Strike a Match 3

by Frank Tayell

  There were no flames, just thickly cloying smoke as they eased their way past the locomotive. Mitchell stood by the carriage.

  “Lin? They sent you here?”

  “It was my reward for going after Longfield,” Lin said. “I’ve sent for the fire crew, and left someone up the track, they’ll send everyone else through the service tunnel.”

  “Good,” Mitchell said. “Because the wagon doors are—” He was interrupted by a loud creak, a rasp, a snap as metal was torn from its hinges. Ruth flinched, but it was only the first of the Marines. By bayonet and brute force, they’d levered the jammed doors apart.

  Two minutes later, smoke now billowing freely from the locomotive, Ruth was one side of a crate, Lin the other, running through the cross-passage linking it with the service tunnel.

  “You’ve been here since the first attack?” Ruth asked.

  “On the fifth, yes,” Lin said. “And before. I was here before they arrived. Not many of us left who were, not now.”

  Before Ruth could ask another question, they emerged from the cross-passage and into the access tunnel. Flickering candles and dim flashlights illuminated scores of stretchers laid end-to-end. Medics flitted from one to the next, sidestepping the hale and walking-wounded hauling crates towards the entrance.

  “There are so many,” Ruth murmured.

  “They’ve been targeting our hospitals,” Lin said. “That’s who we’re— Woah!” The sergeant slipped in a patch of viscous fluid. As she stood, for the first time, Ruth saw the stained bandage on Lin’s leg.

  “Are you okay?” Ruth asked.

  “It’s nothing but a scratch,” Lin said, “and nothing compared to what these shells will do to the Cossacks.”

  They hurried on, though the sergeant was noticeably trying not to limp. As they neared the Tunnel’s entrance, a squad of far-too-young but bandage-free Marines ran towards them. Some carried battered extinguishers, others axes and tools, and a few had buckets of sand.

  “Where are the hoses?” Lin barked at the fire crew.

  “There’s no pressure,” the fire-chief replied. “Not until they get the power line back up.”

  “Damn it,” Lin muttered, leading Ruth towards a ruined building with bullet-flecked tricolour painted on the one remaining wall. They followed the other Marines down a narrow ramp and into the building’s basement, adding their crate to the growing stack being opened and inspected by an older man with a week’s worth of stubble.

  Ruth took a step back, and then a look around. Few of the other men in the dimly lit basement were old enough to shave. The women were similarly young, too young. All, Ruth realised, the same age as her. New recruits, not old hands, yet even if the mud and grime was cleaned from their cheeks, they wouldn’t be fresh faced underneath. There was a depth of experience in their eyes that spoke of the horrors they’d witnessed in the last few murderous days.

  “General,” Lin said.

  Ruth turned around. The sergeant was speaking to one of the few other older people in the basement, a moustachioed man in his mid-fifties with sunken cheeks and wild eyes.

  “General, it’s the artillery train,” Lin said. “The locomotive is on fire. We need to get it unloaded. We need those shells.”

  “On fire?” the general asked. “How?”

  Lin shook her head. “Move, you lot!” she barked at the Marines. “If you’ve got two legs and at least one arm, get down that tunnel now, before the whole lot explodes!”

  “Explodes?” The general said. “Then I should… I should contact high command.”

  “The telegraph is working, then?” Ruth asked.

  “Who are you?” the general asked.

  “Deering, police,” Ruth said. “Is the telegraph working? We need to…” She hesitated, then decided a lie was better than the truth. “We need to report back to the prime minister immediately.”

  “What? You do? No. No, the telegraph stopped working when the power was cut. I… I should write my report. Yes. The prime minister will want it.”

  The general hurried away. Lin shook her head.

  “General Stevens,” Lin said. “It’s not so much lions led by lambs as tigers commanded by a blind jellyfish.” She winced, and looked down at her bandaged leg. “Back to it. We’ll rest when we’re dead.”

  They joined the crowd of Marines flowing into the service tunnel. As they threaded their way between the medics, the injured, and those bringing crates back down, Ruth lost sight of the sergeant. When she reached the train she ended up on one side of a crate with a turbaned man twice her size on the other.

