by James Rouch
‘Is he having a stroke?’ Sherry Kane turned to look into the back and couldn’t believe it when she saw the other two not helping, but actually trying to distance themselves from the old priest. ‘Say what kind of creeps are you, at least loosen his collar, he ain’t hardly breathing.’ She reached out to do it herself, but Gross lunged to grab her wrists before she could.
‘Don’t touch him. That isn’t the battery in his pacemaker going on the blink, he must have picked up something when he went off on his own.’
‘What can we do?’ The handkerchief Edwards wadded over his mouth as he squeezed himself into an extreme corner not caring that his actions clearly indicated to all that his concern was more with avoiding whatever might be affecting Venables, than helping to apply some remedy. ‘Can he pass it to us?’
‘I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not going to give him the fucking chance. Stop the car.’ Even before the Rover came to a halt Gross had the door open and was jumping out. From the side of the road he picked up a moss covered bough and using it as a giant prod, began to push the dying man from the vehicle.
Giving a frightened yelp as he realized that Venables was being shoved toward him, Edwards made a hasty exit from the far door and got clear just in time as the priest toppled out onto the road.
Unable to resist, Venables had to suffer the pain of the rough wood rammed fiercely into his side and could do nothing to prevent arrest or soften his fall when the seat was no longer beneath him. Without being able to even put out a hand, he struck the road face first, hard, doing a flopping half roll before coming to rest against the shallow grass bank at the roadside. His glasses had broken and blood poured from cuts about his eyes and from his burst nose.
But pain, even that of the shard that had pierced his right eyeball, was fast becoming a distant thing. What vision he had left was dimming, and his thoughts were blurred, running together and losing their meaning like the images and colours of a painting dissolving in the rain. The last sight he had before it went altogether was of Professor Edwards splashing large quantities of disinfectant over the seat before jumping aboard the already moving vehicle.
The feeble beating of his heart and the sound of shallow breaths whistling past the broken dentures lodged in his throat were the only sensations he was aware of, and his oxygen starved brain never registered the instant when they ceased.
Only Webb did not join in the exchange of accusation, excuse and argument. His only feeling over the event was contempt for them all. It was a mark of how little regard any of them had for each other that the discussion centred not on the fact that a dying man had been jettisoned to a suffering lonely death, but around the moral issues involved.
He listened as the passion and anger flowed back and forth. Gross and the woman made the most noise, but the union-leader’s prime concern was justifying his actions, while Kane’s contribution, though equally loud, was an intellectually lightweight mishmash of half remembered and less understood quotes from schoolroom Marxist pamphlets.
When Gross made an occasional interjection it was usually drowned by the shouting, or interrupted repeatedly, and then he would scowl and his wrinkled face would gain another set of creases and his sharp eyes would narrow and project his hatred and frustration.
A point was reached where it appeared likely that blows would soon be struck. Kane’s voice was so shrill she seemed at times to go off the audible scale and Gross was purple, with his every word accompanied by a shower of spittle. Of the trio the professor alone seemed to have retained a degree of self control, but he sat with tight lipped bridled silence that had all the menace of a volcano on the verge of violent eruption.
Reluctantly Webb framed a comment to take the heat from the situation, but he never needed to utter it. Circumstances intervened.
On the road ahead was a small crowd of a dozen or so civilians. When they saw the Range Rover coming they made no move to step aside, instead they fanned out across both lanes and linked arms to form a human barrier.
Absorbed in the violent discussion, Sherry didn’t see the group until she turned back to the front to discover why they were slowing. They looked strange, she blinked and looked again, still she couldn’t make sense of what she saw, it was like she was seeing images in a grotesquely distorting mirror.
The people rushed forward to crowd about the vehicle, and it was as they tried to reach in through the open window, as they came so close that Sherry could feel their breath on her cheek, that her brain could no longer block the truth of what she could see.
She saw the bare flesh of their hands and arms and faces, those terrible, terrible faces, and started to scream; and went on screaming as with balled fists pressed savagely hard into her eyes she tried to hide from a sight she wished she had never seen.
‘He was still alive when they left him.’ Sergeant Hyde made his inspection of the body from a safe distance. ‘Look at the state of him. He must have lost the best part of a pint of blood from those facial injuries, but there’s no sign of a dressing, nothing.
‘They dumped the poor old devil.’
‘Could have fallen out I suppose, it might have been an accident.’ By his feet Thorne had noticed smears of blood and fragments of glass.
‘They’d only just pulled past that tree, they couldn’t have been doing any speed, certainly not enough to kill him. And if that were the case, why go off and leave him. No, judging by the marks on his face I’d say he was thrown out, probably because he suddenly developed symptoms that scared the living daylights out of them.’
‘So that kinda proves this place is still pretty lethal.’ With a long stick that lay nearby, Ripper gave the corpse an exploratory prod. ‘How come back in the US we were told all that chemical crap only lasted a mite longer than a month at most, and then it weren’t dangerous no more. There ain’t been no action in these parts for better than half a year, so it ought to be safe hereabouts, or was that just bullshit they gave us at boot camp?’
