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If grease and dirt alone could kill, Norman should have died ten times over. He’d lay face down in the mud under Fury for hours after the German soldier, wearing an expression he knew all too well, turned off his flashlight and walked away.
A slow drip of oil spattered the back of Norman's neck, the dirt of the crossroads churned up by tank track and German boots soaked into his fatigues. With the dull pop of grenades still ringing in his ears and the metallic chaos of the broken SS company surrounding him Norman wished the dirt would swallow him whole. Not two days ago he begged Sargent Collier to kill him, not two hours ago he told the same man he was afraid to die. Now he pressed himself into the earth, tight against Fury’s half buried track and wished again for death.
The slow oil drip could be blood, his mind whispered, after the third cold splash on his exposed skin. Potato mashers didn’t blow up so much as cut you up, dice you into little pieces. Little pieces that could leak and splatter down between bolts and plates, through the hatch right by his destroyed seat.
His face still pressed to the mud Norman reached for a black gritty handful of the stuff. He’d piled as much around him as he could when he dived out the hatch. As he waited for the final Germans to pass through he was sure what he held in his hand could kill.
They were going to hold the road. Plant Fury in the earth, and they tried, yet it was not the bullets and shells that took them but the dirt. Norman didn’t have the guts or the gun to join them so he squeezed his first tighter, and hunkered down into the mud, wishing for death.
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Death road a pale horse. Did the Bible say that, or had Bible? Norman couldn’t remember but there were hooves by his head, bright white in the ashy dawn. He lay on his side, facing the road that looked out onto the field where they would have run for cover if not for Don.
”Don loves horses” Gordo whispered to Norman as he registers that a horse means people.
Their own people? Germans?
From where he is Norman can’t tell. He’s covered in dirt and his legs are numb. Amazingly he must have dozed off and the earth had not claimed him for her own. This left him with a choice, something Norman had taken for granted between enlisting for life in an army office and being kicked in the ribs by Don or struggling to breath with Grady’s arm around his throat. Free of their choke hold he could lie here, work a little harder, die a little more. Or he could climb into Fury. Though no one told him what to do, the tank called. Death rode a pale horse and Norman was the only one left alive. Another drip of oil, or was it blood ran down his neck. The hatch was sticky as he felt for a hand hold to pull himself into the unknown.
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Don had apologized - for what he’d done, what he couldn’t do, what he made Norman do. Norman found it hard to look at Grady and Gordo. Even Bible, coated in dust, made him angry. The dirt took them, gave them peace. Now Don, Norman couldn’t help but stare, so much that it felt wrong, irreverent, shameful. He wished for death while the same ass-hole who cheated it for years sat ripped up in front of him.
Norman’s coat rained gravel down into the tank when he removed it to place over his sergeant. Better to remember Don for who he was, not the corpse they’d eventually find.
Once he was safely hidden Norman let himself touch the rest of the still, hollow world around him. He braced himself on the turret seat then fell forward, just as Don had fallen over Bible before ending up in his final resting place.
”I’m sorry” Norman whispered into his coat, not sure what exactly he was apologizing for.
“It’s ok” something he said once before, unsure if Don believed him.
”Thank you”, the two words gritty on his tongue.
He held tight to the jacket, to Don. Norman didn’t want to let go, only the war waited for no one. The sound of men climbing the turret alerted him to what rested in Don’s slack hands.
Rose's blurry face was barely covered by his sweaty palms as Norman climbed over Don to point the revolver at the top hatch.
Death road a pale horse. What he was about to do was a righteous act. Their stand at the crossroads didn’t take him and the mud wouldn’t swallow him up, but he would die in Fury-
”Easy there boy.” Norman squinted and blinked in disbelief at the familiar face smirking down at him.
”One’s alive.”
The call ran out. Arms reached into the tank and hauled him out. With a medic on each elbow Norman was escorted to a waiting truck. He couldn’t see the road around him, couldn’t think out in the open so he focused on the mud at his feet and the gun in his hand. They tried to gently take it from him but he held fast, remembering Don’s hand gripping his, telling him to shoot.
It wasn’t until the ambulance door closed and Norman sat alone, rolling forward without a crew behind him that he opened his palm and let the revolver drop.
Rose smiled past him, her profile looking out the window. Norman looked with her, though the frosted, pitted glass.
Fury sat alone.
Though they told Norman he was alive, had announced for all to hear he could feel deep in his gut, right up to his heart a stretch, then a snap. His body may have risen but he knew his prayer was answered. Something in him died in the grit and grease, drowned in the dirt and mud. Something he would never get back.