DISCLAIMER: This story contains some themes and content that most will find uncomfortable, namely the rape of an 17 year old German male by a female Soviet IS-2. You have been warned.
“Утюг сука”
Willi Höfler slowly reached up beneath the brim of his Stahlhelm and wiped the sweat from his brow, listening to the harsh, man-made thunder of artillery in the distance. He tightened his white-knuckled grip around the battered Italian Carcano rifle as the ripping sound of incoming shells passed overhead and shook the building around him. He coughed and covered his mouth to keep from breathing in the dust and soot that filtered down from the charred beams overhead. At seventeen years old he was barely old enough to grow a beard, but he could feel the dusting of blond hairs on his gaunt, dirty cheeks. He glanced around the room with tired eyes, hearing the quiet sniffling from one of the younger kids who had failed to hide their fear. There were seven of them – teenage boys, girls, kids as young as fourteen – all exhausted and filthy, huddled in the burnt-out shell of what had once been a delightful pastry shop. Willi’s parents had taken him here last year for his birthday; the increasing wartime shortages had made the small cake a special treat. It was the cruelest of ironies that he was likely going to die here exactly one year later.
The date was April 27th, and Willi lived in Hell.
If there was a better way to describe the current state of Berlin, he could not think of it. The once-proud capital of the Third Reich had been shattered and laid to waste by years of Allied bombing raids. Day and night the bombers of the United States and Great Britain had come to drop their explosive payloads, reducing entire swathes of the city to rubble. Hundreds of thousands had been killed by a rain of death that the Luftwaffe seemed increasingly powerless to stop, and countless others had simply fled the city to escape such a fate. Of those that remained behind, many were starving and malnourished. Clean water was in short supply, the pressure gone from the shattered pipes. Without plumbing, people simply dumped their refuse in the streets, spreading disease. Fires raged until they ran out of things to burn, and the unreachable dead rotted beneath the debris. Berlin was a city destroyed long before the Russians even arrived…
But now, the barbarian hordes howled for blood at the gates, a horrifying reversal of fortune from 1941 when the might of Germany had seemed unstoppable. Poland, France, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Low Countries, Greece, and Yugoslavia had all fallen to the superiority of the German soldier, and the armies of the Reich were poised at Moscow’s throat. Rommel was kicking the Tommys all over North Africa, while the Luftwaffe’s bombers struck at London. Victory had been all but assured, and the Greater German Reich would stand astride all of Europa in a new and glorious age! But one by one, the branches of the Wehrmacht had been been beaten back: the Kriegsmarine, the Luftwaffe, and the Heer. Now, not only had the Bolsheviks reconquered the lands lost to the Reich since 1941, but they had invaded the Fatherland itself! In the West, the Amis had crossed the Rhine after retaking France and Belgium, and were also pushing hard towards Berlin.
Only the most ardent supporters of National Socialism still believed the words of victory coming from Goebbels’ propaganda ministry. It was clear that the Führer’s vaunted Wunderwaffen had failed to break the will of the Allies, and in response he had tasked every man, woman, and child left in Berlin with the final defense of the city. For months they had labored, digging anti-tank ditches, erecting bunkers and barricades, and making tank traps from the endless rubble, transforming it into a fortress that would finally break the back of the Soviet advance. And as the Red Army closed in on the city, the Volkssturm, alongside the ragged remains of the Schutzstaffel and the Wehrmacht, would be the last soldiers of the Third Reich.
Willi instinctively flinched as another swarm of Soviet rockets – the damned ‘Stalin’s Organ’ – howled overhead like demons. Eight days ago, those defenses constructed at Seelow Heights had finally crumbled under the weight of the Red Army after a pitched, four day battle. The next day, the Russians had started shelling Berlin and hadn’t stopped firing since. He had thought it impossible for the city to become even more ravaged than it already was, but the relentless artillery barrage had proved him wrong. Buildings already damaged by the bombings were simply collapsing, burying those hiding within under tons of concrete and steel. Each day, the sound of gunfire and tank cannon got a little louder, a little closer to the city center. The Russians had already crossed the Teltow Canal, swarming towards the Reichstag at the center of Berlin and crushing all resistance in their way.
But the encroaching Red Army wasn’t the only thing that the terrified Berliners had to worry about either. As the Reich collapsed around them, the SS grew increasingly fanatical and relentless in their methods. Anyone, soldier or civilian, suspected of cowardice or desertion was rounded up and executed. Death squads roamed the city, shooting and hanging those they believed were trying to abandon their posts. Now bloated bodies hung from the trees and lampposts like demented fruit, and blackened blood congealed and drew flies in the streets. Signs around their neck proclaimed messages of their treasonous acts to dissuade others from following their example.
