BLACK RED BLOOD WHITE

Chapter Seven, I

CHAPTER SEVEN

"Oh, Holy Lord Jesus!" Ursula exclaimed.

"Ursula, stop it!" Anna ordered.

"We need to open the cages! Now!" Ursula insisted.

"You can't! You can't! Don't you understand? If we open the cages, they'll discover her at once!" Anna replied.

Kate approached one of the cages where a child's dirty hand clung to the bars.

"What is your name?" Kate asked.

"My name is 245," the child replied.

"How long have you been here?" Kate inquired.

"I don't know, a long time," the child answered.

Kate opened the latch of the cage and waited for the door to swing open.

"What does he do? What does he do!!!" Ursula panicked.

"Anna, do the right thing!" Kate urged.

"I want to go with you too, I am so scared," a female voice emerged from another cage.

Kate approached that cage, where two opaque eyes stared at her.

"Please," the voice pleaded.

Kate opened the latch and began freeing all the children from their cages. Some were as young as three or four years old.

As they poured into the corridor between the cages, they appeared like little zombies – slow, dirty, hungry, and astonished.

Kate started shouting, "Let us out now! I know you're there! Let us out, I know you can!"

"Ursula, if this one screams again, Henry will come. You need to make him understand," Anna warned.

Kate fell silent.

"Kids, we're going out now, okay? But you have to be quiet, follow me, we'll take the stairs, and we'll get out, okay?" Kate said to the children.

"Out on the mat? Fighting?" one of the children asked.

"No, not on the mat. We're going outside, we're running away," Kate explained.

"Did you hear what the baby said? Ursula, did you hear?" Anna asked.

"Who cares? How do we help them? How do we get them all out now? It's impossible. You're right, there are about forty of them, eighty feet making noise. Anna, we have to fight Henry and let them go," Ursula suggested.

"No, that's impossible. We need Kate. She messed up my plan, so now she has to take responsibility for it. She will fight with Henry, provided no one else comes along," Anna decided.

Kate knelt down, placed her backpack on the ground, and rummaged inside. She pulled out a mobile phone and turned it on. To her surprise, it had a signal.

Kate's mind raced as she dialed numbers on her mobile phone. She had to make a decision quickly: either lock the children back in their cages and try to escape on her own or call for help. She knew she couldn't get all the children out without drawing attention, and she suspected that the local police might be involved in the sinister activities happening in Buchenwald.

She opted to call a newsroom, hoping that someone there could help. After a brief conversation with the switchboard operator, she was connected to Jeff Gregor, who listened carefully to her frantic account of the situation. Kate described the man named Henry, the children held in poor conditions, and the horrifying discovery of mutilated women in a cold room.