He found out what it was when he struggled far enough back, almost to the corner of the street. A military unit had debouched from the side street and formed a line across the main thoroughfare, guns pointing at the crowd. Men were being hauled out of the crowd and lined up in a clear space, and Causton took one good look and tried to duck back. But he was too late. An arm shot out and grabbed him, pulling him bodily out of the crowd and thrusting him to join the others. Serrurier was busy rounding up his dissolving army.
He looked at the group of men which he had joined. They were all soldiers and all unwounded, looking at the ground with hangdog expressions. Causton hunched his shoulders, drooped his head and mingled unobtrusively with them, getting as far away from the front as possible. After a while an officer came and made a speech at them. Causton couldn't understand a word of it, but he got the general drift of the argument. They were deserters, quitters under fire, who deserved to be shot, if not at dawn, then a damn' sight sooner. Their only hope of staying alive was to go and face the guns of Favel for the greater glory of San Fernandez and President Serrurier.
To make his point the officer walked along the front row of men and arbitrarily selected six. They were marched across to the front of a house -- poor, bewildered, uncomprehending sheep -- and suddenly a machine-gun opened up and the little group staggered and fell apart under the hail of bullets. The officer calmly walked across and put a bullet into the brain of one screaming wretch, then turned and gave a sharp order.
The deserters were galvanized into action. Under the screams of bellowing non-coms they formed into rough order and marched away down the side street, Causton among them. He looked at the firing squad in the truck as he passed, then across at the six dead bodies. Pour encourager les autres, he thought.
Causton had been conscripted into Serrurier's army.
IV
Dawson was astonished at himself.
He had lived his entire life as a civilized member of the North American community and, as a result, he had never come to terms with himself on what he would do if he got into real trouble. Like most modern civilized men, he had never met trouble of this sort; he was cosseted and protected by the community and paid his taxes like a man, so that this protection should endure and others stand between him and primitive realities such as death by bullet or torture.
Although his image was that of a free-wheeling, ail-American he-man and although he was in danger of believing his own press-clippings, he was aware in the dim recesses of his being that this image was fraudulent, and from time to time he had wondered vaguely what kind of a man he really was. He had banished these thoughts as soon as they were consciously formulated because he had an uneasy feeling that he was really a weak man after all, and the thought disturbed him deeply. The public image he had formed was the man he wanted to be and he could not bear the thought that perhaps he was nothing like that. And he had no way of proving it one way or the other -- he had never been put to the test.
Wyatt's hardly concealed contempt had stung and he felt something approaching shame at his attempt to steal the car -- that was not the way a man should behave. So that when his testing-time came something deep inside him made him square his shoulders and briskly tell Sous-Inspecteur Roseau to go to hell and make it damn' fast, buddy.
So it was that now, lying in bed with all hell breaking loose around him, he felt astonished at himself. He had stood up to such physical pain as he had never believed possible and he felt proud that his last conscious act 'in Roseau's office had been to look across at the implacable face before him and mumble, "I still say it -- go to hell, you son of a bitch I"
He had recovered consciousness in a clean bed with his hands bandaged and his wounds tended. Why that should be he did not know, nor did he know why he could not raise his body from the bed. He tried several times and then gave up the effort and turned his attention to his new and wondrous self. In one brief hour he had discovered that he would never I need a public image again, that he would never shrink from self-analysis.
"I'll never be afraid again," he whispered aloud through bruised Lips. "By God, I stood it -- I need never be afraid again."
But he was afraid again when the artillery barrage opened up. He could not control the primitive reaction of his body; his glands worked normally and fear entered him as the hail of steel fell upon the Place de la Liberation Noire. He shrank back on to the bed and looked up at the ceiling and wondered helplessly if the next shell would plunge down to take away his newfound manhood.
V
Not far away, Wyatt sat in the corner of his cell with his hands over his ears because the din was indescribably deafening. His face was cut about where broken glass had driven at him, but luckily his eyes were untouched. He had spent some time delicately digging out small slivers of glass from his skin -- a very painful process -- and the concentration needed had driven everything else out of his mind. But now he was sharply aware of what was going on.
Every gun Favel had appeared to be firing on the Place de la Liberation Noire. Explosion followed explosion without ceasing and an acrid chemical stink drifted through the small window into the cell. The Poste de Police had not yet been hit, or at least Wyatt did not think so. And he was sure he would know. As he crouched in the corner with his legs up, grasshopper fashion, and his face dropped between his knees, he was busy making plans as to what he would do when the Poste was hit -- if he still remained alive to do anything at all.
Suddenly there was an almighty clang that shivered the air in the cell. Wyatt felt like a mouse that had crawled into a big drum -- he was completely deafened for a time and heard the tumult outside as though through a hundred layers of cloth. He staggered to his feet, shaking his head dizzily, and leaned against the wall. After a while he felt better and began to look more closely at the small room in which he was imprisoned. The Poste had been hit -- that was certain -- and surely to God something must have given way.
He looked at the opposite wall. Surely it had not had that bulge in it before? He went closer to examine it and saw a long crack zig-zagging up the wall. He put his hand out and pushed tentatively, and then applied his shoulder and pushed harder. Nothing gave.