  “You’re a copper,” he said, in the soft burr of the Scottish lowlands.

  “We were pursuing a criminal,” Ruth said.

  “Into a war zone? Talk about dedication,” he said as they ran.

  “Ruth Deering,” Ruth said.

  “Fazle Bhatt,” he said. “Do you know when the reinforcements are going to arrive?”

  “Sorry,” Ruth said. “I’m just a constable.”

  “I know that story. They tell you nothing, nothing except hurry up and wait.”

  They ran through the lines of Marines streaming into and out of the service tunnel, and then past the growing pile of crates.

  “We need to get these to my squad. You mind?” Bhatt asked.

  “Sure,” Ruth said. The box wasn’t that heavy, but Bhatt’s legs were far longer than hers. While he jogged easily along the side of the tracks she had to run just to avoid being dragged along. The railway tracks widened, branching and multiplying as they ran through the switching yard and toward the old terminal building where one wall appeared to be recently painted white.

  “That was the hospital,” Bhatt said. “We had a red cross on it at first, but that only gave them something to aim their mortars at.”

  “They targeted a hospital?” Ruth asked.

  “Welcome to hell,” Bhatt said.

  Ruth had seen ruins before. She’d seen craters. She’d seen the glassy hole that marked where an atomic bomb had impacted. In Twynham, ruins had been levelled, repaired, or systematically dismantled for their component parts. Outside of Twynham, the ruins abandoned by humans had been occupied by flora, with wallflowers and weeds erupting from every crack in the mortar. This corner of France was infinitely worse. It was a place of mud and ice, of foetid water-filled shell craters, of scorched tree trunks absent of branches in a new growth forest that had spread across what must have been fields before the Blackout. Ruth reflexively ducked as shells whined and exploded, but Bhatt ran on, through the shattered woodland and into the ruined city of Calais, where the sea of mud was replaced by fractured bricks and broken concrete. The skyline, lit up by flares fired from the British lines, had been reduced to jagged splinters of brick in a landscape where no building remained whole.

  “Incoming!” an unseen voice yelled.

  Bhatt hauled the crate towards a shallow trench. As Ruth held the other end, she was dragged along and down into the dank, muddy interior. A moment later, there was a loud crump-crump-crump. The ground shook.

  “Got to keep moving,” Bhatt said, all good cheer gone from his voice. “Make a hole!” he barked at four walking wounded crouching to keep their heads below the parapet. Each Marine was bandaged, but each carried a rifle, and all were heading back towards the front line.

  The trench took an abrupt right turn, then one to the left that ran through an old underground car park filled with smoke but few people. There were no signs, but Bhatt knew the way. The car park’s wall had been breached. Beyond, a tunnel sloped upward into the basement of what had once been a home, then through another broken wall into the below-ground dining area of a restaurant. Ten Marines nervously adjusted straps while another four calmly played a hand of cards as they all waited for the order to attack.

  Bhatt angled for the stairwell, then paused at its base. Ruth looked up and saw the ceiling turn orange. No, not the ceiling, she realised. It was the sky, illuminated by a flare. As she watched,
the artillery barrage grew in intensity.

  “We’re returning fire,” Bhatt said. He grinned. “Now we’ll have them.”

  “You were that low on ammunition?” Ruth asked.

  “The train was meant to arrive last night,” Bhatt said. “They started attacking at sunset and never stopped.”

  Cavendish, Ruth thought. Or perhaps it was Emmitt, but someone had organised another co-ordinated attack, designed to push the infantry back towards the Channel Tunnel. Then, when the sabotaged train arrived, they would have been wiped out.

  “Wait for the flare,” Bhatt said as the orange glow began to subside. “Now.”

  He led her up the stairs, and then across a jumble of broken steel and brick towards the shattered plate glass window of a shop. A bullet whined past Ruth’s ear. Against the background roar, she barely heard it. They ran through the shop, into a paved area that would once have been filled with chairs and tables. The tables were gone, and the paving slabs ripped up, added to the windows of a three-storey apartment building. From the bare girders, the building had once been taller, but only those three storeys remained.

