by GlasOwl

IX

Jeri peered over the rubble and ruins of the wasteland where the Croatian National Guard and the Yugoslav Federal Army struggled for control. The dark that protected her also protected her quarry. Continuous shelling covered any sound she might make, but even though most of the rounds were falling inside the city, she still moved cautiously. Her hand tightened on the hilt of a large-bladed knife. She had been returning to the trenches from a scouting mission when she saw the unmistakable shape moving past a whitewashed section of wall -- all that was left standing of some house. A target of opportunity if not exactly the purpose of her mission.

An explosion nearby lit the area momentarily. Jeri ignored it, having learned by now to distinguish between close and closer in the continual shelling. Even the cow she was stalking seemed to know the difference although it turned its horned head to look in the direction of the blast.  Jeri mentally formed a path during the brief instant of light and inched forward. She wondered how tame cows were. She was approaching this one as if it were a wild thing, like a deer or a wolf. Maybe she could just stand up and walk over and then lead it back to her squad. Kelly would probably know about cows.

The thought of Kelly made her heart hurt. Jeri tried not to think about Kelly too much. The pain of separation was like the shelling, constant and unbearable if thought about. It had been more than two weeks since she or Stepan had been able to get to Pijacu Street or the Tesla School. And each day was more like a century in hell. Anything might have happened. Some other members of her squad had left and returned to tell of being lost on streets where they had lived their entire lives, unable to find their way now that whole blocks had been destroyed. And no one could be sure of finding the people they had left.

Vukovar existed underground now. If a structure was still standing, more or less intact, it might be gone in minutes or hours. The shelling broke all the rules, devastating civic buildings, historical structures, religious centers -- even the Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas. The Chetniks unleashed by Milosevic had declared war on culture, on the expressions of civilization.
 

The hospital, which should have been spared by any civilized opponent, had been forced underground into the space that had been built as a shelter from nuclear war; guardsmen who had taken their wounded comrades for treatment came back with stories of patients put two to a bed, even under the beds.  Those who ventured outside shelters, daring the artillery and the snipers and the machine guns, soon discovered another dimension to the siege: the smell.  It was no longer possible to collect bodies and many remained where they had died. Nor could the bodies be buried if they were collected. Attempts at burial simply made more corpses.

Still Vukovar held out. Against what had been touted as the third largest standing army in Europe, the vastly outnumbered, poorly equipped defenders of the completely surrounded city hung on, day after day. The guardsmen and volunteers had only a few armor-piercing weapons to hold off tanks and warplanes, but they also had their wits and their courage. So they stood, and held the Yugoslav Army from advancing, and gave heart to all of Croatia.

Jeri realized that she and the cow had been staring at each other for several minutes. She was hesitating, and it came to her that she was reluctant to kill the cow. Just like the truth was that she was afraid to see Kelly. Stepan had been back to Pijacu Street to see Ivo and Marija and the Tesla School basement where Kelly and Alenka worked, but Jeri had been somewhere else when he left the front, so she has missed that trip. She had to go soon, or she would die of longing, but by all that was holy she was afraid to look into Kelly's eyes.

The cow tossed its head at her. Everyone was hungry. Her squad had managed to cook a few potatoes the night before, and before that there had been a meal of boiled corn. The cow was a god-send. Jeri tightened her grip on the knife handle and it felt the same way it had just before she had driven the blade into one of Arkan's Chetnik Tigers. She hadn't been reluctant at all with her last target of opportunity.

Jeri and a small squad had made it their mission to take the war the enemy.  It was work she had been trained for and work she did well: disrupting order behind Chetnik lines. Her squad sabotaged equipment, set up tank traps, cut communications, stole ammunition or blew it up, fouled water supplies -- anything they could manage that made it more difficult to wage war on the city of Vukovar.

Jeri made an effort to avoid direct contact with the Chetniks. It was good tactics and much more effective to wreck tanks and roads than to get into firefights, but every so often an accident would happen and fighting couldn't be avoided. Something in her quickened and amplified when she joined battle at close quarters, something that was rooted deep within her. Discipline for Jeri, and she thought Arkadia O'Malley might understand this, was to grasp her skill as one would hold a sword and not let the exhilaration of it overcome her. So she directed her talents toward sabotage and sidestepped contact.

