Trev tensed. “What?”
“What do you think? I’m not alone in here, and if we just leave someone might be tempted to give us up.”
Deb huddled in her cage with a dozen other prisoners, the closest of the twenty or so cages in the barn to the front doors, fighting to keep down the slightly rotten food the blockheads had given them for dinner. She knew if she couldn’t hold it down she wouldn’t have the strength to work tomorrow, wasn’t sure she’d have the strength anyway, but she couldn’t afford to be hungry.
She only hoped she wouldn’t get sick. From her experience so far the blockheads didn’t care why you couldn’t work, they just beat you if you didn’t. And they weren’t the sort to spare the rod, either.
Her group was supposed to be in transit to someplace up north, but while they were stopped at this camp waiting for something to happen, some facility to get prepared for their arrival or some road to be repaired or something, the enemy soldiers were putting them to work digging ditches and doing camp chores.
The first night here she’d tested her cage looking for weaknesses, as well as inspecting the barn for a good spot to escape. Neither one had offered much hope, not in the middle of a camp with hundreds of soldiers, with guards who checked on the prisoners every half hour or so.
Then the blockheads had put her to work the next day doing laundry, and by that night she was too exhausted to even think of escape. The work wasn’t just tossing clothes into a washer and waiting for it to ding, either: the blockheads had them doing a full industrial sized operation to clean every sheet, blanket, and uniform in camp, all without technology. Instead she and several other women were forced to use an enormous tub filled with scalding water mixed with some nasty cleaning solution that made her hands burn up to her elbows, and her eyes and nose sting too if she caught more than a whiff of the steam right to the face.
The blockheads gave them dowels to literally pound the dirt out of the cloth, then they had to toss the laundry into another tub of cold water to rinse and finally hang it up to dry. The wet cloth was surprisingly heavy and difficult to handle, using the dowel deadened her arms within an hour, and if her or any of the other women slowed down in the slightest their captors were on them in a heartbeat.
Those men had dowels too, but they weren’t for stirring laundry soup. So far Deb had managed to keep going fairly well, but some of the women in the cage sported more than a few bruises from failing to keep up.
A fresh wave of nausea gripped her, and she clenched her jaw around it. She had to tell herself this was bearable. Terrible as today had been, terrible as every day since she’d been taken prisoner had been, none compared to those first days when they-
Deb shuddered and did her best to blank her mind. Thankfully the gorge rising in her throat gave her something else to think about, and she determinedly focused on keeping the bad food down so she could stay strong to work.
Other women were still going through that hell, the newer prisoners who hadn’t been worn down by near starvation and being worked ragged day after day. Although the rest of them who’d been around longer had to fear more of the same as well from time to time, depending on the mood of their captors.
After a lifetime of being blessed with reasonably good looks, Deb had never thought she’d be grateful for aging badly under stressful conditions. But every time she caught a glimpse of the cracked sandpaper skin of her hands, or the reflection of her haggard face and limp stringy hair in the rinse water, every time she was ignored by the soldiers as long as she kept doing her work, she was.
Which only made her feel even worse for those who weren’t as fortunate.
A commotion at the door near her made her cringe back in fear. Blockheads sometimes came in the night looking for amusement, either to taunt and torment the prisoners or for… other things. It was a bit late for that, and anyway her cage of laundry workers was usually passed by, but the fear was still there.
To her surprise she caught the dim silhouettes of two men dragging another man inside. One man ducked back out the door while the other closed it to a crack behind him, and she saw his faint outline standing staring out the narrow opening into the night.
Something was wrong. The blockheads who came after dark were always loud, usually drunken. These furtive men were the opposite of that. And was the body on the floor the sentry who’d been guarding that door?
Deb heard the man whispering, and to her shock he spoke in English. “Come on, run on by.”
It was stupid, but she couldn’t help herself. “Who’s there?” she hissed.
The man froze, then slowly turned to stare into the dark openness of the barn’s interior. Deb saw a bulky shape over his eyes, goggles, and from the way he moved he seemed to be able to see. Night vision?
“Ah crap, I forgot,” he muttered.
The prisoners in other cages were stirring. “Are you American?” a man somewhere behind her hissed. “Have you come to free us?”
The man glanced back out the doorway, tense. “Not this time,” he hissed back. “There’s no plan for it. If we even tried you’d probably all end up shot before you even got halfway out of camp.”
Deb had felt a surge of hope when she’d realized she could understand him, even when she’d thought he might be an enemy. After a month of being abused by soldiers she couldn’t even understand, just hearing her own language from someone who wasn’t a prisoner was a relief.
That hope was rising in spite of his words. “Do they know we’re here?” she demanded. “Is someone going to help us?”
The man turned back to the door, calling quietly to his companion outside. After a moment that man slipped inside. He also wore night vision, and his head moved as he inspected the cages. “Can we trust you to keep quiet so we can escape?” he asked. His voice sounded familiar.
Deb lurched to her feet, pushing the nausea down through sheer willpower, and clutched the metal mesh of her cage. “Let me out!” she begged. “I don’t care if they kill me, I’d rather die trying to escape than stay here!”
The man started forward until he stood only a few feet away. Deb fought the instinct to cringe away, staring at him pleadingly as he inspected her. “My God,” he breathed, sounding shocked. “Is that you, Deb?”
The haze of exhaustion, starvation, and pain lifted just long enough for her to finally recognize the voice, and hope brought something back to life inside her. “Trev?”
Trev barely recognized her. The Deb he knew from Newtown had only been a few years older than him, friendly and energetic and just a tad bit plump. Now she looked like she was in her 40s, gaunt and listless and with her brown hair hacked short and brittle as straw from prolonged malnutrition.
She’d cringed away fearfully in spite of herself when he came close, even when she thought he was here to help, and her face bore the marks of old bruises. She was also hunched slightly around her stomach as if in pain.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she’d been through. “How did you end up here?” he asked incredulously.
Other prisoners were crowded the mesh walls of their cages nearest to him and Rick, and before Deb could answer another prisoner cut in. “I’m with her,” the man said hoarsely. “Set me free and I’ll strangle the first blockhead I find and take his gun, even if I get shot trying.” There was a quiet but desperate chorus of agreement. Not all of the prisoners chimed in, but most did.
“Trev, Rick?” Lewis’s voice came in their earbuds. “Did you shake the patrol? I’m setting the detonator now.”
“Get outside and play sentry,” Trev told Rick as he toggled his mic. His friend nodded and took the blockhead’s rifle, then slipped out the door. “I’m here, Lewis. We shook the patrol, I think, but we had to hide in the barn. There’s over two hundred prisoners in here.”