Snap.
The chamber is loaded.
Click-tick.
Click.
Boom.
A startling explosive bang, then a high-pitched ringing zings through my ears.
Adam isn’t as fortunate as Natan was that night.
My vision darkens and blurs, feeling the world spin around me, shake me around and thrust me off my feet. The sound doesn’t stop…it just echoes in my head and strangles the air out of my lungs. A scream warbles and I don’t know if it’s mine or someone else’s. I can’t open my eyes…I don’t want to.
THIRTY-FIVE
GAVRIEL
No. Adam. You’re all right. You have to be. We’re in this together, remember?
I can’t move. As if I’m stuck inside a nightmare, one that burns through every limb of my body.
A click…thenboom.The sound continues to float around me like a falling leaf, too soft for what it’s caused.
I can’t breathe in or out. I press my fists into my chest as if searching for my lungs. There’s no sound. Not really. Something inside of me tears like paper ripped down the center, jagged and destroyed. Unmendable.
He said we were getting out of here. I should have believed him.
He should have been right.
This isn’t real. It can’t be. We’ve made it so far.
He would have said we were close to the end.
I can’t go through this again. Losing my brothers, now Adam. I can’t?—
A boot to my ribs, sending me flying backward. “Get up!” Oskar shouts. “Get up, or you’re next! There will continue to be anextuntil we find the person responsible for the stolen items.”
He must think he looks like a hero to Schäfer. A Jew holding the Nazis’ prey hostage for the ease of his hunting. An innocent man who had nothing but hope in everything he did. Blood gushes out of the back of his head as I clamber to my feet, my knees weak, my hand throbbing, a cold sweat steaming from my skin within the unwavering summer heat.
“You and you, take the body,” Oskar says, pointing at me and Rueben. His words are muffled beneath the unrelenting ringing in my ears, but I understand what he’s said.
Rueben and Benson look the way I must look, empty with shock despite knowing there’s nothing shocking about this moment. I move to Adam’s head and scoop my hands beneath his arms, waiting for Rueben to have a hold of his feet. He hardly weighs enough to be considered a grown man.
Adam’s eyes are still open, holding on to the last second of realization that his life was ending. Everything inside of me shatters as I remember conversations of what he planned to do with his life. He spoke as if nothing could happen to him—nothing would happen to him. It was as if he knew he would walk back out of those gates unscathed, but he was wrong. Or, he was right, I suppose, but he’ll be brought back in through the gates so his remains can be burnt into disintegration, undoing his existence. And for what? A threat to whoever is killed among us next?
“I wish we had survived this day together,” I whisper. I know he didn’t do what they accused him of. This is what they do when they’re looking for a reason to get rid of someone. He shouldn’t be dead. I shouldn’t be carrying his lifeless body as the wound on my hand stretches with each step. Warm blood seeps around the bandage at my thumb and all I can think is that I could be next. But I can’t let that happen.
Rueben’s eyes are filled with tears and his chin trembles as he sucks in his cheeks, likely biting the insides like I am.
“What is wrong with your hand?” Oskar shouts at me.
“Nothing,” I reply. I can prove it’s nothing by continuing to carry my friend back to Auschwitz despite the pain writhing through my hand and arm.
“Doesn’t look like nothing to me. Looks like your thumb has been gnawed off by a dog.” He can’t see my thumb, wrapped in the bloody bandage. I want to call him an idiot for suggesting I was bitten by a dog when I’ve been sawing all day.
“Where’d the bandage come from?” He’s a traitor of the worst kind; a man who helps kill the innocent to keep his own name off a list. I hope he lives a long life—long enough to remember the face of every person who he helped disappear.