The Dark Ages had returned to Germany.
But Willi was not going to desert. He truly believed that it was his duty as a good German to defend the Fatherland and the Reich, even if the latter was becoming an increasingly hollow concept. To run away would be to abandon his friends and family, and to spit in the face of those who had already given their lives in his defense. Even if he had wanted to flee, his squad of Volkssturm had been taken over by an SS-Oberscharführer named Uwe Gottschalk, a hawkish man who had been fighting the Soviets since Barbarossa. He would have likely shot any of them if he had suspected they might desert. Indeed, one of the younger boys had fled a couple of nights ago and Uwe had beaten the other two members of his foxhole until they were black and blue, screaming at the two boys as tears ran down their cheeks and snot bubbled from their noses. No, Willi was not dumb enough to desert his comrades.
Gottschalk paced back and forth in front of the shattered windows like a caged tiger, with willful disdain for the chaos raging outside. “The bolsheviks are approaching!” The man shouted, “But they are walking straight into our jaws! Their panzers are vulnerable in our streets! Their own artillery hampers their movement!” He stabbed his finger in the direction of Tempelhof Airport, which had been besieged by the Soviets for several days now. “Our comrades valiantly resist the Russians with their every breath! The Führer expects all of us to do the same! We will fight them here, we will stop them here! The future of the Reich is counting on us!” The younger members of the group watched in awe at the man’s confidence. With such a fine example of Aryan superiority leading them, how could they lose? Uwe then locked his steely gaze on Willi, making a chill run down his spine. “Volkssturmmann Höfler! How many Panzerfausts do we have left?”
Willi lunged to his feet, the rifle clattering at his side as he stood at attention. “We have eight Panzerfausts remaining, herr Oberscharführer!” He barked, his back straight. As the oldest ‘soldier’ under Uwe’s command, he had been tasked with keeping track of the group’s supply of anti-tank weapons. The Panzerfaust was a true Wunderwaffe: cheap to produce, easy to use, and effective. Even though he had never fired one at an enemy tank before, he had seen a public demonstration on how even the least-trained Hitlerjugend could still use it with ease. But while German factories had once produced them by the thousands, now it seemed that there were never enough to go around. When they ran out of the ones they had, would they be able to get more?
Uwe nodded and slowly met all their eyes, looking around the room. “The Russian panzers are fearsome, but the Russian soldier is a dog! They are untrained, illiterate subhumans tainted by the sins of Bolshevism and Jewry! Without their armor to hide behind, they are useless! Now, this is what we will do…” He pointed down at a crude map of the intersection drawn in the dust on one of the cafe’s tables. “Myself and Volkssturmmann Höfler will take positions here. We will use the Panzerfausts to destroy the advancing panzers. This will block the road and force their other tanks to withdraw, where they will be savaged by our mines and 88s. Their infantry will be forced by their masters to advance even without their armor, and that is when the rest of you will strike!” Uwe pointed to several spots on the ‘map’. “Here and here! Two soldiers each with rifles. The machine gun will be set up on the second floor of this building. You will cover our withdrawl, and then fall back when I give the signal!” Two boys, both of them barely sixteen, stood sharply by the old MG 34 and saluted. Uwe looked around the room again, making sure he commanded their attention. “Do you all understand?” Dirty faces nodded in reply.
Willi thought quietly about the Oberscharführer’s plan as he crouched down by one of two crates stored behind the charred countertop, opening one of them to reveal the four Panzerfausts stored within. He quickly slung the rifle over his shoulder and retrieved a weapon for himself and Gottschalk. Despite his ruthlessness, Uwe understood that they would have to bleed the Soviets and then fall back, trading space for time. Throwing away his soldiers’ lives was a wasteful act. But the problem was, they just didn’t have much space left…or time. Willi hefted the Panzerfausts and set one on the table by Uwe, shards of glass crunching beneath his boots as he peered out into the street from one of the shattered windows.
