you are. Now tuck in, carrots are good for the eyesight.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Mother. That idea is just propaganda, put out so that the Germans won't find out that our great success at night missions is due to the fact that we have radar.”
Poppycock. Now eat your carrots and watch where you're going.
His vision cleared and he saw that he was much closer to the end now. He could even make out different types of building; barns, houses, and the larger churches. Those two churches down there, for instance, were definitely further apart than a few seconds ago. They did not look like churches now, though. They looked like... eyes. Grey, gold-flecked eyes, and below them a river-curve of a mouth, smiling up at him.
“Well, you’re in a bit of a pickle, Peter darling, and no error.”
“I should say so, dear. Blimey, you're a sight for sore eyes. I'm glad that you've popped up, June darling. I don't think I'm going to make it out of this one, and I did so want to tell you one more time how very much I adore you. Also will you return my library book to Boots? I'd hate you to have to pay a fine for being overdue.”
“Oh, Peter.”
“Now now, old thing. Don't take on so. Oblivion comes to us all eventually.”
“I know, but—”
“God moves in mysterious ways, my darling.”
“Mysterious ways, my Aunt Fanny.”
“June! Moderate your language!”
“I will not. There is nothing at all mysterious about this situation. This is just malicious. What possible use could God have for you that would be worth tearing you away from us so horribly? This cannot be the work of a loving God.”
“Steady on, old thing. That's the thing about God, you see. We often don't understand Him, but we must have faith in His plan. Faith that everything happens for a good reason.”
“I can't. I can't accept that, and I shall never forgive Him for what He is doing to the man I love.”
“You think that now, but one day you will accept this, you’ll see. Now dry your eyes, give my love to Jeremy, and remember that library book.”
“Yes, Peter.”
“You've got a little smudge on your face there.”
“Where?”
“Just there, on your cheek. It seems to be moving.”
Silence. June had transformed once more into a pair of churches and a river. The smudge was a large vehicle, perhaps a lorry, moving along a thin line of road.
Actually, June had a point. What use could God have for Peter, that he took him now? Peter could think of only one thing. Punishment.
After all, how many lives had Peter obliterated? Twenty nine missions, hundreds of thousands of pounds of explosive. All those tiny people below Doris, in factories and streets and houses, all blown apart because of him. People who loved, who drank beer, who lived good lives or bad, all destroyed by Peter in complete indifference. He was a mass murderer, when it came right down to it. In which case a divinity quite the opposite to God was probably awaiting him. Perhaps Peter would burn after all, and for a lot longer than the poor soul he'd seen fall out of Doris.
Don’t be silly, dear. You were always a good boy. And God, of course, is on our side.
Of course. Our side. My side. God is on my side.
He had been lucky, he supposed. Compared with other aircraft, the Lancaster was not easy to escape from; the hatches were too small, the spaces too cramped. In a Halifax, he had heard, a quarter of downed aircrew bailed out successfully, compared with only ten percent of Lancaster crews.
At least he hadn't burned like the poor sod he’d seen arcing away from Doris’s dive. Peter wondered which of the crew it was that he had seen immolated, screaming out his death agony as he burned like a meteor for the last few moments of life. Actually, it really did not matter which of his crewmates it had been. They were all dead by now. All dead except him.
Peter shuddered. A horrible death, that. Perhaps God was on his side after all, and had seen fit to spare him that horror. No, not for him the blistering skin, the boiling eyeballs. He was going to—actually, what was going to happen to him? There was no guarantee that his ending would be quick, not with this slow-motion time-stretch gubbins going on, and it would not hurt to prepare himself.
If he hit the rapidly approaching ground feet first, the bones of his legs would likely be driven up through his body, the flesh either stripping from them to flop like soggy meat in a pile, or forcing itself up inside his torso like a sock turned inside out. The rest of his body would collapse, the pressure causing bones to shatter and flesh to rip asunder, splashing over a wide area. Finally his head, brain still aware of all of this happening with exquisite slowness, would impact, and awareness would eventually end.