Until the night about a week before. She and Petar had been coming back from a reconnaissance. No one had been more surprised than Petar himself to discover that the bitter young graduate student in economics had a talent for sneaking around in the night, but he had volunteered to accompany Jeri once, and now he was her usual companion. They'd been scouting, trying to find out where the YFA might attempt their next attack. They'd found a small increase in tanks near one of the river roads, and they were bringing back the information when they passed a partially ruined shed lit by flickering lantern light, and heard voices coming from inside.

Jeri gestured for Petar to change direction so there would be less chance of alerting whoever was in the shed. She was getting ready to follow him when she heard the unmistakable sound of a human whimper. Jeri took a second look around and realized that the ruined house was at a distance from the lines, that whoever was there wanted privacy. She crept up and eased toward a pane-less window. The shelling of Vukovar was less loud here, but it still covered stealthy movements. One of the benefits of the barrage, Jeri thought wryly.

She saw pretty much what she expected. A lantern revealed three Tigers and one woman. The Chetniks weren't even paying attention to the woman who huddled in the corner, clutching a blanket around her. Not anymore, or not for the moment. Jeri had to take a minute to breathe and get her rage under control.

Jeri found the attachment for the gun she had brought from the Krajina.  It wasn't exactly a silencer but it muted the noise considerably. Which was a shame because you wanted a lot of noise when you were outnumbered.  Of course, if you were behind enemy lines, you didn't want a bunch of your targets' buddies to come running so you counted on getting some disorientation just by showing up and shooting. Which is what Jeri did, walked in the door-less entry and shot one guy. She'd come in between them and where they'd left their rifles.  She aimed for the second one who looked surprised and dodged her first bullet.  Then the gun jammed.

Useless piece of shit. It wasn't the first time the bullets had fouled.  Whoever sold Zagreb these cartridge magazines needed to be strung up and --

Jeri could finish that thought later. Her opponents were gathering themselves. The shack they were in appeared to have been some kind of tool shed. One of the the Tigers crouched, holding a long-handled axe. The other had picked up a rake with short, curved prongs. She could tell that the Chetniks thought they had her. The one with the axe had a pistol at his waist, but hadn't even bothered to unbutton the holster flap, not while Jeri, apparently weaponless, faced them. Jeri grinned at the men and took her knife from its sheath. One man grinned back, unimpressed even if the knife did have a big blade. The eyes of the other man narrowed, but he still felt he had the advantage.

Jeri felt the rage in her settle into something infinitely colder.  She assessed her opponents. One was tall, thin -- wiry thin, not hungry thin.  They'd both been eating well. He had long arms and held the rake like he might try out for a batter on a major league baseball team. The other guy was big but not so tall -- he had a shorter reach. He was confident.  She could see that in his eyes. He was past young, already beginning to go bald, but he was by no means past his prime. He jabbed the axe at her and she moved back. She leaned slightly to the left and picked up a short-legged wooden stool. It made a shield of sorts. Her opponents reeked of garlic and sweat and brandy. That was the thing about close fighting, it was personal.

They hadn't figured out yet that Jeri was a woman. Everyone in the trenches looked pretty much the same, especially now that the fall rains had turned the dirt to mud. Her jeans were loose and filthy, but she'd picked up a camouflage jacket and a cap like the Guard wore. Still, something was nagging them about her, she could see the Chetniks trying to figure her out in the bottom of whatever thick, twisted muscle they used for brains.

The guy with the rake swung. He didn't really think about it, he had just decided he wanted to swing. Jeri stepped aside and felt the rush of air as the steel prongs went past. The guy with the axe moved to her left, trying to get behind her. One of them was thinking. Jeri decided that she had better even the odds quickly. She moved toward the swinger in a feint, and then leaned back as he took her up on the suggestion and swung a huge roundhouse. It worked the way she planned. He was way off balance and she stepped toward him, using the stool in her left hand to catch the rake handle. The continued momentum of his swing carried him forward, leaning almost right into her knife. It might have nicked a rib but it mostly slid between.  Jeri kept it sharp.

