Barbed Wire

I screamed and reached towards the door where Benjamin's body was disappearing, and I pulled against the guard's strong, lanky hold.  The soldier held me at arms length and started speaking to me, but I wouldn't open my eyes and I wouldn't stop yelling.  
"Just kill me!" I cried, tears erupting, struggling, writhing.  "Kill me, too!  Please, please, Benjamin, don't leave!  No, Benji, no, don't go, don't go, you can't leave me alone, take me with you, don't leave me!"
Suddenly, I felt a harsh slap against my cheek and my eyes were jarred open.  It took me a moment, but I recognized the slender nose and the tin-can eyes.  His auburn brows were drawn down low and his mouth was a hard line.  "Sara!  Listen to me.  Listen to me, Goddamnit!"  He shook my shoulders and I closed my mouth, biting down hard on my lip until blood ran down my chin.  
His grip on my shoulders was tight, and his arms were trembling.  "Now I want you to listen to me, Sara, listen closely.  The American's are here; I was stationed at one of the watchtowers this morning and I saw the three men and the white flag and the Ally troops."  His hand found mine, and I felt the cool faces of coins as they were slipped into my palm.  "When they come, when they open the gates, get out of here as quickly as possible.  Here's enough monkey for three train tickets…" he trailed off when he glanced over at the empty bunk beside me.  He shook himself and looked back at me.  "Get his little brother and wait out near the front, just stay away from any of the guards and the other inmates.  I have a bad feeling that there's going to be a rush, so I need you to get out."  
He shrugged out of his heavy trench coat and put it around my quivering shoulders.  "The city isn't that far away; maybe a mile or two. There's an extra shirt of mine in one of the pockets for the boy so you aren't conspicuous.  When you get there, go to the train station and buy two tickets and some bread.  The train will take you through Munich and into the country, and in a few hours you'll be in Cologne.  I know you're scared, I know you're weak, but I need you to do this.  You have to survive.  He might be dead, Sara, but you're not.  You're still alive, and that boy over there needs you right now.  I'm counting on you, Sara.  You're going to make it.  You're my Überlebende." Survivor.  So that's what I was now.
My tin soldier helped me to my feet, and pulled me into an unexpected hug.  His wiry arms pulled me in tight, and I felt his cold nose against my ear.  For some reason, it was comforting, and I yielded to him.   
"Thank you, Klaus," I choked, my voice hardly more than a wisp of forced air.
After what seemed like forever, I heard the shouts of soldiers and the commands of the Americans, and he moved away from me.  His narrow, tragic face was deep and furrowed, and he squeezed my arms one more time.  "I have a feeling that I may not see you again," he told me.  "But if I don't, I need you to promise me that you'll be brave, for him," he gestured to Benjamin's bunk, "and for the boy and for you."  I felt something slip into the trench coat's pocket. He then shot me one last look before whisking away in a twirl of rusty hair and reedy limbs, and strode out of the barrack.  That was the last time I saw Klaus Goldschmidt alive.       

The few remaining inmates in my barrack were murmuring softly to one another, wondering why the sergeant hadn't stuck his head in the door and screamed at us to get our filthy, shit-caked carcasses out of bed and into the trenches, but none seemed to have noticed Klaus's speech to me.  I gripped the coins firmly in my hand and strode over to the bunk a few yards down, where Daniel was curled up under the straw, breathing deeply, brown eyes red-rimmed and puffy.  I took him softly by the wrist and pulled him out.  Before he could speak, I told him to take off the shirt an put on Klaus's.  His big, sad eyes were wide and his mouth was open.  "He's gone," he choked.
     "I know, Danny...I know."
He looked at me with those distressing eyes, so much like his brother's, and a light of understanding and anguish fell upon them.  "He's dead…"  I could see tears brimming, but he fought them back, his face contorting with the effort of keeping himself from breaking.  Why couldn't I be brave like that?
I couldn't look at him; he was so young… just thirteen years old; why did he have to loose so much? 
I brushed past a guard or two, who didn't bother stopping me because they were too busy panicking.  As I walked, I noticed inmates slowly drifting towards the gates, but I was lucky, because my barrack was only a couple hundred yards away from the gate, and I was pressed up against the wire within a few minutes, watching the Allies.  The electric hum had drifted off, for the soldiers had turned off the fences.  Once or twice, I swore I spotted the burgundy flashes of Klaus's hair among the German guards that were being rounded up, but I couldn't be sure, and I tried to ignore the piles of corpses that littered the grounds and the smell of decomposing flesh.  Most of the following was a blur.  I remember holding Daniel's hand, the other inmates warming up the air with their swelling breath as they crowded around me.  Some of them were crying, shouting out "thank you!" and praying, thanking God.  I felt no joy.  I didn't feel anything except a hole inside me.  What about my prayers?  What about Benjamin's?  What about the piles of bodies, of children and mothers and fathers?  Who was there to comfort them?   Who was there to answer their prayers?
And then I remember the American soldier's shout that echoed over the various cries and exclamations and cheers of the others.  


