The Walking Dead

by The Walking Dead (epub)

  I regret to report to you the death of Cecil Darke, volunteer of the XV International Brigade.

  He passed from us three hours ago. He had been hit by a single high-velocity bullet in the upper chest, which caused a Pneumo Thorax condition, the collapse of the right lung. Inevitably there was also internal bleeding into that lung, which had deflated. The original wound was bandaged on the instructions of the doctor i/c, and a trocar was inserted into the lung, a procedure that allows excess blood to be drained. Regrettably, in the conditions of the field hospital–there were many casualties admitted at that time–he was subject to infection. Bacteria would have been introduced through the nasal air passage, and from his uniform particles carried into the wound by the bullet. His temperature rose to 101 deg. F, and his pulse rate and respiratory rate had also risen. To alleviate pain, morphine was injected. At the time of death he was unconscious.

  With comrades, he was buried one hour ago. The grave will not have been marked. We withdraw tonight, and tomorrow the Fascists will hold this place; they would destroy, defile, any grave they identified.

  I talked to him this morning, before he went to unconsciousness. He was calm, able to speak in a whisper. You should know that, at the end, he had courage and was dedicated to the cause he had joined. He told me that he wished, when he was buried, that the words of Psalm Number 137 should be spoken over his grave: it is not permitted that Christian prayers be said, the commissars forbid it. He had this diary in his hand when he passed. We have an amputee who is being repatriated and he will take the diary to London.

  I think he was a man for whom you should feel pride.

  Sincerely, Angelina Calvi.

  'You ready, Mr Banks? God, you look like you've seen a ghost.'

  Low on the settee, his body hid the movement as he closed the notebook, slid it back into his pocket and let it fall on the loose coins and the two pebbles. He said curtly, 'Yes, I'm ready and have been for half an hour.'

  'No need to be scratchy.' His Principal grinned. 'Looks like rather a nice day out there.'

  She called from the kitchen that they should get a move on or the sausages would be charcoal. He touched the Glock in the holster on his hip, shrugged into his coat and followed Wright out.

  Banks walked a pace behind his Principal, and a stride to his Principal's left, held the outer section of pavement. He wondered if an Italian nurse, sixty-nine years, less a few weeks, before, had written the truth of a man's death. Banks raked his eyes over the road ahead and the cars approaching, the people on the pavement, as his training had taught him. He wondered if a man with a hole in his chest and his lung collapsed still felt courageous. Banks saw the ordinariness around him, and sensed no danger.

  He thought of betrayal. It would be a big day for betrayal. His, because he had been dumped by the team he should have been with.

  Cecil Darke's, because he had been fooled by the cause he'd followed. Julian Wright's, because of what would be said to him after the burned sausages had been served. He thought betrayal made a bad start to a day–to any day.

  'Are you always so damn miserable, Mr Banks?'

  Ignored him, walked a pace behind and a stride to the side. Saw the cars, saw the faces, saw the square opening out in front of him. Saw the crowds in the far distance.

  'All right, what's the story? What's going to happen to me?'

  Banks said quietly, as if it was a conversation piece, 'The trial ends and you go into protective custody. You make a statement, which has not yet been done for fear of prejudicing the case you're hearing. If you're lucky you won't be called as a witness in subsequent proceedings because there's a stack of first-hand evidence of arson. You are then let go. You go, if you have an ounce of sense, about as far as is possible. Change your name, change your identity. You forget everything of your past–including your wife and your daughter because they make for the weak link. Only thing you remember is to look over your shoulder, keep looking. Never stop looking into shadows, into darkness, into the faces of strangers. Never think, for what you did, that you're forgotten. How's that, Mr Wright, for a reason to be cheerful?'

  'I don't fathom you. I'll miss you, been good having you alongside, does the ego wonders.. Yes, I'll miss you–but I don't understand you.'

  'You shouldn't try to.'

