The man heaved backwards, and now I saw that he was grasping someone else's hand. He planted his feet, and with one more heaving tug, he pulled a person up from the grave. Both of them, the man and what now looked like a woman, immediately collapsed onto the snow. The man lay panting. The woman lay perfectly still. She looked emaciated. I couldn't tell if she was breathing at all.
After a moment, finally, the woman stirred. She weakly raised a hand to her head. With what looked like a lot of effort, the man got to his feet, helped the woman stand, and he started hurrying her towards the barn.
The man hadn't been digging graves at all.
He was digging up buried positives. And he was sheltering them in the barn.
"Oh my God. Chris." I handed him the binoculars. "Do you see what's happening down there?"
He adjusted the binoculars to fit his eyes. Then he whistled softly.
"Holy. Crap. That woman must have been underground for, what, months? Amazing they still haven't expired. I knew TGV requires almost no oxygen. But, wow. I had no idea. Still, these are probably the last people the Home Guard buried before the executions started. That guy's saving their asses just in time. Wouldn't be surprised, though, if he's mostly just finding expired bodies."
"We have to help him," I said.
"Well, yeah, that would be neighborly of us, wouldn't it?" Chris tossed me the binoculars back. "But ain't gonna happen, Ash. It would take us half a day just to get down there. We got people of our own to take care of. Supplies? Food? Remember?"
He kicked his horse and trotted ahead.
I knew he was right. We had a narrow window of time to reach Ed's place, load up the horses with supplies, and hurry back to the safety of the dwellings. If the Home Guard caught us down there, people who were counting on us would starve.
Still, it was hard to see someone struggling to help people who'd been buried alive and do nothing to help. I took one last glance through the binoculars. The man was already pitching the shovel into the snowy earth, starting on a new grave.
A warm tingling, originating someplace between my legs, rose up into my breast and shifted my heartbeat up a gear. I couldn't even see this guy's face, but watching him make this selfless act sent images flashing through my head: his warm body laid back against the snow, my legs straddling him. Then another: his arms clutching me, from behind.
I took a breath and forced myself to focus my thoughts on the breakfast waiting for us at Ed's. . .
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