Isabelle couldn’t move, but if she stayed there, they’d whip her again. Or worse.
“On your feet,” Micheline said.
“I can’t.”
“You can. Now. Before they see you’ve fallen.” Micheline helped her to her feet.
Isabelle and Micheline fell into the ragged line of prisoners, walking wearily forward, past the brick-walled perimeter of the camp, beneath the watchful eye of the soldier in the watchtower.
They walked for two days, traveled thirty-five miles, collapsing on the cold ground at night, huddling together for warmth, praying to see the dawn, only to be wakened by whistles and told to march again.
How many died along the way? She wanted to remember their names, but she was so cold and hungry and exhausted her brain barely worked.
Finally, they arrived at their destination, a train station, where they were shoved onto cattle cars that smelled of death and excrement. Black smoke rose into the snow-whitened sky. The trees were bare. There were no birds anymore in the sky, no chirping or screeching or chatter of living things filled this forest.
Isabelle clambered up onto the bales of hay that were stacked along the wall and tried to make herself as small as possible. She pulled her bleeding knees into her chest and wrapped her arms around her ankles to conserve what little warmth she had.
The pain in her chest was excruciating. She covered her mouth just as a cough racked her, bent her forward.
“There you are,” Micheline said in the dark, climbing onto the hay bale beside her.
Isabelle let out a sigh of relief, and immediately she was coughing again. She put a hand over her mouth and felt blood spray into her palm. She’d been coughing up blood for weeks now.
Isabelle felt a dry hand on her forehead and she coughed again.
“You’re burning up.”
The cattle car doors clanged shut. The carriage shuddered and the giant iron wheels began to turn. The car swayed and clattered. Inside, the women banded together and sat down. At least in this weather their urine would freeze in the barrel and not slosh all over.
Isabelle sagged next to her friend and closed her eyes.
From somewhere far away, she heard a high-pitched whistling sound. A bomb falling. The train screeched to a halt and the bomb exploded, near enough that the carriage rattled. The smell of smoke and fire filled the air. The next one could fall on this train and kill them all.
* * *
Four days later, when the train finally came to a complete stop (it had slowed dozens of times to avoid being bombed) the doors clattered open to reveal a white landscape broken only by the black greatcoats of the SS officers waiting outside.
Isabelle sat up, surprised to find that she wasn’t cold. She felt hot; so hot she was perspiring.
She saw how many of her friends had died overnight, but there was no time to grieve for them, no time to say a prayer or whisper a good-bye. The Nazis on the platform were coming for them, blowing their whistles, yelling.
“Schnell! Schnell!”
Isabelle nudged Micheline awake. “Take my hand,” Isabelle said.
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Isabelle stepped over a dead body, from which someone had already taken the shoes.
On the other side of the platform, a line of prisoners was forming.
Isabelle limped forward. The woman in front of Isabelle stumbled and fell to her knees.
An SS officer yanked the woman to her feet and shot her in the face.
Isabelle didn’t slow down. Alternately freezing cold and burning hot, unsteady on her feet, she plodded forward through the snowy forest until another camp came into view.
“Schnell!”