Schatzi

17

Time didn't exist within the train.

No light filtered in through cracks under the door or through the wood. He'd begun to doubt the sun was even shining anymore. It didn't seem right for the world to go on as normal considering what had happened that night.

He'd stood the whole time, back pressed up against the wall, front pressed against another person, skin clammy and sweaty due to the constant closeness they were all trapped in to. He could already feel himself slowly losing his mind, because there was nothing else to do on the train but think. Being alone with his thoughts was not what he needed. He'd lost all feeling in his legs, and if they hadn't been packed in so tightly, he would've collapsed to the filthy floor. He slept briefly, waking often and plagued by horrible dreams that just repeated until he was more frustrated than frightened.

Eli's corpse, again and again, each version in his dream more gruesome than the last. How he'd last seen him, bruised and bloodied, then dead with a hole in his head, eyes blank and lifeless as the cobbles ran scarlet. His troubled mind conjured up images of his body days after his death, projecting his fear that no one would go looking for him, that no one else would care. They'd find a rotting corpse they could barely identify with how badly he'd been beaten and how long he'd been dead. A ghost of who he was. Discarded and forgotten.

He wished he was the one with a bullet in his head, just to stop his thoughts torturing him, both in sleep and all his waking hours.

Then there was the grating sound of grinding steel that was hardly used and the doors to the carriage slid open, light pouring in on the prisoners inside. Looking around, Peter could finally see the conditions of the people he'd boarded with. He himself was on his last legs, stomach growling, throat and mouth dry as sawdust, but he was still alive. Less could be said of some of the others. Standing on his tiptoes, he could see at least three dead already. Two women, one young, one elderly, the laugh lines worn deep into her face, and one teenaged boy, boyish curls falling softly against his pale forehead. All three were limp and lifeless but still stood, unable to find room to collapse, supported by the people around them. He could see the distant look in the eyes of the Polish prisoners forced to hold up the corpse of a stranger for what could easily have been several days.

"Out! All of you, out!" Someone shouted, their nasally voice filling the carriage as they began to move with much pushing and shoving, desperate for fresh air, for food and water, or just to see the sun again.

He was one of the last out, so he couldn't see what was going on, couldn't hear much either over the thrum of confused chatter. But he heard the gunshots, and he heard the panic and the screams that followed. The bodies of the three who succumbed to dehydration had fallen to the floor with little care as to what happened to them, and as Peter stepped hurriedly out onto the grass beside the tracks, another two were added. A middle aged man, dressed in a sharp suit and tie still, maybe just coming back from work when they were captured, his hair greasy with sweat but still parted neatly down the middle, blood blossoming across his dirtied shirt. And a child,  likely no older than 7, although it was difficult to tell considering half her face had been destroyed by the bullet that entered in her right cheek and blew her brains out the back of her head. His stomach churned, and if there'd been anything in it, he would have thrown up at the side of the train. He ended up just curled over, clutching his chest as he heaved, tears falling down his cheeks.

"Hey!" Someone snapped from right behind him, and he felt something blunt poking into the small of his back. They grabbed his shoulder and spun him around, moving the rifle up from his back to his face, resting it against his cheekbone. "Move it along or you'll end up just like her."

Peter gulped and nodded quickly. The gun was removed, the soldier left, he hurried away, his heart pounding in his chest.

They were giving them water finally. They'd stopped by what looked like a farm in the middle of the countryside, with a couple of buckets filled with murky water. They passed it around between them, drinking like animals, tipping back the bucket as other hands reached for it desperately.