Last Man Standing

by Vance Huxley

  Pat wasn’t interested in stupid or not. She looked stunned. “Really? I didn’t think you’d care. You know, with, well.” She floundered to a halt, then rallied. “Sixteen? Can we place flat stones and carve them, crosses and quotations as well as names?”

  “You can put what you like on them. I keep telling you I don’t believe in any gods, or praying, but I don’t mind if you do. The mourners stand inside the gardens for the service, okay?” All the heads nodded eagerly. “Now I’ll try to persuade Sarge that the funerals aren’t a clever way to assemble an assault squad.” Harold thought he’d get permission, probably after a grumble, because this sergeant seemed quite sympathetic.

  On the way to the gate, Harold asked how the scavengers were getting on with collecting timber for pyres. “Slowly, Harold. We haven’t got enough people, and those we’ve got are wounded, or tired, or just wary about going out into the ruins.” Patty looked tired, exhausted, and Harold wondered briefly if she’d had nightmares too.

  “Use the roof timbers collected during the demolition before Christmas. The good ones as well if you run out of broken timber, because there’ll never be a more important job.” Harold paused, worried about the next part. “Will our people mind if we burn everyone together, only use three pyres? We’ll never collect the timber for eighty or ninety.”

  “Eighty-eight to go on pyres and sixteen for burial, so far. I doubt anyone will mind mass pyres, because they all lived and died together.” Patty’s voice softened as she glanced towards the two houses being used as a morgue. “For the record, when it’s my turn I don’t mind being burned with anyone who fought alongside me.”

  “Hah, Vulcan will take you off to raise a shrine outside the GOFS Castle.”

  “As he damn well should.” Patty managed some sort of a smile, or a grimace. “I’ll tell the scavengers but it’ll still take time. Can we light one pyre a day?” Patty glanced towards the morgue again. “We should cremate some as soon as possible, the children and the ones who were badly burned or blown up. It would help some people, especially the parents and Tilly.” Harold agreed, before heading for the bypass.

  * * *

  The challenge from the squaddie, and the search after Harold had done the twirl to show his back, were casual enough to confirm Harold’s assessment of how the sergeant felt. The greeting sounded subdued. “What can the Army do for you this time? More than usual, I hope, because that’s sod all.” Harold glanced at the squaddies, because Sarge hadn’t moved very far from them even if he’d lowered his voice. “Oh yes, the mushrooms.” Sarge started walking along his side of the sandbags. “Though to be honest the mushrooms are waking up. Some of those girls have been talking, the ones who prefer Army brothels to work camps. I wouldn’t send my worst enemy’s daughter to one of those camps, especially if she happened to be remotely decent looking.”

  “It can’t be that bad, with all the guards?” Harold hoped not because they’d sent Curtis off to hospital and a work camp when he’d been lungshot. “It’s just that, well, if Emmy finds out she’ll go looking for Curtis, even if she has to search every bloody camp.”

  “I could save her some time, but I wouldn’t want a woman going near the place.” Sarge stopped walking and bit off an obscenity. “Me and my big mouth. I’ll tell you, but don’t let her know, right?”

  “But he’s her bloke and Tammy’s father though he won’t know that.” Harold knew he couldn’t insist Sarge tell him, but with a location and that hole under the wire a dozen of his best might bring Emmy a surprise present.

  “There, you see, that’s the problem. I can see you working it out and to be honest, normally, I’d rate your chances.” Sarge laughed briefly at the shock, then embarrassment on Harold’s face. “In your place I’d do the same, but you can’t try and spring him. The guards are better than the usual half-trained civvies that guard the Mart. They’re also nastier but their attention is mainly on keeping the prisoners under control. To do that, they let the gangs organise themselves. What’s a few beatings or rapes and a couple of bodies if it makes life easier for them? Those girls aren’t just frightened of the gangs in the camps though, because the guards are as bad.” The non-com punched a sandbag, savagely, but his body blocked it from the squaddies.

  “Can’t the Army do anything?” Harold’s mind whirled, because now he really must get Curtis out of there. If Emmy found out about the conditions nothing would stop her. “We can handle the guards and a few scroats as well if we have to.”