"They're trying to get away!"


Then there was an explosion of gunfire, like a series of firecrackers, and blossoms of red plumed into the brisk spring air.  I turned and peered through the barbed wire, watching as at least fifteen or twenty camp guards collapsed onto the ground, forming scarlet pools in the cold dirt.  I remember slipping by when the inmates tried to rush out, and passing through the slain guards.  Klaus's empty face stared up at me as he lay slumped against the fence, his silver eyes glazed and staring.  Freckles of blood covered his body and trickled from his mouth and his hand was clasped over one of the many bullet holes in his chest.  I looked down at him for a moment, feeling the gaping hole inside me grow even more.  I'll just add him to the list of the people who were taken away from me.  One by one, I was being left behind.  Sometimes, I wonder what it is a person thinks of the second before they die as sharply and unexpectedly as Klaus.  I've seen so much of it that I can't help being curious.  What ran through that poor boy's mind before he was shot to pieces?  Did he think about his family?  Did he wish he knew why he deserved it, or did he simply wonder whether or not he had left the water running back home?  If I ever see that fox-faced boy again, I will certainly ask him.

"Hey, where are you going?"
I stopped and spun around, and saw the face of an American soldier. He was speaking in halting, flimsy German.
"I can't just let you leave," he said.
"Please, I have to get out," I answered in English.
"So does everyone else."
"Please!"
I fought back tears as I stared up at him, and his face softened.  "I can't let you out if you have Typhus.  Do you?"
I shook my head.  
"Fever?  Pneumonia?"
"Nien."
  He sighed and glanced around before putting a hand on my back and leading me down the path and out the gate, along with several other prisoners who had been cleared as far as infections or diseases.  We all stood by their jeeps for a while, and as we waited, one of the men put a blanket round my shoulders.  And then, after what seemed like an eternity, I was free.  

Free.  

What a perverted term for what I really was.  Almost everyone I knew was dead, and here I was, standing here, being told I was free.  No, they were free. I was the one chained to this world.  The survivor, the leftover piece, the perpetual breather who just would not die.  Then again, she had had someone to live for until now.  
When I came home, people would tell me how lucky I was, how relived I must have been to have left all of this behind me. No.  There is no leaving behind what I have seen.  There is no leaving behind the small faces of the children as they waited in lines with their mothers, waited to be burned, nor the mile high mountains of naked bodies, some frozen solid with others, all dead, dead, dead.  There is no forgetting that.
  As I made my way towards the city, I felt the numbness come over me, and instinct replaced the empathy.  As much as I wish I were dead, I survived, and so did a tiny piece of each and every one of them.  I was going to survive for Benjamin's sake, for Daniel's sake, for Klaus's sake.  I made a promise, didn't I?  I had move on to keep myself whole.  I sure as hell didn't want to, but I had promised.  
I reached into the pocket, and felt something small and round.  I lifted it, and I cried.  
It was the promise ring Benjamin had given me the day before we were discovered.  Somehow, Klaus had found it, and now it was home.