His beloved Berlin was a wasteland, the air thick with smoke and dust. Not a single building stood undamaged, the streets filled with the scattered rubble of a civilization. Vehicles lay abandoned at the sides of the street, their tires long gone and their fuel tanks long empty. Sandbags and crude tank traps had been constructed out of anything and everything. Ditches and trenches had been dug into the streets, craters made by Russian artillery were used as shallow foxholes and fighting positions for anti-tank guns. Street trams had been packed to the roof with loose rubble and shoved into place to form crude barricades. The morbid joke ran that it would take the Russians twenty minutes to bypass those ‘fortifications’ – ten minutes to stop laughing at them, and then ten minutes to drive through them.
Oberscharführer Gottschalk again took the lead, striding out through the window and into the street. “Follow me, Volkssturmmann Höfler.” He ordered, holding the Panzerfaust firmly in his grasp. He turned to address his assembled ‘soldiers’ once more. “You all know what is at stake! Bleed the Soviets for every inch of ground! Make them regret ever setting a foot inside the Reich! Heil Hitler!”
“Heil Hitler!” Seven voices howled in reply. Their confidence bolstered, the German youths rushed to their ambush positions as Willi followed Uwe up along the street of shredded automobiles and scattered rubble. Already the sound of small arms and tank cannon was louder than it had been five minutes ago. He could hear the snarling of diesel engines, the metallic squealing of tracks as the Soviet tanks probed the city’s defenses. Undeterred by the noise, Uwe strode forward without even bothering to take cover. Willi wasn’t sure if this was bravery or insanity, but he held his helmet a little tighter against his head and hurried along behind the man. They rounded a gentle bend in the street, but one that would hide the waiting machine gun from any infantry that decided to follow them.
“This is where we will wait.” Uwe gestured to a pile of rubble that had spilled out into the street from a collapsed house. Some of it had already been piled into a low ‘wall’ of sorts by some thoughtful Berliner in preparation for using it as a defensive position. “Quickly, get yourself into position.” He ordered, “They should be here any minute.” Uwe crouched down behind the rubble pile and began preparing the Panzerfaust. Willi shuffled into place beside him, quickly removing the pin holding the warhead to the launcher. The primer was already inserted into the weapon, despite that making it not ‘safe’. But in this instance, having the weapon ready to fire at a moment’s notice was more important than safety. His stomach churned with nervousness, glancing over the debris again and again, each time expecting the Russians to suddenly be there.
The minutes began to bleed together into a nerve-wracking stretch where each echo, each crack of a distant shot, made Willi cringe. A chunk of brick was jabbing into his stomach, but he didn’t dare reach down to move it. More artillery thundered down on Templehof, bombarding the German strongpoint there. ‘At least the Amis aren’t bombing us now…’ He thought sardonically. The encirclement of Berlin by the Soviets meant that the other Allied Powers had ceased their bombing raids, out of concerns of harming the Russians. Willi would have given anything to see one of those devastating bombing raids falling on the heads of the Communists, even if it meant having to endure more of them himself.
He jumped as a diesel engine snarled just up the street, the sound of metal scraping against the cobblestones echoing off the shattered walls. Willi peeked up over the edge of the rubble just a bit and then promptly ducked back down when he saw the blunt snout of a Soviet T-34-84 appear around the corner. The commander was cautious, stopping to inspect the street in front of him. Brown-clad infantry huddled around the tank, shielded from attack by the machine’s metal bulk. The city was eating up tanks and men like a wolf ate rabbits. But there were so many rabbits…even a wolf got full. Uwe must have sensed Willi tensing because he shoved Willi back down against the ground before he even realized that he was starting to stand. “Not yet.” He growled, glaring at the Soviet panzer. “Wait until you know you will hit…” Willi didn’t like that, not one bit. That meant they would be more than close enough to hit him back. He held no illusions of his ability to dodge machine gun fire.
The T-34-85’s commander finally decided to continue his advance, the engine roared and gushed exhaust as the tank pivoted in place, lurching into motion towards them. The infantry advanced with the tank, men carrying rifles and submachine guns. At least ten of them, Willi counted. Laying there, watching the tank approach, and being able to do nothing made every part of Willi want to get up a run. Get up and scream. Get up and do something, anything! He could feel the weight of the tank vibrating through the ground like an earthquake, fragments of brick and mortar skittering off the pile of rubble. “Not yet.” Uwe repeated, and then again. “Not yet.” That blunt machine gun at the front of the tank pivoted from side to side, looking for targets. Targets like him. Soviet soldiers were close enough that he could see the whites of their eyes, some starting to move in front of the tank. They were going to be spotted if –
“Now!” Uwe lunged up from behind the rubble pile when the T-34-85 was no more than ten meters away, leveling his Panzerfaust at the tank barreling towards them. Bang! The high explosive shaped charge lashed out and slammed into the Soviet tank’s hull, detonating in a flash of flame and smoke. Fragments of molten metal spanged off the cobblestones as the tank ground to a shrieking halt. Willi thought he could hear the agonized screams of the crew inside, but the sound was drowned out by a volcanic rumbling that grew in volume as flames gushed from the hull and the hatches. A human torch managed to claw itself halfway out of the commander’s cupola before the entire turret blew off, a massive fireball of exploding ammunition and burning diesel lobbing the several ton turret into the air. The hunk of flaming metal arched over and smashed through the side of a building, showering rubble down onto the street below. A pall of noxious, greasy smoke boiled up from the wreck and flooded the street with choking fumes.