The Chetnik who was still alive swore, some standard cultural comment about Jeri's mother's genital area, but it was heartfelt and he was worried now.  He was thinking about going for his pistol. He pulled the axe back and held it with both hands and then feinted toward her left. She read him, parried with the stool anyway, and shifted as he spun the axe the other way and swung it toward her right. She let it come close. They might have been moving in slow motion, she felt she had so much time. It was like reading a chess game a dozen moves ahead. Just as he got a grin on his face, she spoke.

"That your best shot, Slobo?"

Letting him know she was a woman would do two things. First, he'd think he had to be better than she was and he'd do something stupid. Second, she wanted him to know a woman was beating him. The first happened right away.  He was furious, his face went red and he swung the axe at her with all the finesse of a charging bull. She laughed as she stepped out of the way.  This was going to be much too easy. He swung again without putting a lot of muscle in it, only anger, and she caught the axe head in the stool and pulled. The idiot thought it was a tug of war. He should have let go of the handle and grabbed for her but instead he pulled, determined not to lose his axe, while all she wanted was to use it for a kind of fulcrum and swing toward his side. It wasn't a great cut, but she didn't want the knife to get deflected by a rib, so she slid it into his belly and twisted the blade up.

He knew he was dead. He dropped the axe and then just sat down holding his stomach together. Jeri picked her gun up and put in a new magazine. Then she walked over to the man on the floor and shot him in the head. She could have used half a dozen reasons, starting with the way the woman with the blanket looked, but the truth was she had liked seeing his arrogance turn to fear.  She had held off the shot just one instant too long.

That's what gave her nightmares.  That instant when she had to accept that she was very like the man she had just killed. Petar knew. He'd got to the door in time to see the end of the fight, and she could see in the way he avoided looking at her that he had seen the connection.
 

That's why it's called temptation.  Did you think the word only meant hungering for candy in Lent?

Christ, when had her conscience taken on Arkadia O'Malley's voice?

Discipline is always a series of small victories, small defeats.  Temptation is always there. You haven't given in to it, you've acknowledged it.  So don't be ridiculous and indulge in self-pity. You're avoiding the grief you really feel. That man was your brother just as the woman was your sister and there's a profound sorrow to knowing that.

Jeri took a step toward the cow. It raised its head expectantly and took a tentative step toward her, not away. In the old life, before war and rumors of war, people had meant food and water. Even now the animal hoped for some comfort. Jeri slipped her belt around the beast's head and began guiding it back to the lines where her comrades waited. Someone else would have to do the honors, but maybe they'd let her take some of the meat back to Pijacu Street.
 

Kelly took hold of one end of the soggy gray sheet and passed the other end to Alenka.  They twisted and wrung the water into the large metal wash tub.  Then they shook the sheet and hung it over one of the wires that had been strung along the hallway of the Tesla School basement. They went back and took another sheet and repeated the process. Washing sheets was a task they had grown quite adept at, though now that they had to collect rainwater, it was a more difficult task. The fire truck that had delivered water had been absent for several days and there was a rumor from the Vukovar Medical Center that the driver had been killed by snipers.

As the last damp sheet was placed over the line, Alenka slid wearily to the floor. The smell of bleach hung heavily in the corridor, but it was better than going back to the crowded gymnasium that had been built to be a bomb shelter in a nuclear war. The thick smoke of cigarettes did nothing to cover the odor of several hundred unwashed humans. The wounded were segregated in a smaller section off the gymnasium that had been turned into a makeshift treatment center.

"I want to go home, Auntie Laura."

Kelly settled beside Alenka in a kind of listless trance.  Lack of food sapped mental as well as physical energy. She looked at her hands. They were red and smelled of bleach.

"I want to go home," Alenka repeated.

