The Boy on the Bridge

by M. R. Carey

  The colonel can’t take the corner cleanly. There just isn’t room to turn something of Rosie’s generous dimensions without hitting something. So he doesn’t even try. He comes round wide, smashing through the frontages of shops, folding benches and litter bins down to two dimensions, then he swerves at the last moment to scythe into the street they’re on. Even so, he doesn’t have enough room to manoeuvre. A lamp post is torn out of the ground and falls full length across the road, from pavement to pavement. It lies there like a toppled tree for half a heartbeat before Rosie’s treads crush it flat.

  McQueen grabs the radio. “Extend the airlock,” he yells. “We need an umbrella!”

  The massive vehicle comes to a stop at last, with the mid-section door right opposite the door they entered through. The scientists scramble up and start to head for the exit, but McQueen brings them back with a terse bark. “Wait for it.”

  The colonel extends the airlock, all the way to the door of the building. That glass is everything-proof. If someone up on the roof has a gun pointed down at them, or even just a pebble and a leather strap, the crew will only be exposed for a fraction of a second as they sprint across from the protection of the doorway to the sanctuary of the airlock. Even McQueen would have trouble setting up a decent shot in that kind of timeframe.

  “Okay,” he tells his people, “lead off. One at a time, like before. Cover the civilians, then go over yourselves. Foss, you and me run tail.”

  The geek squad is quick and efficient for once. With their lives on the line they remember every combat drill they were ever put through, every skip and jump. They descend the stairs quickly and quietly. McQueen notices as Dr. Penny runs by that she is uninjured. Her duck-and-cover was a reflex, not a response to a wound.

  He lingers in the doorway, and Foss stays behind too without a word being spoken. They wait, rifles in hand, to see if anything comes down through the ceiling, but nothing does. Finally they retreat backwards out of the room and slam the door.

  When they get to the bottom of the stairs, the whitecoats are already scooting through the airlock doors with Phillips and Sixsmith to either side, watchful and ready.

  They get the hell out of there, by the numbers. Only Khan seems a little breathless as they duck and run, a little clumsy, but then she’s used to manoeuvring without a seven-month baby bump.

  Dr. Fournier is waiting for them right inside the mid-section door, trying to look like he’s actually got something to do here, yelping out orders as though anyone is listening.

  “Keep the platform clear! Leave room for the people who are coming in behind you! Cycle the doors as soon as the last man is in!”

  The last man is McQueen. Foss, who was second to last, has shuffled in backwards so she can cover him as he comes. He gives her a curt nod of thanks and walks on by, trusting her to lock up behind him.

  “What if Stephen—?” Dr. Khan protests, but McQueen isn’t really listening so he misses the rest of the sentence. He dumps his gun and climbs into the turret.

  The doors slide shut and the airlock retracts. Rosie backs out the way she came, smashing a lot more infrastructure with her arse end.

  They reverse onto the main street where they swing around in a wide, destructive arc. But not as destructive as it’s about to get.

  The field pounder, in these close quarters, is useless. The shells would punch through the walls of Invercrae and sail right on. The flamethrower, though, is a different proposition entirely.

  The lieutenant slams down the priming lever and rotates the turret through most of a circle. He aims at the building they’ve just come from and cuts loose, sweeping the house from the roof on down.

  In seconds, it’s one big bonfire. After that, he sprays the buildings on either side, with a view to catching anyone who saw the turret turn and jumped clear. Finally, he picks targets at random. Invercrae goes up like dry tinder around them and behind them.

  McQueen hears a yelling from the bottom of the turret steps, in more than one voice. He shuts off the primer, rests the gun and descends to find Dr. Khan and Foss wrestling while the men look on in various states of bemusement or horror. Khan was trying to get up into the turret and stop him, presumably, and Foss blocked her way.

  The lieutenant gestures to Phillips and Sixsmith, who restrain the doctor as gently as they can, pulling her off Foss like a limpet off a rock. “Motherfucker!” she yells, with the accent on the third syllable. She immediately tries to throw herself at McQueen, but the soldiers hold her tight. He sees Dr. Sealey contemplate a rescue, then very sensibly take a step back as his sense of self-preservation kicks in.

