by James Rouch
By now the liaison officer would have examined the map, seen where he was having to deploy his troops. For him, and for them, it would not be a good arrangement. He would have trouble explaining their use to his superior, and their loss.
On two occasions in the past Revell had been forced by circumstances to finish off, to kill, members of his own command who were desperately wounded and in danger of falling into Russian hands. That it had been by far the most humane thing to do, saving them from the further agonies of torture; that had not made it any easier. What the leader of the refugees was asking was no more palatable.
He knew he could not do it himself, nor could he order any of the others to do it. Asking for a volunteer was no solution either. Almost certainly Andrea would be the only one to do so. His mind was already in sufficient turmoil over her for him not to want to carry an image of her gunning down unarmed sick refugees, whatever their condition, how ever great a mercy it might be. He sought another way.
‘Dooley, up here, bring your pack. Not that one, the one you keep tucked out of sight.’
Slowly and suspiciously Dooley produced it and handed it to the officer. He watched nervously as the major rummaged about inside it.
Various small tins and boxes were crammed into the bulging pack and Revell had to delve deep before he found what he wanted. The Soviet Makarov pistol was wrapped in a piece of garish printed cotton, along with two loaded magazines. Throwing the hand gun to the spokesman, he retained the clips for the moment. ‘You know how to use it?’
‘Yes.’ Slowly and painfully he tested the action, noticed it was unloaded and looked back to Revell.
‘I’ll drop these off a little way up the road. You understand why, don’t you?’
‘All we want is to die, to end our suffering. There is no anger left in us, not even toward the Russians who made us this way. We are past caring. An act of indiscriminate revenge upon you would serve no purpose.’
‘I’m sorry…’ Rebinding the cloth about the magazines Revell tossed them down.
‘Thank you.’ Fumbling with fingers made clumsy by disease-induced deformity he slid a clip into the butt, and turning his back on the Marder shuffled toward the children who sat by the side of the stretcher.
Without being ordered, Burke eased in the drive and made the quietest departure he had achieved to date. As the hatches were being pulled shut they heard a shot. A second followed before they were secured.
* * *
Speed was reduced to a crawl, with the APC in bottom gear as they approached the summit of the long climb, when a pin sheared and the left track broke. At that slow pace their driver was able to bring the machine to a halt before they ran off it.
Following the sergeant from the Marder, Revell joined him in an inspection of the damage. ‘Could have been worse, at least we won’t have to piece it, but it’s another hold-up we could have done without.’
‘About thirty minutes I should think, Major. Less if the broken pin comes out easily.’
‘They never fucking do.’ With the maximum amount of noise Dooley dropped the tool kit.
Boris and Thorne struggled with a spare track plate that was proving difficult to remove from the brackets fastening it to the hull side. Their comments as Burke sauntered past carrying a single track pin, and grumbling about having to do it, were drowned by the thunder of Dooley’s assault on a recalcitrant fragment of distorted metal still retaining the failed component.
‘Post a guard sergeant, and have an air-watch kept, then we’ll have a stroll to the top and see what lies ahead. Might as well take that advantage of this stop.’
The view was not as panoramic as that they’d had from the hill on which they made their electronic sweep, but it was even more informative. Before commencing a systematic search of the slice of Bavaria laid out before them, Revell couldn’t resist a swift general sweep along the road where it went off into the distance.
‘Got them.’ Studying the scene a moment longer, he handed the binoculars to the NCO and directed his observations to a causeway and Bailey bridge across cratered and flooded ground less than two miles ahead.
‘Looks like they’re stuck.’ Adjusting the setting to suit his weaker sight, Hyde scrutinized the distant tableau.
Four figures stood about a Range Rover that had stopped on the log built causeway leading to the bridge, a little short of a section that had partially subsided into the artificially created bog.
‘Do we go in on foot and grab them now, or wait for the track to be fixed?’ Hyde returned the glasses.
‘I think we’ll wait for the wagon.’ Something else caught Revell’s attention. ‘In fact we’ll have to.’
Midway between them and their quarry he’d seen a pair of light trucks and a field car parked among the trees, far enough in for them to have been invisible from the road. In the course of the day they’d seen dozens of rusting wrecks and at first glance that was all those three vehicles had registered as, but then instinct made him focus on them again, and a more critical inspection revealed that they weren’t hulks.
It was the trucks’ erected canvas tilts that betrayed them. Tough though the material was, it would not have survived several months’ continual exposure to Europe’s unrelenting elements. If they’d been derelicts then there ought only to have been a few flapping strips by this time, but that wasn’t how it was.
The transports were all late models that, aside from being mud spattered, appeared to be in perfect condition. That discovery made, it didn’t take Revell long to discover what they were doing there.
Scrutinizing every yard of ground between the vehicles and the highway he found their passengers dug-in and occupying hastily camouflaged positions astride it.
With the advantage of height, Revell could discern the textbook precision with which the slit trenches and weapons pits were laid out.
‘There’s the best part of a platoon of Russian infantry waiting for us. Seems like we’ll have to run the gauntlet of whatever they’ve got to throw before we’ll reach those turncoat civvies.’