Kelly slid down beside her.  "So do I," she said, thinking of low hills with trees splendid in their autumn colors, of harvested corn fields stretching in long rows of stubbled stalks, of rolled hay bundles waiting to be stacked.  Autumn in Ohio.

"Oh, Auntie, I forget sometimes that this isn't even your home."

A series of shells exploded above them. The school basement was a satellite medical center as well as a shelter for people who had sought refuge after being bombed out of their own homes. So of course it was a target of the Serbs -- or the Yugoslav Army -- or the Chetniks.  Kelly had lost track of which name was the more correct term to use for the people who were shelling civilians and sick and wounded people.

"It is now, Alenka."

"No."  Alenka shook her head fiercely. "You are not ashamed. If your home was truly here, you would be ashamed."

"What are you talking about?"  Kelly looked sharply at the young woman beside her. No one was immune to the depression of days spent without enough food, without sunlight, without peace from the incessant shelling, but Alenka had never said anything like this before.

Alenka had changed so much in the days underground. At first, she had shared her spirit and attitude with the children of the center. She could make them laugh, she could get them to sing songs like "Beautiful Vukovar," and she made up games that caused even the adults to smile. But at last, the dread and hunger sapped Alenka's reserves and her soft roundness became narrow, and shadows gathered around her eyes.

"I thought we were modern, that we were part of Europe at last and there was so much to be done. We could move into history and become healthier and wiser and kinder and smarter, we would be part of what makes the world better, but look -- we are savages. Nothing but savages. No wonder Europe doesn't want us. No wonder they will not come to help us."

Kelly put her arm around Alenka, remembering how awful it had felt to be inside a plague while the rest of the country simply ignored the existence of AIDS. She would hear George talking on the phone, then he would hang up and have one more name to add to the list of the condemned. There were so many.  The startled look that was becoming his permanent expression seemed a reflection of his wonder at how long this could go on as well as one of the markers of how far his illness had progressed. Then Kelly would go to the drug store, the grocery store, and all around her were people oblivious to
the plight of the plague victims in their midst.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," Edmund Burke had said in another century. In another life, Kelly had given the quote as a theme to one of her composition classes. The students hadn't done too well with it -- but then neither had the rest of the human race.

Kelly thought of places where people were buying some flavor of Starbuck's, where they were driving in aggravating traffic jams, where they were walking to the office copy machine --people who were completely ignorant that, in this remote corner of Europe, a handful of simple and ordinary men and women were proving once more that the most human thing of all was to be brave and resourceful, to survive and struggle to help others survive, to risk, to lay down your life for people you might not even know.

The worst of human kind was evident here, also: butchers and rapists, snipers who shot hapless children. Two days before, a mother had come to the shelter carrying her six-year-old daughter. The two of them had been making their way to the school after their neighborhood was about to be overrun by YFA soldiers. A sniper bullet had torn the child's leg and by the time the mother and daughter reached the school, it was too late to get anesthetics from the Vukovar Hospital. The child screamed throughout the amputation.  In the auditorium where the residents huddled, not one person dared to look at another.

The best and the worst were met in struggle in Vukovar, striving in a hideous contest to define the limits of the human soul.

"Vukovar is a light," Kelly said.  "What's done here is important. The truth of it will live and you're part of it."

Kelly felt Alenka's head nod against her. The young woman was no longer crying. Even tears took energy.

"Do you think we can try to go to Pijacu?" Alenka asked.  "I miss Marija and Ivo. And I want to see Srijeda."

Kelly felt a clutch of fear, but it passed. They could try when it got dark.  The attempt would be one more thing to take her mind off the amount of time it had been since she had seen Jeri.

As if to thwart Alenka personally, the incessant rain of mortars increased as soon as it became dark, and sometime around midnight planes flew over and dropped bombs that shook the ground. Night was no time for dreams in Vukovar. Some hours after midnight, the shelling lessened and its focus shifted closer to the Danube.

"Do you still want to go, Auntie Laura?"

