The Milieu Principle

by Malcolm Franks

Matt had gone four paces when the first groan sounded. The rucksack fell from his grasp. He turned to face the noise, gun in hand, ready to shoot everything and anything that moved.

  Silence

  He began to doubt the reality of his own senses when he heard the weakened groan for a second time. Angrily, he stepped forward and kicked at the lifeless form of the first assassin, then the second and third. They were all dead.

  Tillman, the voice inside him shouted, and he approached the slumped form ready to administer further brutality. It was still. Then the groan sounded again.

  “Rosa, Rosa,” he called, and scrambled across to her limp body.

  Cradling her head in his hand the blue eyes flickered into slow motion life, pain evident in the dulled brightness of her eyes.

  “Johannes,” she whimpered.

  Matt thought for a moment, not sure quite what to say at first. Then he whispered the news she didn’t want to hear.

  “He’s gone. Stay still, Rosa.”

  She looked to the sky and started to breathe erratically, each heave of her bosom only adding to her physical pain. Matt placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “Rosa, please. Keep still while I examine you.”

  Matt eased up the dark jersey and moved his head to allow the street lamp to shine onto the wound. He closed his eyes and pictured the second diagram he had drawn on her torso, when they were on the ship, and then snapped them open again once clear in his own mind about what he had to look for.

  The news was encouraging, no vital organs were damaged. He moved his hand round the other side of her body and felt the skin of her back to search for the exit wound. There were no holes to be found. His hand touched a mound of flesh. Somehow, the bullet hadn’t pierced the other side and had lodged just under the surface of her skin.

  “Matt,” she said quietly, “I can hear them coming. There isn’t time.”

  “Then I’ll make the time.”

  “No, Matt. You have to go.”

  “No!”

  “I’ve told you before, to leave the dead behind.”

  “Well you’re not dead and I’m not leaving.”

  “I’m not going to make it anyway,” she whimpered.

  “Don’t you fucking dare!” he shouted angrily. “One more word of abject surrender and I’ll drown you myself.”

  “They’ll catch you.”

  “They will if you don’t stop your pathetic whining. Christ, I thought you told me you’d been trained for this sort of event. You’re just a wimp really.”

  He glanced at her face and saw her blue eyes burning with sudden indignation, aflame from his contemptuous insult.

  “That’s my girl,” he said quietly.

  Matt didn’t bother to warn her, just forced the cloth handkerchief into her mouth and then poured the magic dust over the wound. Her muffled screams made him wince as he recalled exactly how it felt. It was soon over.

  “Back in a jiff,” he said, and then disappeared from her side to one of the tourist shops.

  She heard the sound of breaking glass. Matt reappeared with towels from the shop. Feverishly, he wrapped one of the dark garments round her body and then proceeded to tighten it round her slim waist.

  “Right,” he said, “get your arse into gear.”

  “There’s nowhere to go, no place to hide from them,” she whispered.

  “Yes, there is,” he replied confidently. “The one place they won’t think to look.”

  Forcing Rosa to her feet, he carried her towards the small jetty. She wondered what was going through his mind, taking them to the very place where the clean up team would arrive. She thought he’d lost it.

  He stepped hesitantly into the small rowing boat, fighting to retain his balance, and gently laid her down next to the rucksack. Running back to shore he grabbed the additional towels and placed some of them under her body, to cushion her from the hard surface, then draped the remainder over her trembling frame.

  “Not one word,” he demanded, and slipped over the side to push the craft away from its moorings.

  Clambering back into the boat, Matt shivered from the cold water and gripped the oars. He started to row away from the shore, steering the boat into the pitch blackness of the lake where the beam of the moon didn’t shine.

  At first he hurried. Once their silhouettes had disappeared from view he slowed his pace, and then stopped altogether to allow them to drift free of the shore.

  An age seemed to pass before the speedboats of the clean up team surged by. Matt waited until they were almost at St Gilgen before he started rowing again, inching them closer towards St Wolfgang.

  Rosa was asleep, maybe unconscious, as he continued the escape. He shivered constantly despite the physical effort. After a while, the muscles in his arms and shoulders began to ache with cold and tiredness. He knew he couldn’t let up.

  The darkness he didn’t mind, it disguised the real distance of their journey. It was the silence that unnerved him. Even the blades of the oars being dragged through the water seemed to make no sound at all. On each occasion he turned to look ahead the lights of St Wolfgang neared ever closer, and Matt used these images to further motivate his tired muscles.

