The Calm after the Storm

Chapter One

The calm after the storm

Chapter One

November, 1952

//Dean//

Death. That's what Dean smelled twenty-four hours seven days a week. That abnormal scent of rotting corpses like a blanket of dust layering upon him. After a while he got used to that repellent odor. He had to. On the first day when Dean arrived, his stomach revolted, because he had never smelled something so aggressive like that before. The then fellow guard still remembered how it felt, as if acid was running down his throat, etching away the flesh. It didn't mean that people were killed every day, because that would not comply with the truth, but the smell abided for months if someone has been executed which happened rarely. Nonetheless it could have happened each day and everyone was tensed, hoping it didn't go that far.

The 25 years old guard tramped along the plastered way, rethinking about the tasks he had to do for this day. He wore his uniform that resembled his old one from the military. The weather was freezing, fortuning that winter is coming. Cold days were a punishment for everyone in the camp, both the inmates and the guards. Dean walked upright, keeping his head eye and wore a neutral expression on his face so that no emotions were seen. He stared outside the walls, scanning the area vigilantly.

The encampment was surrounded by a widely spread forest and the next tarred road was miles away so that the district couldn't be located easily. Regardless of the woods, the stench didn't vanish, reminding everyone of the horrible everyday life, but he was paid well. That's the main reason why he was still working at such a dark place. It was the birthplace of agony and expiry. The camp was established to have all criminals locked away, but it wasn't exactly a prison. It was worse.

It was Dean's shift to guard, scouting the entire camp. He had to walk along every trail to make sure no one's trying to escape or doing something they weren't supposed to do. Occasionally someone tried to flee, but they can't make it pass the gates. The fence is being watched by five guards, each of them was standing on top of a watch tower, equipped with floodlights. No one got ever the chance to vamoose, because any possible exit was being watched.

"Dean, everything alright?" Kenneth, another guard, asked as Dean passed him and he just nodded in response, saying something afterwards. "Yeah, Kenny. Everyone's working!"

"Alright." Kenneth responded and Dean continued his watch. The camp was kind of a maze with all its buildings, tracks and other places that belonged to it.

There was one huge house, constructed for the officers who managed everything, placed exact three miles before the main gates. Within the barbed wire fence there were lots of wooden sheds for the inmates, in each one lived like 30 up to 50 people. They didn't have ample space, but they didn't stay in there most of the time. The half day they were whether working outside, depending on what job they had, or they were in the community room in their spare time. Additionally there was a big canteen that was usually used twice or triple a day. In front of the barracks a large gathering place expanded, an empty area to fit all Prisoners on it. Space was in demand with quite 1000 to 1500 people, so far everyone got along with it and didn't complain. A few trees and flowerbeds were planted all over the place to make it look a bit friendlier what obviously didn't work, but because of that some of the prisoners worked as gardeners and their job was one of the easy ones.

People had been sent here with different motives; not just felons, but also political criminals, gypsies and homosexuals. The government put everyone away who could be dangerous in any way for the civilization and since they intensified the rules people who committed any sort of crime, no matter how pathetic it was, ended up in one of the barracks. Mercy and exceptions weren't in their vocabulary.