So they slipped out into a dark where the lurid light of distant explosions vied with the smell of unburied corpses as to which effect was the closest approximation of hell. Kelly let Alenka lead the way. She had no idea how to find her way through the rubble and simply stayed close to the younger woman. Kelly could imagine no way being safer than another. It was fate now, or some deity, or some unraveling of circumstance and sequence far too complicated to try to influence that would keep the two of them alive. It occurred to Kelly as they inched along that if she died here it wouldn't matter whether anyone knew her as Laura or as Kelly, she would become just another dead body.

She missed Jeri. They had been far too long apart. Kelly didn't believe anything had happened to Jeri. She'd know. Her heart would know. But they had been far too long apart. Travel through Vukovar was desperate at best, nearly impossible most of the time. On his last visit, Stepan had said that Jeri had gone on patrol and had missed the chance to leave. Kelly thought he was leaving something out; she waited to see if Stepan might explain, but when he didn't, Kelly let the matter rest.

Far too long apart, my love, far too long apart: the words echoed through Kelly like the refrain of an old folk song.

Several rounds of mortars came in their direction but then fell short. A person learned to read the sounds.

"Wait," Alenka whispered in the darkness and pushed Kelly back against a wall. Someone was coming along the street ahead and it was impossible to know if it was friend or foe. Ever so cautious, Kelly and Alenka eased through a doorway -- half a doorway since the top of the building was gone.  They pressed themselves against the section of wall and waited for whoever was on the other side to pass.

There were no more sounds that could be heard aside from the shelling.  Kelly's heart thudded in her chest. She knew there was someone just on the other side of the stone wall, and she was afraid that Alenka was going to take a chance and move -- and give them both away. Suddenly the smell of a newly lit cigarette drifted by.

They waited. Hours seemed to go by although that was impossible because it was still dark when they heard the sound of someone again on the other side of the wall. Then the crunch of boots in rubble, walking away. They would never know if hiding had been necessary but they were still alive.

Once more Alenka led the way. Walking was easier now because the world was gray, dawn was approaching and the dark shapes loomed around them. Hell gained another dimension in the torn and shattered shapes that became visible around the two women. Alenka stopped. Kelly drew close and saw the young woman's confusion.

"Where are we, Auntie Laura? I do not know where we are." Alenka whispered, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wide and horrified. "The trees are gone. All the beautiful trees."

Kelly looked around. She and Alenka had gone to the school perhaps three or four weeks before -- keeping track of time had become difficult and meaningless. When they left, the buildings on and around Pijacu Street had been marked by war but they had still existed. All around them now was a desolation of heaped stone, odd portions of standing walls, doorways that led nowhere, a window still framed with a torn curtain.

"We have to get inside somewhere soon," Kelly whispered.  Snipers came out in daylight.

Alenka nodded, her hands clasped tight against her mouth in a attitude of prayer. "This way, I think.  This way."

18 Pijacu Street was gone. A corner of it remained, a forlorn corner standing above the litter, the rubbish, the heap of life turned into junk.  Kelly had no idea what Alenka was seeing, what she might be mourning, but for herself she thought her heart might break as she saw the wreckage of the piano. She stepped toward the ruined keyboard and stopped. Lying just
beneath the black and white keys, Kelly saw the family photo. The frame was broken and the glass cracked, but the picture was still intact. Kelly picked it up for Alenka.

Alenka had found the doorway to the basement. Kelly followed her.

It was empty. It smelled empty, damp, musty -- a basement, but nothing worse. Alenka found matches and lit a candle. The flame flared, and Alenka lit another candle.

Ivo and Marija and Srijeda were gone. The basement bore signs of the shelling that had destroyed the building above, a toppled cabinet, fallen plaster, but there was no sign of the people Kelly and Alenka had left here.  Nothing suggested where they might have gone or why. It was far too possible that Ivo and Marija were among the unburied, that Srijeda was one of the animals that now prowled the devastation of Vukovar. Kelly quietly went to explore the back of the shelter and leave Alenka alone for a moment.

