I begin the process of keeping her clean once more, and she’s still half-drugged when Sunday arrives. The guards are more anxious than normal, and over breakfast I hear them bickering about who will drive tonight. This is it, our chance. If we go, I can save Marie but might be signing Katrin’s death warrant, and therefore my own. If we wait, we could all die.
I spend the entire day worrying, and there are no words for how relieved I am when Katrin is shoved into our room, just after dinner. She’s so pale she’s nearly green, and there’s a fresh bruise along her jaw.
“Are you okay?” I whisper, as we lie down to sleep.
“No,” she says. Her voice is flat, empty.
“We have to leave tonight,” I tell her. “I’m not sure we’ll get another chance.”
She’s silent, and for a moment I worry she’ll refuse. “Give me the drugs,” she says finally.
I reach into the hole in my mattress and pass them to her. She rises, walking straight to the guard, who lounges at the desk with his mug of beer, ready for an evening nap. “I need the bathroom,” she says.
He laughs. “I guess your cot will smell like piss then.”
She leans toward him, over the desk. “You know he’s going to kill all of you before this is done.” Her hand passes over his mug.
The guard is one of the short-tempered ones. His hand flies out fast and I can hear it make impact all the way across the room. She falls to the ground. “You think just because you’re his whore you can talk to me like that?” the guard roars. She clutches the sides of the desk to stand and pulls herself up.
“No,” she says. “I suspected you’d react just as you did.”
She returns to her cot and we lie still, waiting until we’re certain the guard is passed out.
“It’s time,” I finally tell Marie as I pull her to her feet.
“I’m going to be sick,” she whispers, and she falls to the floor and retches. Katrin and I exchange a glance. Her nausea won’t be improved, lying pressed against rotting corpses for several hours. She’s going to give us away.
I hold her hair back. “Get it all out,” I whisper. “You can’t do this when the guards load us on the truck, okay? They’ll know you’re alive if you do.”
She nods. After a minute, when nothing more has come up, I pull her to her feet, and tell her the plan, which sounds far simpler than it actually is: hide three corpses, pretend to be dead, and time travel as soon as we’re outside. “Don’t wait for me,” I warn. “Just go. Do you understand?”
She nods and I squeeze her hand, allowing myself to truly hope for the first time that this might work. In a few hours I might be back with Henri. I want that moment so badly I can feel it in my bones.
Together, the three of us sneak into the hall. Marie leans on me the entire way, her skin clammy and her hands shaking. Katrin is lagging too, weak and ill from her days with Coron. I can’t allow myself to think about what those days entailed, and I can’t allow myself to feel sympathy. Sympathy won’t get us out of here.
We pass the hole they are digging, the place they will store the bodies soon. I don’t want to scare Marie but I feel like I have to. She needs to understand how serious this is and right now, she’s too sick and too drug-addled to get it. I point to the hole.
“You see that?” I whisper. “That’s where the bodies will go after tonight. Under that big slab. Do you understand what that means?”
She nods and I pray it’s enough. Because if we don’t get out tonight, I’m not sure we ever will.
I open the infirmary door. The bodies lie in a pile, eyes open, mouths gaping. I wasn’t prepared for the sight or the smell. Marie, though—who hasn’t been conscious over these last few weeks—is far less prepared than me.
She falls to the floor beside them, dry heaving now that her stomach is empty. Katrin is green as well, but plows forward, grabbing one of the women by the shoulders.
“Are you sick?” I ask.
She gives me a tense nod. “Get the feet,” she whispers.
Even with two of us, the task is far harder than I’d anticipated. It’s over a hundred pounds of dead weight, and I’m so weak from days without food that even propelling myself forward is a struggle at times. I force myself to keep moving, and when we finally drop the body beneath a table at the end of the room, I have an odd, floating sensation that makes me wonder if I’ll survive the journey home. We return to the corpses and grab another, both of us breathing heavily; we manage it, but just as we return for the third, we hear the heavy tread of boots in the hall. My gaze meets theirs. The guards are here early, and we don’t have time to hide the third body.
Which means one of us has to stay behind.
I told Henri I would keep Marie safe, and I will. And if Katrin doesn’t survive…odds are I won’t ever be born.
“Lie down,” I tell them.
Marie shakes her head. “No, you should go. I’m too weak anyway.”
“You are not going to be able to time travel in a few weeks. You’re losing your spark, and I am not. I’m still fine. Lie down. Go back to your brother. If I can escape I will. Go to America like we planned and swear on your life that you’ll never return to 1918.”
She presses something into my hand—her mother’s necklace, the one she found in a pocket when we arrived here. She was certain it would bring us good luck, though I’m not sure it has.
I turn to Katrin. “Good luck. Hopefully this hasn’t changed your future or mine too much.”
She gives me the smallest, saddest smile imaginable, and runs her hand over her stomach. “Not to worry,” she says. “Your future is now secure.”
I blink, not able to understand, at first. And then I do: she is pregnant.
It all begins to make sense —her recent illness, her quiet. She’s been pregnant since the first time she slept with him and lying about it so she’d be able to escape.
There’s no time for questions and not even time to process my shock. I dive to the back of the room just as the guards walk in and hold my breath as they begin to lift the bodies on the cart, waiting for someone to notice that two of them are still warm. They don’t, too busy bickering about who will drive and who gets a weapon.
The bodies are thrown carelessly, as if they are sacks of flour. The door slams as they go.
And then my shoulders shake and I begin to cry. For Marie and Katrin, my only friends here. And because Katrin has just confirmed one of my worst fears: the terrible piece of me is real. I’m a Coron.
8
SARAH
I wake to find myself being turned out of my bed. The guards are kicking my stomach, my back, my face, demanding to know where Katrin and Marie are. If I’m still here, Katrin must have survived. I hope that means Marie did too.
I accept the blows, but along with the pain I feel that familiar rage as well—blistering, making my blood heat until it’s reached a boiling point. I’m going to kill you all, I think as they aim their boots into my stomach and back and face. I’m going to kill you all and I’m going to make it so long and so painful you’ll beg me for a quick death.