Gestapo

9

"Peter!" Peter's head snapped naturally towards the empty space in the wall where the man next door would poke through often times.

"What is it?" He hoped nothing had gone wrong.

"Everything is ready. Did you tell her?"

"Yes. I said I would get her, but how will I do that?"

"Leave it to me, sohn. I - " panic flashed in the man's eyes and he shoved the block of cement back onto the wall clumsily. Peter could hear through to the other room.

An officer had entered the old man's room, but he had not seen the carved-out block of cement. They were still safe.

The officer's voice carried through the wall, "Wessler!" So that was his name. "Come! Outing!" Peter had gotten used to the guards' way of speaking, mostly in single words, sometimes short sentences, and knew what this meant. The guards would pick a few inmates and take them outside. Today was a perfect day, because it was so loud and windy outside - a gunshot would barely be heard. And there would be gunshots.

The man next door - Wessler - would die. When Rebecca left, Peter would be alone with his secrets. Rebecca - no. Peter had no way of knowing that she was chosen for the outing, but he could feel it. He needed to get to her.

In the corner of the room was a bucket where Peter was expected to relieve himself - it was his chore to empty it outside on every day that he was allowed out. It was the one thing the guards never touched or searched, so that was where he hid his tools. It was quite disgusting, but Peter had grown used to fishing around to find his file and a bottle of something or the other the man next door had found. Whatever it was, it could eat away metal as if it was a delicious feast, and so Peter had saved it. Now he would use it.

It was slow going, but for Peter, the clock was ticking and it seemed like time was flying as he filed and ate away at the back of the lock on his door. He hadn't know if it would work, but the door swung open after a few pushes and Peter was off.

Strangely, no one stopped Peter as he ran down the halls and towards the exit. All the guards must have been focused on the outing. Only then, as he was running faster than he had ever run before, did Peter realize the true horrors of this place. The cells were all packed together, not even wide enough for Peter to stretch his arms across, and he could tell that some of them must have been packed with at least five or six people. Peter had been lucky to be all alone. It must have been because he was German, just like Wessler next door. But Rebecca was not German - what had she been through? Peter had heard rumors, but dismissed them as such - no place could be so terrible as all of that - but now he knew they were all true. He had not been subjected to any of the Nazis' cruelties, but his poor Rebecca was dying now.

Peter had only seen the door to this place once - and that was when he had been in shock from his capture and beaten bloody - but he had stored the information somewhere deep inside his brain and now his adrenaline brought it out, sending him out of the building and into the buffeting winds.

As soon as the door closed behind him, the bare lighting of the cells was gone and the world was completely dark, much like that night two months ago - the night when something had gone terribly wrong. And something may go wrong today, if Peter couldn't stop it. But he would.

Unlike that night, though, there was wind and rain and flashes of lightning. Peter ran, slipping in the slick mud of the yard, aided by the flashes of light until his pupils had dilated enough for him to see. Where was Rebecca?

Peter dashed madly around corners, slipping in mud and sliding on his hands and knees until he could scramble back up. His uniform was ruined, and he would be punished, but Rebecca was here somewhere. Now he knew how to find her. He would follow the screams.

Peter was sure he had been going in circles around the building, but somehow he rounded a corner he hadn't rounded before, and came to a sliding stop in the mud. There was a gap in the wire here, as if a door had been opened. Surely Rebecca had been through here.

After that, the screams became louder and louder, until they were cut of all of a sudden.

"No one makes a sound!" The unmistakable bark of an official.

Peter was in the woods he had not known existed so close to the barren yard of the camp. Peeking around a scraggly tree, he saw a river. It must have been freezing. It was Spring, but this was a part of Germany Peter had never been to - or maybe it was Poland - and it was so very cold.

The river, more of a stream, still had cracked pieces of ice floating sluggishly up and down, bobbing in the slow current. And there were people in the river. Blue people. So it was true, that these Nazis would do anything to the Jews. Men and women alike were standing naked in the river, water up to their shoulders, and they were shivering so violently they created currents of their own.

There was a dead woman floating on her stomach in the stream, a dark spot on her back from a bullet. It was too dark to see the blood flowing into the waters, congealing in the cold around the other bodies. But it was not too dark to make out faces.

"Rebecca!" Peter jumped from behind his tree. "Rebecca!"

Peter had no idea how long it had taken him to open his door and arrive here. Hours? It had felt like minutes, but now the moon was up. How long had she been standing in the waters? She should be dead soon. Peter lunged towards the river, towards Rebecca. Just as his hand entered the edge of the water, almost freezing off in the second for which it was submerged, an officer pulled him back.

Rebecca's mouth opened to say something, but it was too much effort and she crumpled, her head falling beneath the surface. From the faces of the other prisoners, they were all in agony from the freezing, and the minor disturbance was all it took for them to lose control of their voices - and there were screams again.

The officers shot blindly, and the noise was cut off in seconds. Everyone dead. "Rebecca," the name sounded wrong and strangled.

But there she was - so beautiful even as she died - rising out of the water like an angel. This was an angel who would not be allowed to live - she rose only to be shot down again.