Stitches

by Nick Kyme

  Bucher nodded dully. ‘Yes, sir, but how does–?’

  ‘Renhaus will assist you. Whatever you’re doing, teach him to do it too.’

  No!

  ‘Think what you could accomplish with twice the manpower,’ Rake went on. ‘We’ll have this war won in a matter of months.’

  ‘Months?’ asked Bucher, his gaze flickering to Renhaus, who looked studiously neutral, and then back to Rake, who appeared inordinately pleased with himself.

  How can I keep this up for months?

  A cold knife of dread slid into Bucher’s back as he suddenly grappled with the full import of what Rake was saying.

  In the privacy of his own sanctum, his work had felt divine, righteous, but Renhaus tainted that. Bucher could not risk exposure. His gift might be denied to him, to the men he would otherwise save. He walked a tightrope, and the weight of Rake’s words threatened to unseat him and send him tumbling to oblivion.

  ‘Sir, I’m sure that the corpsman could be better employed–’

  A flash of suppressed anger lit the colonel’s face like a muzzle flare. ‘Are you questioning a direct order, Bucher?’

  ‘No, sir, of course not, I just believe…’ He didn’t have the will to fight it. That old, spineless wastrel that Bucher knew he was took over again and he crumpled like a broken kite.

  ‘Very good,’ said Rake. ‘The regiment is making another push at dawn…’ He checked his chrono. ‘That’s four hours from now. I expect it to be bloody. You’ll be glad of the corpsman’s help then.’

  ‘I am ready to assist in any way, doctor,’ said Renhaus.

  You obsequious little shit…

  Bucher felt a sudden urge to bury a scalpel in the corpsman’s face and keep churning until he was red and raw and bleed–

  He stopped himself. Blood dripped from his clenched fist, the scalpel blade having taken its fill without him realising. He deftly clasped his hands behind his back to hide the wound.

  ‘We should prepare then,’ said Bucher, and Rake gave him a curt nod.

  ‘You know,’ Rake said, as he was leaving, ‘I once thought you were a weak, ineffectual man. I expected to have to throw you back onto the line with the rest of the regiment. But you have proved me wrong.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Bucher, feeling the heat resurge, but Rake had already taken his leave.

  He glared at Renhaus, before hurrying to the basin to wash his cut hands and patch them back up.

  ‘Doctor…’ The corpsman sounded alarmed as he followed Bucher. ‘Are you injured?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Bucher, running the water over his hands as he caught Renhaus’ reflection behind him in the grimy mirror. A crack ran down the glass, cutting the corpsman’s mirrored face in two. Bucher imagined smashing his skull repeatedly against the glass until his face collapsed entirely and nothing remained but a gaping red maw and then he’d grind the– Bucher blinked, blood boiling, and took a deep breath.

  ‘You look weary, doctor. Perhaps you should rest. I can take care–’

  ‘I’m fine!’ snapped Bucher, then repeated himself more calmly when he saw how pale Renhaus looked. ‘I’m fine. Thank you, corpsman.’

  Renhaus was young, eager. A thin wash of stubble peppered his skin but it was soft and fair. In the corpsman, Bucher saw everything he wasn’t. Competent, hopeful, devout. Bucher saw his replacement.

  His tongue felt dry, thick like a wad of cloth. He wanted to be sick. Bucher pushed the feeling down, blaming it on his fatigue. He had barely eaten or slept in the last three weeks, so consumed was he with his work. His gift. A kernel of fear knotted in his gut as he realised there’d be no more of that. He couldn’t risk it.

  ‘Patch them up,’ said Bucher, still staring at his reflection, wafting a hand vaguely at the two flesh wounds that had just come in.

  ‘At once, doctor,’ said Renhaus, moving swiftly to his post. ‘I will prove my worth, I swear it by the Emperor.’

  ‘May He protect…’ murmured Bucher, and reached for a lho-stick.

  The next few days were bloody. Rake’s promised ‘push’ brought fresh wounded by the score and turned the medicae block into a charnel house. The bodies stacked up like sandbags in a defensive redoubt. The stench of death and rot pervaded.

  ‘Clamp it, Renhaus,’ snapped Bucher, the trooper’s chest cavity filling up like a red well. ‘I can’t see a damn thing in here.’

