Page 108 of Winter’s End

Jacob nodded slowly. “He is to report to the High Command in Maybach II, just south of Berlin, at 0700 hours on the eighteenth day of March.

Evi dropped heavily into a chair.

ZOE

They were deep in conversation in the dim light of the basement morgue.

“Lieve god, the children are gone,” Zoe said. “We can only pray they can be transported from the mortuaries to safety….”

Kurt shook his head. “We will never know. But we did what we could. Now we pray.”

Zoe sighed. She looked down half-heartedly at the list they were preparing for Gerritt.

“You and Doctor Aaron should be the next to go. You know that.”

“Aaron, yes, but I will take my chances until the others have escaped.”

Zoe looked at him and sighed. “How do you decide whose lives are more important than others,” she murmured.

Kurt did not hesitate. “The hiding mothers. Some of them sent their own children abroad to keep them safe from warfare…”

The list was not yet half completed when the three blasts tore into their consciousness.

Zoe was the first to move.

“The airhorn,” she said. “Lieve god, Kurt,” she said, “They are here…the Germans. You must get out of here now.”

“The others first,” he protested. “I will help them toward the ambulance bay. How many will the van hold, do you think?”

Zoe shook him by the shoulders. “You are not hearing me, Kurt. You must go first. You are high on the list of the Reich’s most wanted. The others will know what to do.”

He hesitated, his face a mask

“Go now, Kurt – if not for your own sake, then for mine.”

He looked at her and something electric passed between them. He reached for her, and she knew she must go with him.

She was propelling him out through the door to the ambulance bay when the first sounds of jackboots began clattering down the stairs and daylight flooded the morgue.

She had never driven a vehicle this large, but when the van was full of fleeing souls, she slid into the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition, and sped out of the bay, tires screeching.

Heart hammering in her chest, she lowered her speed as she reached the main road, realizing, belatedly, that a speeding mortuary van might be a certain target for Germans on high alert.

Slowly, steadily, she guided the van through familiar streets, eyes darting left, right, straight in front of her, watchful for check points, for gathering German soldiers, for signs of anything out of the ordinary.

It was not until she pulled to a stop in the alley behind the Klaasen Mortuary that she realized she had been holding her breath. Gulping air, she jumped out of the driver’s seat, raised the back door of the van, and flung open the mortuary door.

Shivering in the cold, in their hospital nightshirts, the evacuees filed into the mortuary.

“God zegene,” Zoe whispered to each as they passed. “God bless.”

Kurt was the last to disembark. “How can I leave you, Zoe? I cannot think of it. I may never see you again…”

She met his gaze, and a thought came together in her head.

“Stay in the van, Kurt. Get up on the gurney and under a blanket. If we should be stopped, you are a very ill patient – near to unconsciousness, you understand?”

Kurt’s brows knit together.