"Its like dee tawk on top."

  "He means candy-coating." 

  Solitary marching boot sounds on empty building floors. 

  "Vee hold position." 

  We'd been burying the dead.  All of us with earth under our nails.  Then we'd been re-burying the dead.  Such was the Soviet persistence in claiming identities.

  Bootsounds stopping.  Searching each room.  Last minute deep beaths to counteract the shallow, barely audible seashells on a beach breathing that wisps of people hiding in plain sight live. 

  People seemed to notice the piece of paper at the same time.  A stomach pulling groan came from the man we'd dug out of a grave.  A leader-type with the fortitude of a castle hewn of mountain.  The thieves had wanted the shovel.  So they distracted, smashed him in the head with it, and tipped his dead weight into the grave.  We'd restrained each other from killing them.  It had taken us hours to get the man out of the grave hole.  He barefoot tip-toed to snag the piece of paper as the marching bootsounds came one room closer.