‘And it doesn’t look like they’re prepared to hang about and wait for us either.’ Even without the binoculars Hyde could tell from the patterns of movement about the Range Rover that efforts were being made to repair the causeway.
‘Okay, the schedule’s too tight for us to play Indians and sneak up behind that ambush…’
‘Not much chance of that anyway, with the racket the Marder makes.’
‘Right.’ Revell had already recognized that impediment to any attempt at stealth. ‘So we’ll just have to get as close as we can before they open fire. If we charge in with cannon blazing they’ll hit us with a shower of anti-tank rockets. The road’s not that wide, and there’s nowhere else to go, so…’
‘So…?’ Not that he needed to ask, Hyde was perfectly able to anticipate what was coming next.
‘And so we motor toward them like we’re on a Sunday afternoon drive round the park, make out we don’t even know they’re there. You know what the Ruskies are like. Offer them a sitting target and they’ll wait until they’re within spitting distance before letting them have it. A second or two before they have a go at us, we’ll pour all we’ve got into them.’
‘Sounds fine in theory, Major. Do you think we can make the timing that neat?’
‘Look, it’s all we’ve got. Let’s get ready to put it into practice.’
Walking back to the Marder, a thought kept nagging at Hyde. While they were still out of hearing of the rest of the squad he posed the officer a question whose answer he suspected he already knew. ‘If we had all the time in the world, Major, you’d still have us doing it this way, wouldn’t you.’
‘What’s the matter, sergeant, you think you can live forever?’
‘Just a day at a time, but if I’ve got to cop it then I don’t want to go knowing that I’ve taken some of my men with me who didn’t have to die. Most of the blokes I’ve met in the Zone want to win the war by surviving it,
not by throwing their lives away.’
Revell could pretend, to himself at least, that their proximity to the rest of the squad precluded him from making a suitable reply. In all truth he couldn’t argue with the NCO, the sergeant was right; it was he who was wrong. Not that he could stop himself though. It was as if he was trying to make all the war he could, trying to keep the biggest possible share for himself.
In some such actions might have been a death wish, but he didn’t recognize that within him. And even if that were the case then long before now he’d have had it granted. The Zone would have found it all too easy to fulfil. It did as much for thousands of others every day, when death was the last thing they desired.
Unbidden, unwanted, to the forefront of his mind came a recollection of the pathetic group they’d provided with an escape from the Zone. Even in their case though there had been no willingness to embrace death in the solution they’d found to their suffering, distressing in the extreme though it was.
When they’d set out to cross the Zone to reach the west those people had been full of hope. To have got so far that hope must have stayed with them until their condition had deteriorated beyond the point of endurance. They hadn’t wanted to die, and nor did he, but as he climbed back into the Marder, Revell knew that? like them, for him there was no longer a choice.
EIGHT
‘Really, I’m not at all sure that this is entirely practical. I wait to be convinced.’ With his free hand keeping a fierce grip on the Rover’s tailgate mounted spare wheel, Edwards made feeble attempts to cut the rope lashing rough-trimmed logs together. ‘You do realize that once we have removed these from behind us we shall be quite cut off, should the repair to the track ahead not be successful.’ He looked at the ochre water beneath the piling suspended causeway. ‘I should not like to have to wade back to firm ground.’
‘Give it a rest, will you.’ Sherry took the axe from the professor and with a single double handed blow freed the timber for Gross to lift. ‘Go up front and help Webb place and tie the logs we bring you.’
As the nervous academic edged past the high sided vehicle, Gross leered at the woman. ‘Did you get rid of him so it’d be just you and me?’
‘Oh yeah.’ She started on another binding, the blunt blade taking several hacks to get through the plaited strands. ‘Oh yeah, all day I been saying to myself how much I’d love to have your smelly fat gut crushing my bare arse into splintered wood while your soft little prick had trouble finding its dribbling way through my fanny hair.’
‘I like it when you talk dirty, makes my balls go tight.’ Half closing his eyes Gross puckered his wet lips toward her.
‘In a minute I’ll make you leak something, you creep.’ Raising her axe threateningly, Sherry took a half pace back to make room to swing it. As she did her ankle turned, and she lost her balance.
With surprising speed for his bulk Gross grabbed her, and then as he pulled back, crushed her to him while his hips thrust the hard tip of his penis against the front seam of her jeans.
‘See, it’s not a soft little prick, is it. I reckon it’d even fill that well used cavern of a cunt you’ve got. Want to talk dirty again? Go on, I could jerk off with one hand just listening to you.’
Managing to break free she pulled her T-shirt straight where Gross had tried to shove his hand inside it. ‘Jesus, have you ever taken a look at yourself? You’re horrible.’
Undecided whether or not to grab for her again, Gross stood panting, watching her breasts heave as she also fought for breath. ‘What are you getting so fussy about. I’ve seen all your films, all of them, even those early shorts. My favourite was that one called The Boarding School, especially that scene where the caretaker and the boiler man hoisted your gymslip and had you front and back among the cobwebs in the cellar. Were they really buggering and fucking you at the same time? Did they shove their tools right in? Or was that imitation spunk they licked off you afterwards?’