  “Yes you can, probably in your sleep judging by what happened down there. Then the tanks will blow the shit out of your merry crew.” The sergeant blew out a long breath and eased his shoulders, trying to relax. “Your picture has done the rounds at sergeant level, and a mate of mine spotted your man. He took a trip to have a pint with me. He’s been posted down there, not in the camp but he gets near enough to see what’s going on. That’s near enough to see all the armour training up just outside the wire but it isn’t Army armour. Some of the contractors, the Specials, have been given tanks and armoured personnel carriers.” Sarge spat but looked as if he still had something nasty in his mouth. “They’re much better trained than the Mart guards, truly nasty bastards on a good day. At least they aren’t allowed to mix with the squaddies or there’d be trouble. The Specials think they’re as good as we are, but they haven’t got the discipline or even proper training. Even so they’re killers, there’s a lot of them, and you haven’t got armour-piercing so don’t even think about it.”

  Harold had a hundred questions, the first one being why civvies had Army tanks, but only one would help. “If I promise not to go up against the tanks, will you tell me where the camp is, please? I’d like to know how Curtis is as well, but I’m not sure I dare ask. He won’t take to gangsters very well.” Curtis would shoot them if he got a chance, though he’d never had the training the current Orchard Close inhabitants received.

  The laugh surprised Harold, because Sarge meant it. “Your gardener has hit the jackpot, because the powers that be need him. There’s a small compound for people the authorities want to keep sweet, part of a village. They each have a house and staff, and the guards would shoot half the camp to keep them safe. Your man was seen leading a line of farm workers. He gets decent clothes and a yellow hi-vis vest, while they wear orange jumpsuits. That’s so the guards know which ones to kill if trouble starts.”

  “What sort of trouble?” Harold thought about Curtis, and how he felt about the way men should treat women. “If the others start bragging about abusing women, he’ll say the wrong thing and one of them will go for him.”

  That brought more completely genuine laughter from Sarge. “I doubt it. I’d heard rumours about the system but now it turns out they are true. The gardener is there because he knows how to grow stuff, how deep to plant things, which shoots are weeds, how much bug killer to spray, all that sort of shit. If one of the arseholes messes up, doesn’t do exactly what the gardener tells them, they’re shot. Right there, and the rest strip and bury the body as part of the lesson. Most of the orange jumpsuits have bullet holes in them, presumably as a hint about the previous wearer’s manners.” Sarge had a blissful smile as he delivered the punch line. “If he doesn’t like how one of his labourers treats women, your Curtis only has to say he pulled up the wrong plant. Bang.”

  “So maybe we can snatch him while he’s in the fields?” Sarge had already started shaking his head so Harold abandoned the idea, for now. “Okay, I give in. We won’t try to spring him while the armour’s there. Though if it moves?”

  “If the armour moves and I find out I’ll tell you, on one condition.” Sarge shook his head at Harold’s worried look. “Don’t worry, you’ll like it. I want you to get as many women out as you can, the victims, not the gangster types. No quick snatch. Do the job properly. Take out the guard’s barracks if you can. At least create enough bloody chaos to give the lasses a chance to run. That way my conscience will let me sleep better.”

  �
��Cripes Sarge, how many more feel like you do?” Harold glanced behind him, towards Orchard Close, then at the squaddies. “You could come with us on the raid? Give your conscience something to enjoy?” And a few Army rifles or grenades would be handy for taking a barracks, Harold thought.

  “No but thank you anyway. I swore an oath, the same as you before you left. We really do have a new King, even if he’s never had a coronation because he’s recovering from bullet wounds. Not a rumour, stone cold fact because several Scots Guard officers have seen him. The government can burn in hell for all I care, but HM is my commander.” After another quick glance back towards the squaddies, Sarge finally gave. “The camp is only twenty miles from the wire, if you cut through at the nearest point. It’s four miles south of Evesham, right in orchard country so your Curtis will feel right at home. You can’t miss the place, just follow the work gangs as they march home at the end of the day. Now I need something to tell the mushrooms, so why did you actually come up here?”

