Road Rage

Sicily | 1943

Ulrich placed the Italian rifle, with a sixty-millimeter anti-tank attachment, down onto a thin pile of leaves, then swiftly hurdled himself over the highway’s guardrail. Nadine did the same with her rifle, and followed Ulrich with a similar vile grin, slicing her six-inch dagger through the air as if she was sharpening the blade with the wind. Ulrich yanked his Luger from his waistband, and together in stride, closed in on the burning supply truck.

Hot smoke seeped into her nostrils, filling her lungs with noxious diesel chemicals. The front of her head pounded with pressure, and blood oozed from a deep gash beneath her two main, curly bangs. Her vision was blurred, and her ears rang with a deafening high pitch which intensified her headache. She tried to make sense of what had just happened, but all of the controls on the truck’s dashboard were all upside down.

She reached out towards Garret, who was twisted into a painful position next to her, and tugged on his jacket in an attempt to get him to wake up. He was unresponsive. Craning her neck, she finally made the harrowing connection that the truck must have flipped over when they hit the second crater. All she could remember before blacking out was a blinding flash of bright white and red light, then a loss of gravity.

Shuffling, and moaning from the rear of the truck reminded her of who was back there. She shifted herself upwards, and pulled back the partition. The concealed space was dark, save for the slivers of light coming through the numerous tears in the tarp.

The Italian man who they rescued was face down in a pool of blood. She was unsure of where the blood was coming from, but the amount wasn’t encouraging. The woman was laying on her back beside the mean, writhing and groaning. Her arms were both slashed, and her left ankle was bent in a direction bones were not meant to bend. Corrado was hunched over the satchel he took from the house, the one he stuffed with the pieces of the violin. He was also bleeding, and Rosalie could see where.

He must have hit his face against something when they flipped because his nose looked deformed, and it was oozing with blood which coated his entire mouth, neck, and shirt. What really concerned her was the rest of his body. It wasn’t moving.

“Corrado,” she said, as loud as her fiery lungs would allow, “Are you okay?”

He did not answer. The only response she received was from the woman who had begun weeping over the body of the dead man beside her. Needing to find a way to get to her brother, she shifted herself around until she was able to place both of her feet against the glass in the passenger window. It was already shattered, so if she kicked it, the rest would fall away.

The position in which the truck had landed, crushed the front end, making the windshield too tight of a passageway, and too jagged to safely climb through. Kicking out the window was her only option.

She braced the soles of her boots against the weakened glass, and stomped. The first attempt bounced off, but the second stomp broke through - shattering what remained. Stretching out her right leg first, she tried to shimmy her body out of the smoking truck when a familiar, slithering voice pierced her already piercing eardrums.

“Rosalie,” the voice said, with a slight melody.

Her heart skipped a few beats, and her chest erupted with pain. Her lungs malfunctioned and she gasped as hard as she could to quickly pump air back into them. She didn’t want to believe what she had just heard, but hearing it again, clearer, and closer, solidified the nightmare.

“Rosalie Tutino,” sang the voice.

Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes, but there was also adrenaline boiling in her veins. She needed to defend the truck, and everyone inside of it. There was no running away this time. She needed to face him.

Unable to locate her pistol, she removed Garret’s from its holster, placed it outside, then corralled herself through the window. Taking a moment to catch her breath, and to breathe in fresh air, the woman that was crying in the truck bed had climbed out, and was stumbling towards her.

Speaking in Italian, Rosalie tried to reason with the woman.

“You need to get down. Please. It isn’t safe.”

The woman mumbled something Rosalie could not understand, and continued to walk past her, towards the open road. Rosalie reached out and grabbed the woman’s arm, to keep her from walking out into the open, but the woman spat at her feet and threw up her arms - forcing Rosalie back.

Still heavily dazed, and incredibly confused, Rosalie stepped back behind the cover of the truck’s front end.

The woman stepped out beyond the smoke, and stumbled down the road on one foot. She was badly bleeding from both arms, and was still mumbling to herself when a bullet ripped through her upper back. She fell forward, hard, and bled out in the middle of a sunny patch of asphalt.

Rosalie fell back at the sudden crack of gunfire, pressing her back up against the truck.

“I know you can hear me, Rosalie,” Ulrich said, “There is nowhere left for you to hide.”

She could tell from the clarity, and volume of his voice that he was getting closer with every second. She had to do something, fast. She could not believe that Ulrich had traveled alone. Surely there were others closing in from multiple directions. But she was armed, and that was better than nothing. She rose to her feet, keeping her spine pressed up against the tarp.

The engine sparked, and continued to leak both smoke and fuel. She was no mechanic but she knew what a combination of fuel and fire would create. Time was running out, and Corrado and Garret were still inside of the truck.

