Walter felt a sudden tightening at his chest as he was hauled up from the scorched earth by sheer force.
Tinnitus continued to boil within his brain, and the world before him overlapped and swayed, the telltale signs of a severe concussion.
"Wake up! Walter!"
Simo's voice pierced through the buzzing.
Walter shook his head, his vision finally snapping into focus.
Of the three soldiers who had originally followed Simo for cover, only one remained: a young man with a face slicked with blood, desperately firing his rifle into the shadows with a look of utter hopelessness.
The other two were nowhere to be seen.
"The clerk... the cook..." Simo's gaze shifted toward the gun carriage.
The clerk lay face down in a mud pit, half his body buried under loose soil. No matter how hard Walter shook him, there was no response.
And the cook, who had previously fought with the strength of a wild bull, was now slumped against a cold iron wheel.
Great gulps of blood surged uncontrollably from his mouth, forming dark red icicles upon his charred beard.
"Move! This place is going to blow!"
The fire in the Soviet camp had spiraled out of control. A secondary explosion of the ammunition caches could send them all to the heavens at any second.
Simo scanned the perimeter, his eyes landing on a truck in the center of the camp.
Working together, Simo and the remaining soldier dragged the unconscious clerk like a sack of grain and heaved him into the cargo bed of the ZIS-5.
Simo vaulted into the driver's seat while Walter was shoved into the passenger side, clutching the now-feeble cook tightly in his arms.
The engine roared to life with a piercing grind of gears. The truck lunged forward, smashing through a pile of burning debris as it charged into the darkness.
Holding the cook, Walter could feel the man's body heat fading rapidly.
He instinctively turned his head, looking back at the nearby Hill L.
The gunfire on the heights had fallen silent.
The previously fierce exchange, the distinctive chatter of the Suomi submachine guns, had completely vanished.
In its place was a bone-chilling, triumphal roar that pierced the polar night: the earth-shaking cheers of Soviet soldiers.
The summit was ablaze with light. Under the command of a political commissar, Walter saw several Soviet soldiers treading upon a foundation made of Finnish corpses as they drove a massive Soviet Red Banner deep into the frozen soil of the hilltop.
The red flag snapped violently in the firelight and the freezing wind, as if proclaiming sovereignty over the blackened earth.
It was February 23rd, Red Army Day.
At this very moment, they had finally secured the "gift" they desired.
Simo gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white.
He glanced at the hill, then at the fuel gauge. His voice was cold, devoid of temperature. "The heights are lost. We're pulling out, Walter."
Just as Simo prepared to swing the truck onto the forest road, the cook in Walter's arms twitched violently.
With a final surge of strength, the terminal lucidity of a dying man, his blood-soaked hands gripped Walter's collar in a death vail.
"Can't... we can't..." the cook rasped, every word accompanied by a spray of bloody foam. "Can't let them... raise the flag... there..."
He had been a mere pig farmer, an ordinary man who spent his time in the bunkers muttering about going home for dinner.
But at this moment, the fire of Sisu burning in his eyes was hotter than the sea of flames surrounding them.
"It's not... six o'clock yet... Can't... let them... win..."
The cook's fingernails dug deep into Walter's collar, his eyes locked onto that piercing streak of red atop the hill.
Walter fell silent. Simo fell silent as well.
The air in the cabin froze for a heartbeat.
Walter slowly raised his head, meeting Simo's gaze.
Neither spoke; there was no need for further movement.
Simo slammed the accelerator to the floor.
"Hold on."
Simo cranked the steering wheel hard.
The ZIS-5 let out a beastly howl as its heavy chassis swung around violently on the ice. The roar of the engine drowned out the lingering explosions in the distance.
Braving the wind and snow, the truck's high beams flickered on, casting a blinding glare.
Guided by a dying cook, two Knights of the Mannerheim Cross launched a final counterattack toward the position that had already changed hands.
…
Up on the heights, the cold wind whipped the newly raised Red Banner.
The commissar stood beneath the flag, his sheepskin coat shimmering oily in the firelight.
He stood upon the scorched earth upturned by shells, or rather, upon the bones of Finns, delivering the most impassioned speech of his life to the hundreds of blood-stained, panting Soviet soldiers below.
"Comrades! Look!"
The commissar brandished his Tokarev pistol, pointing at the vibrant red flag above.
"Today is February 23rd! In Moscow, Comrade Stalin is watching us! We have turned this stubborn rock into Soviet territory! This is the greatest gift we could give for Red Army Day—"
His voice cut off abruptly.
The commissar frowned.
He realized that the expressions on the faces of the soldiers, men who should have been cheering for victory, were not filled with fanaticism.
They were filled with terror and shock.
Over a hundred pairs of eyes looked past his shoulder, staring fixedly into the darkness behind him.
It was a look of extreme horror at something incomprehensible. Some soldiers were already instinctively diving to the side.
"What are you looking at? Attention!" the commissar barked in annoyance.
Then, he heard a sound.
It wasn't the whistle of a shell or the roar of a Suomi. It was a heavy, violent, growling engine.
VROOOOOM—!
The sound arrived so fast and with such fury that the very ground beneath his feet began to tremble violently.
The commissar instinctively tried to turn around.
However, before his neck was even halfway turned…
Two high-beam pillars, as pale and piercing as the aurora, shot straight up from the slope. They instantly stretched his shadow into a long silhouette cast against the blackened trees opposite him.
Within that blinding wall of light, a massive steel silhouette, encrusted with frost and mud, tore through the darkness.
"Is that... our truck?"
That was the last thought that flashed through the commissar's mind.
CRACK!
With a sharp snap, the thick wooden flagpole snapped like a matchstick against the ZIS-5's heavy bumper.
The red flag that had flown for less than five minutes was dragged under the wheels along with the pole.
The commissar didn't even have time to scream.
Under the terror-stricken gaze of the Soviet soldiers, the roaring truck, like a mad bull charging into a flock of sheep, plowed directly into the commissar's back.
His body snapped into an unnatural posture the moment of impact, and a second later, the heavy wheels crushed over him.
Thump—
The truck jolted violently.
Sitting in the passenger seat, Walter could clearly feel the vibration.
It was the resistance of tires crushing through bone, exactly like hitting an insignificant speed bump on a bumpy highway.
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