C4 Yellow barracks

As the heavy footsteps of the soldiers were audible on the hollow wooden floor, Sabine startled out of her uneasy sleep and once again hit her head painfully on the bed frame above her, where Markus had taken up his encampment.

They distributed breakfast. Cursing she placed her bare feet on the wooden floor but jerked back as she noticed that the floor was cold. Then she watched as the soldiers were wheeling the breakfast trays into the area in the back, where the table and chairs were.

The barracks was divided like a normal crew accommodation, the bunk beds in the front, then the common area and all the way in the back the washrooms and toilets. Every inmate had gotten a yellow card instead of the red one. They had been pent-up in here already for three days.

The schedule was constant and absolute. Breakfast at 7:30 a.m., first examination at around 09:00 a.m., lunch at 12:00 p.m., second examination at 02:00 p.m., dinner at 06:00 p.m., third examination at 08:00 p.m., lights out at 10:00 p.m. It was the exact routine every day.

Every visit to the doctor left a bitter taste behind, as if you went to an annual screening knowing that you had been pissing blood every morning for months beforehand. All together there were twenty persons accommodated in there, made up of a cross section of all age groups.

In the beginning there had been fifty, fifteen had been relocated to the green barracks already and fifteen more had not returned from their examinations. Shortly after soldiers had taken the bed sheets and mattresses and had replaced them with new ones.

Sometimes when you were outside, and that was only the case when you had to go to the examination, you could smell the odor of fire. Neither doctors nor nurses had given any kind of information about any missing people were. They had simply vanished into thin air. All that was left were rumors and speculations about how much of it was really true, all of which were contradictory.

One heavy-set woman from Jena, with blond dyed hair, claimed firmly that the epidemic had meanwhile swallowed the entire area outside of this facility and that there was no hope left for rescue, while a locksmith apprentice from Leipzig felt confident that they had already found an antidote and that it would be only a matter of time until everything would be back to normal.

Oh yes, and there was this protestant priest, who had unmasked the Catholic Church as the culprit responsible for this disease because it wanted to punish everyone for their failures. Everything was a gigantic, yes even global, conspiracy theory.

The only thing that seemed to be true was the fact that there had been no more new arrivals since Sabine and Markus had arrived at this accommodation. But even that could mean everything and ultimately nothing at all. The mood had reached something close to insanity and all of them were one step away from getting cabin fever and going mad, simmering wildly like pots shortly before they boil over. To that effect the mood was rather strained and it was fundamental to ponder what to say to whom. On the first day Markus had collided with the self declared chief of this barracks, a burly stocky guy, but Markus had realized the pointlessness of a physical confrontation and had backed down. Where was the sense in getting ones teeth kicked out over some artificial tasting pudding?

Not to mention that it was extremely important to not be declared as sick by the other inmates. The barracks mates had been tolerant in the beginning, but one little sneeze caused by some dust or a cough because something had gone down the wrong pipe was enough to be cast out of this dubious community.

What would follow was isolation and a trip with the soldiers to an extra examination. Markus’ medications had prevented more than once already that he would fall into this pattern. At the slightest threat of a shortness of breath, which would inevitably lead to coughing, he took his asthma spray out of his pocket and he used it almost obsessively often by now. The only question was how long the little aerosol spray would keep on working because those things had the habit of being used up without a warning.

He had to ration his usage more than once already, especially during the bad time where he had woken up every night gasping for air. Tired, he swung his legs over the rim of his bed, letting them swing in front of Sabine’s face.

Sabine smiled up to him, hoping for the solace of some conversation. “Good morning, Sir. Well, how was your night?”

Tired, he rubbed his eyes. “It’s a well-known fact that bad smells travel upward, Sabine, so I will spare you the details. Besides that, today is day three and hopefully something will happen today.”

“It’s about time,” he added, his voice quiet. “And if not, I will do something about it, do you understand?”

With an almost confident smile, she slipped into the cheap sneakers which had been handed to them upon moving in and waited until Markus was ready for breakfast as well.

The hospital gowns had been replaced by light-green sweat pants with matching shirts. Additionally they all had been given socks, underwear and those cheap sneakers. Breakfast itself was not worth mentioning and finished quickly – a mixture of Bundeswehr grub, sticky toast with butter and extremely strong coffee which cast out even the last bit of tiredness.

Then they were again lingering at their sleeping spots, waiting anxiously for the next examination. Sabine was nervous because she was missing out on nicotine, but most of all because of Pascal, about whom she was extremely worried. Nearly all the conversations between Markus and her were about their respective partners.

Did they make it? Were they healthy? Did they have enough to eat and drink? How worried they must be by now.

It made them nearly insane to know nothing at all. They had asked several times for their mobile phones, which were probably stacked somewhere together with their back packs and every time they had been put off by telling them that they would get their private things back as soon as they received a green card, but by the time of their release at the latest.

“Markus, this endless waiting is making me crazy, I can’t stand it much longer. If they won’t let us out of here soon, I might kill somebody!”

“Hey, today is the third day. I have to believe that things will be moving forward. Pandemic or not, they can’t hold us here forever without a good reason. After all we have rights, right?”

Instead of giving an answer Sabine threw herself on the mattress, lifting her legs upwards.

Markus continued in a weary voice. “I do not even have a picture of Annette with me. It’s all in the Defender. Oh man, we really shouldn`t have gone to this game.”

“Come on, Markus, nobody could have known.”

But we had still closed our eyes, acted selfishly, Markus thought to himself, however he refrained himself from uttering the words because they would have let to a heated argument between them like every day. Sure they would calm down after an hour the latest, but still the mood between them got more and more strained, more and more sensitive.

Finally it was time. The examinations were about to start. It was the same procedure every time. Each time soldiers arrived and picked two persons up from the barracks, in order to bring them to a solid building by crossing the yard, where the actual examination took place. Since they were roughly in the middle of the barracks they still had to wait for nearly hours until it was finally their turn. Two hours which seemed like a small eternity.

When they were finally escorted over the yard in the pleasant winter air by two soldiers, they were able to watch men in darkgreen protective suits carrying three body bags out of the black barracks and throwing them in a container. Markus was certain that this sickness (or whatever it was) was almost always fatal. Presumably they would bring the infected in this barracks in order to monitor the progression.

And then, at the end, the door to the black barracks was waiting for them, to do who knows what with those poor souls. Both of them remembered the trench from before, the one lined with thick, dark plastic. Shivering, they pulled up the collars of their thin jackets because suddenly a ghastly wind was blowing.