  Renhaus fumbled in the gory morass of the trooper’s innards. Bucher was trying to tie off his stitches, which were slipshod at best, one hand on the needle, the other holding the screaming missile loader down.

  ‘Throne, Renhaus, will you please–’

  ‘I’ve got it.’ The corpsman started calmly draining the fluid. ‘You nicked a second artery when you cut him,’ he said.

  Bucher glared. Renhaus looked grey, like funeral ash, and dark rings circled his eyes like little pits of darkness.

  What do you see? Eh? You think I don’t know what you reckon of me?

  Bucher had jabbed a syringe of morphia into the missile loader, and it settled the trooper right down. His chest still moved feverishly, like a scared rodent caught in a trap. No longer needing to hold the patient steady, Bucher stabbed a finger at the corpsman.

  ‘I did not,’ he said, his voice dangerously level.

  ‘With respect, doctor–’

  ‘Now, you listen to me, Renhaus. I run this medicae. Me. Not you. Ever since you got here you’ve been a hindrance. Three days of this, and we’re losing every other soul. That’s one in every two, corpsman. What do you say to that?’

  Renhaus only half listened. His attention was on his task, draining the wound, clamping the rogue artery. He only looked up when the rapid chest movements came to an abrupt halt.

  ‘He’s dead,’ he announced, exhausted, and sagged like a drained waterskin.

  Bucher blinked.

  ‘He’s what?’

  Renhaus met his disbelieving gaze. ‘Succumbed to his injuries. They were severe.’ He made the sign of the aquila. ‘Only in death does duty end.’

  Bucher looked at the corpse like it was a foreign object. The trooper’s eyes were open, flashing like little silver coins of light where the stark overhead lumens touched them. Blood flecked the face, the body cracked open like a broken egg, fluids spilling and slopping over the edge of the slab.

  ‘Is that the last of them?’ asked Bucher, a sudden millstone weight around his shoulders.

  Renhaus nodded. ‘For now, at least.’

  A hollow silence fell, where only the breaths of two defeated men and the distant thud of heavy weapons could be heard.

  Then… a tiny beat sounded, faint but discernible in the quiet medicae block.

  Renhaus squinted, canting his head like a hound that had caught a scent.

  ‘What was that?’ he asked, turning to try to pinpoint the noise.

  ‘What was what?’ said Bucher, bleary-eyed and slow to make the connection.

  Cold ice woke him though. It seized his every nerve ending and thrust him up ramrod straight. ‘I don’t hear anything,’ he said too quickly, too urgently.

  He mustn’t know. He mustn’t know.

  ‘Probably just vermin,’ he said, trying to sound casual. ‘They get in everywhere.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s vermin…’ Renhaus took a few steps, listened.

  Two tiny beats sounded, soft like a child’s finger tapping against a window.

  Du-dum.

  Then again.

  Du-dum.

  ‘That definitely wasn’t vermin,’ said Renhaus, intrepid now, vowing to catch his softly drumming quarry. He gave a side glance to Bucher. ‘Can’t you hear it?’

  ‘Must be from the guns, an echo in your eardrum perhaps. Here, let me take a…’ Bucher reached out but Renhaus had already moved on and was
heading for the organ cabinet where the biological material for transplantation was stored.

  ‘Nothing in there but empty, briny jars,’ Bucher said, still dissembling, still scrambling.

  Since his recent successes, the last three days notwithstanding, he had begun to run out of intact body parts. Not that it mattered with Renhaus watching him like a bloody servo-skull.

  The beat came again, a dull thud, an innocuous little noise but hard to deny. It struck Bucher with all the finality of a gunshot.

  ‘There…’ said Renhaus. ‘You must have heard that?’

  Bucher shrugged, opting for nonchalance. ‘This place is always creaking. It’s taken a few hits.’

  Renhaus was shaking his head. ‘No…’ he said. ‘No, it’s definitely coming from that cabinet. It sounds like there’s something in there.’ He edged closer, a poacher uncertain of what was in his snare.

  Bucher’s expression turned blank, a canvas bled of all its colour.

  He knows…

  Renhaus had grasped the cabinet’s handle and was opening the door.

  ‘Be careful…’ said Bucher.

