“There’s no fire damage in the rest of the camp,” he said calmly. “You mustn’t be afraid. Hall 4 is fine. Your bed is still there.”

But Lou clung to me. “I have to go and see. We have to go now.”

Finally Martin let her go. He smiled at me apologetically. “I did the best I could.”

I didn’t have time to answer. I had to run after Lou. It was starting to get dark. Smoke still hung over the camp like a dry, scorching fog.

Embers lay glowing on the ground where the sanitary barracks had been. Christian and a number of other people my age were sitting in a circle. All of them were covered with black soot, and they were grimy and exhausted. Several were holding half-empty water buckets in their hands. They were guarding the fire. If they saw any stray embers, they put them out immediately.

Water, water, even more water wasted.

Lou ran all the way to the smoldering ruins before she stopped. She stood in front of it, scanning the blackened ground. Then she put her hands over her face. A tiny sob escaped. “Everything’s gone!”

Gone? What was gone?

“Lou?” I placed a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s all burned up,” she said without looking at me.

She grasped a scorched wooden plank with one hand. And then she started walking in, across the red-hot rubble, while poking with the cane.

“Where was the women’s shower?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Where was it located?”

She kept going. Her shoes gave off the stench of burned rubber. She used the cane to push aside charred woodwork.

“Lou. What are you doing?”

She balanced her way forward, placing her feet between glowing embers. Her face was red from the heat.

“Lou? Stop!”

And at exactly that moment she stopped, but not because I had told her to.

With her cane she pushed aside a huge floorboard made of some kind of plastic material. Smoke poured out and I couldn’t bear to think about how toxic it was.

In two steps I was at her side. “Now you have to stop!”

But then I discovered what she was standing there staring at.

“They’re destroyed. All of them. Burned up!”

At her feet, hidden by the board, by what had previously been the floor of the women’s shower, were tin cans that had exploded. The contents oozed out. Yellow corn turned gray from ashes. It smelled of fried ham, baked beans. Tomato sauce.

She squatted down. “There must be something left!” With the board she started digging through the destroyed cans. “There? No. What about that one?”

But they were all destroyed.