The Children’s Train

The line moved slowly around them. Eric and Borg picked up the dead man and tossed him to the side, out of the path, not with sympathy but with efficiency.

Borg grimaced. He looked at the line of prisoners stretching as far as he could see. “Where are we going?” he asked Eric, cold and weary, walking beside him.

Eric pointed ahead. “It doesn’t matter. We will go until they tell us to stop.”

“Who will tell us to stop?” Borg asked, finally questioning the madness. “It is only us.” He looked around and shook his head. “But it won’t be me, anymore.” He took off running across the field.

Eric, unused to anyone questioning the Nazis, stared after him. Then, the fog of confusion lifted, and his Nazi sensibilities clicked in. He pulled out his gun, aimed it at the fleeing Borg, and shot. Borg, at last on his way to his own freedom and finally giving in to a long simmering rejection of his murderous people and his own actions, stumbled and fell face down in the snow. He was dead at the hands of his own people, for disobeying a Nazi command.

“I hate cowards,” Eric muttered, as he continued moving forward with the death march of prisoners.