“What is it?” Pellegrini asked, immediately on edge. “Where’s Wood? Is he okay?” He was drawing his pistol as he spoke. Alarm was evident in his eyes. His thoughts were obvious and they alarmed Collins.
“I don’t know,” she squawked. Their fear was making her more anxious. “I’m sure he’s still okay but I just don’t know where he is.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know where he is? Oh shit! We’ve got to wake everybody up, now,” Pellegrini almost shouted and the three started running for the cafeteria. Collins was ahead of them and faster. By the time she had mounted the stairs to the upper floor she had left them in her wake, spurred on by guilt and fear. How could she have been so stupid as to fall asleep at such a time? How could they all have been so reckless as to let him sleep in an unlocked room? The two of them should have made their bed in his lockable future cell. But it was too late for regret now. She just hoped it was not too late to prevent something dreadful happening, whatever that may be.
She burst into the dining area, stumbling over the prostrate body of Leading Aircraftman Allen. Many of the soldiers still chose to sleep in the main area for the reassurance of company. Several bodies were laid out on the floor. In the half-light just before dawn it was the scene of a massacre. She stumbled and cried out in shock.
There was instant confusion. People were constantly jittery as it was. Someone waking them up by screaming was too much for them to handle. Lewis had made his bed in the middle of the area so he could be readily accessible should anyone need him. He was on his feet immediately, almost as though he had been awake and prepared for this to happen. His gun was in his hand and he looked at Collins in stunned bewilderment.
“What is it babe?”
She turned to answer Lewis but realised the voice had not come from him. She looked past her commanding officer and saw a figure sat in the gloom on the serving counter by the kitchens. It was Wood. He was cross-legged and had a curious expression. She noticed the night vision goggles beside him. He held something else as well that she really could never have expected to see. On his lap there was a puppy, probably no more than four or five months old. It was a brown mongrel with a white patch over its left eye, as though it too wore a monocular. It was asleep and looked entirely at ease in his care, warm, happy and safe. It was a little thin and a section of fur had been shaved on its stomach for some operation or experimentation, but otherwise it was just adorable.
“What…?” she stammered. “Where were you? What is that?”
“Not what,” he answered with a grin, “but who. Meet Wilson.”
She had heard enough. She hurled herself at him and enfolded him in her arms, with tears afresh coursing down her face. By now Wilson, along with everyone else, was wide awake.
When she finally released him, everybody was standing quietly around them, staring. Wood seemed exhausted. His face was pinched and pale and he looked terrible.
“How do you feel?” Singleton asked, wondering how advanced the contamination was.
“Dreadful,” he replied and she cringed. “But then so would you if you had been up all night.”
“Why were you up all night?” Lewis asked.
Wood shifted his position to return some circulation to his legs and only then did Collins notice Wood’s crossbow and knife. The sheath, she noted, was empty of bolts and the knife was bloody.
“Where have you been?” Lewis asked suspiciously although the answer was already beginning to dawn on him. He caught on fast.
Wood did not reply directly. Instead he handed Wilson to Collins. “Best someone who knows a bit about dogs looks after him, don’t you think?” Wilson licked her hands. Then he looked at Singleton. “You said yesterday ma’am that Bennett needed the animal section clear of hostiles to get cracking with this antidote thing. Well, it’s now clear. So please, bloody well get cracking.”
He was extremely tired so Wood took himself to the room that had been prepared for his imprisonment, the lockable inner laboratory of the office beside Darby. He had started to feel as though he was suffering from flu and there was a thumping in his forehead.
“It’s begun,” he said softly to Collins as he sat on a blanket in the corner of the room.
“I’ll stay with you a while longer though,” she replied. It was half statement, half question. She placed Wilson on the floor allowing him to roam freely as she leant her head on his chest. He wrapped an arm around her and they sat without talking for a while.
Her sniffles gradually subsided and she looked at him through watery eyes. “Where did you find Wilson?”
He raised an eyebrow, as though to say, ‘do you really need to ask?’ and waved an arm in the vague direction of the eastern section of GVF Laboratories, the part that, until last night, had remained unexplored and uncleared; the part where the animal experimentation had occurred.
“And why Wilson?”
He grinned. “Permit me to exhibit a small amount of narcissism in my final hours, leaving a reminder of myself on this mortal coil. There was an American president in the early nineteen hundreds called Woodrow Wilson.” He paused but she still looked confused. “His nickname was Woody for obvious reasons,” he continued, “and that was my nickname at school. So… Wilson.”
“Wilson it is then,” she said. “I was so scared when I woke up. I thought you’d killed yourself.”
“I must say, I thought about it hard,” he replied. “I was going to do it after I had cleared the rest of the building.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Well, apart from not wanting to cause you any pain,” he paused, “in the days before all this, I used to carry a donor card. I thought that I don’t care what happens to my body when I’m dead. If it can benefit medical science, then that’s gotta be a good thing. I guess that’s not changed now. It still applies, even more so. So consider this my donor card.”
