The girl was still alive, and she was still crying and reaching for her mother, even though her mother was no longer there. What kind of inner strength and pain would push a body to this extent? From the smell and the rot, these people should have been killed days ago, but for anyone to survive for this long was either a curse or a miracle.
I knelt beside the girl and slowly shifted the woman who had covered her child, even when she was dead. I used a bit more force than I thought I would, because even in death, there was a stubborn rigidity in the body of the mother that refused to stop defending her baby.
At the moment, it was as if a knife was being stabbed into my heart, as I looked at the girl and gently placed my hand on her head. Her eyes found mine, and I saw the shape of a question in them, a question I could not answer.