The sound of the door scraping open preceded the fall of light down the stairway and for a moment Kelly's heart lifted, unreasonably sure that she was about to see Jeri. She even took a step toward the stairs before caution stopped her. It was the look on Alenka's face as she stared at the intruder that made Kelly step back deeper into the darkness.

Alenka still spoke English to her, but Kelly had inevitably picked up some Croatian as she worked at the school. She didn't understand all that the stranger was asking, but she heard a word here and there, and the fact that he had his rifle pointed at Alenka was quite comprehensible.

"I am alone," Alenka said, in Croatian, quite clearly, and Kelly understood that she meant for Kelly to hear. To hear and stay safely hidden. Then she added something like "but my husband will be here."

The man laughed. His accent was too strange for Kelly, she couldn't translate, but it wasn't necessary. He was Chetnik. Chetniks raped Croatian women.  Then they killed them.  Or not.

The gun was nearby. The gun Jeri had given her. Kelly knew exactly where she had left it along with the book by Rebecca West. She had been debating with herself whether or not to bring both back to the school. The gun was in her pack on the other side of the basement. The man was at the foot of the stairway, his rifle still pointed at Alenka. The rifle had a scope mounted on it and Kelly took that to mean he was a sniper.

The stranger took another step toward Alenka, enjoying her fear, taking his time. He was talking the whole while. Kelly stepped backwards and sideways, making sure of each step, keeping inside the shadows. His back was turned to her now and she let herself move farther. She avoided boxes, a pail with a mop beside it. Kelly had maneuvered herself into something of a corner.  She didn't think Alenka could see her, but the Chetnik seemed to have said something to make the younger woman react because Kelly heard her say something that she recognized as a string of obscenities. You didn't spend a lot of time in a bomb shelter with several hundred refugees and not learn to recognize when people were cursing.

Kelly reached the alcove and slid behind the sheet that surrounded the area she had shared with Jeri. She was hidden here but it was considerably darker. She had a general idea where she had left her pack. She knelt down on the mattress and felt around in the dark.

The noise she heard made her blood cold. She heard the Chetnik hit Alenka and she heard Alenka cry out. She bit her lip to silence herself. It was hard not to jump up and rush out to Alenka's defense. You had to be schooled in this, Kelly realized. A person had fight or flight instincts and you had to be schooled to do things like methodically feel about in the darkness for a backpack that might or might not be there. She heard Alenka cry out again and she heard herself stifle a cry. Damn. Where was it? Where had she left it? Had Marija decided to move things around? Had she decided to rearrange the living areas? Where in the fucking hell was the backpack?

There! She felt the unmistakable shape of the book first. She needed to be careful, quiet. It wouldn't do Alenka any good if she fucked up now.  Kelly lifted the pack, brought it to her. Everything was taking too long, it was like in a dream, but the zipper didn't stick and there was the gun and it felt just the way it had the dozens of times Jeri had made her break it down and load it that day. Her hands were remembering even if her mind was acting like a frantic rabbit.

Kelly's mind quit. It just shut down and the phrase 'fucking shit' took over like a tape loop. She stood up and stepped outside the sheet. She saw how Alenka had been knocked to the floor, how the Chetnik was bending over her, setting his rifle onto the table with one hand while his other hand fumbled with his pants. Kelly raised the gun with both hands and aimed for the chest.

The first shot hit, spun him back, but the noise and kick of it was a surprise even though Kelly had tried to anticipate both. Her second shot went wide and and high and the ricochet sound of it was another thing to fear. He was up on one knee now, looking at her, screaming at her.  It wasn't his voice that bothered Kelly, it was that he was looking at her and he knew she had hurt him. She had the urge to apologize, to excuse herself, even as she took aim, steadied both hands and shot again. And again.

Then there was one more dead body in Vukovar.

Kelly knelt beside Alenka and set the gun on the table beside the Chetnik rifle. He had used the rifle butt but Kelly couldn't remember the particular word. Kundaciti? Whatever the word, Alenka was bleeding from a great gash above her ear. She glanced around and saw a dishtowel. Water. There was a little left in the pantry where Ivo had stored several containers. And alcohol. The pantry also contained a half bottle of vodka. Kelly came back to Alenka and cradled the girl's head in her lap. She dampened a corner of the towel with water and vodka and wiped the edge of the wound.