  He damn well knows…

  He reached for the bone hammer. It felt cold in his grip, but something hot inside him urged him on.

  If he sees…

  ‘Definitely something in here…’ Renhaus was squinting at the darkened interior of the cabinet at the strange, ugly shapes floating in the cloudy liquid inside the jars. Only a few were occupied. One was tapping against the glass, half a heart, its aortic valve enlarging and contracting like a tiny mouth sucking at the wall of the jar. ‘Holy Emperor…’ Renhaus breathed, backing up and making the sign of the aquila. He sounded scared. ‘There is corruption here, there is taint–’

  Bucher struck him hard across the back of the head. Renhaus went down like a felled ogryn, bouncing off a gurney rail on his way down to the floor. And there he lay, as still as the dead.

  ‘Throne, what have I done?’

  Bucher nearly fell, slipping on the pool of blood oozing from the corpsman’s cracked skull. He reached out, debating whether he could patch him up. He could claim it was an accident, he could–

  Renhaus stirred, half-conscious, face bloody.

  Bucher hit him again, crouching in close and swinging the hammer one-handed until the skull came right apart. Then he swung five more times. Gore and brain matter spattered his coat, the medicae walls. He was practically swimming in it by the time he came to his senses. Renhaus barely had a head left. It was just red pulp and bone fragments. Bucher dug a piece out of his face, feeling the sting as he wrenched the skull splinter loose.

  ‘Oh, shit…’ he gasped, chest heaving, heart thudding louder than the artillery batteries outside. ‘Shit, shit, shit, shit!’

  They’d hang him for this or shoot him or worse. Rake would make him suffer. No way he could spin this. He’d murdered Renhaus, bludgeoned the poor bastard when his back was turned.

  He knew though, didn’t he. He knew what you’d done.

  ‘Yes… he knew,’ Bucher uttered aloud.

  He would have exposed you. He would have stopped your healing gift.

  ‘I had no choice…’ he said, feeling calmer.

  No choice at all.

  Bucher swapped the hammer for a surgical saw. He got to work.

  The bone was tough. He didn’t bother dragging Renhaus onto a slab and just dismembered him on the floor. He cut the narrow joints, the wrist, the elbow, the ankle, the knee. The sheared bone gave off a plaintive shriek. He ignored it, took the partitioned limbs and bisected them. Then he did so again. Kept the pieces small enough to fit. Everything needed to fit. It was hot work and sweat sheathed him in a cloak of body odour and desperation.

  ‘Come on, come on…’ he urged himself, the bite of the saw wearing at the web of skin between thumb and forefinger. It began to bleed. ‘Come on…’

  He kept at it, praying to the Emperor that no one would come, that for now the injured would wait. It took hours, and when he had finished his white coat had turned a ruddy pink. His eyes burned, dry from staring. He needed a drink, but he wasn’t done. Not yet. Fingers trembling, he dropped the saw and went for the jars, their preservative fluids sloshing noisily as he took them from the cabinet and lined them up on the medicae floor. He worked hurriedly, unsealing each one, holding his nose against the acerbic bite of the liquid and then dropping Renhaus in piece by ragged piece. He had just about bundled the last jar back into the cabinet and locked it shut when he heard a gentle tap.

  Du-dum.

  An innocuous sound really. Almost dulcet.

  Du-dum.

  But it wasn’t dulcet. Not soothing at all.

  Du-dum.

  It gnawed, like nails raking against glass.

  Screeeeech!

  Bucher stuffed his ears, trying to block it out. Oh, Throne… He could smell the blood on him. They would smell it too. They would know what he had done. Killed a corpsman and then cut him into pieces. Emperor’s mercy… that bone shriek.

  Du-dum.

  ‘Shut up…’ Bucher pressed his ears so hard that he grew dizzy from the pressure against his skull. Blood thundering, he let go.

  Du-dum.

  ‘Shut up, shut up…’

  He turned on the medical saw and let it whine, scything the air.

  Du-dum.

  Like a parade inside his head, beating out the tattoo of his guilt.

  Du-dum.

  ‘Shut up!’

  Bucher scrambled to his cabinet, slipped and hit his head. Fire burned through his skull, like a dozen hot pins had been thrust into his scalp. He got to his feet, groggy, nauseous.