  After Sarge’s bombshell, Harold didn’t bother with sneaking up on the subject. “We want to bury some of the bodies, rather than burn them. It matters to some people. The thing is, the only place where the scroats won’t piss on the graves is the narrow strip this side of our wall, between there and your exclusion zone markers.”

  Sarge looked down at Orchard Close, at the people still trying to scrub blood off walls and those building a pyre in the fields, and shrugged. “Nobody pisses on the ashes. You can’t leave anything sticking up, no gravestones.”

  “The ashes are spread inside the exclusion zone.” He spoke very carefully, because Harold couldn’t quite believe what Sarge might be offering.

  “Only eight people digging at any one time, in pairs, well apart and clearly unarmed. Mourners stay out of the zone during the burial but pairs of mourners can visit the grave afterwards, to put flowers on it, weed round it, that sort of stuff. They can bring kids under ten. Flat markers, but your people can carve them if you’ve got someone.”

  Harold’s head jerked in a nod. “Someone will manage, if we use paving stones.”

  Sarge hesitated before speaking again, and now he sounded cautious, unsure. “Can my lads line up, to show their respect? They’ve met a good few of your blokes on shopping runs, and the chip girls of course. The corporal had to more or less sit on a couple of the lads before I got here, to stop a bayonet charge, and he admits he nearly joined them. Hah, I’d send a couple down to help with the digging but they’d tell someone in the NAAFI.” Sarge stopped and looked Harold right in the eye, stone cold serious. “Then you’d get a new sergeant and squaddies, hard-liners, and I really wouldn’t like where we’d be sent.”

  “That’s a lot more than we’d hoped for Sarge. Thank you, from everyone. I’m sure they’d appreciate the soldiers at the funeral, but nobody will advertise it. I’ll let you know when.” After a little more clarification, over things like exactly where the graves could go, Harold headed back down the access road. John’s Pat burst into tears when he told her, while quite a few people who weren’t all that religious waved or shouted thanks to the soldiers.

  * * *

  That night, as the first pyre burned, Orchard Close had time to draw a breath and recover their balance a little. The GOFS and Barbies helped, at least twenty spending the day carrying and stacking timber. Cy insisted he only came so he could get a picture taken with Wamil, once she recovered, to go with the ones with Patty, Doll and Emmy. Ski allegedly came to put ointment on bruises, while Beetch swore she was essential to stop everyone skiving off. Others joked they’d come to steal some of the weapons Caddi had left lying about, to steal the smith’s secrets for Wayland, or kidnap some of the fighters to toughen the Barbies or GOFS up. All of them appreciated the free beer, but none actually accepted payment for their work.

  Harold split his time between cleaning weapons, reloading brass, and sitting with Mercedes, filling in the book. On the second day Mercedes stayed awake more of the time, but she still couldn’t get out of bed. She cried, briefly, when Harold entered her as an official resident, but then she wanted to know all about the rest of the names right from the very first. Getting to know the neighbours, she said, before she had to leave.

  One hundred and four residents had left in one bloody night, their names marked clearly with RIP and the date. That became a hundred and six when the Barbie Doc couldn’t save two of her patients, then a hundred and seven when Lenny lost another one of his.

  Harold slept on his camp bed, though Mercedes patted her bed because she had no knife now. Not a serious invitation because Lenny had warned her. Moving the wrong way, or pressure in the wrong place, might literally kill her. Despite that, he told Mercedes to sit up as often as possible because she needed to breathe properly to help her lungs. Privately, Lenny told Harold he didn’t think it would make any difference in the end. He was sure Mercedes was still bleeding, inside, but he didn’t have the gear or expertise to fix it.

  The blood Mercedes coughed up meant that a bullet fragment, or Caddie repeatedly punching her ribs until he drove one inwards, had damaged her lung. Mercedes explained she’d only managed to trap one arm because she wouldn’t let him get inside her. The trapped hand gouged the bloody furrows in her thigh while Caddi tried to get it free. Mercedes used one of her arms to hold Caddi’s face to her chest so he couldn’t call out, which explained the bite. Her other hand beat him to death with the thirty-eight, but that took time because of the angle. She couldn’t get all her strength into the blows, so Caddi kept punching until he passed out.

