Himmler's War

This just wasn't his kind of game.

She just now got a really good look at her boyfriend and screamed.

Himmler watched her collapse while the flames raged higher.

Dammit. All he needed was ten little seconds, a dozen or so heartbeats.

The hissing from under the hood blew an orange geyser of sputtering flame in a four-foot-long streamer.

Make that six seconds.

The humming overhead grew fainter.

Chancing a look-see, Himmler watched the UFO ascend until it lost itself among the stars. That took nearly an entire second.

Five heartbeats remained.

Now.

Time to move!

He flung himself at the inferno, smashed the passenger's side window with a good-sized rock, and unlocked the door. Seemed that the girl's arm, the strap of her hot little purse shaped like big red lips, and the door handle had become hopelessly entangled. This party girl almost wearing the tight red mini-dress and ruby stiletto heels had been drinking. Oh yeah. He undid the seatbelt and freed her from the impromptu crematory and carried the creamy bundle over to the pines, eased her limp and petite form to the rocky ground and covered it with his own body.

There were no more seconds.

The sedan transformed itself into a fiery comet nearly winning the struggle against the captive bonds of gravity.

Very hot and angry things whistled past his ears. Others ricocheted off his legs. One flaming mass insured that sitting might prove distressing for a few days.

Himmler hauled the mystery girl's five-foot-two frame aloft, guessed her weight at around a hundred and three pounds soaking wet, and tenderly but awkwardly placed her in his Bricklin. After finding some difficulty in sitting properly himself, he keyed the ignition. The Battlecruiser awakened with a muffled growl and folded her wings.

Gallantry insisted he give the hem of the red mini-dress a firm tug.

Oops!

A wail of sirens drifted in from the distance. He gave the local constabulary and fire department a mental tip of the hat.

His passenger didn't seem to have any broken bones or serious lacerations or burns. Dark, gypsy eyes, staring, yet unseeing, rolled back. Those mascara-edged eyelids closed.

"War really is hell, Honey." A solemn voice spoke to the now unconscious girl. "But if I don't expect to die from it, I had better learn damned fast how to live with it."

Smiling grimly, he examined the undamaged film cartridge and wondered how everything would develop.

Dammit, it was going down.

And there were no Purple Hearts in this war.

Only broken ones.