Dinner Time

It's dinner time at a concentration camp in Germany. But the prisoners aren't going to eat. They're getting EATEN.

             June Fourth, Nineteen Forty. I was nineteen years old, a Pole in a Nazi Camp. I was in the main gathering area to get my meager portion of soup, when all of a sudden screams and panic broke the silence. It wasn’t the usual screams of scared prisoners, it was the scream of someone who had just seen something absolutely horrible, like...a dead kitten, or a ghost. The panic spread rapidly, and soon I was surrounded by it. And then I saw it. At the time I didn’t know there were hundreds more surrounding us, I only saw the one. A Nazi soldier, but he wasn’t human. I thought of the possibilities, and my mind stuck on the final one.

A zombie?

 

 

His head was twisted, cocked to one side almost laying directly on his mutilated shoulders. He seemingly had almost no control over the position of his arms, and they lay limp at his sides, in a strange, contorted way. He stomped toward me slowly, muttering strange things as he approached, a slight moan coming from the back of the throat.

 

I was so scared that I couldn’t move. Everybody was running around crazily, as more of the zombies approached. I had nobody to save me, to push me out of the way. I had no friends, no family, I was completely alone, but in these times, that was mostly a relief. Nobody to miss you when you died. And now I was going to die in a completely different way than I had spent the past six months preparing myself for. I snapped out of my trance like state, and turned away from the zombie that was now quickly closing the space between us.

 

Just as I began to run and actually begin putting space between myself and the monster again, I nearly tripped over another person. A small girl in the fetal position, screaming and covering her head. I bent down to help the little girl up, forgetting about the creature once again closing in on me. I picked up the tiny blond girl, and ran away with her in my arms, only barely escaping the grasp of his disgusting hands. I darted between two bunkers, and the zombie seemed to walk right past the alley as if he didn’t even notice I changed course. I hid there for a moment, but soon the alley was flooded with other people, some looking like they themselves were going to become like the zombies at any minute. I once again took off running, the little girl in my arms, crying against my shoulder.

 

As soon as I got out of the alley, I noticed the clearing which was crowded shoulder to shoulder only moments ago was almost completely empty. I took a sharp right out of the alley and into the swinging, open door of one of the bunkers. As I was making my way into the building, someone was heading out, and pushed me into the hard metal frame of the door. The cold, rusted metal scraped against my left arm, the sharp corner catching me near my elbow and gashing into my flesh. I pulled away from the door as soon as the other person cleared the way, but the damage was already done. I shifted the weight of the girl and trudged on, blood streaming down my arm and dripping to the ground.

 

I realized that I had unknowingly entered my own bunker, where there were some loose floor boards where we often hid food if we managed to save any. My mind raced through all the things I could do, just as I heard the strange muttering and moans coming from behind me. I quickly put the small girl in the opening where the floorboards had been removed, she would be safe there; I hoped.

 

"It’s okay honey, you’ll be safe here. I’ll come back for you, I promise." I put the floor boards over the hole, and the little girl disappeared.

 

It was a different fiend closing in on me this time, and now I had nowhere to go. He was closing in fast. There was a window, but I’d have to approach him to the left to get to it. I shoved myself on top of the beds, under the top bunk, and semi crawled, so I didn’t have to walk through the aisle, where it was. He didn’t seem to notice what I was doing, and just kept going straight, toward the end of the room. I finally reached the window, and stumbled out of it and onto the ground outside. It took me a few seconds to recover, and as I was reorienting myself, something grabbed me. It was yet a third undead, and this time it had me. She grabbed my elbow, where my wound was, which created an instant, burning and unbearable pain. That pain brought a strength in me which I didn’t know I had, which I used to fight her off. I bashed her head, and kicked with all my might. Finally I freed my injured elbow from her grasp, just long enough for me to get up and regain my footing.

 

I ran away as fast as I could manage, and hid myself in a single person, stone walled bathroom, for the SS officers; locking the door behind me. I slid down the wall and sat against it, panting and out of breath. The pain in my elbow was beginning to dull, not burning anymore, but aching instead. I took off the thin sweater I wore, that was torn where my cut was, and looked at my injury for the first time. It was worse than I had anticipated. There was deep gash on my arm, stretching from just below my elbow, almost all the way up my arm. There was blood streaked down my arm, and a scab was already beginning to form on the wound. The skin surrounding it was a purple-ish brown color, which made me a little sick. But no, it wasn’t looking at that which made me sick, I really did feel this way. I struggled to get up, but I was too weak now. I crawled to the toilet, and leaned over, regurgitating the water and little food I had to survive on that was in my stomach.

 

There wasn’t chaos outside any longer, only quite. I didn’t hear any more screams, or people running by. I don’t know how long it had been, it felt like minutes, but could have been hours. My sickness was getting worse, but I had nothing left in my stomach to throw up. Instead I went through spurts of intense dry heaves, which was much worse. I couldn’t even feel my injured elbow any longer, and it looked sickly. My legs and feet were tingling, and I was completely exhausted. I curled up into a ball on the ground, and drifted off slowly and painfully.

 

Hours later, I woke up. It was completely dark now, there was absolutely no light coming from the tiny window near the ceiling. Another string of nausea struck me, and I tried to get up to the toilet to relive it. But, I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t move anything, not my feet, not my arms, not even my head. The only thing I could do was lay there, still in the fetal position, blinking my eyes and barely able to breathe. I felt different somehow, not only because of my injury and paralysis, but I felt like I was...changing. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, even though I was only slightly conscious of it. And then I wasn’t conscious at all.

 

The door of the isolated bathroom opened, and the living dead girl emerged. She trudged off to join the others. "Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm........................" The moaning of the group dissipated as they left this camp, and headed for the next.

Reviews

[Brown Bull]

Good writing again Samantha. You seem to have an interest in the subject, concentration camps, not zombies.

One slight thing I noticed while reading... "It was a different fiend closing in on me this time, and now I had nowhere to go. He was closing in fast."

This is actualy fine as it is written, but when possible, I try to avoid repeating the same word or phrase in two sentences in a row. For example your second sentence might say "he was coming at me quickly."

Of course, sometimes you want to repeat a word or phrase for effect.
BB