Willi cautiously peered over the rubble and stared at the blazing, mangled wreckage, shielding his face from the searing heat. Sheets of flame raged from the twisted hole where the turret had once been; strips of molten rubber dripped down from the bogies onto the shattered tracks. The infantry that had been advancing with the tank were nowhere to be seen, driven back by the savage heat and the destruction of their armored shield. Even though he could hardly breathe, a savage cheer clawed its way up out of his throat, his heart pounding with panicked elation. The Russians had been driven off by their stinging attack! With the street blocked by the wreckage, the Soviet tanks would have to withdraw and find a new route, and the chokepoint would leave any infantry that slipped through vulnerable to small arms. For one small moment in time, Germany was victorious again!
It was only then that Willi realized that he had pissed himself.
The victory evaporated the instant another powerful engine roared, turning his stomach to a black pit of ice. Tracks squealed and rattled, the sound growing louder and closer with each moment. As he watched in horror, the burning hulk of the T-34 was smashed aside in a storm of sparks and rent metal by the biggest tank he had ever seen. The cobblestones crumbled beneath its sheer bulk, nearly twice that of the ruined T-34. The gun sticking out of the broad-faced turret stretched on for miles. Black smoke and fire whorled around the hull, burning diesel dripping from the tracks as it drove through the blazing fluids of its wrecked comrade, making it look like it had just emerged from the bowels of Hades itself. Willi was frozen to the ground, petrified by the icy claws of fear tearing into his guts.
“Scheiße!” Uwe cursed, “IS-2!” Willi didn’t care what it was, he had to get away from that thing before it killed him! Finally in that primal part of the human brain leftover from when we were rodents scurrying under the feet of giants, Willi’s flight response finally overrode the paralysis of his higher thoughts. He pushed himself to his feet and turned to bolt, but Gottschalk grabbed him by the collar and hurled him back down to the ground. Uwe slapped him across the face and jerked him back to the rubble pile. “Fire your Panzerfaust, you fucking coward!” He bellowed, his eyes alight in rage and…something more frightening. “Fire it, or we’re both fucking dead!” Willi’s hands were suddenly clammy with sweat, shaking as he snapped the leaf sights into position, sighting it on the approaching monster. It was so close and so large that he could hardly miss… The trigger gave a brief instant of resistance beneath his fingers… Bang!
The launcher jumped in his hands, spitting a ten-foot plume of flame and exhaust out behind him. The warhead smashed against the turret of the IS-2 in a shower of sparks and smoke. Willi’s heart leaped for an instant, thinking he had actually slain this mechanized Goliath, but then the metal beast rumbled on as if though it hadn’t even felt the rocket carom off its armored hide. He dropped the empty Panzerfaust tube and scrambled to his feet before Uwe could grab at him again, bolting back towards the ambush site as fast as his feet would carry him. His lungs burned as he ran, his heart clenched in his chest, tears streamed down his cheeks. He felt his ankle wrench as he stepped on a brick, but he didn’t stop. He caught movement at the edge of his peripheral vision and made the mistake of looking back over his shoulder.
As brave as he was, as vicious as he was, even Gottschalk knew when it was time to retreat from a lost fight. The SS officer was also running from the tank as quickly as he could, though his face lacked the look of pure terror that Willi knew was plastered on his own. He didn’t want to think about the reaming out that he would receive from the SS officer when they escaped. If Uwe didn’t execute him for cowardice, he would consider that a miracle. As it turned out, he wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. The bow gun on the IS-2 opened up with an absurd hammering noise. Dust and chips of stone kicked up around Gottschalk’s feet, sparks jumped from the car husks he was dodging between. Another burst of fire nearly chopped him in half, throwing his body to the ground in a spray of blood and dust without even a cry of pain.
