Ch.6

After 1½ months of being in the camp the ammount of people had gone dangerously low. A shipment of people was supposed to come awhile ago but the train had been liberated on its way here. So naturally there was alot of excitement when we found out that another train was coming.

The guards wouldn't allow us to come outside because they had to tatoo and shave the new people. When they finally finished that we were all called out for a new roll call.

Never had I seen such an emotionless group of people. They weren't sad or depressed, they were just empty. They looked sickly, their faces were all swollen and puffy. It took me about a minute to figure out why. They had typhus. Almost everyone of them had typhus.

It was sad to look at a group of people that didn't have a chance. They were basically the living dead. If they didn't get to a hospital there was no hope for them. So basically, there was no hope for them. The worst thing was that they would be sleeping in our barracks. I already had a skin disease, there's no way I wanted to end up with typhus!

That night our barrack was packed, but there was still a one bunk seperation between the people with typhus. It was weird to have so many people sleeping around me, when just the night before, no one (except Doug, Greg and Christian) wanted to sleep at all close to me. I guess they would rather get a survivable skin disease than the dreaded typhus.

In the fight to get a bunk closer to the wall Greg lost, so he had to sleep very close to the people with typhus. The next day when we all went out to roll Greg wasn't there. None of us had thought to check up on him because usually he beat all of us to roll call.

Call it childish, but sometimes we would have races to see who would make it out to roll call first. Mostly because we missed the concept of competition. Greg won the race 75 of the time. Before being sent to the concentration camp Greg had been an athlete. He told us that his parents had made a Wall of Greg that had his medals and awards on it. That was most likely why he was so competitive.

We went through our days work wondering what had happened to him. Me and Christian had to pick up bodies, and Doug had to help pump the waste out of our out-house style toilets. I felt sorry for him, that would be nasty. Not that body pick-up was any better.

Body pick-up was gruesome today, all of the people who died on the train had had their bodies piled up near the entrance of the camp. After we were done taking that pile of bodies to the crematories we had to do the usual walk around and pick up the bodies that had dropped during roll call. But then we had to literall go through the barracks and take out the many bodies of peopel that had died during the night. Me and Christian actually looked forward to that part though because that meant we would get to go to our own barrack and check on Greg. But when we got there we found that all of the bodies had already been cleared out.

When we finally finished we ran to our barrack and saw Doug standing by Greg. He had been moved to a different bunk where all of the sick people were. He was pale and clammy. It was weird because he was shaking alot, almost like he was cold, except he was constantly sweating. I had seen other people with the same symptoms. Greg had typhoid fever, and by the looks of it it was really bad. Doug said that we should move him over to where we sleep so that his condition wouldn't get worse. But he overlooked the fact that the rest of us would catch the fever if he slept near us.

It was nice that night because since so many people had died the night before we could make a larger space so that we wouldn't have to sleep near the people with typhus. Sadly that meant that Greg wasn't able to sleep near us. I wasn't as close of friends with Greg as Christian and Doug were but I still didn't want him to die.

We all woke up early the next morning so that we could check on Greg. It was weird, as mine and Christian's condition was getting better Greg's was worsening. When we checked on him he was shaking alot. His lips had turned blue, but he continued to sweat as if he was in a sauna. I could barely look at him. When our food came, a slice of bread and a cup of coffee, we had to help him eat.

We had to go at roll call and leave Greg behind. We were all assigned to body pick-up that day, but it wasn't as bad as the day before. We should have been rejoicing that we didn't get to go in the barrack's. But instead we were sad because we had wanted to check on Greg. I was really happey that it was Sunday and we got off at noon. It was especially awesome because today was our monthly shower, and this time I could actually enjoy it because my skin had gotten alot better and the sores were almost gone.

When we went to check on Greg we found that his condition had gotten way worse. He was no longer shaking, he was convulsing. He opened his eyes when we were standing near him. He tried to talk but his teeth were chattering so wildy. He looked at us and we could tell that it was near the end. His convulsions slowly came to a halt. He was still breathing but he had fallen into a coma. He probably wouldn't last throughout the night. Christian and Doug looked away, so did I.

It was hard to enjoy our shower after what had happened, but we still had to clean ourselves. Afterwards we got our dinner of soup and bread. We brought Greg's back for him, but when we arrived we found that he had already taken his last breath.