He stepped back and looked around the cell for something with which to attack the wall. He looked at the stool and rejected it -- it was lightly built of wood, a good enough weapon against a man but not against the wall. There remained the bed. It was made of iron of the type where the main frame lifts out of sockets in the head and foot. The bed head, of tubular metal, was bolted together, but the bolts had rusted and it was quite a task to withdraw them. However, at the end of half an hour he had a goodly selection of tools with which to work -- two primitive crowbars, several scrapers devised from the bed springs and an object which was quite unnameable but for which, no doubt, he could find a use.
Feeling rather like Edmond Dantes, he knelt before the wall and began to use one of the scrapers to detach loose mortar from the crack. The mortar, centuries old, was hard and ungiving, but the explosion had not done the wall any good and gradually he excavated a small hole, wide enough and deep enough to insert the end of his crowbar. Then he heaved until his muscles cracked and was rewarded with the minutest movement of the stone block which he was attacking.
He stood back to inspect the problem and became conscious that the intense shell-fire directed at the square had ceased. The shell which had cracked the wall must have been one of the last fired in that direction, and all that could be heard now was a generalized battle noise away to the north of the town.
He dismissed the war from his mind and looked thoughtfully at his improvised crowbar. A crowbar is a lever, or rather, part of a lever -- the other part is a fulcrum, and he had no fulcrum. He took the foot of the bed and placed it against the wall; it could be used as a fulcrum but not in the place he had made the hole. He would have to begin again and make another hole.
Again it took a long time. Patiently he scraped away at the iron-hard mort
ar, chipping and picking it to pieces, and when he had finished his knuckles were bruised and bleeding and his fingertips felt as though someone had sand-papered them raw. He was also beginning to suffer from thirst; he had drunk the small carafe of water that had been in the cell, and no one had come near since that last colossal explosion -- a good sign.
He inserted the tip of his crowbar into the new hole and heaved again. Again he felt the infinitesimal shift in the wall. He took the bed foot and placed it within six inches of the wall and then plunged his crowbar into the hole. It rested nicely just on top of the metal frame of the bed. Then he took a deep breath and swung his whole weight on to the crowbar. Something had to give -- the .crowbar, the bed, the wall -- or -- maybe -- Wyatt. He hoped it would be the wall.
He felt the metal tube of the crowbar bending under his weight but still bore down heavily, lifting his feet from the floor. There came a sudden grating noise and a sharp shift in pressure and he found himself abruptly deposited on the floor. He turned over and coughed and waved his hand to disperse the dust which eddied and swirled through the cell illuminated by a bright beam of sunlight which shone through the gaping hole he had made.
He rested for a few minutes, then went to look at the damage. By his calculations, he should merely have broken through to the next cell and it had been a calculated risk whether he would find the door to that cell locked. But to his surprise, when he looked through the hole he could see, though not very clearly, a part of the square partly obscured by a ragged exterior wall.
The shell that had hit the Poste had totally destroyed the next cell and it was only by the mercy of the excellent and forgotten builders of his prison that he had not been blown to Kingdom Come.
He had dislodged only two of the heavy ashlar blocks that made up the wall and the hole would be a tight fit, but luckily he was slim and managed to wriggle through with nothing more than a few additional scrapes. It was tricky finding a footing on the other side because half the floor had been blown away, leaving the ground-floor office starkly exposed to the sky. A man looked up at him from down there with shocked brown eyes -- but he was quite dead, lying on his back with his chest crushed by a block of masonry.
Wyatt teetered on the foot-wide ledge that was his only perch and supported himself with his hands while he looked across the square. It was desolate and uninhabited save for the hundreds of corpses that lay strewn about, corpses dressed in the light blue of the Government army uniform. The only movement was from the smoke arising from the dozen or so fiercely burning army trucks grouped round what had been the centrepiece -- the heroic statue of Serrurier. But the statue was gone, blown from its plinth by the storm of steel.
He looked down. It would be quite easy to descend to the ground and to walk away as free as the air. But then he looked across and saw the door of the ruined cell hanging loose with one hinge broken, and although he hesitated, he knew what he must do. He must find Dawson.
He picked his way carefully along the narrow ledge until he came to a wider and safer part near the door. From then on it was easy and inside thirty seconds he was in the corridor of the cell block. It was strange; apart from the heavy layer of dust which overlay everything, there was not a sign that the building had been hit.
Walking up the corridor, he called, "Dawson!" and was astonished to hear h is voice emerge as a croak. He cleared his throat and called again in a stronger voice, "Dawson! Dawson 1"
A confused snouting came from the cells around him, but he could not distinguish Dawson's voice. Angrily, he shouted, "Taisez-vous!" and the voices died away save for a faint cry from the end of the corridor. He hastened along and called again. "Dawson! Are you there?"
"Here!" a faint voice said, and he traced it to a room next to Roseau's office. He looked at the door -- this was no cell, it would be easy. He took a heavy fire-extinguisher, and, using it as a battering ram, soon shattered the lock and burst into the room.
Dawson was tying in bed, his head and hands bandaged. Both his eyes were blackened and he seemed to have lost some teeth. Wyatt looked at him. "My God! What did they do to you?"
