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suddenly, bending over and
putting his hands on his knees. The American stopped also, but
Wolfgang shook his head.
    “ We keep
moving.”
    The soldier started running again,
but the other man remained bent over.
    They left him behind.
    But the American ran slower, so
Wolfgang slowed to match his pace. Leah looked back at him and he
worried she thought he was weak. He nodded at the American, and she
seemed to understand. She moved over to the man’s other
side.
    “ You can do it,”
Leah encouraged the soldier, in English. The girl barely spoke
German and Wolfgang was surprised she could speak English. Perhaps
her English was better than her German. He asked
her.
    “ A little,” she
answered between breaths.
    The path grew steeper.
    After twenty minutes they were
trudging up the steep slope, no longer running, but still out of
breath. At the top of a particularly steep climb, the American
collapsed on the ground, clutching his side and gasping.
    “ Do we leave
him?” the German woman running with them asked.
    “ Of all of us, he
must make it to the top,” Wolfgang said. The others nodded
understanding.
    Wolfgang watched the man. The
American opened his eyes when he seemed to finally catch his
breath.
    “ Mountain running
very hard,” Wolfgang said to him, sometimes amazed at the English
words he remembered. He had spoken more English today than he had
since Gymnasium.
    “ You ain’t
kiddin’, pal,” the soldier replied and held his hand up. Wolfgang
pulled him upright.
    The German woman moved close to
him and got in the American’s face. She grinned and said in German,
“Tell him he doesn’t want to get beaten by a girl.” She turned and
sprinted off.
    Wolfgang translated and the
soldier laughed.
    “ She’s right.
Let’s go.”
     
    The restaurant staff at the top
were of little help. They had heard the sirens, had covered
themselves as best they could, had seen the flash through closed
eyes and through the cracks of closed doors, and had witnessed a
mushroom cloud from the direction of Kaiserslautern. It was
definitely nuclear.
    They had no contact with anyone.
No network was up for phones or computers.
    Worse, the electric tram that
brought tourists up the side of the mountain had stopped in a bad
spot. If anyone survived in the tram, they would have to clamber
twenty or thirty feet down to get to a level spot, and would have
to negotiate several sheer drops to get back to any kind of path.
Coming up would be even more challenging.
    The staff were preparing climbing
ropes to head down to rescue them.
    “ What now?”
Wolfgang asked the American soldier.
    “ Let’s give it a
few minutes. I’m going to go up to the highest spot and try again,”
Captain Wlazlo replied.
    They followed him out of the
restaurant and up into the ruin that stood atop the hill. Wlazlo
climbed a set of ancient stairs to the highest point that could be
reached. Wolfgang and the others waited below for him.
    Captain Wlazlo tried several
things on his phone, even waving it around in the air, and grew
increasingly frustrated.
    The others with Wolfgang tried
their phones, but he had already given up. There was simply no
signal. He knew nuclear weapons released electromagnetic pulses
that could destroy electronic devices, and although his phone
didn’t seem to be affected, the network system that serviced it
seemed to be down.
    The Captain’s agitation grew and
he began cursing at the device in his hands.
    “ It’s no good,”
Wolfgang called up to him, waggling his own phone in the air. “No
signal.”
    The soldier ignored
him.
    “ What now?” the
woman with them asked. The man stood next to her, they looked like
friends, Wolfgang thought, and Leah stood close to
him.
    “ We go back and
get the others, and head back to ‘Slautern,” Wolfgang replied. At
least, to what’s left of it, he left out. He tried not to think
about it.
    Leah looked up at the American and
asked, “What about him?”
    “ He has to do
what he has