pew to challenge him, “I agree, Sergeant. Tell her what really happened in that alley way.”

Ulrich rose from his seated position, adding reinforcement for Nadine’s request.

The room fell ominously silent as Father Burgio’s entire demeanor shifted from holy to something much darker, “He shouldn’t have run from me.”

Rosalie slowly rose to her feet, using the pew in front of her for balance, “That gunshot…that was you?”

“Straight through the heart. I had no choice, Rosalie. I’m sure you can understand that.”

“Son of a bitch,” Garret said, as he lunged towards Father Burgio.

A deafening gunshot suddenly exploded inside of the small chamber, halting Garret’s advance.

Nadine was standing behind the barrel of a smoking Luger, prepared to fire it again with lethal intention if Garret decided to make another poor decision.

“Now that everyone has been reunited and informed of the details of our situation. It’s time to move on to the next part of the - "

An explosion ripped through the front entrance of the nave, while a smaller explosion tore a hole in the ceiling just behind Nadine and Ulrich. Debris from the ceiling and room above crashed to the floor all around them, concealing them in a chaotic avalanche of dust and wood.

Two masked figures, aiming 1911 sidearms, came sprinting into the room through the flickering flames of the first explosion.

Spotting only one visible enemy, the smaller shadowy-figure fired three rounds into Father Burgio’s chest.

His work had finally come to an end.

The taller, broader figure lifted Garret from his feet, and helped him flee the collapsing church. The smaller, petite figure grabbed Rosalie by the arm and escorted her from the church with haste.

Once Rosalie was sage from the flames and following Garret, and the other mystery gunman down a dark corridor, she re-entered the nave and removed the black ski-mask.

Her dark-brown curls unraveled in a triumphant flaunt of victory as she made eye contact with Nadine through the raging flames, swirling smoke clouds, and crumbling debris.

Never fuck with a mother’s child.