The truck rumbled in through the gates; guards were as quick to close it again as if anyone had been even the slightest bit inclined to make a break for it. Which no one was. The men in the truck were shackled together at the ankles, and while it might have been theoretically possible for the eight of them to run in lockstep, none of them were either foolish or desperate enough to attempt the feat… at least, not yet. The men milling around the camp, gloveless hands stuffed deep into pockets for what warmth they could get and heads bowed against the wind, conversely, had long since gone past the point of desperation and into a sort of numb acceptance of the fact that the world ended at the edge of the fence.

"Well, here we are," muttered one of the new prisoners. "Home sweet home."

They had been ritually paraded before the other prisoners at a special roll call, to the accompaniment of a rather cutting little speech to the effect that they were all fools to try and resist the Glorious Third Reich, that their ultimate failure and humiliation were assured, and that none of them had anyone to blame for their current situation except their own countrymen, who, apparently from pure obstinacy and perversity, had chosen to throw their lives away in a hopeless war.

Well, the guards seemed to enjoy the show, at least. The eight new prisoners were split fairly evenly between stomach-churning terror and blinding rage, some simultaneously, and the tirade did little to alleviate either. The other prisoners simply stood in ragged lines and stared into the middle distance, either not hearing, not listening, or, possibly, half-convinced by sheer repetition.

They were dispersed among the various barracks; the damned place was overcrowded, which fact the Kommandant had brought to their attention four separate times as further evidence of German military superiority, but eight empty bunks were, eventually, located and each of them was assigned their new address. The air in the shack, which, back home, he wouldn't have deigned to use as an outhouse, wasn't much warmer than it had been in the yard, but that was all right, because the emotional atmosphere wasn't much warmer, either, he thought as he entered. He could see his breath.

"Top bunk," said one of the other prisoners, after a moment, jerking a thumb at the appropriate rack, and not looking up from his cigarette. "I've got the bottom one, and I just hope you don't talk in your sleep like my last bunkmate did."

"Don't know. Never been awake to hear," he joked.

No one so much as smiled. No one even seemed to hear him.

He shrugged, and turned to the task of making the bed. The mattress was thinner than a drill sergeant's patience and the blanket had apparently been home to untold generations of moths. "What the hell is this supposed to be—a blanket or a fishnet?" He held it up, grimaced at the holes. "Say, who do I go to about getting something that might actually keep me warm?"

His first interlocutor looked around, but no one else seemed interested in letting him off the hook; he'd apparently been elected as the tour guide. "You don't. You complain to the Krauts, the only thing they'll give you is a belt in the chops."

"Well, that's just not right. The Geneva Convention—"

"The Geneva Convention is a goddamn fairy tale. Now shut up."

Well, he had his coat. That would do for tonight; he'd see about proper bedding in the morning.

OoOoOoOoOoO

He saw, all right. He saw stars. His bunkmate—he still didn't know the man's name—found him as he staggered back to the barracks. He sighed. "I tried to tell you."

"How can you all just… sit back and take it? This is—"

"This is a stalag. Want to survive? Keep your head down, your mouth shut, and you'll have maybe a thirty percent chance of walking out of here. Best-case scenario." He strode away.

"We could try to escape," he said to his bunkmate's retreating back.

He stopped. "We could try," he agreed flatly, not turning around. "Now ask me what happened to my last bunkmate. I'll give you a hint; he won't be talking much. Not ever again."

"We still have to try," he said. "We can't just give up."

He spun on his heel, and for the first time, something like emotion was in his voice. "We all thought so too, our first few weeks in camp. Before we watched good men dying of the goddamned sniffles because Krauts think the best medicine for a fever is double-time marching in the snow with no boots on. Before we sat down to eat swill you wouldn't have thrown to a pig and realized that we were looking forward to it because we were hungrier than hell and we'd forgotten what real food tastes like, anyway. Before we figured out that this isn't a damned movie, and there's no happy ending coming! Look at me, newbie. You think I don't get it? I was you, once. We all were! And look at him."

The man indicated was just standing by the water tower, a gaunt scarecrow with the same pinched look of deprivation and the same thousand-yard-stare as the others. "Who's he?"

"He's you, that's who he is. Give it six months. That's your future."

OoOoOoO

The departing Kommandant reeked of schnapps, which might have been understandable if it had not been ten o'clock in the morning. He was, from the sounds of it, not unhappy to be departing his command.

"This place is a cemetery for careers," he told his replacement with a wave of his hand. "But better that than a cemetery for colonels, yes?"

The new Kommandant smiled politely at what he assumed was an attempt at wit. "We must all do our part for the glory of the Fatherland," he said carefully. "My own glory must, necessarily, be a secondary consideration."

"Your own glory. Pfft." He splashed schnapps into a chipped glass, emptied it. He did not offer any to his guest. "If you were of the slightest military consequence you wouldn't be here in this godforsaken petting zoo. You're nothing, Colonel. You're a failure and a joke. Like me."

The Colonel bit his tongue, but was spared the trouble of coming up with a response to that; the phone rang.

The Kommandant snatched up the receiver. "What is it?... Both of them?... Good. Bring them here… And call a special formation. All the prisoners… Yes, right now! Heil Hitler."