  Screeeeech!

  The nails again. His nails. The image of a dismembered hand clawing at the glass filled Bucher’s mind.

  ‘Please…’ he hissed, a plaintive whisper to the dark. The cabinet sprang open on the third attempt, Bucher’s fingers raw and bleeding with the effort. He threw aside the doors, exposing his tormentor…

  The jars were still. Nothing stirred. He waited. He watched. Renhaus, his accumulated biological matter, simply floated. Tiny pieces of him had broken off and bobbed around in the briny fluid. It was murky, like dirty sea water, churning with filth. He checked every jar, holding it up painstakingly to the light, examining the cloudy morass within. Just parts, savaged and separated, but just parts. A foot. A piece of jaw. An eye… Oh, holy Emperor, did I really do this?

  Bucher slid to his knees, sloughing down into the gory matter underfoot, a man melting under the weight of his own misdeeds. He let it cling to his clothes, his skin, begging for the filth to consume him.

  For a few seconds, there was silence. Then his weary gaze caught sight of that mark again. That little rime of mould, a reminder of the boy, his back arched like a bridge of flesh and bone, the path to his agony and horror. Was it… a little larger than before? No, it had changed though. One patch had become three, a grimy little triangle of dots.

  He crawled over for a closer look, and was about to reach out when–

  Du-dum.

  Bucher sprang to his feet. He had left the cabinet open and grabbed the bone hammer on the way up. Its head was still matted with some of Renhaus’ hair. Roaring, he smashed the jars. Brine and body parts spilled out in a gruesome flood. He felt it touch him, the soft flesh slapping at his coat, the fingers snagging, the teeth biting. A grisly moat of biological matter and shattered glass separated Bucher from the rest of the medicae block. He laughed, too loud, too hysterically.

  ‘Now, you’ll shut up…’ he said, a triumphant, mildly unhinged lilt to his voice he didn’t entirely recognise.

  There was silence then, blissful silence.

  No, wait…

  It was actual silence. Not just the empty echoes of the medicae block, but outside too. No bombardment. No d
ull thud of artillery. It had become so constant that now it was gone Bucher found he missed the percussive refrain of the guns.

  Frowning, he carefully edged through the mess he had made. Bits of glass – or was it bone? – crunched under his feet.

  He walked out of the block. Still he heard nothing. A long corridor led out to the camp, to the trenches. He took it, still listening, still hearing nothing. Blinking, he stepped out into the light of a cold day. The sky looked ill, jaundice yellow with brown smears of cloud like a dirty rag had been dragged across it with a god’s hand. The regiment were there. They were waiting for him. Silent.

  So was the camp. No guns shook the earth with their thunderous recoil. No orders barked back and forth. No one even moved. They stood before him in their ranks, a perversion of parade ground discipline.

  They had changed, the Valgaast 66th. Pale skin, sunken eyes and withered limbs. Ragged uniforms blotched by patches of mould in that same pattern he had seen on the medicae wall. He noticed Gruemann, the vox-operator. His arms and legs had wasted to skeletal thinness but his stomach bulged, bloated with putrefaction. Languid flies drifted on air that smelled like fever sweat. It was thick. You swallowed it rather than breathed it. Bucher took a pull and gagged.

  Rake came forwards. He shambled, to be precise.

  ‘S-sir…’ Bucher rasped, fear constricting his throat, or was that just the stench? Rake smelled bad. Like milk left in the sun or eggs turned rotten. The image of flyblown meat surfaced uncomfortably in Bucher’s mind. Then the silence broke and the beat resumed.

  Du-dum.

  Louder.

  Du-dum.

  Two dozen hearts beating at the same time. A chorus of lungs heaving ragged breaths. The pulse and throb of life, except it wasn’t life, Bucher knew that now, faced with Colonel Rake in his malodorous state. His shrunken, decaying flesh, his black nubs for teeth. It was un-life or un-death.

  It had taken them, some kind of ague.

  ‘It was the boy, wasn’t it?’ said Bucher, hot tears running down his cheeks.

  Rake nodded, opening his mouth to reveal a thick, grey tongue like a slug lolling inside, too fat to fashion speech. Black flecks collected at the corners of his mouth, cracking the skin and releasing tracts of watery pus as he grinned.