Willi rounded the bend as fast as his ankle would carry him, pain wrenching up his leg. If he could just get another Panzerfaust..! A rifle bullet cracked past his head, and then a machine gun opened up, stitching a line of impacts only a foot in front of him. He yelped as fragments nipped at his ankles and he tripped, slamming against one of the abandoned cars. The machine gun made a different sound than the stuttering Russian gun…it was the MG34! It was their machine gun! The ambush was shooting at him! Now Willi was the one screaming in rage as bullets snapped overhead, rattling against the car’s body and keeping him pinned down, but his allies couldn’t hear him. They just kept firing in their excitement. Willi never thought he could imagine a situation where he hoped his own side ran out of ammunition, but here it was!
He could hear the tank coming, the sound of metal smashing as it shoved cars off the road or crumpled them like tin cans beneath its weight. The gun poked around the shallow bend in the road, the turret rotated enough that he could see the Cyrillic writing painted crudely in white on the green metal. ‘Утюг сука’. Sparks started dancing across the front glacis and turret of the the tank as the boys shifted their fire to the obviously more threatening target. Willi jumped to his feet again, feeling his ankle flare in protest at the abuse, but this was his only chance! Another rifle bullet, Soviet this time, ricocheted off the hood of the car he was trying to clamber over, tugging briefly at his sleeve as it sliced a hole in the fabric. The IS-2 lumbered to a stop, the turret slowly rotating as it aimed at the winking muzzle flash from above the bakery…
A flash of white fire erupted from the IS-2’s massive cannon, the pressure wave snatching at his uniform. Willi screamed and clutched at his deafened ears, dust and the stench of gun smoke were literally rammed down his nose and throat. The machine gun instantly stopped firing, the MG34 and the two boys manning it obliterated by the shot. The Panzerfausts downstairs in the bakery also detonated in their crates, adding to the destruction that blew the building to rubble. Fragments of brick and splinters of glass rained down around him, but half-maddened by the concussion Willi didn’t even notice. Blood trickled from his ruptured eardrums, a shrill ringing screamed inside his skull. Hot tears blurred his vision into a mush, but he could still make out the shape of the damned IS-2 looming over him. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the machine gun rounds to tear into his body…but they never came.
One minute and an eternity later, he was still breathing. Willi slowly opened his eyes, blinking rapidly to clear away some of the tears. The IS-2 sat motionless only meters away, its engine idling loud enough to hurt his damaged ears. “What?” He rasped at the tank, his throat raw from the smoke and from screaming. The Soviets inside must be laughing at him. “What are you waiting for?! Kill me!” He suddenly didn’t care anymore. Death would be better than suffering like this! He scooped a chunk of stone from the street and hurled it against the IS-2’s hull. “Verdammt Sie! Just kill me!”
The engine snarled and the tank lurched forward, clanking on heavy tracks. Willi flinched and tried to scramble back with his hands, his momentary defiance evaporating in a blink. They were going to crush him beneath the tracks! He tried to get to his feet and run, but he had no balance and fell to the trembling earth. He sobbed and scrabbled at the ground, trying desperately, frantically, to drag himself out of the way. Too slow, he would never make it. Tracks screeched and kicked up sparks and dust from the street, the massive tank grinding to a halt only inches away from crushing him into red paste. Its engine rumbled in a way that sounded like heavy breathing, white fumes drifting up from the exhausts. Willi stared up at the metal behemoth, quivering like a leaf on an autumn tree.
“Vyyti. Ya budu zabotit’sya o etom.” A voice growled loudly from within the tank. Willi understood no Russian, but it was a woman’s voice! His tormentor was a woman! There were quieter voices from inside the armored hull, but these he could not make out as clearly. “Ya skazal vyyti! Teper’ !” The brutish-sounding woman boomed, even louder than before. Then to Willi’s utter astonishment, the hatches on the tank opened. One by one, the crew of the tank slowly climbed out from the top of the turret, their bodies filthy and sweaty. Their uniforms were in tatters, and it was obvious that they had not bathed in weeks. Despite his disorientation, Willi couldn’t help but stare in disbelief and dismay. These were the people that had beaten Germany? They were walking wrecks! The four of them glared vitriol at him too, as if though this was his fault, but then they shrugged and seemed resigned to the situation, gradually fanning out to stretch and relieve themselves. What in Hell was going on? Then Willi abruptly realized that not a single one of them were women.
