Carl vs. the Nazis Ch. 13 To Arms

"Carl vs. The Nazis Ch. 12 Logic" 
Call to Arms

Hoggleton and Damon ran to the podium and screamed orders.
“Arise men! Our time has come, and the Furher’s light is upon us! Grab your weapons! We will pry open the world like a giant oyster! We shall shackle its feet and pummel its head! To arms! To arms!”
Several minutes of confusion followed, since the Nazis were in the middle of their music lessons. Some men began carrying their instruments back to their cases.
“There is no time to diddle with your fiddles,” scolded Damon. “Leave them where they are!”
The men dropped their French horns, trombones, snare drums, sousaphones, and bass violins on the floor, making a horrible mess. They tripped over the instruments and fell on each other. The cavernous room echoed with their shouts and curses.
Picking the right weapons compounded the confusion. All of the Nazis were very proud of their weapons collections: they spent their lives shopping for guns and knives for their uprising, and they were too sentimental to dispose of anything. Each man tried to carry an automatic rifle, a shotgun, a favorite hunting rifle, muskets to remind them of the American Revolution, and a large assortment of pistols they had seen in their favorite gangster movies. Commemorative hunting knives they had ordered from outdoor magazines, machetes, and swords dangled at their sides. Rows and rows of grenades and bullets crossed their chests. Powder horns dangled in from their necks in front of their flack jackets. The men, still out of shape, tried to look brave and stoic, but were red-faced and sweating under their ridiculous loads.
One soldier so armed tripped on a flugelhorn and disappeared into a cloud of smoke. All that remained of him was a puddle of steel. Miraculously, the flugelhorn was not damaged.
That stunk up the room. But I also smelled burning wood.
I looked up at the air vent, which was a small pipe on the ceiling. A wisp of smoke was sinking into the room. Damon saw it too.
“Achtung!” He cried. “We are under attack! Hurry men! Over the top! Someone plug that hole!”
The men brought a ladder. Because I was smaller, thinner and unarmed, I was ordered to climb the ladder. I stuffed the pipe with a soggy towel, which stopped the smoke.
“Now to battle,” screamed Damon. “Let us face the enemy!”
The Nazis crawled through the tunnel and stood in the room at the foot of the manhole that rose into the basement. This was also a disaster. With the added weight of their weapon collections, they could barely climb. The topmost of the first five to climb slipped, knocking down the other four. Pell-mell they tumbled, a pile of metal and flesh onto the mattresses below. The soft landing prevented another explosion, but the men were injured with all the hard, sharp things they were carrying.
Medics moved the injured men from the manhole entrance. The remaining men looked up with trepidation, but did not climb.
Damon turned to me.
“Carl, you are a hero,” he said loudly, so the others could hear him. “You stopped that poison nerve gas from coming into our sacred bunker.” He took a medal out of a pocket. It was actually an Elvis souvenir key chain.
“Now duty calls you again. Select from this room the happy few men who will join you in liberating our great race! Oh, in case of any accidents, you’d better let them go up just ahead of you.”
I would love to have gone first. I would have picked the plumpest, juiciest, slabs of lard of all the Nazis in that hole so I could have scrambled out by myself while they lagged behind. But Damon had thought of that. That’s why he wanted the men to climb ahead of me. I picked a handful of men who seemed to have a chance of not falling on me, and followed them up the smoky manhole.
It was a long climb. The Nazis were panting and sweating by the time we reached the basement that led out of the hotel. I crawled up the smoking steps and peered out the window. The far end of the Manor was on fire. It was a huge building, but it would soon be completely engulfed and the Nazis would be killed or trapped in their bunker. It seemed like a good time to leave.
Fire trucks and firefighters surrounded the hotel, but no one else was in sight. The firemen were holding hoses as they laughed and talked with each other, but no water was coming out. They just stood watching.
The Nazis in the basement went into a panic. “Herr Damon was right! Shouted the men. “We are under attack. We must defend the Fatherland!”
The Nazis unfurled their banner in front of the door and began shooting at the fire trucks, puncturing their tanks so that water gushed and splurted from their sides. The puzzled firemen took cover behind their machines or ran behind trees.
“Call the police!” shouted one firefighter to the chief.
“No one has seen the police for weeks!” the chief shouted back from under his truck. “Haven’t you noticed how little crime there’s been lately?”
The fire rushed through the building. The engulfed side of the Manor collapsed in a roar of flame and ancient, dried timber. Nazi bullets bounced off of the fire trucks and sunk into trees.
“BOOM!”
A section of the wall to my side disappeared, and huge hole opened in the ground in front of a tanker truck. Soil and rock filled the sky. One of the Nazis managed to haul up a mortar and was using it to drive away the enemy. I felt the burning intensity of the fire. I knew I had to escape now or retreat back to that hole full of Nazis. I decided I would rather risk getting shot.
“Listen, men!” I called. “We cannot hold out any longer! You go back to the bunker where you will be safe! I will protect your retreat! Achtung, Achtung, Schnell, Schnell!”
They did not need to be asked twice, but scrambled into their hole. I sprinted off from the hotel door heading into the woods. There I would tear off the horrible uniform. Freedom! I was finally free of the Nazis and, one way or another, the world would be free of them! Then I heard a voice behind me crying, “Herr Carl, I cannot let you face the enemy alone! I will cover you!”
“BOOM!”
It was the soldier with the mortar. He shot his last round before a balcony collapsed on him, burying him in coal and flame. I covered my ears to block out the crunching sounds above me and kept running. The mortar shell had struck an elm that towered over the Manor entrance. I looked up to see a tangled mass of tree about to cover me.

"Carl vs. The Nazis Ch. 14 Help!"