A shadow fell into the basement and a figure stood framed in the doorway.  Kelly swore to herself and reached for the gun.

Jeri paused, giving her eyes a chance to adjust to the dark. When she could see, the sight was startling. A man lay to one side of the communal table, face down and presumably dead. Alenka, blood streaking her face, was lying with her head in Kelly's lap while Kelly pointed a gun directly at Jeri.

"Steady, baby, it's me."  Jeri waited until she was sure that Kelly understood before hurrying down the steps.

It was while she searched for Marija's sewing basket that Jeri found the note from the older couple. They were sorry, they had one last chance to attempt to escape using the path through the cornfield, the last route out of the besieged city, and go to their daughter in Osijek.  They were sorry to leave, they were taking Srijeda.  Pray for them, please, as they would pray constantly that soon they could all be together again.

Jeri read the note to Alenka while Kelly cut away the hair from around the wound. It wasn't deep although it bled heavily like all head wounds.

"Do you think that they could get away?"  Alenka asked.

Jeri considered her answer.  "It is possible. Very possible. I can't be sure when this was written exactly, but I think that someone came in through the cornfield even after Ivo and Marija left. It's closed now, but I think Ivo and Marija could have got out."

"And Srijeda," Alenka added.

"Drink this," Jeri said, handing Alenka a small glass of vodka.  "We are going to sew that hole in your head closed. We don't want all your thoughts leaking out."

"Don't be silly, Auntie Stella, I haven't had a thought for weeks."

Alenka took Jeri's hand while Kelly made stitches with the needle and thread that had been soaked in the vodka. The young woman winced and her grip tightened against the pain, but she didn't cry out. Kelly worked quickly.  She had watched the doctors at the school shelter sew wounds many times.

"Your head looks fine" Jeri said, "but I came to tell you that Stepan has been taken to the Medical Center. Wait -- it's not horrible. It's his leg and it's a wound that can heal. He should be okay soon. He wanted me to tell you he would be fine."

"He would say that if both his legs were gone."

"I know. But I saw him and he should be okay."

The sober look that Alenka gave to Jeri contained her understanding of all the things that were definitely not okay. "Can I go the hospital?"

Jeri nodded.  "After dark we'll try.  And the good news is that I brought some food. Beefsteak."

"Auntie Stella, can you get him out of here?  I do not want him in my father's house if you can get him out."  She nodded toward the corpse that they had all been ignoring.

Jeri glanced toward Kelly who had closed her eyes. Kelly opened them. "Yes, let's get him out. It will be worth the risk."

Kelly still felt nothing. Removing the Chetnik was simply a problem to be solved. The hard part was getting him up the stairs. The sunlight had disappeared and a fall drizzle had taken its place. Jeri and Kelly drug the dead man to the edge of the street, symbolically removing him from the no longer existing house. The mortars continued to fall, but the two women seemed to have avoided the notice of snipers. They hurried back inside and Jeri fixed a board across the door for a bar.

"Jeri?"

"Yes, love?"

"I'm okay for now, but I don't think I can cook meat. I know we need it, but --"

"I'm on it.  Go talk to Alenka."

Kelly thought the young woman might have fallen asleep, but instead she found her in the area she had shared with Stepan, weeping silently. Kelly sat down on the mattress beside her and put an arm around her. Alenka continued to weep and Kelly waited.

When the sobs slowed, Kelly spoke.  "Thank you for being so brave.  You probably saved our lives by pretending to be alone.  I wish I could have kept you from getting hurt."

"I miss Srijeda," Alenka finally said.

"I know. Me too."

"I don't think I love him," Alenka said with a sob.

"Srijeda?"

"No, silly.  Stepan.  He is so good and we have been friends for so long, but I don't think I have the right feelings for him. It is this war. I think we both need to take care of each other, but I don't think it's love.  And now he's hurt, and I wish I did love him."

 Concluded in part X