The IS-2’s engine revved again, the tank shuddering as that broad turret began to rotate – there was still someone inside the tank! Willi was too close for the massive cannon to aim directly at him, but the turret stopped turning when it faced him. Then an eye opened up on the right side of the turret, just beside the gun mantlet, glaring down at him. Willi’s thoughts went utterly blank. He was certain that he had just gone insane. Or maybe he was dead after all. Either one of those explanations were more plausible to him than the fact that the tank was staring at him! That cycloptic eye seemed to sneer, the blackened smear of gouged metal where his Panzerfaust had hit gouged over the it like a scar. “Knabe komm.” The tank growled in crude, thickly accented German.
To compound the living nightmare in front of him, a seething cluster of metallic cables slithered out from beneath the tank’s chassis, snaking across the ground directly towards him. All rationality fled as the first of those cables snared around his ankle. “N-Nein! Nein!” He screamed, kicking at the cable as it slithered up his leg. A second cable whipped around his other ankle and together they began dragging him towards the tank. He tried to find something, anything to grab hold of, but there was nothing. He didn’t even know where his rifle had gone. “Let go of me! What is happening?!” He looked over and saw more Soviet infantry cautiously advancing further into the city. “Help me! Ich gebe auf! I surrender!” He sobbed, pleading with the stone-faced Russians. He’d rather face them than what was happening to him! But they saw the tank and pointedly ignored him, leaving him to his fate.
“Vyyti izvivayas’, malen’kiy cherv’!” The tank…shouted at him, and a metal gauntlet cracked across his face. His ears rang even worse than before, the stinging pain threatened to make him black out. More cables looped under his armpits and around his chest, binding him tightly. Another curled dangerously around his throat, the firm pressure choking off his protests. He felt the tendrils tighten further and haul him off the ground as though he weighed no more than a sack of potatoes. Willi kept trying to struggle against his bonds as much as he could, yelping in sudden pain as he cracked his shins against the spare tracks bolted to the tank’s lower glacis. “Ya skazal, brosit’ dvigat’sya!” Another slap, harder than the first, brought him to the ragged edge of unconsciousness.
When the blackness finally retreated from his vision, Willi was sprawled face up on the tank’s hull, his arms and legs pulled spread eagle over the upper glacis like a prisoner on a torturer’s rack. The driver’s viewport jammed painfully against his spine, and those metal cables coiled so tightly around his wrists and ankles that he did not have the strength to move them by even an inch. The metal of the tank’s hull was rough and pitted from crude construction and battle damage, and uncomfortably hot. He could feel the vibrations from the engine, and the sharp bite of diesel fumes hanging thick in the air made it difficult to breathe.
The tank’s cannon hovered over him, his head only centimeters below the mantlet. Thick, silvery fluid dripped from the metal and onto his face, his skin tingling wherever the liquid touched. He sputtered and tried to turn his head away, but one of those metal hands grabbed his hair and yanked his head back into place. The heat radiating from the tank grew nearly oppressive as the cannon began elevating towards the sky, a gray seam widening in the green-painted metal. It seemed to twitch and pulse before his eyes, looking…alive. He felt a hand claw at his uniform, sharp metal fingers knifing into his collar. With alarming ease, the hand raked down the front of his coat and shirt, ripping the fabric apart and exposing his chest. Again and again her claws struck, shredding his dirty uniform into scraps of fabric that barely clung to his body. Pips of blood quickly rose in the angry red scratches she had gouged in his skin.
The tank’s engine revved again and the hand slid lower and gripped at his privates. Tightly, too tightly! Pain whited out his vision, a squeak slipping past his lips as he grit his teeth from the pressure. A moment later, he squeezed his eyes tight in shame as he felt his penis bared to the open air. “Teper’ vy znayete, chto ya odin v zaryada.” The tank growled, finally releasing her vice grip on his cock. Willi sagged against her hull and whimpered, closing his eyes and wishing it would all stop. The trickle of silvery fluid was almost constant now, drooling rivulets of mercury running down his chin as he kept his mouth closed tightly. The hand gripping his hair jerked his head up towards that oozing seam. He tried to twist, to turn his head away, but it felt like his scalp was being ripped off. Without even a chance to hold his breath, his face was jammed up into the steaming port, the smell of hot iron flooding his nose. A bit of that mercury fluid also found its way up his nostrils and he sputtered, coughing frantically. This only opened his mouth and let more of the tank’s bitter fluid pour in. He spat it out, struggling again as he gagged. He couldn’t breathe. He was going to be smothered!
