Reincarnated: Vive La France-Chapter 352: Men yell and do not hear themselves.

The tank groans forward, smoke curling.

Białek stands up without meaning to, like a man seeing a wave.

"Shit!" Staszek cries, tears in his voice now. "It's...."

A German bullet slashes powder at his feet.

He flinches and drops the box.

It thuds into the mud with a sound so small it's obscene.

"Pick it up!" Kulesza roars.

He feels his throat rip.

Staszek dives, hands fumbling blind in slime.

The detonator's cord tangles around his fingers.

He gets it, he gets it, he....

A shadow falls over him.

"Staszek!" Białek yells.

He slings his rifle, grabs a fistful of Staszek's collar, and hauls.

Staszek slides like a fish on a bank.

The tank's track bites the edge of the ditch and throws a curtain of mud into their faces.

They roll.

The track misses Staszek's head by the width of a confession.

"Fuck you!" Lewandowski screams at the machine, voice breaking, and empties his magazine into the side of the tank because it's something his hands can do.

The bullets spark and skid.

The tank does not care.

"Move!" the German officer howls in the hatch, eyes wild now, teeth bared.

He looks a little bit like a man who realizes he's not as in control as the map suggested.

The second tank clanks onto the boards.

The bridge sags like a tired back.

"Again!" Kulesza shouts to Staszek.

He doesn't know if the man can even hear him.

His ears ring. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

The whole world is a bell.

Staszek shoves the muddy plug back in on instinct, on desperation, on raw hope, and slams his palm flat on the box.

A sound like a cough answers from somewhere under the boards.

The tank lurches.

Everything tilts.

"DOWN!" Białek yells, and yanks Staszek by the belt.

The ditch becomes a mouth and swallows them.

The first plank goes.

The tank's nose drops a handspan.

The German officer's hand scrabbles for the rim, knuckles white.

"Schei.....!" he barks, and the word tears in half.

The second tank kisses the first in the ass end, metal on metal, a clang that makes teeth hurt.

Smoke belches.

Men shout in two languages at once.

Somewhere to the left a Polish squad, wild with a hope that feels like rage, opens up with everything they have rifles, an old Chauchat that someone dragged out of a barn, curses.

Bullets stitch the road and hit flesh.

A German private does a stupid little dance and falls.

Another crawls, leaving a trail like a slug.

"Push! PUSH!" the German lieutenant on the far bank screams, spittle flying, face gone red.

His voice cracks into something too young.

"More smoke!" someone howls near him.

The canister rolls, hisses, dies....the fuse wet.

"Reload!" the Stuka pilot mutters to himself over the bridge, eyes tracking the wobble in the tank line, hands cold in his gloves.

He dives his plane's nose an inch.

His wingman says, "Wait...friendlies on the bridge, idiot. .." and the pilot swears and hauls, stomach climbing his throat.

Under the deck, water slaps stone.

Staszek looks at Kulesza, eyes huge. "Again?" he chokes.

Kulesza nods, too fast.

He looks like a man about to punch God.

Staszek jams the plug.

His thumb is bleeding.

He hits the box like he's slapping a stubborn child.

A second cough.

A wooden scream.

The bridge's middle leans away from itself, old nails thinking about their last day on earth.

"Back! BACK!" Białek bellows at anyone with ears, and gets an elbow in the face for his trouble as men thrash and the ditch becomes a barrel of limbs.

Lewandowski is still on his knees in the road, empty rifle in his hands, laughing like a lunatic.

"Come on!" he yells at the tank. "Come on, bitch, drown!"

The tank answers by spitting a burst a meter high that shreds the hedge.

Twigs fall like confetti.

A piece of leaf sticks to Lewandowski's lip.

He spits it out and grins bloody.

"Jesus Christ," Kulesza rasps.

He grabs Lewandowski by the collar and throws him bodily into the ditch. "Head down!"

The German officer in the hatch finally makes a choice.

He drops inside, slams the lid, and the tank's engine howls like an animal hauled on a chain.

"Reverse!" someone screams on their net.

"Forward!" someone else roars.

The driver, sweating like he's got fever, panics and picks both for a heartbeat.

The tank shudders, dips, climbs, and the decking beneath gives them its very last favor for the year.

Staszek raises the box again, breath hitching, thumb white on the toggle.

"Now!" Kulesza tries to say, but his voice is gone, and he has to push the word out like a weight through a torn throat.

Staszek slams his hand down.

The blast is nearer this time, wetter, wronger.

Boards leap, nails ping, water erupts in a fan.

The tank's left track bites air, spins once like a wheel on a child's toy, and then the whole machine yawns toward the river like it just remembered gravity.

Inside, the driver swears very softly, a prayer with only one syllable.

The German officer throws his shoulder against the hatch because instinct is stupid.

He reaches for the rim and feels the sun on his glove for what might be the last time today.

Kulesza's ears fill with cotton.

Białek's mouth opens and makes no sound.

Lewandowski's laughter dies, replaced by pure horror.

Staszek is smiling like a lunatic through tears. "You bastard," he whispers at the tank, at the river, at the box in his hand, at all of it. "Drown."

The second tank shoves, the first tanks shifts, the bridge finally lies to itself and then stops lying.

All at once the world decides.

Steel goes down.

Water comes up.

Men yell and do not hear themselves.

A hand claws the hatch rim once, twice.

Białek grabs Staszek and rolls as the ditch spits them out in a slurry of mud, smoke, splinters, and the first rain of the day.

"Move!" Kulesza tries to shout, but it's just air.

He hauls Lewandowski up by the belt.

Somewhere a German MG barks like a dog chained too tight; somewhere a Polish gun answers with a hoarse cough.

The Stuka pilot swears, banks hard left, and the wingtip scythes water vapor just above the river like chalk on a board.

"Back to the second position!" Kulesza wheezes, voice breaking at last. "Now!"

"Back...fuck....back!" Białek echoes, shoving men by shoulders, by helmets, by the small of the back.