  He saw the rise of the packed steps, heard the clock ahead strike the quarter-hour, saw the snaking lines of the queues in the square. He thought of betrayal and death, and what a sniper had done, and of a psalm not spoken.

  Chapter 20

  Saturday, Day 17

  The square opened out to their left. Nothing was said between them, and his Principal led, Banks following. Every eye that passed him, men and women who bustled forward as if delay were a crime, was fixed on the steps and the great monolith that was the shopping centre; rock music played loudly. He studied each front display window–used the reflections off them to check his rear–and each business doorway and each alleyway between them, because that was his training.

  He reckoned his training protected him. It was not his business how one stranger ended a relationship with another. Should worry about himself, not about others, should lock himself in a cocoon of selfishness. He noticed, because he was trained to, each front window and each narrow cut where rubbish bins were stored, where there were the bottles, shit and cardboard sheets of vagrants.

  The music, beating down from the centre's loudspeakers, grew in intensity. He took in faces, but none was important to him…He felt cold. Realized he was in shadow thrown down by the tower of the town hall. Shivered. Quickened his stride. In shadow, sensed a threat. Came to his Principal's shoulder, then burst back into the sunshine. But it stayed with him, lingered on the skin of his face, and his hand had flipped, without reason, to the weighted pocket of his jacket–no cause -. and his fingers had dropped to the hardness held in the pancake holster. Could not have explained it.

  But David Banks had been told he was useless, had told himself he had no future.

  He snapped, 'Are we nearly bloody there?'

  Wright stopped, turned, gazed at him, a grin on his face. 'You seeing ghosts again, Mr Banks?'

  'I just want to know if we're nearly there.'

  'You're white as a damn sheet. Breakfast's what you need. Yes, we're nearly there.'

  He could not have explained, to a stranger or to himself, the chill that had come to him when he had walked through the shadow cast on the pavement.

  They were 'nearly there': He should have seen it, but hadn't. There was an alley with a big wheeled rubbish bin half across its entrance, then the A-shaped hoarding outside the newsagent's door and window that announced the grand opening of the bonanza sale in the town, as if it was the biggest, most vital and critical matter in the whole wide world. Now, breaking the training, his glance came off his Principal and flitted to the crowds on his left, dense and close, with the murmur of excitement given off like hot breath.

  'Patience, Mr Banks, patience…We're there.' Then the mocking laugh. 'Did you really see a ghost?'

  Banks snarled, couldn't help himself, 'Just bloody get on with it.'

  The bell rang as his Principal opened the door. He saw that the shop was full, that it would be an age before Wright was served. The door closed after his man and Banks turned away from it, looked back up the street where they had come, and waited.

  Now she spoke, said what she had rehearsed. 'There, in front of you, is the crowd. You go close to it, into it. Push hard among it. But look at nobody.'

  They had come down the hill and had walked past places she had known all of her life. Had left the big stores far behind. And the turning into the road where the mosque dominated–she had prayed there before moving to the smaller mosque where she had seen the videos and been recruited–and they had gone along a road with stalls, on which were laid out the fruit and vegetables, from which she shopped. The scent of spices had billowed at her from the open doors of the edge of the ghetto where her society lived, and
soft silks for clothing had danced in the sunlight from racks. She had brought him to the square. As they had walked, there had been silence between them. What had happened at the top of the hill, the attack, was gone, irrelevant; all that remained of it was the knife in her bag. The square was wide in front of her. She could not fathom his mind, but the smile on his face–spread and open -,was childlike. She thought him at peace, but did not believe she could be certain of it, not when he walked the last steps.

  'There are women there, and children, and men of our Faith–many others. Do not see their faces. Look at them and you will, want it or not want it, identify with them and hesitate. Do not join your eyes to theirs. Promise me.'

  No answer was given her. He had been in step with her, had matched her stride. If she stopped, he had stopped. If she had gone quicker, so had he. She realized her power over him, his dependence on her. She-checked her step, and he slowed.

