Pretty bad, but no one dies.

Over the smell of burning flesh are the sounds of screams and scattered shots. Usually singular, but other times there is an automatic burst from an MP40.

Graeber steps over a body. It’s difficult to judge the gender and the age, but one thing is certain, they lost a lot of blood. Graeber goes into one of the many buildings to rifle through the cabinets. There’s a dead body inside, a woman for sure. Her ratty hair is caked with dried blood, and her full eyes have a vacant expression. He regards the body for a minute and then continues to the kitchen.

He finds a can of condensed milk and soups and stuffs them in his rucksack. The situation isn’t what he expected, but he still feels indifferent to the problem. He cranes his neck and goes through the rest of the kitchen in search of goodies, such as candies or other forms of indulgence.

Up the stairs, he heard screaming. He took a bite of one of the candies and lazily walked up. The screaming continued, and then there was shouting. And then, a rifle cracked, and a bullet zipped through the thin walls. Graeber crouched and produced his rifle out in front of him and returned fire through where the hole first appeared. “Who’s there!”

“German!” A voice said. “There are Germans in here!”

There’s no accent, but Graeber remained low. “There are Germans everywhere! Now come out, or I’ll throw a grenade in the room.”

Silence is all that responds to Graeber— but as he tilts his head and dials his listening to the room, he can hear morbid gurgling and disappointed muttering. Eventually, a man in uniform steps out with his hands out. And then another, and then another— 4 men step out and leave without saying anything.

Curiosity kills the cat, but Graeber feels no danger in his curiosity, so he enters the room and sees a woman on the floor, already wax-like in her state of ****. Graeber sighs heavily and sets his rifle down at the doorway before walking to the bed. His appetite is gone, but he knows better than to discard the sweets, so he keeps them stowed in his webbing.

The girl on the floor isn’t just half-naked but is a sign of twisted mercy. Graeber wouldn’t have stopped the others from fulfilling their primal need if he hadn't returned fire. His stomach is put in knots as his chest becomes tight; after looking at the girl one more time, he pushes off the bed to leave.

Later that same day, he volunteers to be one of the first men to take watch so the others can get some sleep. True isolation came to greet Graeber when he was alone in the dark, and even though danger lurked in the shadows, he felt like this was one of the authentic moments of being alone. More or less, however…

Graeber kept his eyes fixed forward along the wide front and thought about everything up until this put. His thoughts lingered in Stalingrad before breaking off to recall Dieter and the convoy ambush. He wondered about Lukas, Gerhard, the Weber family, and— he cursed, he hadn’t thought about Katarzyna all day. He asked if he had missed any letters from her. A crater filled his stomach, and suddenly he felt lonely.

“Entschuldigung,” a man passed him, going left to right. For someone, a strong sense of peace came to him for a second. This peace was similar to the one he felt in the plane when he was airlifted out of Stalingrad. He went to follow the stranger, but another soldier going the other direction walked past him, smothering him with a scent of roses— French perfume? Instead of comfort, memories returned to Graeber, the ones that involved his sexual side-quests with Julia and Alicen, the thoughts of Katarzyna.

There’s a tugging in his guts. He wants to get to know one of the figures…

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