CHAPTER ONE
GRACE’S EYES BURNED as sweat trickled down her forehead and blurred her vision. She blinked hard to keep the perspiration out. Struggling to keep her breathing steady, she ignored the burning in her legs and the constricting of her chest, while keeping pace with Jack and Miles. A mild irritation at the moment, but nothing compared to the terror stalking them.
Shots from the SS guards pierced the pre-dawn air, jolting her to a momentary stop. But the baying of search dogs urged her feet to continue.
They descended into a ravine where the earthy essence of moss and decomposing leaves overwhelmed her. She looked back to see Miles taking up the rear. Up ahead, Jack continued to blaze a trail through thick vegetation.
“Keep moving!” Jack said. “We’ll lose them up ahead.”
Grace continued battling the brambles as she stumbled forward. “How well do you know this place?”
“You could call it a haunt of sorts,” Jack said.
“Why would you ever come here?”
“Long story, but I can assure you it wasn’t always willingly. Now, quit jabbering and keep running.”
Jack led Grace and Miles up and over a rise—and straight into a swamp. After all the running, sloshing through the mire was painfully slow. The farther she stepped into the water, the higher it rose. It finally stopped once it reached her waist.
“There must be a better route,” Grace said.
“There would be, if it wasn’t for the dogs. We’ve got to make them lose our scent.” Jack looked down at his watch. “We’re behind schedule.”
For the next ten minutes, the barking and occasional gunshots faded as they trudged through the swamp. Jack motioned for Grace and Miles to stay in the water, while he walked out of the swamp and up a short incline. He then walked backward, retracing his steps.
Following Jack’s lead, they clambered over a small hill, then descended a short slope that leveled out by a set of train tracks.
Jack stopped.
“We’re out in the open,” Grace said, concerned about aerial surveillance.
Jack put up his hand to quiet her. He then put his ear on one of the rails and listened. Without explanation, he straightened up. “This is going to be close. Grace, you have to do exactly as you see me and Miles do.”
“Right.”
The dogs bayed in the distance while Jack ran over to where the tracks bent around the hill. Within seconds, he came running back, and led them to hide behind the trees at the tracks’ edge.
Crouching, Grace regarded Jack with curiosity. For someone barely older than her, he seemed to know his way around trouble—a bit too well. “You’re pretty well-versed in subterfuge.”
Jack kept his eye on the bend in the tracks. “I spent hours in these woods as a kid. It’s like my back yard.”
“How did that happen?”
“After escaping the Nazi’s, a rebel paramilitary colony took me in. All we did was train—no fun or games, but I didn’t care, I was motivated.”
“What exactly did you learn?” Grace asked.
“Sniper training, hand-to-hand…I can hold my breath underwater for four minutes…”
She didn’t want to appear impressed, but in fact, she was. Best not to let it show, or his already inflated head might just explode. “Is that all?”
“Well, maybe I’ve had to land an airplane once when a pilot died of a heart attack on final approach.”
“Now you’re just patronizing me.”
Jack laughed and shook his head. “You’d be surprised at what I’ve—” He froze and stopped his thought. “It’s coming. Get ready.”
“For what?” Grace said.
“It’s simple, really. Trains have to slow down at that bend—it’s all we’ll need to hop aboard one of the cargo cars. Ready?”
Miles nodded. “Ready.”
Grace stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“Best I could come up with in the moment.”
The squeal of the train’s brakes announced its arrival.
A bright yellow beam swung around first, then came the engine roaring past them.
“I thought you said it was slowing down!” Grace yelled, trying to be heard above the din.
“It did,” Miles said.
“Wait for my signal,” Jack said.
Car after car whooshed by.
“On my mark!” Knees bent, Jack bounced slightly on his feet, preparing to spring.
Grace had never set foot into a curb or gutter before, and now she was at the edge of a mechanical monstrosity that could crush them all in an instant. The horrid wail of the wheels against the steel tracks drove her hands up to her ears, but she dropped them right away, fearing she might miss Jack’s signal.
The rhythmic percussion of the train’s passing resonated in her chest.
A wave of panic seized her. “Jack, wait! I can’t—!”