  “You bastard!” Khan shouts. “Stephen is out there! Stephen is out there and you burned it down!”

  He doesn’t have any answer to that. He hadn’t forgotten Greaves; he just didn’t believe there was any chance at all that the kid was still alive. Or if he entertained a doubt, a small one, it didn’t weigh very much against the urgency of paying out Invercrae and her invisible residents for what they just did to Lutes. He is groping for a way to put this into words that Dr. Khan will understand, but she’s still screaming at him so he can’t get any headway.

  It’s right then that Rosie slows.

  Stops.

  The intracom hisses and crackles.

  “Friendlies,” the colonel says. “Mid-section door. It’s Greaves. Bring him aboard.”

  Khan is the first to move. She hits the lock. Sealey and Akimwe join her, quickly throwing the manual safeties that Foss has only just engaged.

  Only Foss out of all of them has the presence of mind to provide any cover as they pull the door wide.

  They’ve stopped by the river, just before the bridge. Stephen Greaves steps in. Nothing to say for himself, he just jumps right up onto the platform as the doors open, like a hitchhiker who can’t believe his luck is in. His kit bag bulges at his side, even fuller than usual.

  “Thank you,” he says. “I’m very sorry to have slowed you down. We probably should go now. The town is on fire.”

  21

  “You violated standing orders,” Colonel Carlisle says. “I need to know why.” He is aware that he has said it before, and he is aware of how inadequate it sounds, but it is the least of a whole box of evils. He needs to adhere to the bloodlessness, the formality of regulations and procedures in the same way that Odysseus needed to tie himself to the mast when he passed by the island of the sirens. The seductive voices in this case will lure him into anger, and Lieutenant McQueen will meet him more than halfway.

  “You didn’t see what Lutes looked like when they were through with him,” McQueen says, as though that’s an answer. After a half-second pause he adds a “Sir,” like throwing a scrap to a dog.

  The two men face each other across the long diagonal of the crew quarters, as though this is a duel. The rest of the crew stand around the edges, all except for Greaves who has hidden in the lab, away from the dangerous emotions. The boy’s instincts are sound, the colonel reflects grimly. His own men and the science team are all still stunned by what just happened, but as they thaw out, their reactions are tending to extremes. The soldiers are angry and hurting because one of their own is dead. Samrina Khan is furious for a different reason, the lieutenant’s unilateral barbecue party far from forgotten, and her voice carries a lot of weight with the whitecoats. However this plays out, it has the potential to polarise them, to set them all at odds.

  So the colonel treads lightly. He stands by the book. The book isn’t angry with anyone, and the demands it makes are ones the soldiers accepted the first time they put on their uniforms.

  “Explain to me,” he says to McQueen, “why you fired the flamethrower in the absence of a direct order.”

  McQueen shakes his head as though that’s the sorriest excuse for a question he has ever heard. He doesn’t answer. So Carlisle tries again. “Lieutenant, you used the mid-section guns without permission, and without verifying that all personnel were aboard. If there was a clear and p
resent danger that justified this course of action, I need to know about it. Because if there wasn’t, you endangered the entire crew for no good—”

  “They’re still alive,” McQueen says, between his teeth. “All but one of them. All the ones who stuck with me. Did you miss that? I did what had to be done to bring us out of there. I secured a position and then I requested an extraction exactly as per standing bastard orders. The flamethrower was just to let them know that if they hurt one of ours we hurt them back.”

  “Damn right,” mutters Lance-Bombardier Foss.

  Samrina gives Foss a look of incredulous contempt. She hasn’t bounced back yet from the whole ordeal. Her face is haggard with stress and exhaustion. “Damn right?” she echoes. “What, did they teach you that at sniper school? Somebody hurts you, you hit back with the biggest weapon you’ve got, no matter who might be in the way?”

  Foss shrugs. “Nobody was in the way. We got out. We got out in one piece.”