  “Preston!” Bhatt called. “Preston!”

  “Weston!” a voice called back.

  Bhatt led her through a narrow gap by a twisted girder.

  “I got ’em, sir,” Bhatt said.

  Ruth blinked as a Marine turned on a torch and shone it on the crate.

  “Perfect,” he said. His accent was French, and though here were no badges of rank on his uniform, he was clearly an officer.

  What Ruth had thought was an apartment block had really been a small hotel before the Blackout. There was a thin desk next to the stairs, with a row of pigeonholes behind it. There was a sign next to that, but it was in French, and she had no idea what it meant. Bhatt drew his bayonet, and levered the crate’s lid open.

  “Mortar rounds, yes?” the officer said. “Now we shall get them. In two days I shall take you to the chateaux. My grandfather may only have waited table, but we shall live there like kings!”

  “I’ll settle for a night’s undisturbed sleep, sir,” Bhatt said.

  The light’s face had been taped so as to restrict the beam, but there were only two other human-shaped shadows in the room. One was lying down. The other was kneeling over him.

  “Hennessey!” the officer said. “He is dead, Hennessey.” The officer said, this time more softly. “Martin is dead. You cannot help him, but you can avenge him. Come. Help Bhatt get the rounds to the team.” Finally the officer looked at Ruth. “They are sending the police in as reinforcements?”

  “No, ah, sir. I’m… we were chasing a murderer and I sort of ending up helping.”

  “Ah, you volunteered. Never volunteer,” the officer said. “That is what my grandfather told me. Never volunteer, yet what did I do?”

  “Volunteered to join the Marines,” Bhatt said, as if it was a rhetorical question the officer had asked many times. The other Marine, Hennessey, detached himself from the shadows and walked over.

  “Hennessey, good, listen. Four hundred metres east is the old radio transmitter. You can still see the spire. That spire is your marker, your guide. Fifty metres from here is a bakery. There is a wide strip of hideous orange plastic outside. You will see it when the flares go up. Go through the bakery to the buildings beyond. Johannes, Gopal, and Mathews have set up their position in those buildings. Take half the rounds. I’ll take the other half to—”

  “Grenade!” Bhatt bellowed pushing Hennessey and Ruth aside as he dived towards the stairwell. Ruth hadn’t seen the object come down the stairs, but she heard the explosion though it was muffled by the bulk of Private Bhatt’s body. Confused, she picked herself up as the officer drew his sidearm.

  “They’re above us!” he bellowed.

  A figure appeared on the stairs. It was a man, bearded and blond, his arms bare despite the weather, his jacket festooned with sheathed knives. The officer fired. The pirate collapsed, but there was another behind him. That man, dressed in tattered muddy rags, carried a shotgun, and fired it before the officer could shoot. Hennessey screamed. Ruth had her revolver in her hand, though she didn’t remember drawing it. She fired. Twice. The pirate collapsed.

  The officer limped a pace towards the stairs.

  “I think that’s it.”

  “Are you all right, sir?” Ruth asked, as she crossed to Hennessey, but the man was dead.

  “Fine,” the officer said as he pulled a strip of cloth from a pouch and wrapped it around his calf. “You remember the route. Follow the spire. The bakery with the orange sign? Here.” He unclipped the torch from Hennessey’s webbing, picked up the canvas bag that Bhatt had half filled, and thrust both into her arms. “Go. I’ll take the rest. Go!” He gestured at a dark gap behind the reception desk.

  Ruth ran through, and found a heavy curtain blocking her path. She pushed her way through it, and then through another curtain, and then found herself outside.

  She crouched by the wall, and looked up and down, left and right. There was nothing but darkness punctuated by the sound of artillery. She couldn’t see the ground beneath her feet, let alone any orange sign. She fumbled her revolver’s chamber open, and replaced the cartridges. She wished she’d kept the assault rifle that Isaac had given her, but wishes were dangerous, and making one would only lead to wishing that she was anywhere but here. That would lead to inaction, and right now, she had to act, she had to find that bakery.

