Dawn of the Living-Impaired Read online

  The skinny one moans with discomfort. The tall quick one rubs fitfully at some old damage, two holes high on the right side of the torso, below the shoulder.

  It takes a long time until we near the cave.

  We all feel strange.

  We ache. We tingle. We itch.

  Something inside my chest clenches in a sudden painful squeeze-thump. I suck in breath with a gasp, let it out with a grunt. The sensation passes. Then squeeze-thumps again. And again.

  The cave is not far now.

  My mouth is parched. My lips are cracked and dry. I am thirsty, so thirsty.

  Thirsty?

  The sunlight is a harsh white glare, squinting my eyes, making them water. It burns on my skin, where the marks show in vivid color and design.

  There is dampness on me. Under my arms, on my forehead, trickling along my spine. Damp, even under the baking sunshine, cooler when a breeze gusts. More dampness, thicker and wetter dampness, is in the wounds on my sore hip and calf. I feel it welling up, oozing down. I limp.

  The noseless one stands sentry on a high flat boulder. Turned in our direction, alert.

  Close now. Very close. The cave is just ahead.

  I feel my bowels rumble. I feel pressure in my bladder. My breathing is ragged, raspy. I cough.

  The tall quick one whimpers. Blood dribbles from the old damage, the bullet-holes. Then, all at once, the dribbles turn into a flood. The tall quick one takes two more steps, stumbles, falls flat, does not move.

  The skinny one cries out for help. But the cry becomes a retching gurgle as the skinny one bends double and vomits up a torrent of partially-chewed meat and organs in a pinkish stew of fluids.

  The noseless one must have given a call, because the group is coming.

  All of them.

  The biggest one, the wobble-headed one, the half-faced one, the tiny shrunken one. Even the hollow one.

  They are coming.

  Arms raised. Groaning and wailing.

  They are hungry.

  All, always, very hungry.

  And we have returned … with meat.

  BE BRAVE

  Germany, 194-

  Klara didn’t want to be on the train.

  Mustn’t cry. Mustn’t whine.

  It would be all right. Mutti had promised. Mutti had promised, and Mutti never lied.

  But, if Mutti had promised, and Mutti never lied, how come Mutti had tears in her eyes when she said it?

  “It will be all right,” Mutti had said. “We’ll be together again soon, Klara, I promise. You just be brave, my good brave girl, and everything will be fine.”

  Then Mutti was gone.

  Klara wished she could jump out of the crowded car, just jump and run and be away. Nobody would bother trying to stop her, would they? She was only ten, who would care?

  Besides, she could run fast.

  Or, she could if she left her suitcase.

  They’d let her bring a suitcase, just one, stuffed with hastily-packed clothes. If she left it behind on the train, she might never get it back.

  Couldn’t leave it behind. Couldn’t run fast carrying it, having it bump and bang into people. Somebody surely would notice, then.

  It was too late, anyway. The doors latched shut. The steam whistle shrieked. The train started moving. It shuddered and jerked as it picked up speed, then settled into a steady rattling kind of rocking motion.

  Klara huddled as small in her seat as she could, suitcase between her feet. She held Gerte on her lap, bowing her head over the doll’s fluffy curls. Gerte wore a pretty blue dress with lace ruffles. Klara wore a grey traveling coat.

  No crying. No whining. Be brave.

  Mutti’s good brave girl.

  Her chin tried to quiver. She made it stop.

  It would be fine. They’d be together again soon. Mutti had promised.

  But what if something bad happened?

  Bad things did happen. It was war-time, and in war-time, bad things always happened. The soldiers. The fighting. The bombings.

  What if a bomb hit the train?

  Or what if a bomb hit a bridge, and the engineer didn’t see it in time?

  Her chin tried harder to quiver, and she bit her jaws together so hard they hurt.

  She wanted her Mutti. She wanted to be home, in the warm kitchen, with chicken and dumplings cooking on the stove.