  'You do not look at them…You think, when you are with them, when you have the button in your hand, of God and of your Faith–of where you will go and who you will be with, and of the pride of your family. Hear, as God welcomes you, the praise of your family, and of all those who love you.'

  She did not know if it was enough, but had nothing more to say.

  Most days, Faria walked through that square. Most weeks she climbed those steps and entered the shopping centre. She pointed to it, had no reason to but did. Her arm, loose in the folds of the jilbab, gestured towards it. Her vision was blurred, clouded by the enormity of what she did. She did not see, misted in her eyes, the shape of the man in the old raincoat who held the clipboard and gazed round him, or the expectation and pleasure on his features. What she saw, as she directed him with her arm, were the images from the videos that had been shown to her: the statements to camera of martyrs, the movement of crowds in street markets, the passing of convoys of Humvee personnel carriers, the guns of the enemy…did not see the man in the raincoat turn, break away from the little cluster close to him and advance towards her.

  'You're just in time. I had started but it doesn't matter,' Steve Vickers chattered. 'You've come for the inner town's historic tour…Well, you've found it. I've done the Roman period, but we can do that again–no one will mind. Now, if you could just follow me…'

  They were rooted. Oh, people were so strange. The young woman had waved at him, clearly. Had seen him, had waved–he had explained that repeating what he'd already said did not make a difficulty for him, had asked them to follow, but they stood stock still. It would be shyness, perhaps embarrassment.

  Vickers, the amateur historian, saw the smile on the young man's face. So many of them, so often–and absolutely he rejected prejudice and would have thought stereotyping beneath him–were so defensive, so withdrawn and uninterested in learning the heritage of the society they had become part of. It was a fine smile, so filled with youth, almost with happiness. The woman was different, had a chill in her eyes–and he thought he saw a gleam of anger there. It dawned on him.

  'Are we at cross purposes? I'm Stephen Vickers. I take parties of interested people round the town so that they may better understand what happened here, where we are now, in the generations and centuries before. I assumed you'd seen my advertisements in the local paper and are intent on joining us. Am I wrong?'

  'Yes, wrong,' the woman spat.

  He saw the livid scar on her face and the blaze in her eyes, but the young man beside her merely smiled, like some sort of idiot, and seemed decent enough if detached.

  'Then I'm sorry to have intruded…Of course, should you wish to join us, not having intended to, please do. It's a fascinating story, the town's. We walk where Romans did, where Saxons, Vikings and Normans made their lives and–'

  'Leave us alone,' the woman hissed.

  He would have said that she was on the point-of tears, but her rudeness was extraordinary. Vickers said, 'Another time, then, perhaps.'

  He strode, annoyed, back to his group. Rejection came badly to him. He did not realize, could not have, the consequences of his approach to the woman and the young man, the importance of those moments lost to them. Nor what would be the result of his delaying them for not more than a minute and a half. His face was flushed from the rebuff when he again addressed his audience.

  'My apologies for abandoning you. As I was saying, the Saxons from the Elbe river liked what they saw and found the alluvial valley of the river Lea a most suitable place to settle. Right here, where we are now, they made their first encampment…'

  The woman was talking urgently to the young man. Steve Vickers ignored them, forgot them.

  'You are ready, it is the time. The man was a fool…It is you who will make history'

  She did not know whether he listened to her, understood her. She had her hand on his arm, near to his wrist, close to where his hand was hidden in the pocket of the leather jacket.

  'I am with you, not beside you but close to you. We are together. I will remember you always. We are going to start to walk. One day we will meet again.'

  She cursed the wetness in her eyes. Blinked to squeeze away the tears. She felt the hard shape of the waistcoat under the jacket, and could smell the perfume, and the filth from the field. The music screamed in her ears and a metallic voice shouted a welcome to the crowds. She looked back and up, saw the clock face, four minutes to the hour, and she did not consider the time lost in the spit and hiss to get rid of the fool.

  'We are going to start to walk. I am with you, but never look back–and do not see the faces. You are in my prayers.'

