Chapter 24 Section 24

As the days passed, my brother was still in a daze.Once I managed to caress his little face with one hand, and felt his eyes were still slightly closed.This is what comforts me.However, when I touched his chapped lips and puffy tongue, I thought I had to do something to ease his pain.I tried to cry to wet his lips with tears, but my body was too exhausted to respond to my emotions. I was so anxious that I wrung his wet underpants with my free hand, and wiped the stinky urine on his lips with my fingers, moistening the cracked skin.I tried to soothe him aloud, but couldn't do even that little thing because my own mouth was cracked out of shape from dehydration.I reached down and dabbed the dirty liquid on my lips to soothe chapped lips.

In the end, the people around were also tortured until they couldn't make a sound, and the car was almost silent.The longer the time, the fewer people stood, we had to struggle to keep our balance, and surrounded by our feet, I knew, were the bodies of our fellow passengers. On the fifth day, through a small hole in the top of my head, I saw the dark night turn to the blue of dawn, and then, something that horrified me happened. First there was a sound in the distance, and a huge explosion broke the silence.My mind was so numb that I couldn't tell the direction of the sound, or even be clearly aware of it.Then, the running state of the train seemed to change.Immediately after a rumbling sound, there was a huge clash and harsh friction between metals.The car began to sway from side to side, and we couldn't stand upright. In a moment, I lost Nikolai, and his body left my arms.

Terrified, I blurted out his name and bent down to search for him, but I couldn't make out the body under my feet in the darkness.I frantically scratched the limbs all over the floor, hoping to touch my younger brother's young body, and at the same time clearly felt that many of the bodies touched by my hands were already cold. But I know that Nikolai's body is at least warm.He's still alive, if only dying. I touched a child's body, and my heart beat wildly in an instant, but that body was cold, so I pushed him aside indifferently.The carriage was still shaking violently.

Suddenly, the ground under my feet seemed to rise, and my body flew into the air, hitting the roof of the overturned car hard. The two walls of the carriage were torn open, and the light flooded into the car. For a moment, my eyes were almost blinded by the light of day, but I still saw the hellish scene around me: wounded bodies and filthy bodies. Corpses were tangled together, women, children, some alive and dying, but thankfully many had apparently passed out and were out of pain. Then the pain overwhelmed me and darkness enveloped my consciousness. But I only got brief relief.I think it was only a few minutes, and then I was awakened by a burst of gunfire, and I was back in the harsh reality for a moment.

The scene of destruction was still in front of me, but this time, I was not on the verge of coma, and I could vividly see the horrors around me. Those filthy and terrifying images slowly penetrated into my consciousness, but I couldn't move my eyes away from the bloody scene around me.All eyes are on death, and those few survivors are all trapped in it, unable to get out.I scanned the bodies for Nicholas, but, if he was there, I couldn't make out. I could hear intermittent machine gun fire in the distance, getting closer, but I had no idea who was firing or who they were targeting.I wanted to move my body, but those bloody limbs pressed against my body, making me unable to move.

As I struggled to free myself, a child's face slid down and hung in front of my eyes. He was only Nikolai's age. A pair of lifeless eyes stared blankly from his bleeding head. , then got stuck between the heavy wooden beams that originally supported the carriage.I wanted to scream, but I couldn't make a sound, and I wanted to back away, but my body didn't have the strength to escape from the terrible scene in front of me. I lay there terrified, and after an unknown amount of time, I stared straight into those gray eyes. The only thing I was glad was that this child was not Nicholas or Ilo, but I realized that they might be right next to me. Somewhere nearby, the same fate was met.

The brutal machine-gun fire came closer, and I heard shouts in German amidst the bursts of gunfire.The sharp shouts were interrupted by gunshots, and I was still struggling to climb out of the cage of the corpse, guessing in my heart what happened. All of a sudden, all my guesses became superfluous. A Nazi soldier appeared in the field of vision, and without saying a word, he raised his machine gun and fired at our carriage.I shrank instinctively, but there was nowhere to escape. I could only open my eyes wide in fear, watching the rain of bullets sweep across the crowd in front of us, killing the survivors one by one.The rain of bullets is getting closer and closer to me.

I realized that I was going to die, and at the same moment, the fire of the machine gun had enveloped me.A rain of bullets shot into the corpse hanging in front of my eyes, and blood and flesh flew all over the place. When the bullet hit me, the pain was rippling through my body, the blood of the corpse above splattered my body, and my last thought was relief that it was, finally, over.I knew it was impossible for Nikolai to be alive, so I no longer feared death, but welcomed it. Now I just look forward to reuniting with my brother in another world.With this thought in mind, I gently fell into the deep darkness.