  “And the ends justify the means. Right.” She indicates McQueen with a jerk of the head. “You’re a bigger idiot than he is.”

  Foss arches an eyebrow. “Well now,” she says mildly. “That’s a conversation we can take up another time.”

  Samrina talks over her, eyes on the colonel. “Stephen was MIA,” she says. “He could have been in any one of the buildings this fucking moron torched. I don’t know how this works, but I want some assurance that he can never touch those turret guns again. I’d rather take my chances with the hungries.”

  McQueen lets the insult pass. “In this instance,” he points out levelly, “you would have been taking your chances with junkers. And let’s not forget that Greaves going off-mission was the catalyst for all of this. Lutes was killed trying to find him and escort him back.”

  “If I might be permitted to voice an opinion,” Dr. Fournier breaks in. “Speaking as civilian commander.”

  “With due respect, Doctor,” Carlisle says heavily, “I’m attempting to settle a matter of military discipline.”

  “Which impacts on the mission.”

  True enough, but so does everything. Which is why having two mission commanders never made any sense.

  “Lieutenant,” Carlisle presses, “what prompted you to fire the mid-section guns? Please explain.”

  McQueen makes a gesture, palms up and open. This is all I have to give you. “I suppose, sir,” he says, “I fired them because I felt that Brendan Lutes’ death mattered. If you disagree, feel free to discipline me in any way you see fit.”

  The challenge rests there. Carlisle gathers himself to pick it up.

  “If I may be allowed to speak,” Fournier tries again. “The presence of junkers in the town more than justifies the lieutenant’s action. I would be inclined to overlook the breach of regulations.”

  “The presence of junkers wasn’t verified,” the colonel tells him bluntly, and turns right back to McQueen. “You used the flamethrower contrary to regulations. In an enclosed and compromised space, and without regard to the safety of the crew. You were firing in a broad arc, ignoring the headwind and our own acceleration. Not only could you have killed Mr. Greaves, you could also have set fire to Rosie if the propane stream had blown back on us. I respect your feelings, but I can’t condone your actions.”

  “I can live with that,” McQueen says.

  “I’m therefore taking away your commission.”

  McQueen takes that blow full in the face. He blinks a few times, as though to clear his sight. There is a silence that spreads out from him to take in the rest of the room. Even Dr. Khan can’t find anything to say right now, although she nods just once. Good. The slamming of drawers and the clatter of instruments—Greaves, at work in the lab—seem to come from a great distance.

  “Whether or not the demotion becomes permanent,” the colonel goes on, “is a matter for the Muster’s senior officers as soon as we’re able to re-establish radio contact.” He tries to temper his tone. The punishment is what it is, and it needed to be public, but there is no need to take the man’s humiliation any further than that. “Until then, your acting rank is private. The official reprimand will stay on your docket regardless, of course. Lance-Bombardier Foss, you are now ranking officer in field parties and on any occasions when I’m not present. You will carry the acting rank of lieutenant.”

  “Sir,” Foss says mechanically. She’s just acknowledging the order. She clearly needs some time to figure out what it means.

  “Permission to speak, sir,” McQueen manages. His voice is tight. His face is starting to look a little taut too, as though suppressed emotion is pressing on it from the inside.

  “I don’t agree with this decision,” Dr. Fournier says.

  “You’re not required to,” Carlisle reassures him. “It’s mine to make.”

  “Sir, permission to—”

  “We’ll speak later.” The colonel hauls himself to his feet, wincing at the pain in his damaged leg. “Take a while to think about it, then come and find me in the cockpit.”

  “If you don’t mind, Colonel,” Dr. Fournier says, his voice rising now. “I think there’s a wider decision to be made. About the mission as a whole.” He stands up too, rigidly tense, his head moving as his gaze flicks between Carlisle and the rest of the crew. The colonel knows hurt pride when he sees it: Fournier doesn’t like to be brought up against the limits of his authority. But there is fear in his face, too. He’s not just throwing his weight around: he’s serious about this. About whatever it is he’s about to say.

  And what he has to say is serious stuff. It brings the house down.