He moaned softly as the pounding surged once more.
“Is it bad?” she asked.
He nodded. “You’ll have to go soon. But hey, at least this way I get the chance to contemplate all that I’ve done in life; and to say goodbye. There are many ways of dying that don’t permit that luxury.”
There was the noise of footsteps and a coughing from the passageway as Straddling approached. Bannister lingered several paces behind, obviously feeling uncomfortable.
“Sergeant?” Wood said.
“I came down to see how you are. To see whether it’s… whether it’s time yet.”
Wood stood up, erect and proud. “It’s getting worse. It is time.”
“No!” Collins shrieked.
“I’m sorry my dear,” Straddling said, laying a hand on her back. “I know this is hard.”
Wood gently lifted her face up to meet his gaze and he smiled. “Promise me two things?”
She nodded, unable to talk.
“Firstly, when I have turned, please, you mustn’t come to see me.”
“But,” she started to complain, “I’ll stay with you throughout…”
“No. When you leave me now, don’t ever come back. I couldn’t bear to think of you seeing me like that. Please, you must promise me.”
Reluctantly she nodded, her eyes downcast. “And the second thing?”
He forced a poignant smile. “When it comes to feeding time, promise me I’ll get the best cuts of meat. Certainly I want to be fed before Darby and the Incarcerated anyway.”
She snorted a laugh but it was quickly replaced by the deluge of tears that had barely ceased all morning.
Straddling stepped forwards and placed an arm on her shoulder. “Come my dear, we must leave him.” As he started to guide her away he turned back to Wood. He was flustered and struggled to find the words. “I, err, I know we’ve had our differences over the past few weeks, but I just wanted to say…”
“Sergeant,” Wood interrupted, “I’m well aware that no leader should be surrounded purely by people who constantly agree with him. A difference
of opinion can be very constructive.”
“Well, maybe a little too much of a difference…”
Wood smiled. “I am sure Captain Lewis is going to need all the help he can get over the next few days and weeks. He’s going to need wise counsel and good soldiers. Be strong for him Stradz, you are a very good soldier. Be his rock.”
“It has been my absolute pleasure to fight alongside you,” Straddling replied falteringly as his voice broke down. He extended his hand. They shook, just once, with a firm grasp while they met each other’s glance. Then Straddling turned briskly away, not wanting to show his emotions.
He started to guide Collins up the corridor but she tore herself free and embraced Wood one final time. “I love you,” was all she whispered. Then she was gone.
Wood stepped back into the inner laboratory and passed the key to Bannister. The door swung slowly shut and the lock fell quietly into place. Wood moaned as the throbbing came at him in waves and he sat down on the blanket, leaning against the door. Bannister paused in indecision, and then sat outside the room, looking through the hole that had been cut in order to feed him.
“So,” Wood muttered through clenched teeth, “are we friends yet?”
Bannister grinned, his cheeky, impish grin. “How many times did I say?”
“Hmmm, I think it was ‘a couple’.”
“And you’ve saved my life, what, once or twice now?”
“I count three or four,” Wood replied.
“Well I guess that makes us mates then.”
They were both silent for a moment. Wood was battling alternating surges of nausea and pain. Bannister looked at him through the hole and felt an overpowering sense of guilt. Guilt for how he had treated everyone and guilt for what he had thought about Wood himself. He tried to talk to avoid breaking down.
“You don’t make it easy though do you?”
Wood opened his eyes and looked at him quizzically. “Huh?”
“I mean I’ve always thought you were a bit stiff and cold towards everybody, walking around with a stick up your arse. It doesn’t help to endear you to people, does it?”
“Well, I thought you were a cocky little gobshite,” Wood retorted.
“I guess we were both right then,” Bannister said and they laughed.
“But seriously though,” Bannister continued, “why are you like that?”
“You really want to know?” Wood asked. The mirth was gone.
Bannister nodded, almost wishing he had not asked. Did he really want to know, to delve into this mysterious man’s past and learn of his dark secrets?
“I guess it started when I was based in Iraq,” Wood said. “It was pretty tough out there and when you’re living in such circumstances, rather like here, you form bonds fast and those bonds are unbreakable. You share your innermost thoughts and feelings with a colleague you’ve only met two days before, because you know that in a month you may well be dead and you need to hope that a little piece of you will survive, if only in someone’s memory.
“And so you form all of these bonds but then the people that you are close to die, just like here. New men would come to the regiment and you’d get to know them and then they’d die too. Pretty soon you realise that if you’re going to get through it you have to do it alone. You can’t rely on anybody else surviving, and you can’t continually make these connections with people only to have them severed. So you train yourself to become detached and get along without needing anyone else.”