  He kept going, minute after minute, and for what seemed like hour after hour. Repetitively and monotonously drawing his strokes as they hugged the shoreline, he thought of nothing else other than ultimately reaching the end. Matt felt on the brink of exhaustion when he finally spotted the point where he expected to land. It was so close.

  The sudden sound of a droning engine made him look into the black distance. His eyes caught sight of the two beams of light being thrown over the surface of the water, one on each side of what could only be a motor boat.

  A second engine sounded, coming from the direction of St Wolfgang, the steady beat of an engine humming through the still water. He turned to see two more beams flashing to either side.

  Rosa’s body had left its reported position. They would have explored the village; now they had decided to focus their search on the lake. Matt strained his eyes to look around the enveloping darkness for inspiration. He estimated they might have ten minutes, maybe a touch more, before the searchlights sought them out. He could see nothing.

  In desperation he steered the craft towards the nearest part of shore and pulled frantically at the oars, the counting of his strokes increasing in speed. The sound of wood hitting wood brought him to a standstill. Another rowing boat, this one tied to a fixture, ran up alongside them and gently bobbed up and down. Matt peered into the darkness and could see the outline of land a few yards ahead.

  He lowered himself into the cold lake, praying for shallow water. His feet pedalled frantically underneath the waterline before resting on firm ground. Waist high in iced liquid Matt had no time to complain. His arms reached into the craft and, with a surge of extreme effort, lifted the human cargo from inside; almost losing his balance in the process.

  Matt took several moments to regain his footing, gritting his teeth to help him focus, and managed to keep Rosa dry. He waded the few yards needed to stumble ashore and placed her on the ground resting up against a tree. He checked to make sure she would be hidden from view, out of sight of the searching beams.

  He still had to retrieve the rucksack and moor the boat to the other fixed craft. If it started to float free then his pursuers would know. Matt re-entered the water, cursing at the drop in temperature of his body, and waded towards the boats. His hands, bitter with cold, somehow managed to tie the two craft together and then he picked up the rucksack.

  The shoreline was almost within stepping distance when the first beam of light flickered across the surface of the lake, edging closer to his stranded frame.

  There was no more time.

  Instinctively, he threw the luggage deep into the long grass and turned to see the approaching light. Seconds, he guessed, as he waded out into deeper water.

  The searchlight was virtually upon him when he lowered his upper frame be
low the icy surface. The freezing cold was instant, making him want to scream with the shock to his system. He suppressed the urge to yell.

  Looking up from under the surface, he saw the yellow beam flash from side to side as the motor boat slowly neared. The light fixed upon the two rowing boats and edged closer. The motor craft was virtually above him. He could make out the silhouettes of two of the crew leaning over to peer inside the wooden frames. Muffled voices spoke as they continued their visual search. Matt could feel the pressure building for him to take another breath.

  Still they looked as they rested on the surface. Matt could wait no longer. He swam with urgency and panic underneath the hull to the other side and surfaced. A huge gulp of air and his head disappeared into the lake, the underwater swim taking him further away. Matt heard the engine rev, and then the motor boat moved and steered away.

  His head punctured the surface allowing his lungs to suck in air in rapid chunks. Once his breathing had returned to normal the piercing cold bit into him.

  Matt half swam, half crawled to the shore and scrambled to the tree where Rosa lay. He could barely feel the muscles of his limbs with his freezing cold hands, as the dampness turned into penetrating cold. He had to keep moving. With rucksack in place he, somehow, managed to raise Rosa from the ground and began to stagger along the tree covered path towards St Wolfgang.

  Left, right, said his mind in repetitive boredom. One step closer, another step closer. God, he was tired. His brain urged him to stop and rest. Matt found himself surrendering to the thought and dropped to one knee, when another voice in his head demanded to be heard.

  Stop and you’re dead, stop and Rosa’s dead too. Stop and you’ve cost the lives of billions of others. So he stood back up and kept going, and going, and going.

  Dawn had risen as he struggled to the door, directly below the blue and white for sale sign. Placing Rosa gently onto the ground he started to rummage through the rucksack until he found what he was looking for.

  The first time he tried his hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and the second and third. The sound of footsteps concentrated his mind and kept him steady while he tried to unpick the lock for a fourth time. Matt leant against the door to force it to spring open and he hauled Rosa into the apartment, dragging the rucksack behind him.

  He lay still for a while, trying to focus his thoughts, trying to ignore his cold aching limbs. Move, said something inside. He reached for her limp body and dragged her down the short narrow corridor, into the single bedroom.