There were no indications of vomiting or diarrhoea on the body, and Revell could see no signs of burning or blistering either, but he knew that some chemical agent had to be the cause of death. Even with the enhanced incubation periods possessed by many of the latest strains of biological weapons, no virus or bacteria could possibly have acted so fast. ‘They told you right, but it’s been found that some toxins can be absorbed by certain plants, and give off again later, a lot later. The old fellow must have gone off for a pee and found that out for himself.’
‘Oh that’s great.’ Dooley moved his foot from a nettle rooted in the cracked road surface. ‘Ain’t enough we’ve got to watch for boards warning of minefields. Now we got to keep an eye open for ‘keep off the grass’ signs.’
They were re-boarding when they saw the refugees coming. The group moved slowly, and four of them held the handles of a roughly made litter. Hesitating when they saw the armoured personnel carrier, after a hurried whispered consultation among themselves they came on, very slowly.
‘Where can they have come from?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Hyde shoved the Russian toward the APC, as the major urged the others to board quickly. ‘The last thing we need is to get involved with a bunch of refugees.’
Instructing their driver to take them forward cautiously, Revell had to order a dead stop when the group deliberately spread across the width of the road to block it. Standing half out of the top hatch he looked at them, and couldn’t prevent a shudder.
He’d been expecting something bad, but even so was not sufficiently prepared for their appalling condition. Ragged clothes, bare bleeding feet and running sores he’d seen before, they were as much a part of the refugee scene in the Zone as hunger and dirt, but the appearance of these… creatures, was hideously grotesque in the extreme.
Huge boils distorted the shape of their faces, and their hands and arms were swollen and misshapen by clusters of more of the same. Two children among the group had thick bandages bound over their e
yes, but still kept their heads low and with hands covered by a livid rash shaded their similarly afflicted faces.
Improvised splints were lashed tight about the legs of the young woman on the stretcher, and where her bare flesh showed between the windings of torn cotton it displayed disfiguring black spots.
A man came to the side of the Marder, and through the evident pain of talking, an effort that opened the distended tissue surrounding his mouth and caused a mess of blood and pus to drop from his chin, spoke to the major.
‘Will you help us please. I beg you.’
He had to pause, swaying as if close to the limit of his tolerance of the agony he was enduring.
‘Please, please help us. The others would not listen, they drove straight at us.’ He indicated the figure on the stretcher. ‘My wife is hurt. You must help us.’
Thorne had come up beside the officer. He winced at the sight of the refugees, and spoke quietly to the major from behind the cover of a hand cupped over his mouth. ‘They’re as good as dead. We were always expecting the commies to use stuff like this against us in Hamburg. They never did, but I got to learn all the symptoms. Most of the adults have got anthrax, and they’ve got it bad. The kids have got San Paulo fever, or something like that. See the rash? And they can’t stand the light. Not sure about the woman on the stretcher, could be plague of some kind, but it looks like it’s in the terminal stage.’
‘I’m sorry, we have to go on.’ Revell hardly needed the information from the sapper. He’d identified the anthrax for himself, and had made intelligent guesses of the other diseases. ‘All we can do is leave you food and medicine. I have to maintain radio silence at present, but I’ll call ambulances and a medical evac-team as soon as I can.’
The spokesman shook his head. His first words came out as animal noises and he had to stop, summon reserves of strength and try again.
‘No, that is what we want.’ Slowly he lifted his arm and his tattered sleeve slid back to display even larger blisters on his forearm, so close together that in overlapping masses they doubled the thickness of the limb.
As the refugee’s wavering finger indicated the 20mm cannon, Revell slowly and carefully let his hand slide down to fasten on the butt of his pistol. These didn’t look the sort, weren’t in the condition to be active bandits on the look-out for weapons and transport, but he had to be ready for anything. Staying silent on the demand he waited for the man to speak again.
‘Please, do not misunderstand.’ He brought his hands together in a gesture of supplication but his bloated fingers would not enmesh and so he put them as close as their deformity would allow. ‘Please, I am asking you to kill us.’
SEVEN
Had there been time to do it thoroughly, Colonel Rozenkov would have enjoyed breaking in his new command, but the operation came first and until it was over there would be no chance to commence so pleasant a task, and savour it.
His arrival had produced an effect in the headquarters of Department A that could be compared with the trauma experienced among the ordered lives of termites on their mound being suddenly and violently ripped apart. Circumstances were forcing him to use sledgehammer tactics where he would have preferred the scalpel. Both achieved the same result, the same bloodletting, but it would have been better done in a manner that had let him keep close control of every cut, every transplant, every amputation. The precision of surgery was much his favourite method.
But heavy handed tactics did have the virtue of bringing quickly to his notice weaknesses in the organization that might otherwise have escaped his attention for days or even weeks. Already four members of the staff were under arrest. Two of them did not even know it yet. Armed escorts were on the way to fetch them now, from whatever pastime, girl friend or other distraction it was that kept them away when they should have been on duty.