  What if she never-ever got to go home ever again?

  She hugged Gerte tight. She blinked until the stinging in her eyes went away, and gulped silently until the lump in her throat did, too.

  Good brave girl.

  Taking a deep breath, she lifted her head to glance around. She saw another girl, about her own age, a skinny girl with a snub nose and braids tied in red ribbons. The other girl wore a too-big brown dress that must have been a hand-me-down, and had an old carpet-bag with a scuffed handle.

  The other girl looked as scared and alone as Klara felt. When their gazes met, they studied each other for a moment, then mustered their strength long enough to share a brief, shaky smile.

  And the train continued its rumbling journey through the countryside.

  *

  They thought they could do this? Those bastards, those pig-dogs!

  Just come in and oust them from their own land?

  Jakob Stumpf would not stand for it.

  His family had held and worked this land for over three hundred years.

  Tell them they were not true Germans? Tell them they had to leave their home, to make way for some pampered city-bred Volk who were more deserving somehow because they were more ‘pure’?

  It was an outrage.

  Jakob Stumpf wished the soldiers who’d come to drive them off had been aggressive about it. Then, they could have fought back … they could have resisted, done something …

  He’d heard stories of when the Nazis had come to other villages, jeering and mocking, committing random destruction or abuses. He’d heard of young men beaten up for sport, young women shamed, houses looted, barns burned, people robbed.

  Why was it just his luck that these ones had been so professional, treating everyone with a brusque but iron-clad respect? Why hadn’t they been the cruel monsters that might have inspired his neighbors to action, instead of meek and wretched compliance?

  They hadn’t burst in on hapless villagers in the night, turning them out of their beds half-wakened and bewildered. Nor was it as if they’d put them to the road with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They’d permitted everyone to gather some personal possessions, keepsakes, even a few valuables before sending them away, telling them not to return.

  It was no less an outrage.

  This was their land!

  Blood and soil, the Party went on about in their speeches.

  Blood and soil? How much Stumpf blood had been shed for the sake of this soil? Over three hundred years’ worth … blood and sweat and tears … bringing crops from the stubborn earth, tending livestock through droughts and bitter winters …

  Jakob had been born here, as had his brothers, his father and uncles, his grandfather, his sons! Their ancestors were buried here, blood and bone and soil!

  But, no.

  They were not true Germans, not pure enough. They were descendants of Poles, and Slavs. Perhaps even Jews, generations back. That, in the eyes of the Party, made them mongrels and undesirables.

  So, they had to go. They had to go, leave their homes and most of their furnishings behind, leave their animals as property of the fatherland, and therefore property of the Reich.

  Hans, his own brother, told him to simply accept their fate.

  “They are taking our home!” Jakob had said. “Giving it to settlers, to city-dwellers, to spoiled would-be farmers who know nothing of farming, who will ruin everything we’ve built here.”

  To that, Hans shrugged. “They let us go with no trouble. We should count ourselves lucky.”

  Lucky!

  Of course, it was Anna that Hans was thinking o
f, and how easy it would have been for the soldiers to decide Anna was too blonde and too pure to be his wife.

  “They are making our village into a garrison and supply depot,” Jakob had persisted. “Stockpiling explosives, weapons, poison gas! And that camp! That camp they’ve built!”

  “But what would you have us do?”

  “Fight back!”

  “Fight back,” Hans had echoed, shaking his head.

  “We know the land here. We know it better than anyone. We know the woods. We can hide, and strike, and escape, and strike again.”

  “The two of us, against an army? Against a nation?”

  “Others would join us. There are men among our neighbors, our countrymen, who would stand against this … this tyranny!”

  “If we go, we live,” Hans said. “Your plan means death, my brother.”

  With that, Hans had taken his wife, and followed the others. Abandoning the farm that had been their family’s lifeblood – blood and bone and soil, blood and sweat and tears – for over three centuries.

  But Jakob stayed.

  *

  After the train were the trucks, two long trucks, covered in grey-green canvas.