Hmm. He did not like the sound of that. Perhaps it would be better to spare himself that experience and orient himself to hit head first, like a bomb. Yes that was it. He would hit like a bomb, and his brain would explode before the torture began. Boom. He would become a bomb, a four-thousand pound Cookie on his own personal Plumduff.
Perhaps this was God’s mysterious plan after all, for him to become a bomb himself at the ending of his days. His feet were fins, his head the detonator. This pleased him. His surface was too rough, however. Too… flappy. A bomb should be more streamlined. He ripped off his flying helmet and threw it from him. It hung in the air nearby, not quite matching his speed. His gauntlets went next, spinning away into the grey nothing. He reached down to remove the boots from his fin, but this put him once again into a wildly disorienting spin. Quickly he steadied himself once more.
The ground was close now. He could make out tiny people on the roads below, and an ochre lorry - the smudge on June’s cheek. That was his target, that lorry full of… well actually he did not care what it was carrying. That was sort of a point about bombs. They did not worry what they were being dropped onto, they just did their job. Boom. He clasped his hands above his head and angled himself so that he was splitting the air nose first, a true bomb.
Hold tight, Peter dear!
His mind flashed a vision of a sunny day at the fair with Mother. He was riding on the flying chairs, too high, too fast, screaming, terrified, desperate for Mother.
“I WANT MY MUMMY!” he shrieked. He was lost. A frightened, lost child without his mother. The earth, the oh-so-close earth; she was his mother, warm and welcoming. He had come from her. He would return to her. His mother earth rushed forward in the crisp morning air to embrace her bomb baby.
“Come Mother Earth, envelop my fiery being in your loving arms and transport me to sit at God’s right ha—”
BOOM!
Rescue
I pushed aside some cow parsley and peered at the compound. The fence looked flimsy enough to cut through, but it was still broad daylight. This job would have been far easier under cover of darkness, but I didn’t have that luxury. I had been given a strict deadline. Five hours, they had said. It would take five hours for the Nazi’s chief interrogator, known ominously as Der Schmerzbringer, to reach the compound. Roads and rail had been bombed earlier, specifically to slow the torturer’s arrival, but he would certainly get here by sunset. After that, the Professor would be subjected to the most intensely painful agonies. He would soon break down, and he would hand the Germans a secret about British defence capabilities that would win the war for the Axis Powers. Even then the Professor’s suffering would not cease. Der Schmerzbringer took joy in his torture and would continue simply for the pleasure he took from it. Some said he saw it as an art form. Others that he was just a sadistic, sick bastard.
I could not concern myself with that. I also had no idea what the big secret was, and to be honest, I didn’t much care. I had my orders and I would follow them – get to the Professor before sunset and save him from the horrors that Der Schmerzbringer intended to inflict upon him.
I wriggled backwards further into the undergrowth at the sound of an engine approaching. The honeywagon, come to take away the barrels full of shit f
rom the military latrines. No such hygienic arrangement existed for the prisoners, of course, who had to empty their own soil by hand, distributing it onto nearby fields.
The filthy grey lorry halted before the gates, engine idling, while the driver’s papers were checked. I rolled, swift as sixpence, into the deep shadow beneath the truck and pulled myself up. When the driver got the all clear, the truck bounced into the compound, taking me with it. It halted by a row of barrels that sat in a trench running behind the latrine block. Brimming with a week’s worth of shite from a score of Wehrmacht soldiers, they stank worse than a hundred rotting corpses.
I dropped and rolled into the noisome filth that had slopped out of the barrels into the bottom of the trench. The malodorous filth made it easy to worm on my back to the far end of the ditch. I slipped my fingers between the metal bars of a slimy grating in the ground. A simple pull revealed a hole just large enough for me to slide down. I fell perhaps three feet, turned quickly, and replaced the drain grid over the hole. The entire manoeuvre had taken no more than thirty seconds. The honeywagon driver had not yet climbed out of his cab.
I wiped my shit-stained hands down the back of my trousers, then drew a small torch from my waterproof pocket. The plans I had been shown were accurate. A low, rough passageway led to the south, towards the main detention cells. Letters scrawled on a rock proclaimed that I was
Descent Page 3