Kolya leaned toward the woman in front of them. “How long have you been waiting?”
“An hour or so,” the woman rasped. Her bloated face encased eyes reduced to tiny slits. Liquid oozed from cracks along her lips. “The line was much longer yesterday.”
As it was, the line wrapped around the building so far that the end was almost back at the entrance. They limited the number of people in the store so as to keep better control. The line moved forward, and the woman shuffled ahead, turning her back on them. Katya glanced down at the woman’s feet and saw that she’d cut her boots so that her enlarged feet would fit inside them. The swelling must have pained her, for her gait was awkward and stilted. Swelling seemed like an odd symptom of starvation, but many people suffered with it. As Katya wondered how the woman would get to where she was going after she got her food, the woman’s legs gave out, and she fell face down on the ground. Katya squatted and tried to turn the body, but it was heavy with fluid.
“Kolya, help me!”
Kolya kneeled next to her and flipped the woman onto her back. Narrow eyes stared vacantly at the sky. She had died right here in front of them, right here as she waited for her food.
The line shifted. Kolya pulled Katya to her feet and stepped over the dead body. “Come, Katya. We must move ahead with the line.”
“And leave her here?” Katya’s voice rose as she pushed him away.
Kolya shook his head in disgust “Look around you! There are dead bodies everywhere. What’s one more woman to them?”
The people behind suddenly surged forward and surrounded the woman’s body. Kolya grabbed Katya’s arm and yanked her away from the commotion.
“What are you doing?” Katya asked, horrified, as a young man begin to rifle through the woman’s clothes. “Stop that! It’s wrong!”
“Everything is wrong, Katya,” Kolya snapped as he pulled her along. “Our whole world is wrong.”
“What’s she going to do with it?” the young man yelled.
Understanding dawned on her as she realized they were searching for her ruble certificate. Her repulsion faded, and anger replaced it. Why hadn’t she thought of grabbing it first? The man was right. What was the dead woman going to do with it now? It might as well help feed someone else, like Halya. She had to think faster if she wanted to keep Halya alive. It was good to have compassion, but the dead were beyond its reach.
Snowflakes fell from the sky, blanketing her shoulders and head. The cold had pervaded Katya so fully by this point that numbness dulled her feet. She stamped them, trying to force the blood back through her legs. Small prickles rewarded her efforts, so she stamped harder for a few more seconds before exhaustion overtook her. She glanced back at the dead woman lying on the ground, thankful that her feet didn’t look like hers. Yet.
As they rounded the corner of the back of the building, Kolya cursed and stopped in his tracks. Katya stumbled into him.
“What are you doing?” The rising wind whipped the words from her mouth.
“You don’t want to see this.” He turned around and blocked her path fully.
“See what? What can be worse than what we’ve seen?”
“This. This is worse,” he said, his voice so low she could barely hear him. “So much worse.”
Frustration made her snap. “I’m not a child anymore, Kolya. I don’t need you to censor the world for me.”
“Fine.” He dropped his hand from her arms. “You’ve always been headstrong. Do what you want, then.”
He moved aside, opening her line of sight to a horse-drawn wagon. Its full load swayed unsteadily as it made its way across the frozen ground. Piled high on its open bed were bodies. Men, women, children, stacked haphazardly and tangled all together. They’d been picked up and tossed into the wagon like logs, without any regard for their value as human beings. Legs and arms stuck out every which way, some so swollen they were still oozing, and others so emaciated their bones nearly jutted out through their thin skin.
“I suppose they have to pick up at least some of the bodies and throw them in a pit somewhere or we wouldn’t be able to walk through them all.” Kolya’s voice dripped with bitterness.
Katya ignored him and watched, transfixed, as the wagon hit a rut in the road and bounced, jarring loose a small body. It fell off the wagon and landed lightly in the snow on the side of the road, barely making a sound. It was a girl, a tiny girl of no more than two or three years old. Not much older than Halya.