‘Someone should shove something up you, a loaded scattergun maybe.’ There was more Sherry would have said, but from the front of the Rover Webb was calling for another log. Keeping a wary eye on Gross, she resumed work.
Places of weather-stained rope, strips of peeling bark and chips of wood made a continual rain into the tainted water a couple of feet below the level of the causeway. The same evil smelling solution coloured the contents of all the other bomb-made pits carpeting the land.
Beyond the elevated track and the girder bridge that took the route finally to firm ground once more, the landscape took on a curiously monochrome appearance.
Trees and grass, every living thing, or everything that had been living because there was no sign of life to be seen in any blade or leaf, everything seemed to have been literally leached of all colour. The countryside had been turned gray, the trunks and boughs of trees dark, their foliage a paler shade, but all of them gray. It was as if that part of the world had been dusted with an adhering ash that no deluge could remove.
A few wind-blown leaves scrunched beneath their feet, crackling apart like a fine brittle china. Some of the fragments fell between the logs to float on the sickly yellow water, skimming back and forth at the whim of the lightest air current.
Struggling to wedge a final component of the temporary repair into place, Webb ceased work abruptly as he heard a fusillade of cannon and automatic fire from behind them.
‘How close is that? Could it have to do with us?’ Becoming agitated Edwards opened a door and prepared to climb into the back of the Range Rover.
‘I don’t know. A mile or so, perhaps, but it’s definitely on the road we’ve travelled.’ Resorting to stamping on it, without success, Webb had to content himself with leaving the oversized length of wood projecting above the others about it.
‘Then why are we waiting.’ Setting an example of urgency he hoped the others would follow, Edwards reached for a hand-hold to haul himself in, missed it, and lost his footing on the high step. Teetering, he gave a high pitched yelp of alarm, then with arms flailing fell backward into the polluted water half filling a large crater.
Not eighteen inches deep, he floundered and panicked as if thrown into the deep end. ‘Oh, help me, help me someone, get me out, oh it’s revolting, I’m wet…’
Extending the handle of the axe for him to grip, Sherry and Webb assisted the professor back to the causeway. He sat gasping and spluttering.
A belly laugh from Gross at his mud-smeared and bedraggled condition did nothing to soothe Edwards’ ruffled dignity and composure, but it did stimulate the speed of his recovery from the shock of his unexpected immersion. ‘Be quiet you uncouth braying fool. Oh damn, damn, damn. I’m quite soaked through. Get me a blanket someone, quickly.
While Edwards installed himself in a corner of the rear seat, and Gross tried and failed to grope Sherry as he assisted her into the front passenger seat, Webb unlashed a petrol can from the roof rack and began to splash its contents over the causeway behind them.
The empty container he tossed aside, to slowly settle in the same miniature lake that had so recently accommodated Edwards. When he bent down and flicked his lighter at the periphery of the soaked area he had to recoil swiftly as the spilt fuel ignited with a roar.
Black smoke billowed from the breeze-feathered tops of the licking flame, as liquid fire dripped off the logs to spread across the ground below.
Hurrying back to the driver’s seat he started the engine, and with a glance through his rear view mirror at the boiling smoke, eased the Range Rover forward onto the improvised repair they had effected.
Lurching from side to side, from beneath the four wheel drive vehicle came a chorus of creaking protest from imperfectly positioned timbers. There was a sharp crack as one snapped, the sudden loud twang of a rope binding parting, but momentum was maintained and wallowing dramatically the Rover dragged itself across the disintegrating section and onto the Bailey bridge that comprised the final link with the far side.
Webb’s last si
ght of the causeway revealed it to be a blazing wreck on the verge of total collapse. Fire raged along it, spreading even as he looked and shreds of burning rope and bark made a non-stop shower into the water. He would have enjoyed seeing its collapse, it would have marked their final separation from the west, underlined and reinforced their commitment to the east. Eventually it would fall, even though he would not see it, and that knowledge was satisfaction enough.
‘You can relax, the worst is over. Whatever it was that was happening behind us, we cannot be caught now. From this moment we can enjoy a gentle drive to our destination and a pleasant reception.’
Professor Edwards heard but paid no attention. Through the discomfort of being wet and cold he could feel something else; a prickling, mildly burning sensation. Alternately he scratched or applied pressure to those parts of his body where the sensation was becoming most acute. It seemed mostly confined to the lower half of his person, those parts that had been immersed, but he could sense it also where the filthy water had splashed on his face and hands.
Trying to be discreet, and decent about it, he fumbled beneath the blanket and hoisted the leg of his trousers. The skin had an unhealthy blanched look and was crisscrossed by red marks that revealed where creases in his damp clothes had been in closest contact with his leg.
The growing discomfort of the irritating affliction forced him to pluck at his clothes to prevent even that light contact, but that was not enough, the burning and itching was becoming worse, unendurable.
Casting all thought of propriety aside with the blanket he took the only course open. Tortured by intolerable discomfort that was fast transforming into pain he mewed his distress as he took recourse to the only measure the torment prompted in his distracted mind.
