April 29, 1945

His heart was beating; he knew that much because it hurt. Each time the muscle keeping him alive thumped in his chest, his ribs ached. Lying in his bed, Max groaned softly, his voice failing halfway through, and shifted painfully off his side and onto his back. His spine protested beneath him, but he did his best to ignore it. His whole body hurt: his joints creaked; his non-existent muscles burned; his head felt as if it was splitting open.

Lurching up, Max coughed hard, feeling close to forcing his internal organs up his esophagus. He knew something was horribly wrong with him; it wasn't just that he was exhausted and emaciated to the point of being able to count each of his ribs and identify each jointed bone in his fingers. He must have caught something from the other men in his building. The month before, he had overheard a few of the SS guards talking about an outbreak of some kind in the camp. Max had known it would spread quickly; there were so many inmates at Dachau that any hope of sanitation had crawled under the cremation building and died there.

He must have caught whatever unbelievably horrid disease the guards had been discussing. He was sure once again that he was going to die in this camp, in this very bed, and besides the sickness, he had lost all desire to live. He had no one. He could only assume that his family was dead. His friends were somewhere only God knew. The Hubermanns were safe in their home, living good German lives to the best of their abilities. The Book Thief didn't visit him in his dreams or nightmares anymore. It used to be that he saw her every week, but it had been months since he had dreamed of her.

As he shivered under his thread-bare blanket, Max heard gunshots, but ignored them. He had become – as much as he hated to say it – accustomed to the sound of his fellow human beings being mowed down mercilessly by the SS soldiers. The shots continued longer than usual, however, and for a second, Max wondered what was happening. But then his attention slipped out of his reach. He began thinking about the Book Thief and her books, Hans Hubermann and his accordion, Rosa Hubermann with her spoon.

Suddenly, daylight flooded Max's bunk and he threw his arms over his eyes to shield them. Shouts and hammering feet surrounded him and he fought nausea to look around. Men in brown uniforms and rifles ran between the bunks, searching the crammed building. Max was just coherent enough to recognize that these men were not SS guards. The men yelled things to each other in a language Max didn't understand, brandishing their rifles around the sleeping quarters before slinging them over their shoulders and taking time to examine the inmates in the beds.

A man younger than Max knelt beside Max's bed and met his eyes. The boy – for he was more on the boy side of the line than the man side – pulled Max's blanket back and his shirt up. Max fumbled with the boy's hands, trying to stop him, not understanding what the boy was doing. The boy saw the tender red rashes on Max's paper-thin skin and called something to the soldiers around him. One near the door answered in the same language.

He said something to Max in a soothing tone and with a smile. Within it, Max caught what he thought could be the boy's name: Jack Miller. Slowly, Max's fogged brain came to understand that this was either a hallucination or an Ally soldier come to rescue him. He sincerely hoped it was the latter.

"Wie heisst du?" Jack asked in halting German, attempting to bridge the language gap between himself and Max. His pronunciation was terrible, but Max understood what he was asking: What is your name?

After a coughing fit during which Max jolted about in his bed and Jack took his hand, Max whispered his name twice to the soldier. Jack smiled and said, "Guten tag, Max."

Max couldn't help but return the greeting with a tiny smile. Strangely, it didn't hurt.

Jack pointed to his own chest and said, "Amerikaner."

Now the smile was real. A sense of safety and peace settled over Max Vandenburg. The Allies had finally arrived. The American soldiers were here to rescue the sick and dying people of Dachau. Max knew he was a far reach from saved, but he felt hope bloom inside him for the first time in two and a half years. Maybe he would make it out of this horrid place after all.