“If you try to run, I will find you,” Ulrich said.

Thinking quickly, she dropped back down to her knees and wedged herself through the passenger window.

Luckily Garret was slowly regaining consciousness, which made her task easier.

“Give me your knife,”Rosalie screeched in pain.

Garret was too dazed to comply fast enough so she forced herself inside and searched Garret’s body until she found it. Crawling back outside, she shuddered at the depth of the fuel puddle as she hustled back to the rear tarp.

Taking the knife in her right hand, she raised her arm high above her head, stabbed the blade through the tarp up to the hilt, then dragged the knife down. The blade sliced through the tarp with ease, allowing the pieces to part wide enough to fit through. She did the same thing to two more sections of the tarp, exposing the entire, overturned interior.

Corrado was still laying bloody, and limp. It was a sight that stoked all of the emotions brewing inside of her breaking heart. Collapsing in on themselves, she did the only thing she could. Go on the offensive.

A disturbing rustling caught her attention in the woods behind her. She turned, pistol raised, and fired three shots into the trees. Without waiting for return fire, she re-positioned herself at the rear of the truck, and peered her head around.

Standing in the street, no less than fifty feet away, was Ulrich. Silver smoke consumed his face, fogging the oval lenses of his glasses. He was in plain Sicilian clothes, and his Luger was tightly gripped in his left hand.

Raising her pistol towards the man who ruined her life, she leveled her arms on the truck’s rear step ladder and prepared to squeeze the trigger once she had the perfect shot.

A disturbing rustle reached her ears again, and her instincts told her to fire. Being caught off guard made her shot miss its target. She received confirmation of her miss by a cackling laugh.

She was about to fire again when a sharp, thickly accented voice spoken in rough English sent thousands of spiders up and down her skin.

“Do not fire that again.”

Rosalie turned around, and saw a short, muscular woman standing by the pooling fuel, brandishing a large knife in her right hand. She too was also dressed in traditional clothing, yet Rosalie could tell she was far from Sicilian. And her accent was the same as Ulrich’s. This woman was also German.

Her face was lean, slightly scared, and sharply chiseled. The more Rosalie stared, the more her memory started to remember. This woman was with Ulrich when they attacked her, and Corrado at their home. The painful memory rapidly grew in strength because shortly after Corrado blew up their truck, this same woman ran off into the woods with a short man who looked exactly like her. Twins. She thought at the time. What a strange coincidence.

“If you fire again, I will make your death worse than it’s already going to be,” the woman said with disgust.

Rosalie’s arm lowered slightly, and her finger regressed from the trigger.

“There’s no way for you to succeed,” Rosalie said, “This area is crawling with American, and British soldiers. No matter what happens here, you cannot hope to escape Sicily alive.”

Nadine spat at Rosalie’s feet, and squeezed the grip of her dagger, as if envisioning the euphoric sensation of sinking the blade deep into Rosalie’s flesh.

“Stupid child. Believe me. What’s going to happen here is going to matter.”

Nadine turned, and looked into the exposed truck bed at Corrado, who was finally showing signs of life. She smiled, elated at the fact that the boy had not denied her the gift of killing him herself.

“I am going to kill your brother. Call it retribution for killing my brother. Call it war. Call it whatever you want. He is going to die. Today. Right here. And right now. This theater of war is no place for children. So please allow me the honor of removing you.

Nadine stepped towards the truck, but was stopped short when a barrage of automatic gunfire lit up the morning.

Rosalie dropped to the ground, then poked her head out around the rear end of the truck. She saw Ulrich’s lengthy frame sprinting towards the woods as the armed vehicle Garret had interacted with earlier came barreling down the road. The mounted gunner was firing rounds towards Ulrich, and he was screaming out orders in German.

Rosalie turned back around and saw the woman struggle with the evolving situation. Clearly she was being instructed to retreat, but her prize and prey laid so close, and it was wounded.

Nadine snarled at the thought of being deprived of her prey, but she knew that if she lingered any longer, she wouldn’t stand a chance against the mounted gunner. But just because she couldn’t slash the boy’s throat, and mutilate his body, didn’t mean she still wasn’t going to kill him. Keeping her eyes locked with Rosalie’s, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a lighter. She took two steps to the right, to allow Rosalie a clear line of sight to the still pooling pond of fuel, then tossed the ignited lighter into the dark liquid.

Nadine pounced into the woods, showing off her skills, and disappeared into the shadows, leaving Rosalie left to make another impossible decision. That fuel was going to blow, along with the rest of the truck, and Corrado and Garret were still both inside. She knew that she could realistically only save one.

With her heart broken, she laid down her pistol, and made her decision.