Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

The sergeant wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Maybe there’s grub in that gingerbread house,” he said.

We had one weapon between us, my 1911-model army .45 automatic. I got to my feet and pulled it from the holster. It felt cold and heavy in my hand. “Let’s take a walk,” I said.

The gates were unlocked, the smoke flattening in the wind, the smell of charred flesh unbearable. I cleared my mouth and spat, then pulled my sweater over my nose. The sergeant kept looking sideways at the crematorium, his eyelids stitched to his brows, his cheeks sunken. “Lieutenant, there’s a little-bitty child in that pit,” he said. “Right yonder. Oh, man.”

“We’ll talk about it later, Sergeant. Concentrate on what’s in front of us.”

“Yes, sir. If this is a camp for slave labor, why is a child here?”

“Don’t try to make sense out of a place like this,” I said. “There are more of us than there are of them. That’s what we have to keep remembering.”

“Sir, maybe we should forget the house. I think there’s poultry in that tarpaper building. Maybe turkeys. Maybe we should wring the necks of a couple and get out of here. Sir, pardon the expression, we’re standing out here like shit in an ice cream parlor. Sir, I want to get out of here.”

“You’ve got

a point,” I replied.

A gust of wind slammed the tin door shut on the tarpaper building. The sergeant grabbed it by the handle and jerked it open. Carrion birds clattered into the air, their wings beating against the walls and roof, their beaks red from their work. The building was not a barracks but a charnel house. The only difference between the bodies in the pit and those in the building was some of them were wearing clothes, if rags could be considered clothes. The bodies at the bottom were festooned with pustules, the skin waxy, almost luminous. Who were these poor creatures? Did they once have families and homes like the rest of us? Did they die from typhus or diphtheria, pneumonia or cholera? Or bullets? No one would ever know. From what I saw, I would say they died a little bit from all those things, and for most of them death came as a blessing.

“Did you hear that, Lieutenant?”

“Hear what?”

“A woman’s voice,” the sergeant said. “I heard it.”

“I think you heard the hinges on the door.”

“Listen. That’s not the wind. Somebody’s alive back there.”

My hand was tight on the grips of the .45, my eyes trying to adjust to the weak light.

“There it is again,” Pine said. “It’s a woman. Who are you, lady? Tell us where you are.”

“It’s too late to do anything for these people, Sergeant.”

“We cain’t just walk out of here, sir.” He was trembling from the cold, moisture running from his nose. “Right, sir? We cain’t pretend we didn’t hear what we heard. Look at this goddamn place. Oh, Jesus, sir, I cain’t forget the way I talked to Steinberg.”

I walked deeper into the building and saw her lying on the floor in a filthy gray dress pooled with blood that appeared to have come from the bodies around her. Her face was turned toward me, her eyes too big for her face, her hair thick and dark brown with streaks of black, cropped on the neck, probably with a knife or a very dull pair of shears. A number was tattooed in blue ink on the inside of her left forearm. I knelt beside her and looked into her face. “I’m Lieutenant Weldon Avery Holland, United States Army,” I said. “Who are you?”

I thought she was trying to speak, but I couldn’t be certain. I cupped my hand to her forehead. It felt as cool and smooth and bloodless as marble. “Can you tell me your name? Are others alive, too?”

She tilted her head slightly; her lips moved without sound. I leaned down with my ear to her mouth. Her breath smelled like shaved ice.

“I’m sorry, I can’t understand you,” I said.

“I never went to the whorehouse,” she said. “My name is Rosita Lowenstein. Viva la República. No pasarán.”

I would have sworn she winked at me.

WE FOUND AN overcoat and a scarf and a pair of shoes in the house and put them on her. She told us that the camp staff had become frightened three days earlier, when British planes bombed a German convoy one mile away. The staff had also heard rumors that Americans were executing SS in retaliation for a massacre in Belgium. She said she was twenty-three years old, had grown up in Madrid, and spoke Spanish, German, English, and French. We found a jar of preserves and a half loaf of bread and part of a smoked ham in the larder. We fed her and ourselves, all the while eyeing the road.

“What was that you said to us back there in the building?” the sergeant asked.

“I told them if they put me in the whorehouse, I would kill the first officer I could. Then I would open my veins and tell the other women to do the same.”

“What was the other thing you said?” the sergeant asked.

“‘Long live the Republic’ and ‘They shall not pass.’ I was talking about the Spanish Republic and Franco’s Falangists.”