“We’re still under their thumb, Stella. They could be sending us to another camp. Back to Birkenau, even. That’s probably what they’re doing.”

“But the war is over—”

“No, it isn’t. Not yet. The guards on this train are scared and angry, and if we get in their way they’ll kill us. They won’t even think twice.”

“Why can’t you believe in something good for a change? Why can’t you let yourself hope?”

“I want to. I do, but—”

“But what? What now?”

Suddenly she was too tired to go on. And what was the point, besides? Either the train was taking them straight back to Birkenau, in which case they were doomed, or the train was going somewhere . . . else. Somewhere better, as improbable as it seemed. Wishing or wanting or hoping would change nothing.

Stella believed, though, and it was too cruel to steal that away from her. Not after she had already lost everything else. So Nina smiled, and sat down, and patted the dirty floor beside her.

“You’re right. I’m just being grumpy. Come and sit. Aren’t we lucky there’s enough room this time?”

The rest of the day scraped by with painful slowness. Nina’s head began to pound, but she told herself it was only because she was hungry and thirsty. That was all. The train stopped and started, over and over again, and the guards opened the door to give them water and change out the latrine bucket every few hours.

“Where are you taking us?” the others cried, but the guards ignored their question.

On the second day Nina was woken by muscle pains, deep and racking and violent.

On the third day the fever set in. Along with it came roiling waves of nausea, though her stomach was so empty she heaved up nothing more than air.

On the fourth day she saw the rash for the first time, scattered constellations of red, impossible to ignore against the pallor of her skin. And she knew, at last, what the fever meant.

Typhus.

The others in the boxcar kept their distance, and if Nina hadn’t been so weak she’d have told them not to worry. The typhus bacterium had been the gift of an infected louse, not another person, and the wretched insect itself was likely still in the barracks back at the camp. If there was any justice in the world, of course, it would have instead found its way to the oberaufseherin and bitten her.

She lay on the disgusting boxcar floor, her head in Stella’s lap, and wondered what would become of the people who had terrorized them over the past months. Who had tried to reduce them to nothing. To zeros.