Dawson looked at him for some seconds without speaking, then he summoned up a grin. "Seen yourself lately?" he asked, speaking painfully through swollen lips.
"Come on," said Wyatt. "Let's get out of here."
"I can't," said Dawson with suppressed rage. "The bastards strapped me down."
Wyatt took a step forward and saw that it was true. Two broad straps ran across Dawson's body, the buckles well under the bed far beyond the reach of prying hands. He ducked under the bed and began to unfasten them. "What happened after you were beaten up?" he asked.
"That's the damnedest thing," said Dawson with perplexity. "I woke up in here and I'd been fixed up with these bandages. Why in hell would they do that?"
"I threw a scare into Roseau," said Wyatt. "I'm glad it worked."
"They still didn't want to lose me, I guess," said Dawson. "That's why they strapped me down. I've been going through hell, waiting for a shell to bust through the ceiling. I thought it had happened twice."
"Twice? I thought there was only one hit."
Dawson got out of bed. "I reckon there were two." He nodded to a chair. "Help me with my pants; I don't think I can do it myself -- not with these hands. Oh, how I'd like to meet up with that son of a bitch, Roseau."
"How are your legs?" asked Wyatt, helping to dress him.
"They're okay."
"We've got a bit of climbing to do; not much -- just enough to get down to street level. I think you'll be able to do it. Come on."
They went out into the corridor. "There's a cell a bit further along that's been well ventilated," said Wyatt. "We go out that way."
A shot echoed in the corridor shockingly noisily and a bullet sprayed Wyatt with chips of stone as it ricocheted off the wall by his head. He ducked violently and turned to find Roseau staggering down the corridor after them. He was in terrible shape. His uniform was hanging about him in rags and his right arm was hanging limp as though broken. He held a revolver in his left hand and it was perhaps that which saved Wyatt from the next shot, which went wide.
He yelled, "That cell there," and pushed Dawson violently. Dawson ran the few yards to the door and dashed through to halt, staggering, in an attempt to save himself falling over the unexpected drop.
Wyatt retreated more slowly, keeping a wary eye on Roseau who lurched haltingly down the passage. Roseau said nothing at all; he brushed the blood away from his fanatical eyes with the back of the hand that held the gun, and his jaw worked as he aimed waveringly for another shot. Wyatt ducked through the cell door as the gun went off and heard a distinct thud as the bullet buried itself in the door-jamb.
"Over here!" yelled Dawson, and Wyatt hastily trod over the rubble and on to the narrow ledge. "If that crazy bastard comes out we'll have to jump for it."
"It's as good a way to break a leg as any," Wyatt said. He felt his fingers touch something loose and they curled round a fist-sized piece of rock.
"Here he comes," said Dawson.
Roseau shuffled through the door, seemingly oblivious of the drop at his feet. He staggered forward, keeping his eyes on Wyatt, until the tips of his boots were overhanging space, and he lifted the gun in a trembling hand.
Wyatt threw the rock and it hit Roseau on the side of the head. The gun fired and he spun, losing his footing, to crash face down in the ruins below. His arm lay across the shoulder of the dead man as though he had found a lost comrade, and the newly disturbed dust settled again on the dead man's open and puzzled eyes.
Dawson took a deep breath. "Jesus! Now there was a persistent son of a bitch. Thanks, Wyatt."
Wyatt was shaking. He stood on the ledge with his back to the wall and waited for the quivers to go away. Dawson looked down at Roseau and said, "He wanted to implicate you -- I didn't, Wyatt. I didn't tell him anything."
"I didn't think you had," said Wyatt quietly. "Let's get down from here. There'
s nothing happening here now, but that could change damn" quickly."
Slowly they made their way down to the street. It was difficult for Dawson because his hands hurt, but Wyatt helped him. When they stood on the pavement Dawson asked, "What do we do now?"
"I'm going back to the Imperiale," said Wyatt. "I must find 'Julie. I must find if she's still in St. Pierre."
"Which way is it?"
"Across the square," said Wyatt, pointing.
They set off across the Place de la Liberation Noire and Dawson stared at the carnage in horror. There were bodies everywhere, cut down in hundreds. They could not walk in a straight line for more than five yards without having to deviate and they gave up trying and stepped over the corpses. Suddenly Dawson turned and retched; he had not drunk or eaten for a long time, and his heavings were dry and laboured.
Wyatt kicked something which rang with a hollow clang. He looked down to see the decapitated head of a man; the eyes stared blankly and there was a ghastly hole in the left temple.
It was the bronze head of the statue of Serrurier.
Five
Causton marched to the sound of the guns.
He sweated in the hot sun as he stepped out briskly in response to the lashing voice of the sergeant and wondered how he was going to get out of this pickle. If he could get out of the ranks for a few minutes, all he had to do was to rip off the tunic, drop the rifle and he would be a civilian again; but there did not seem much chance of that. The erstwhile deserters were watched carefully by troopers armed with submachine-guns and the officer, driven in a jeep, passed continually from one end of the column to the other.
Bagley, Desmond - Wyatts Hurricane Page 12