He had almost forgotten, there was a fifth arrest, it had been right here, in his office. The woman had been stupid, the moment she had obviously non-accidentally brushed her big breasts against him it was clear how she had risen to the rank of lieutenant. In her haste to be the first to try to ingratiate herself, perhaps to ensure the security of her position, or possibly to gain further promotion she had acted too soon. Stupid sow, she should have waited, appraised him first. Most likely the result of her advance would have been the same, but at least this way she had got to know immediately what new position he had in mind for her.
In essence it was not dissimilar to what she’d been trying for, but it would be in neither the place or the circumstances she’d been aiming for.
Spread-eagled and manacled across a stained, nail raked rough table, the instrument between her legs would be an electrode, not his.
In earlier days he had always personally supervised the questioning of the more attractive women. That was the sole indulgence, the single luxury he permitted himself. A refinement he had introduced was to force females to drink copiously beforehand, and then watch the dramatically enhanced effect of the treatment when they could no longer control their bladders.
And there was something else, the private thing he did when the others had gone and he was alone with his… subject. He could admit, to himself, that he was tempted by the lieutenant’s fat udders. They would have made good hand holds as he thrust in and out.
Others would have that pleasure, he could not. He would be under close scrutiny in the first few months he was here, until he weeded out those who might be tempted to be disloyal to him. Before his purge was complete, by demotions and blocked promotions he would make many enemies among the staff. A few would, with cause, hate him so much that their fear of him would not over-ride it. Until he identified those people, and removed them, he would have to go by the book, to the very letter.
The abrupt, almost peremptory double knock at the door came at virtually the instant it started to open. An immaculately uniformed officer from military intelligence entered briskly and walking to the desk threw a salute that in its starkly contrasting slackness was tantamount to insolence.
‘I see that you are not overawed in my presence, eh…?’
‘Major Morkov, Comrade Colonel.’
There was a shade more difference in the words than there had been in the salute. Rozenkov knew he had caught the man off guard by being so blunt.
‘Some commanders might think that a good thing, healthy. You are married, Major? With a family?’
Following the first, that question was not what he’d been expecting, and the major rapidly regained the attitude he’d displayed when he entered. Obviously the new boss of Department A was an old fool who had achieved his promotion through contacts, not by merit, if he was prepared to waste time engaging in trivial conversation. It would be as easy dealing with this one as it had with the last weakling. And to think that for a while he had been worrying about the change-over. He saw now that his post as GRU liaison officer would remain as comfortable and undemanding as before. Still, it might not hurt to humor the old fool.
‘Yes, with three fine sons.’
‘How nice for you. I feel I should tell you though, that you will never see them again if your attitude is not transformed instantly into apologetic grovelling compliance with my every wish and whim.’
‘I… I… Comrade… I am an officer under the command of military intelligence, I report directly to the chief of the GRU.’
‘Who happens to be General Anatoli Mischenko. You must know that the head of the GRU is always an ex-KGB officer. Anatoli is an old friend of mine, owes me many favours. Should you disappear without a trace I have only to ask him to believe that I have no knowledge of what has happened to you, and that will be an end of the matter, as it will be of you. It may be that you are under his command, but you are under my roof. I do not doubt that in this vast building I could find a room where you could be kept half alive for a very long time.’
‘Yes, Comrade Colonel.’
The salute that accompanied the trembling words was immaculate, spoiled only by
the terrified man’s inability to entirely prevent his hand from shaking.
‘Good, we understand each other. Here is what I want.’ Rozenkov threw a rolled map across the desk to a fumbling catch. ‘On there is marked the probable route being taken by a group of western civilians I am anxious should cross the Zone unmolested, by NATO troops at all, by any of ours until we have a proper reception prepared for them. Already I have a report that a squad of enemy troops are in close pursuit. You will employ any men you have available in the area to intercept and eliminate them.’
‘I understand, Comrade Colonel.’
‘Splendid, your continued robust health and contentment with family life depend upon it. Remember, on no account are the civilians to be stopped, they must not even know we are taking an interest in them at this stage. Do whatever you have to, you know the results I require.’ Rozenkov farted loud and long, the pressure of the escaping gas near lifting him in his chair. ‘Here, you may sit at my desk, use my radio link. I have to go for a shit.’
As he left the room, and the overpowering stench behind him, Rozenkov enjoyed a sardonic inward laugh. There was an apt symbolism in the pungent fumes the major was having to endure without protest. The men he would be ordering into action would be coming up against gasses themselves. Instead of stinking bowels though, they might smell faintly of fruit or apple blossom, or new mown hay, but for all their fragrance they would be utterly deadly.
Sitting down he noticed with satisfaction that the paper was a roll of decent quality tissue, not the usual box of glazed individual leaves. For the first time since he had entered the building he had a moment to think. On reflection he was beginning to see certain advantages in some of the improvisations that urgency had forced on him. Principal among them was what he’d most recently arranged.
The employment of GRU units for much of the dirty work could turn out to be a really good thing. He would hold his own men back until the interception could be made with maximum effect, letting military intelligence take the casualties, and if anything went wrong, a large share of the responsibility. Yes, it was a good arrangement.