  Soldiers took all the bags and suitcases, and threw them into the back of the first one. It was also full of metal barrels, canisters, and crates marked with the swastika flag.

  A blond man with the coldest eyes Klara had ever seen reached for Gerte, but another stayed him with a gesture. That one had softer eyes, almost the same blue as Gerte’s dress. He patted Klara on the shoulder as she shuffled past. She wondered if he had sisters back home, and missed them.

  Her whole life felt further away than she could have imagined. She didn’t even know where they were, way out here, surrounded by farms and fields and wooded hills. Where was Mutti right now? Was Mutti thinking of her? Was Mutti sad, though trying to be as brave as she’d urged Klara to be?

  Clutching Gerte in one arm, Klara clambered up into the second truck. For seats, they had rough plank benches along the sides, and a double-bench down the middle. She was able to squirm her way past the jostling larger bodies and sit beside the girl with the brown braids. They shared another shaky smile.

  Was talking allowed? Klara didn’t know, and didn’t want to get in trouble, but …

  “I’m Klara,” she whispered. “What’s your name?”

  “Helgie,” the girl whispered back. “I like your doll.”

  “Thank you. She’s called Gerte. Would you like to hold her?”

  “I better not,” said Helgie.

  “Maybe later.”

  They fell quiet, watchful as the rest of the benches filled up. An older girl said something flirty-sounding to the soldiers, who laughed. Then they pulled down the canvas flap at the back and tied it secure, casting the interior into a shadowy gloom.

  A few nervous murmurs arose. Klara managed not to join them, but she leaned toward Helgie without pausing to think about it. To her relief, Helgie was doing the same thing, leaning toward her, their arms pressed together.

  It helped. It made the dark not so bad. They could still be scared, but it was better to not feel entirely alone. Being brave was easier with a friend.

  The truck engines coughed, sputtered, and roared to life. Moments later, they were bouncing along a rutted dirt road. The faster the trucks went, the bumpier the ride became. It was almost fun, at first, with some hoots and cries of alarmed excitement, but soon it was a grueling ordeal of hanging on, so as not to be thrown off the bench.

  As the tires juddered across a bridge, the girl who’d flirted with the soldiers announced that she was getting splinters in her you-know-where, which elicited a few snickering giggles. Aside from that, though, the mood soon soured and sombered.

  Conversation was next to impossible. The air under the canvas was hot and stuffy, exhaust-smelling and dust-smelling and sweat-smelling, and then even worse-smelling as someone was noisily sick on the floorboards.

  Klara closed her eyes and tried to imagine she was on a ship at sea, instead of in this jolting, bouncing truck. On a ship at sea, with her family, all of them safe and happy and on their way to someplace new, someplace where there wasn’t war.

  Finally, the truck slowed, then turned, then slowed again and came to a wheezing stop. Cab doors creaked open and thumped shut. Boots gritted on gravel. The soldiers untied the flap again. Light flooded in, making everybody squint and wince … but a fresh breeze flooded in, as well, and they all turned gratefully toward it.

  Stiff, sore, and moving like they all had splinters in their you-know-wheres, they climbed down. Klara and Helgie went hand-in-hand, having clasped them just as unthinkingly as they’d leaned toward each other on the bench. Helgie shaded her face with her free hand, while Klara held Gerte.

  Distant figures labored in garden rows and fields. High wooden gantry-like towers overlooked strange structures that Klara could not identify, where it sounded as if some sort of activity was going on. Long, low barracks or bunkhouses were arranged around a square yard.

  The gravel drive that led from the gate widened into a semi-circle in front of a building that resembled a large farmhouse.

  A woman waited for them on the steps, a tall woman with very pale gold hair pinned back in a bun. She wore a calf-length skirt of dark blue wool, a short-sleeved white blouse with shoulder passants, a black neckerchief, and shiny black shoes with sensible hose.