Hanging up the phone, he graced his guest with a smile that crept over his face like a slug—slow, unpleasant, vaguely slimy—and reached for his cap. "Some very foolish prisoners attempted an escape last night. They have been apprehended, of course."

"Of course," the Colonel replied uneasily.

"Come. We will handle this immediately."

Rows of surly men in threadbare uniforms were assembled in the compound; their expressions ranged from blank to wary to sullen to outright hatred. Rows of guards stood at attention; their expressions ranged from bored to contemptuous to anticipatory. Two men stood alone in the middle of the compound; they were dirty and bruised, their hands tied behind their backs. They just looked resigned.

"These men have chosen to share some valuable knowledge with their fellow vermin," the Kommandant announced to the assembly. "Specifically, that escape is impossible, that escape will always be impossible. You are the property of the Third Reich, and until the inevitable defeat of your countries, you will remain such."

No one looked impressed.

The Kommandant switched his riding crop from his right hand to his left. "An example must be made," he said, drawing his sidearm. With no more warning than that, he shot both men. "Ponder that," he said smoothly.

Back in his office, the Kommandant holstered his weapon and smiled at the other officer. "Shot while trying to escape," he said. "Trying to escape… and shot. Where does the difference lie, really?" He poured himself yet another glass of schnapps, and looked directly at his replacement as he drained it. "You disapprove," he said.

The Colonel could not say no; would not say yes. "You executed those men. In cold blood," he said quietly.

"I did. Why not? These creatures are dirty, impure. Useless scum. Every morsel we feed them is taken from the mouths of Aryans; I've done you a favor by culling a pair of troublemakers. But you understand nothing of this. I can see it in your eyes; you despise me. Don't bother denying it."

The Colonel swallowed. And didn't bother denying it.

"I was like you, once. I was soft. Merciful. I played the gallant foe. And how was I repaid? Escape attempts, plots, theft, disrespect. Insults. Filth. I get enough of that from the officers on our side; why should I take it from prisoners?" He paced, clutching his riding crop as if for comfort. "Yes, I've learned better. You will too. In time, you'll realize the truth. Mark my words. I was you. And in six months, Kommandant, you'll be me!"

OoOoOoOoO

The guard closed his eyes, but he could not turn off his ears. The crack of the lash, the liquid sound of the… impact… the soft, animal sounds the man made as the whip carved its message into his bare back, he could feel them sinking indelibly into his mind. As if he didn't have enough horrors in there already from the first war. God, God; why had he been called back up? Hadn't he seen enough blood? He'd been back in uniform for a month; he'd been in this camp for two days, and it had already been too long.

"Garbage, all of them," commented another guard, watching the show with some satisfaction on his angular face.

"What?" he said blankly.

"The prisoners. They're not really human; they're two legged vermin. I don't know why we bother keeping them in the first place."

"What?" He couldn't have heard what he thought he'd heard. This wasn't happening; this couldn't be happening.

"They deserve to die," the other man muttered. "My best friend—we'd grown up together, we enlisted together, we did everything together—but those damned Englanders… during the Battle of Britain… there wasn't enough left of his head for me to even be able to tell it was him… except for the tattoo on his arm. And I found that four feet away."

He blinked. "But… it is tragic, but what has it to do with the men here? That man did not kill your friend…?"

"Who cares? They're all in it together." The prisoner's knees gave way; he was hanging limply by his wrists as the lash fell again. The younger guard smirked. "You're crying for the scum now, old man, but you'll learn. Like I did. Just you wait and see. You'll learn."

OoOoOoO

That's your future. Six months, perhaps less. Schnapps and bile and blood on the snow.

Colonel Klink sat down at the desk. His desk, now. He stared at the welter of papers, at the all-but-empty decanter. He did not want to look out the window. The guards might still be in the process of cleaning up the remains, or they might simply have left the bodies where they lay as some sort of twisted object lesson, or else—and somehow, this was almost the worst—they might already have removed the evidence, as if nothing had ever happened, as if two men had not simply been snuffed out to feed the ego of a drunken failure.

He didn't want to see any of those things. He didn't want it to have happened at all, but he didn't want to pretend that it hadn't, either.

He's you. You're him.

Colonel Hogan looked around the Oflag camp. Everywhere he looked, he saw corpses who simply hadn't figured out that they were supposed to have fallen down. And these were no green kids from the sticks; these were officers, seasoned men. No difference. Shattered like an eggshell.

He remembered a trick he'd been shown as a boy. Eggshells, he'd been told, were actually very strong; if you held a raw egg in your fist and squeezed, it would not break. Something about the shape, and the way it could resist pressure. And, disbelieving, he'd squeezed, strained every fiber, but, sure enough, the egg had held. Strength was to be found in the seemingly weakest of places.

He looked around again, contemplated the defeat he saw etched in every line of every face.

He's you. You're him.

A German officer, an American one. A boy from the heartlands of North Dakota, a man from the streets of Detroit. A stubborn British scrapper, a heartbroken WWI veteran, a passionate French defender.

At one time or another, they were all told the same thing. Give up, give in; surrender to the numbness, the death of self. It's so much easier when you don't have to feel the pain. Let go. Be the man your surroundings want you to be.

And they all had the same reaction.

That's going to be me, you say?

…Like Hell!

You're not getting me that easily.