  * * *

  Mercedes told Harold all this the following morning while he washed the fingerprints off his diamond, again. The Killer Queen had finally abdicated. Her eyes were soft and calm, ignoring the pain when she used a bedpan or moved for Harold to wash her. Despite the danger, Mercedes insisted on ’Arold washing as much as possible so she could remember the last hands on her. She meant that literally, as her feet and legs up to her knees were now hand-wash delectables.

  Lenny called round, but not to check Mercedes because Patricia still carried out any examinations. Two more patients had died, and three more were deteriorating rapidly but he didn’t know why. There were at least three more who probably wouldn’t make it. Harold arranged for the six to go to Beth’s, then tried to persuade Mercedes to go as well. “Only if she can fix me. Can you promise that, ’Arold, that I’ll come back to you?”

  He didn’t want to answer, because Harold had already asked. “Not a guarantee, not without seeing you. You could come back anyway, if she said she couldn’t help?”

  “No ’Arold, because if I’m that bad I might die on the way.” Mercedes looked up at the Valentine’s heart on the wall. “I’m home now, in your burrow just like you promised. If I die, I want to be here. After all, now you’ve introduced some of the residents I should stick around to hear about the rest.”

  Harold gave up asking after the cars came back from Beth’s. One man died on the way and the Barbie Doc had lost another patient, though she thought that should be the last. One hundred and nine. Harold threw himself into raising the next pyre or helping the scavengers collect undamaged glass or window frames from the newly annexed ruins.

  When he came home to eat and rest, flashes of the old Mercedes surfaced now and then. “Patricia is worried that you might not inspect the non-delectable parts and miss a bed sore. Everywhere I might get one has to be massaged, even if you don’t really fancy the job.”

  From the smile Harold wasn’t sure Patricia had said anything of the sort, but he’d heard of bed sores. “So exactly where are these places I’m supposed to massage? Everything I’ve ever seen looked delectable to me.”

  The look meant Mercedes remembered just how much he’d seen. “Oh no, you have to ask, remember.”

  “Mercedes, will you please ask me to massage all the places you might get a bed sore?” Harold lifted his hands and wiggled his fingers. “Delectable or not?”

  “Ooh, don�
�t do that, laughing hurts.” Mercedes took a couple of shallow breaths to ease her ribs. “Will you massage me please, ’Arold, to stop the bed sores? You’d better wear these, so the rough skin doesn’t damage your hands.” She looked embarrassed and her tone was apologetic, but Harold took the velvet gloves and inspected them.

  “According to the Timewarp song these will drive you insane. I hope you’re not ticklish.” Harold did the waggly-fingers again, with the gloves on, then carefully stroked up her arm. “This seems to be delectable. I’m going to have to look closer.” Harold didn’t want to push too hard, so he made a game of trying to find non-delectable bits. That made Mercedes smile, and warn him she shouldn’t laugh, but she complained the gloves weren’t working on some delectables. Harold had to massage all her arms without and her feet up to her knees, but he wore gloves for the rest. Bed baths and massage led to finding two small, hard lumps, which quickly became holes when Patricia removed two bullet fragments.

  More news about the wounded came with visiting Barbies, though it was too soon to know if the latest five would make it. Ski brought a short list of people invited into Beth’s, if they wanted to visit the sick, because Doc believed that visitors would help the wounded. This time they’d have to disarm before coming inside. A startled Harold authorised using the captured vehicles since they all had full fuel tanks.

  * * *

  All the pyre building and grave digging took place in broad daylight. When the second pyre burned, the smoke rose straight up into a cloudless sky for a change, which somehow made the loss even worse. The first pyre had burned the youngsters, their relatives and the most mutilated bodies. Harold remembered Patty’s comment about living and dying together so now he tried to put relatives, friends or comrades side by side. Berry insisted on putting Malt on the pyre with her dad, Nigel, while Alicia wanted Betty to keep Barry company, so neither of them was lonely. The stress had been too much for sixty-two-year-old Betty’s heart. The oldest of Orchard Close’s original occupants had been found lying peacefully in her bed.