  “I am Untergau Wegener,” she said. “On behalf of the League of German Girls, I welcome you to Grünfeld School, Farm and Sports Camp.”

  *

  Jakob Stumpf watched the trucks drive into the heart of the village, raising plumes of dust.

  The village. His village.

  He barely recognized it, now.

  Oh, the outlying farmhouses – his own included – were largely the same … if repaired, renovated, and tidied in preparation for the new families that would arrive soon to take them over.

  Those interlopers. Those true, pure Germans.

  Good, diligent, hard-working men and women.

  As if the people who’d built this place by the strength of their backs and the sweat of their brows hadn’t been?

  The same old argument, and no one else here to dispute it with him, but it rankled no less.

  Jakob supposed that he, too, would be barely recognizable, if seen by anyone who’d known him before. Hiding out in the woods, sleeping in an old hunting-shelter, living on canned food and whatever else he could scrounge … unshaven, his dark hair long and unkempt … indifferently bathed …

  He doubtless looked every inch the mongrel their doctrine would have them believe.

  Fine. Let them believe it, these clean-cut young men, strutting and proud in their uniforms. He hadn’t had much opportunity, yet, but Jakob would make them sorry for what they’d done. For how they’d treated his family and his neighbors, and for what they’d done to his home.

  The general store made into a commissary, the tavern into a mess hall, the swastika waving from the flagpole, the church being used as a supply depot …

  The church!

  He’d never been the most religious of men, but found this last change the most deeply offensive. The pews had been pushed aside to clear the floorspace, which was now stacked with everything from dynamite to toilet paper.

  And to think, less than a hundred yards away, down a grassy slope dotted with wildflowers, was the crumbling stone wall around the tree-shaded cemetery dating back more than three hundred years. His mother, resting there alongside his father and both sets of grandparents, would have wept to see the church she’d loved so much put to such purpose.

  The lead truck parked in front of the church. Soldiers began unloading its cargo of crates, metal drums, and heavy canisters painted various colors. The second truck parked by the feed-and-hardware store. It seemed that one held no cargo, but had been used for some other purpose that necessitated being hosed out.

  A troop-truck with no troops. A delivery, th
en. To the camp at what had once been the old Grünfelder farm. The camp for girls.

  *

  It wasn’t so bad at all!

  Oh, at first, Klara was homesick and missed her Mutti, but soon she was too busy to stay sad for long.

  There were so many things to do!

  Every day, they marched, and recited the pledges, and sang “The Flag on High.”

  And school, yes, lots of that. History lessons, geography, reading and math, some art, some science, some music. Daily chore rosters were posted, saying who would help in the kitchen or laundry or dining room, who would clean the bathrooms, who would sweep and mop. They worked in the vegetable gardens, orchards, and farm-fields.

  On ‘Home Evenings’, they did housewifely things, like sewing, cooking, handicrafts, planning a budget or menu, and learning how to take care of babies. Saturdays were for ‘Outdoor Training’, with running, swimming, gymnastics, and sports. The wooden towers Klara had noticed upon arrival were part of an obstacle course, with ropes and ladders, walls to climb, and wires to crawl under.

  There were badges that could be earned, as well. They watched instructional films. They studied first aid. They memorized codes and signals. The older girls were taught to drive, and shoot, and take care of weapons. They were also lectured regularly on rassenschande, which, as Klara and Helgie understood it, had to do with having the wrong kinds of boyfriends.

  The two of them were the youngest at Grünfeld, but there were a few others who were eleven and twelve. Most of the rest were between thirteen and sixteen, with some seventeen-and-olders who served more as teachers and assistants.

  It was like having many big sisters, none of whom were mean or spiteful. Well, except for Inge, sometimes. Inge often said how she had joined the League expecting that she’d meet and marry a handsome SS officer, not be put in charge of a bunch of little girls. Whenever she complained, Marlene – the one who’d flirted with the soldiers as she boarded the truck, and who still did whenever she had the opportunity – would just laugh.