  There were a trio of flashes in the distance, but a roar of gunfire far closer. Then the sky was lit up by a flare. Ruth couldn’t see a spire, but she saw an orange sign to her left, on the opposite side of the street. She ran.

  After ten paces, there was a loud crack of fracturing stone. A splinter tore through her sleeve. She jinked right, running to the relative shelter of the buildings on the far side of the street, reaching them as a man staggered out into the road. Again he was blond, bearded, with a jacket covered in sheathed knives, except this man also carried a rifle in his hands. The man had the barrel pointing straight at Ruth, but when he pulled the trigger, nothing happened. Ruth screamed as she levelled her revolver, firing all six shots into the pirate’s chest. The man collapsed, and Ruth took shelter in the doorway. Not a pirate, she thought, not really. What was it Lin had called them, Cossacks? This one looked more like a Viking, except for the rifle. That wasn’t an AK-47 but one of the bull-pup designs that the British military used. She reloaded her revolver, holstered it, and picked up the rifle. The safety was still on. At any other time that might have made her smile. She checked the magazine, slid the safety off, and ran once more, staying as close to the buildings as possible. Shells landed in the distance. Bullets hit brick, glass, and steel far closer. The flare finally went out. The road sank into darkness, but the gunfire didn’t stop. Nor did Ruth.

  She kept running until she reached a broken doorway that she thought, she hoped, was the bakery. She dived inside, and took cover.

  There wasn’t time to wait for the next flare. She took out the torch, shielded as much of it as she could with her hand, flashed it around the room, then turned it off. There were tables and chairs, a counter, a register, and a lot of grime. It didn’t look like any bakery she knew, but there was a door behind the counter. Moving through buildings was going to be safer than the road, and she couldn’t be more than a few dozen metres from where she needed to be.

  Rifle raised, she crossed to the doorway. She turned the torch on again long enough to see there were no curtains, just a narrow hallway leading to a downward staircase filled with rubble fallen from the ceiling above. She looked at the hole in the ceiling. There was a depth to the darkness that suggested the hole extended to the roof.

  “Do I go up?” she asked aloud.

  “Identify yourself!” a woman called from above. The accent was English, but Ruth couldn’t see who’d spoken.

  “Um… Constable Deering. Police,” she said.

  “Who?” the voice asked, confuse
d.

  “Long story. Um… oh, Preston. Or is it Weston. I don’t know the password, sorry.”

  A light came on, shining down into her eyes.

  “I’ll get the ladder,” the woman said. It was made of rope, and it was dropped down the hole. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was with Private Bhatt and…” Ruth hesitated. She’d never asked the officer’s name.

  “You’ve got the shells?” the woman asked.

  “Um, yes. I think so.”

  “Then climb up. Quick. Up,” the woman said. Ruth climbed.

  The ladder led to a first floor. The speaker, a Marine corporal, turned her torch on again to inspect the bag’s contents. By its light, Ruth could take in the room, though there wasn’t much to see. There was a hole in the roof almost the width of the room, no glass in the windows, and no other people. Certainly there was no mortar team.

  “Are you Gopal, Johannes, or Mathews?” Ruth asked.

  “Corporal Joanna Johannes,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for these all night. If we’re lucky, it’s not too late. Where’s Fazle?”

  “You mean Private Bhatt? He’s dead. So is… so is Hennessey. I’m sorry.”

  Johannes sighed. “So it goes. Come on, it’s not safe here.”

  The corporal took the bag and ran sure-footedly to the doorway on the other side of the room. Ruth followed, through the doorway, then across a wooden walkway that ran over a narrow alley. When she was halfway across, Ruth realised the walkway was really two doors, nailed together with floorboards covering the join. She focused on the Marine’s back as Johannes disappeared into the building. Ruth followed her through and into what might once have been a child’s bedroom, into a corridor, and up a narrow set of stairs into an attic. In one corner, a hole had been hacked in the roof. A mortar had been set up underneath. Two Marines stood near it.