  After tugging back the sheets, he cut away Rosa’s bloodied jersey and undressed her trousers. Matt eased her into the warmth of the single bed and covered her up. He sank to the floor, feeling close to exhaustion.

  A part of him just wanted to lie there and die. The survivor inside refused to let him co-operate. His clothes were damp, his muscles ached and his eyes tired as he forced himself to undress, discarding the surrounding wetness from his body. He threw one of the towels over the bare floor, collapsed onto it, and then tried to cover the rest of his naked body with another. It didn’t quite work.

  Matt wanted desperately to sleep, massaging his limbs to get some warmth back into his body. The rubbing seemed to have little effect other than stopping him from getting any colder. A shopping list began to emerge in his mind, things he must have to attend to Rosa’s wound. With chattering teeth Matt repeated the list in his mind, over and over again. He daren’t forget a thing.

  Nine a.m. and Matt startled back into life. The shops would be open now. He redressed into the damp clothes, fumbled for some of Johannes’ money from the rucksack, and emerged into the street.

  No-one seemed to notice.

  Twenty five minutes later he had returned. There wasn’t time for luxury items such as fresh clothes, only the bare essentials. The sales assistants and few other shoppers around kept giving him odd looks, weird glances of apparent disdain. He reasoned this had to do with his damp and smelly clothes, trembling hands and sunken pale-faced expression.

  Discarding his outer garments he tried to unscrew the cap on the whisky bottle. The constantly shaking hands prevented him from succeeding. Matt could feel his body getting colder and colder and realised if he didn’t do it now then he would soon be incapable.

  Finally the lid came off and he gulped down a mouthful of the brown liquid. As a rule, he didn’t drink spirits at this time of the day. A flush of warmth shocked his system. It felt good, so he took another swig.

  Rolling Rosa gently onto her side, he lightly dabbed the spirit soaked cotton wool bud over the mound underneath her skin. It took several attempts to free the scalpel from its position in the leather case, and then dowse it with whisky, before he could point the sharp end at the mound. Matt tried to exert some downward pressure. His hands shook even more furiously. The next two attempts produced the same result.

  “Come on.”

  Again, the shaking halted his attempt.

  “Come on, how bloody hard can it be to pierce skin with a knife?”

  This time he doused his own hands in the brown liquid and rubbed them together as hard as he could. He returned to the mound. The incision was small, to the side of the lump under her skin, and lacked precision.

  Rosa, still unconscious, didn’t seem to feel a thing. He pulled back her flesh and gently eased the tweezers around the metal object. On the first attempt, it slipped from the grasp of the tweezers. There was no other choice other than to go in again. Rosa began to moan with the intrusion. He tugged ever so gently. The bullet retained its reluctance to move, so he gripped firmer and decided to give it an almighty heave.

  The metal object flew from her body and shot across the room, bouncing off the wall opposite and then hitting the floor. Blood seeped from the wound so he dabbed a cotton wool bud and pressed it hard against the injury. Again, Rosa moaned in her unconscious state and he realised he would have to work fast.

  Threading the needle proved an impossible chore as his hands continued to tremble, taking them in opposite directions from where he wanted them to go. Pushing the staples into the heavy duty machine was little easier. With persistence, and a good deal of anger, he finally managed. The stapling was scruffy and wayward, but good enough to seal the wound.

  He rushed the wrapping of the bandages round her body, removed the now dirty towel from underneath, and lifted the bed covers back over her beautiful frame. She seemed to snuggle into the warmth of the single bed and Matt believed this to be a good sign.

  Though far from a perfect job his attempt had, if nothing else, successfully removed the alien object and her wounds had been cleansed. With Rosa safely tucked between the sheeting Matt could only wonder how he, of all people, could be capable of such a thing.

  Basking in the sense of achievement lasted mere seconds as Matt’s own body now reacted to the drop in adrenalin. His hands shook ferociously and his body trembled. He could feel his mind shutting down, as if someone had reached over and switched the light off.

  Trying to fight off the sensations he took another large swig of the brown liquid, causing him to feel nauseas. The effort to discard his remaining garments drained him of what little energy he had left, and he slumped hard against the stone wall. Matt tried to cover his shivering body, feeling his mind slipping and sliding into unconsciousness. He tugged weakly at the towel, too weakly for it to move.

  Open mouthed, Matt’s head fell back against the wall and his eyes forced themselves shut, pushing him into a delirious state of absolute mental and physical exhaustion.

  A blurred image entered Matt’s slow motion dream. He heard a woman’s voice calling.

  “Matt, Matt,” called the voice.

  Was it Jenna or Grace? He couldn’t be sure.