“Da! Yesh’te moyu pizdu, vam fashistskaya kiska!” The tank rumbled in perverse delight, grinding his face deeper against her slit. Willi’s head swam, unable to breathe. He swallowed down a mouthful of her hot fluids, wanting to retch at it flowed down to his stomach. His heart surged against his ribs, electricity raced through his nerves, his limbs tingled down to his tips of his toes. His fists beat uselessly against her hull as her steely hands fell upon his cock again. “Vy vyzvali. Zhalkiye.” She roughly stroked his length – which became shamefully hard despite his distress. His eyes watered as his lungs screamed for air. She – the tank – pulled his head away just for long enough for him to swallow a desperate breath of air before she mashed his mouth back against those oddly soft folds. Too soft for metal, but it was metal. Why was he noticing this? Why did he care? Why did he feel so warm? The IS-2’s engine roared, the vibrations shuddering through his body. She continued to jerk him off without a hint of tenderness, strong metal fingers sliding back and forth over his shaft.
Willi gasped and gagged on the metallic fluid pouring down his throat, his struggles rapidly weakening as his strength started to ebb. His thoughts felt hazy and distant, tears trickled down his cheeks as he slowly, reluctantly, stuck out his tongue into the writhing, oozing metal. It was painfully, terrifyingly clear what the tank wanted, even though he didn’t understand how or why, or even what. He just wanted to survive this… The tank’s engine seized up, her metal hand going still against his cock, but only for a moment before the gears crunched back together and she howled in delight. She pulled his hair even tighter, shoving his face even deeper against her port. He grit his teeth, feeling the flood of warm fluid flowing over his face, dripping down onto the tank’s glacis plate beneath him, and dripping off her hull to the shattered street below. The soft metal mashed and squelched with liquid as his tongue desperately probed her depths. His cock twitched beneath her fingers, slick with silvery lubrication and precum. But the IS-2 was much more worked up than Willi. She jerked forward on her tracks, metal linkage squealing against the drive sprockets. Revving louder, and louder, it would be a surprise if the entire Russian advance didn’t hear her roaring engine and cries of pleasure. “O yebat’ mat’ d’yavola!” She snarled, screwing that one eye tightly shut. “Bystreye, shlyukha!”
Those steel hands, those metal cables tightened so sharply that Willi practically cried out, feeling his bones ache, his flesh and muscles bruising under the sheer tension pinning him to her hull. It felt like an eternity, this steel behemoth screaming and shuddering beneath him. Had she been a human, she would have been thrashing her head back and forth. Willi slurped and lapped his tongue around inside her, feeling it tug on his, almost crushing the soft muscle. Silvery fluid flooded around his lips and tongue, more than he could swallow. He shut his mouth and gagged again on the gunmetal and kerosene taste that coated his tongue and warmed his belly. He was vaguely aware of his own cock throbbing and spurting all over the tank’s hands, but it was a distant, hollow feeling that left him even more drained then he already was.
Just as suddenly, her grip on him disappeared and he practically slid off the tank’s hull and flopped to the ground. Willi curled up on his side and retched, trying to empty his stomach of the contents sloshing around inside. For a moment, he forgot about the tank looming over him, about the scraggly Russian crew standing off to one side, or the infantry scurrying past. He forgot about the artillery and rockets pounding the city to dust and rubble. His entire world was centered around him and what had just happened to– Pain. White-hot, blistering pain instantly made his world shrink to a blood-red pinprick. At some point he became aware that he was screaming, only because he had to take a breath to replace the air gone from his lungs. The IS-2 carved across his back, slowly, deliberately, a metal talon slicing a symbol into his flesh – a mark for the whole world to see. It was too much for him to handle. Consciousness flickered, and then fled completely.
– – –
When Willi finally awoke, the sky above was nearly dark, lit only by the fires and distant flashes of still more artillery. He was laying on the side of the shattered street, discarded like a piece of garbage. Every part of his body was in agony, from his scalp to his toes. Scratches and bruises covered almost every inch of his skin – the tank must used him more than once after he had passed out… His back felt like molten iron had been driven into his flesh, and the shredded skin of his shoulderblades was stiff and sticky with dried blood. Slowly, very slowly, the world started to come back into focus, and it was only then that he noticed that the heavy throb of the IS-2’s engine was long gone. Lifting his head, he saw that the tank was no longer there, just a trail of crushed cobblestones and rubble. The sounds of fighting were well past him now, the Soviets even closer to the Reichstag, the city center, than they had been this morning. Even the ruined T-34 had stopped burning…how long had he been laying there?
