Good luck homing pigeon

Chapter twenty four: It's the judgement day (9th January 1945) *Mature*

To those who are reading, I have to warn you, this is an important chapter. This chapter is also marked with a mature rating on the chapter title, so you've been warned. The song above is an old favorite of mine, another Judy Garland song to give some cheeriness. Read on, Macduff!

It was now the night before the March-and still, I had no idea how they were going to 'save' me. It'd been delayed for a couple of weeks; according to Janek, it was more and more updates on the allies progress in France. I'd have thought that would've given us more time to figure something out. But it appeared that whatever they were going to do, I wasn't to know until the very last minute. God, it was so frustrating! It was my life, was it not? Surely I'd get some sort of say as to how it's going to be handled. I'd stayed alive for this long-didn't I have the right?

I wish I could've found comfort in Sandrine: if only Sandrine would speak to me. Ever since the selection, she's barely said a word, much less shared the deep, personal kinds of conversations we had before. It was unsettling and lonely, and the worst part was that I knew exactly why she was doing what she was doing. It was the same feeling Briana had harboured, looking at me waste away for so long. She didn't want to watch me leave. She was one of my best friends in the world, and I was all she had. Of course it would be upsetting. I just wanted to march up to her, and tell her that me leaving wasn't my choice. Or better yet, that I might not be leaving at all. But loyalty spoke louder than personal desires. Odd, wasn't it? It was a moral code so many lived by during this war. Even the soldiers. Most of the time I respected it, sometimes I hated it, and very few did I beg it to let me have just one moment, one person to be an exception to that.

Over the past few weeks I'd been at a perfect balance between the real Kate, and a lifeless one of millions that still occupied this quickly emptied camp. When I needed to escape being a prisoner, I took comfort in my old self with Angelo. Every night we would kiss, in case we'd never kiss again the night after. And you know what? It still worked. After all that happened, he still kept me afloat. How he still managed to hold onto himself so effortlessly and not crumble yet, I didn't know. But I had to praise him for it. His spirit still soared high, high, high above the clouds-like the robin everyone saw him to be. Quick, mischievous, beautiful.

It was for him and Sand dune I kept myself not only alive but whole. It still made me fortunate. Now everybody else around me wanted death so damned much they provoked guards-yelled, screamed at them until they ablidged. And that-that was where things had changed once more. With the guards. Once they seemed happy, relieved almost to prolong death, just for the sake of more torturing. Nowadays, killing was just something they wanted over and done with. As if taking a persons life was just another, tiresome task to them. At least there was still enough in me to feel disgusted. What scared me the most right now was feeling so numb, I couldn't bring myself to care. What scared me even more was the possible chance that if I left on that march, I would become just that.

"You can't and you won't." The block leader said to me, the night before the march was to take place. "You have so much more here than the rest of these ghosts here and you know it. Your family are still alive, you've got friends here, be fucking grateful you still have your sanity."

"I am grateful, I never said I wasn't. But I fear, just like everybody else. Being numb is just something I worry about."

"Well you shouldn't. Not about tomorrow anyway." At long last, she began to relay her ultimate plan to me. "When the break is called for lunch, you'll return straight back to the barrack. Here, we'll ensure your number isn't on that march list. After that you will make  your way to the rendeveux point and stay there until the guard with the shaved, brown hair is on duty-that should be at nightfall. You will wait outside the back of the barrack-you mustn't be seen by any of the barrack women, you know that right?"