  22

  The argument is ugly. But it is taking place in the crew quarters, so Greaves is able to retreat from it into the lab. He hates raised voices, raised emotions, words turned into cutting tools, but the upside is that it provides some cover for what he needs to do. He gets to work, doing his best to tune out the noise.

  The voices still get through, though. The loudest ones belong to Colonel Carlisle and Lieutenant McQueen, with each man repeating the same statement in a lot of different ways.

  Colonel Carlisle is angry with Lieutenant McQueen because he used the flamethrower when he hadn’t been told to. He violated standing orders. He was in breach of regulations.

  The lieutenant is angry because the colonel isn’t angry enough about the death of Private Lutes, which made using the flamethrower the right thing to do. He also says that it was all Greaves’ fault and not his own.

  Greaves tries not to think about this last argument. Lieutenant McQueen must be wrong. It must be a lie, somehow, even if it doesn’t feel like one.

  The rest of the team are angry too (he didn’t kill Private Lutes) because they almost died and Dr. Fournier is angry (but what if Private Lutes died because of him?) because nobody is listening to him even though he’s meant to be in charge (he didn’t he didn’t he didn’t he didn’t he didn’t).

  So everybody is angry and Greaves has to work and not think about any of these things, but especially not that one thing. Private Lutes killed the boy and the rest of the children killed Private Lutes. That was how it happened and Lieutenant McQueen doesn’t know because he wasn’t there.

  Greaves feels the stinging in his eyes, the wetness welling and tumbling down his cheek. He can’t wipe it away because he has put surgical gloves on. And he can’t sob or snuffle in case the crew members hear him and decide to look in on him. He is doing something very dangerous and delicate out in plain sight. He bites down on his lower lip and glares through the filming tears.

  The lab has ten freezer compartments for whole cadavers. Seven of them are full, the remaining three empty. Greaves unlocks and opens cabinet number ten, the one that in the normal run of things is least likely to be used. The one where he has been hiding his stealth suit all this time.

  He takes the boy’s body from his kit bag. It is incredibly light, incredibly small; folded in on itself like a hedgehog or a woodlouse. Greaves puts it directly into the cabinet,
which now hides it from any crew member glancing casually into the lab.

  Greaves is at war with himself. He is lying by his actions, without saying a word. But what else can he do? Before Invercrae, he could have told them what he had seen, what he suspected. He can’t—he really doesn’t think he can—say to them, now, I swapped Private Lutes for this. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you, I’m sorry I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing, but I got all I needed so on balance it worked out well.

  They already hate him. Despise him, at any rate. Dr. Fournier will never allow him into the lab again, and nobody will ever speak to him, and the mission will fail and Beacon will fall and it will all be his fault.

  The bag has to be hidden, too. Its bottom is caked with blood and brain tissue. The seams are holding the liquescent mass, just about, but dark stains are showing on the bag’s surface. Greaves stows it at the bottom end of the cabinet, below the feet of the small cadaver and alongside the stealth suit. There is plenty of room there, since the space was designed with the body of an adult hungry in mind.

  He has to work. He has to find something. And then, when he has found it he can tell them. It has to be that way round.

  Contamination of the specimen is going to be extreme and complex, but Greaves can’t think of any way to prevent it. The exposed tissue in the head wound is crusted with dust and grit from the road surface and unidentifiable particulate matter from his bag. To remove it all would take hours of work with the autopsy table fully extended, taking up half the total lab space, and the body laid out in full view.

  It can’t be done, so there is no sense in worrying about it.

  The volume of the voices behind him has reached a new peak. Dr. Sealey and Dr. Akimwe are shouting at Dr. Fournier, which is troubling but also opportune. For the moment, he is unlikely to be observed.

  He exposes the skull on the side that has not already been laid open by the bullet. This will provide the cleanest sample he can get. He selects a three-millimetre bit and screws it into the high-speed drill. Setting the extractor fan on maximum to mask the noise of the drill, he quickly and crudely punches his way through the skull into the cranial vault. The smell of burned bone almost chokes him. The fan can’t take it all away in time, so he will just have to be quick.