“Now!” Jack sprinted out from the trees.
Grace and Miles followed.
With surprising speed, Jack flew ahead of them, came alongside a car with a door slightly ajar. He leapt, grabbed a steel hand-hold mounted to its wall, pulled himself up, and then turned back. “Hurry!”
This was far worse than fleeing the SS and their dogs.
Miles rushed past her. “Come on, Grace. You can do this!”
Choking on the engine’s fumes wafting back at her, she ran with all her strength. Up ahead, a series of overhanging trees dropped off, leaving the gravelly ground upon which she ran bare and exposed to the ever brightening light of the rising sun.
Miles leapt up onto the side of the car and got inside with Jack. Immediately Jack came to the doorway with his hand outstretched.
“Come on! The train picks up here!”
It wasn’t the fatigue in her legs that slowed her, it was the stifling shortness of breath.
Just when she thought she would collapse, and watch the train carry Jack and Miles away, a buzzing sound above her drew her gaze upward.
Like a bird of prey, a pewter colored, long-winged surveillance drone descended from the sky.
Miles was now at the door of the train car too, looking up at the unmanned aircraft, which was one of the government’s most effective means of tracking criminals, and killing them on the spot. He pointed to it. “Grace, you have to get closer to the train—under its shadow!”
But the wheels and the noise…what if she tripped and fell under them?
With renewed fervor, she sprinted even harder; so hard her eyes squeezed shut as she let out an excruciating cry. “I’m not going to make it!”
Just before she gave up, a pair of hands grabbed her by the wrists.
Instinctively, she too pulled as they yanked her up, her feet striking the side of the train car.
She opened her eyes, fell forward onto a wood floor.
A cloud of dust lifted about her.
Immediately, a heavy thud landed next to her.
Jack, whose eyes were as wide as his smile, slapped her on the back. “You did it, Princess!”
Miles slid the door shut, and wiped his brow with his sleeve. “Wooo-whee!”
Grace got up and turned around.
Never in a lifetime could she have imagined what she now saw facing her. Her jaw fell open as the words floated out absently. “What in all of creation—?” she said, trying not to appear afraid. But what she saw staring back at her terrified her by the very implication of who they were. She’d never met anyone of their kind up close like this. “Miles?”
“Now listen, Grace…”
“I… Wh—what’s…? Where are we…?”
Crowded around her in the dark freight car along with cows, sheep, and other livestock sat an eclectic mix of people. Boys, girls, Jews with a blue Star of David emblazoned on their arm bands, Blacks, Asians, some of whom had crucifix symbols branded into their foreheads, and others with the sickle moon and single star. Some of the men looked effeminate, some of the women looked masculine. To Aryans, they were all the religious and deviant scourge of the earth, Infekts.
Grace shuddered and tried not to stare. They were gaunt, emaciated. Even worse was the forlorn expression all of them bore. Any trace of human dignity had long been evacuated from their eyes.
“How long have you been on this train?” Jack asked.
Nobody said a word.
Jack moved closer to one of the prisoners, a young black man, perhaps in his early 20s. “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”
The man shook his head. “Does it matter? We’re going to die.”
Jack gave him a reassuring look. “We can help a few of you get off this train and—”
“You can’t do squat!”
Miles stepped forward, alerted by the angry young man’s voice. “Now listen to me, Son. There’s always a way, as long as you don’t lose your cool, you hear?”
“You don’t understand,” the younger man said. “We’re nothing but slaves. Always have been, always will be. It’s no use trying to resist. They’ll just kill you quicker.”
Miles just shook his head, and walked away.
A Caucasian man with the Christian symbol branded into his forehead came over. “You’re all crazy, jumping on this train. Don’t you know we’re going to a Belegshaft processing plant?”
She’d already had her preconceived notions of the Belegshaft communities—the ones drilled into her mind, and the general public—upended. But this was a completely unfamiliar term. Grace furrowed her brow at Jack. “What does he mean by processing plant?”
Jack gazed around the car at the despair blanketing the face of each prisoner. “It’s a processing facility for Infkets,” he said.
“What do they do there?”
The branded man gave her a despondent look. “We die.”
To be continued...
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