He staggered to his feet and looked around in a daze. The tattered shreds of his uniform barely clung to his body, his ankle barely held his weight. How had he avoided being shot out of hand by the Russians that he knew had to have passed him? Why was he not being herded together with all of the other prisoners and being shipped off the the Siberian gulags? He didn’t understand…was it something to do with what the tank had carved into him? Had she…intended for him to be spared of the Soviet’s wrath? He could understand someone not wanting to get on the vehicle’s bad side, but… He shook his head harshly, even desperately. He was alive, that was all that mattered. If this…mark that the IS-2 had given him kept him safe from the Red Army…at least long enough to wait for the war to be over…maybe he could even make his way West towards American lines…
He sagged wearily as exhaustion crashed over him like a wave, almost slumping against a wrecked car. Whether he tried to make it to the Americans, or just waited for the war to end around him…he needed to rest. Time to sort out his thoughts, to try and clean himself as much as possible… He saw a particularly large flash, a fireball rolling up over the shattered rooftops of Berlin and stared at it blankly. He didn’t flinch. He was too tired, too uncaring, to flinch. He wasn’t sure what would come next, but one thing was for sure, his war was over…
– – –
– – –
Hello again, everyone!
It’s been a very long time since I last posted something here, (Holy shit, November 2014.) and for that I apologize profusely. I am not a very fast, nor a very consistent writer (as Ratbat will vehemently attest to after months of wanting to see more of my stuff completed), and I am also a perfectionist, so I tend to take a lot of time picking apart and rewriting my stuff. I also hemmed and hawed about writing, and then finishing this story because I was both uncomfortable with the content and didn’t know how well it would be received. And then after spending so long on it, I started to get burned out on the concept. Add that to various real-life issues, and it was very unlikely that this story would have seen the light of day. So, thanks again to Ratbat for egging me on to complete this. This story’s completion is more of her effort than anything.
So, I feel that I should clear things up first and foremost. I do not condone rape, nor am I trying to trivialize it. The fact that it is a male being forced into a sexual situation does not make it any better. However, the idea originated back when I was writing Operation: LUSTY. Originally, I pictured Petra being much colder and more aggressive towards Kenneth, even to the point of being mean, and she was not going to be gentle during sex at all. And I had the thought that if a living machine – be it a plane, tank, or ship – was determined to have sex with you, it was going to have sex with you, and it wasn’t going to really matter what your opinion on the matter was. There is no way a human could be stronger than the vehicle. And while romantic and passionate sex is all well and good, it’s not the only kind of sex there is. I couldn’t make the concept fit very well with Petra without a severe reworking of the entire story, so I instead decided to take that idea and apply it to a different one set during the climactic end to the War in Europe: The Fall of Berlin.
By Spring of 1945, the Red Army was overwhelming the last, desperate defenses that the Germans had to offer. Hitler was only days away from killing himself, and the Soviets had a long list of grievances that they were going to repay the Germans for, with interest. The weight of Soviet artillery shells dropped on Berlin during between April 20th and May 2nd was greater than the total tonnage dropped by Western Allied bombers on the city during the entire war. The Germans, having long-since scraped the bottom of the manpower barrel, employed the Volkssturm, the Hitlerjugend, and even the police to help reinforce the few gutted SS and Wehrmacht divisions that still remained. During and immediately after the battle, there was widespread instances of vengeful Soviet troops (mostly rear echelon units) raping German women in retaliation for what German soldiers did to Russian women during their invasion of the Soviet Union. And that was what made me think of the IS-2 having her way with Willi, despite his struggles.
Now, some of you might be wondering why Willi is using an Italian bolt-action rifle during the battle for the German capital. That’s because when Italy capitulated to the Allies and switched sides, the Germans pretty much took over what was left and continued to fight the Allies, and in the process secured thousands of Italian-made Carcano rifles. By the time the Fall of Berlin was taking place, the arms industry in Germany was more or less nonexistent. So, they began arming Volkssturm units with the Italian arms they had confiscated.
I apologize if the ending was a little weak. I didn’t really know how to wrap it up, but I didn’t want to hold it up any longer. If I come up with a better ending, I’ll edit in the new one at a later date. I’ve got more ideas line up, and hopefully moving on to a fresh subject will mean faster posting, but I won’t try and make promises this time. Hopefully, you guys are happy with this, and as always, feedback and critiques are welcome.
Thank you, everyone.
CerebralError