  “Matt,” she repeated. “Hold my hand and come to me.”

  His eyes remained shut; refusing to focus on the woman’s image. He was convinced her voice wanted to lead him into danger, betray him into a trap.

  “Matt, please. Take my hand
,” the voice said again.

  He was tired; so, so very tired.

  “Let me be, leave me alone,” he heard his weakened voice reply. “I can’t go any further.”

  “You can, you have to go on,” said the voice. “But first you must come to me.”

  He felt his body crawl towards the woman’s voice, climbing up before sinking down into a comfortable place. A warm body wrapped around his aching figure, held him close.

  It felt so good, the touch of hot flesh against his freezing cold shivering body. He felt her fingers stroke his hair and softly caress the features on his face, the same way she had done before.

  “Grace, don’t let go of me,” he whispered. “Promise you won’t leave me.”

  “I won’t,” said the woman’s voice. “I promise not to leave you, but now you must sleep.”

  And he fell into a deep, death-like trance of exhaustion.

  The gentle easing of the depression in the mattress springs forced Matt to open his eyes, not fully understanding at first exactly where he was. He turned his head to see Rosa standing in her lingerie with her back to him, cursing at the remnants of her torn jersey.

  “How did I get in here?”

  “Hi, Matt,” smiled Rosa. “It was your turn, remember?”

  “No.”

  “Well it was. Your turn, I mean.”

  “I had the strangest dream,” he said,

  “You had a few, kept calling Jenna’s name in your sleep.”

  “I did, really?”

  “Several times,” Rosa replied, smiling.

  Gradually, his mind refocused, and his hand darted to his left knee to scratch an irritating itch.

  “Hell’s teeth, I’m naked!”

  Rosa let out a hearty, throaty laugh which she quickly cut short.

  “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts when I do that. Anyway, I didn’t peek.”

  He suddenly remembered and sat upright in the bed.

  “How are the injuries? Let me see.”

  “Everything’s fine, you don’t have to worry.”

  “Rosa, let me see.”

  She gave him a dark look, as though she didn’t take kindly to being given instructions, and then huffed out loudly before moving her back closer towards him. Matt gingerly prodded the bruised skin around the staples, smugly satisfied with his handiwork.

  “Now the front,” he demanded.

  “Matt!”

  “The front wound, Rosa. Now,” he ordered.

  Another big huff of indignation followed, before she slowly eased her torso round to enable Matt to examine the injury. It took him a bit longer to properly inspect the damaged area.

  “Not too bad at all.”

  “The rear could have been neater,” she observed sharply.

  “How’s the head?”

  “Head?” she questioned.

  Matt gazed into her blue eyes, trying to look into her soul.

  “Johannes,” he whispered.

  Rosa turned away and shook her head.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said.

  “Rosa,”

  “I said no,” she snapped, striding to the bathroom.

  Matt jumped up and dressed. A few minutes passed before Rosa returned. He was sure her eyes were moist.

  “Rosa,” he said, holding out his arms.

  “I’m perfectly fine, Matt. People come into your world and then leave again. It’s the natural order of life. Something you should be getting used to by now.”

  She said it with an amazing degree of calmness, and then turned her back on him. He thought about saying no more on the subject, to leave Rosa to deal with the loss in her own way. Something inside wouldn’t allow the matter to rest. Matt approached from behind and wrapped his strong arms around her small frame, pulling Rosa into his grasp. She made to shake him off.

  “Don’t, Rosa. Please.” he said softly. “You’ll re-open the wounds.”

  His calm words brought her slight resistance to an end and her head dropped back onto his chest. She looked up to the heavens. Matt couldn’t be sure, but thought he could hear a tear being shed.

  “This wasn’t meant to happen,” said her subdued voice. “If anything, it should have been me. I would have deserved it.”

  She sighed deeply. Matt was sure he felt an escaping tear drop onto his hand.

  “I never thought he’d leave me.”

  It pained Matt for her to be in this distressed state. After all the training, the many years of bitter experience and denied sensitivities, Rosa was still much the same as everyone else. She had no special exemption from being deeply hurt by the passing of a loved one. Matt knew now he could patch up Rosa’s body and heal her physical wounds. What he didn’t have the power to do was to take away the emotional pain.

  “I won’t, Rosa,” he whispered into her ear, “I promise not to leave you.”

  The phrase echoed in Rosa’s tortured mind as she recalled the words she had said to Matt, a few hours earlier.

  “I won’t,” she had soothed. “I promise not to leave you, but now you must sleep.”

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Choices