  If she had not done it, he would not have moved. She used the strength of her arm, her hand on his sleeve, and pushed him forward.

  He stood outside the newsagent's. So bloody slow. A few came out and a few went in, not his damn Principal. His eyeline traversed.

  He saw the centre and the crowd on the steps, the spread of the queues into the square. Saw a man doing a tour with an audience and shouting to compete against the loudspeakers and the music's clamour. Saw an Asian couple linger on the pavement, and the woman wanted to go forward, and the young man looked reluctant, but she shoved him. Saw an older guy on hospital sticks, coming behind them…and the older guy lurched round them, as if it were a difficult manoeuvre with his sticks, then stopped to gawp. Banks stamped his foot impatiently…For God's sake, even with a life history thrown in, how bloody long could it take to buy a newspaper and a packet of cigarettes? Saw the scar on the woman's face and the old guy, weight on his sticks, staring. Saw the young man respond to her shove–he had a dumb smile like he was manic–and start to move…but the old guy stood four-square in their path.

  Banks felt the cold again, but the sun dappled through the trees' branches, and he was far from the town hall tower's shadow.

  The bounty-hunter from Afghanistan, George Marriot–he had the wounds to prove it, and shrapnel still embedded–knew what he saw and was knackered.

  He was exhausted because he had walked from home into the village, then stumbled along on his sticks to the bus stop. He had stood on the bus, too proud to take woman's offer of her seat, then lumbered from the bus station into the square. The strength had dripped out of him, but not the keenness of clear thought in his mind.

  George Marriot was laughed at, behind his back, when the door closed after him, by the customers in the pub where complacent arse-. holes drank. He had hunted proud and able fighters in the Tora Bora mountains. He had taken, dead or alive, the best men of the enemy. But George Marriot had stayed alive. He recognized danger.

  George Marriot might not have recognized what confronted him, had he not met a German in the camp at Jalalabad. The German had been GSG9, special forces and their elite, and had talked of the unit's training. Bust into a building, hurl the stun grenades ahead, see the enemy cowering in shock, identify the women–kill them: 'No goddamn messing, Georgie, put half a magazine into them. Shoot the women first, is what we're taught. The women, Georgie, are deadly.' She had the set face and pursed
lips and there was, he thought, contempt in her eyes, as she pushed the boy. The boy wore that damn smile…had cause to smile. George Marriot knew what the muftis, mullahs and imams told them, the martyrs. Absolved of sins, a seat in Paradise. No torture in the grave, and up alongside seventy-two dark-eyed women. Can take seventy relatives to Paradise, and earn the Crown of Glory. A kid had walked in Kabul and another in Herat, and both had walked, sweaty, nervous, but people near enough to see–who had survived–had said those kids were still smiling.

  This one had a blown-out chest and a heavy gut under his coat, but spindle-thin legs from the outline of his trousers, and a hand deep in a pocket, which did not come out when he was shoved–it made sufficient of an equation for George Marriot.

  His balance unsure on one stick, he lunged at the kid with the other, but the woman came across him. Her hand was in her bag, and then he felt pain running in torrents.

  David Banks saw the old man lurch towards a couple, as a drunk did when incapable. He targeted the boy, but the woman had intervened with her body, and her robe swirled as she moved. The old man fell against her, then crumpled, went down on his stomach, was slumped flat.

  A mother with a push-chair, and other parents with children, pushed past heedlessly because it was none of their business.

  On training days, they drilled into Protection Officers that they were not to move off-station. A traffic pile-up–drive round it and head on. A fight in a street or a snatched bag–keep moving with the Principal and leave it to the uniforms. He stayed put, his back to the newsagent's door.

  He might have thought it pathetic for an old man to be pissed-up that early in the morning…but his life was past making judgements. He looked away, made his eyeline traverse again and off the pavement where the sticks lay crazily and the old man was sprawled. Last thing he noted was the woman and the young man step over him, and start to come up the pavement. He looked behind him, through the shop-door glass, and saw that Wright was next in line to be served.