Bannister was not sure what to say but Wood had not yet finished. This was his last chance to ever confide in someone and Bannister assumed he was throwing away the rulebook, going against what he had learned to survive, back in Iraq. Maybe Wood wanted to assure that Bannister’s memories of him would reflect the true person; a man with heart and soul, a man who was in touch with his inner emotions, who could feel for others and who could love; not the cold, detached android that he had portrayed to them all until now. He wanted these last people in his life to know that he was more than that.
“Some of the things we had to see and do while we were out there, man, it was bad. If you let your emotions get in the way then you would just choke up right there and die. So you just had to learn to compartmentalize the feelings and deal with them another day. That was the only way.”
He again paused and Bannister said nothing. Now was not the time for smart answers. Now was the time to listen, to be a silent witness.
“But the worst,” Wood said, “the very worst was when I got captured.”
Bannister’s eyes opened wide. He had no idea. But how could he? Wood had never mentioned it to any of them. He had never discussed the injuries that had brought him to Headley Court, and while they had all wondered, nobody had pressed him on the subject. He doubted if even Collins knew.
“I ran out of ammo at a pretty crucial moment when I was out on ops, and got taken,” Wood said. “I was held for six months. I was tortured most days and I quickly learned that the more I reacted, the more they did to me. So I used the skills I had already acquired and buried my emotions. If they beat me I tried to stay quiet. If they threatened me I stayed calm. That was the only way. So I guess having a stick up my arse was better than having it smacked across my back.”
Bannister’s guilt was now compounded. He wished he could take his words back but Wood smiled, guessing his thoughts.
“Don’t worry, you’re right. I am aloof, I know that. These last few weeks I’ve tried to let it all go and loosen up a bit. I wanted to tell Collins the reason why, but the time has never seemed right. I’ve wanted to tell her so many things but I guess now it’s too late. So you’re gonna have to tell her for me.”
Bannister could no longer hold back his own tears. “Sure man, whatever you want,” he sobbed.
Wood hesitated as another wave of pain passed through his skull. He moaned and closed his eyes against the torment. When he opened them they were red. “Take care of her for me. Tell her I love her.”
Bannister thrust his hand through the feeding hole and Wood gripped it hard. He closed his eyes, held their joined fists to his forehead and squeezed so hard it hurt Bannister, but he did not want to cry out. After a while Wood slowly released and Bannister withdrew his hand. It was damp. A month previously he would have liked nothing more than to ‘take care’ of Collins. Now all he wanted was to reunite this couple and see them happy. He had not cried since mourning the death of Lance Corporal Dean Millington, but his tears were just as strong now as he walked away - from his friend.
Lewis was the last to visit Wood. He went alone. When he returned everybody stood silently in the dining area, morosely watching him as he walked in. Nobody spoke. The redness of his eyes was obvious to all. He stared back at them, composing himself. The weight of command hung constantly on his drooping shoulders. Not all decisions were his to make, some had to be reasoned out amongst them all. But on occasion, when there was no clear path and it was necessary for a choice to be made quickly and decisively, then his had to be the final word and that was an ever-present stress. Buoying them all up when spirits were flagging and giving them hope when none existed also took its toll. He was exhausted, physically and emotionally, yet no end was in sight. It seemed that every time there was a note of positivity, whenever they had a victory, however minor, the elation was short-lived. Always, something cruel was never far away to bring them all back to their desperate reality. There was a saying that Lewis’s mother had been fond of: ‘God only burdens us as much as we can handle.’ He thought that perhaps God had got it wrong this time. The joy of finding two more survivors, one of whom could possibly prove to be absolutely pivotal, had been quashed almost immediately with the realisation that they had lost one of their truly vital members. What to say? How to buoy up their spirits this time?
Lewis tried to speak but he could not think of anything.
“Look…” he started before his voice caught in his throat. His eyes were hot and prickly as he swallowed and fough
t for words that refused to come. His vision blurred and he dropped to his knees. In front of all of his people, when they really needed him the most, he had finally run out of energy and the capacity to carry on. He could feel himself slipping, falling and failing, just as Denny had done.
Singleton was the first to reach him. She knelt beside him on the floor and wrapped her arms about him wordlessly, sobbing into his shoulder. She felt his body shaking beneath her grip just as clearly as she felt the futility of their situation. Then there were arms around her and she vaguely realised Straddling was there, embracing them both. And then Bannister was there, and Collins and Hutchison and Mayoh. Slowly they all formed a huddle. That diminishing group, that collection of survivors, bound previously by the structure of the military and united now by a common need, a dependence on each other for physical and emotional support that really was all that any of them had left. Despite what Wood had said about being unable to rely on anybody actually surviving in the long or even the short-term, each of them needed the strength that these connections gave them, regardless of how much pain it caused when the connections were severed.
Nobody spoke for a long while. They did indeed all desperately need a leader to steer them during their passage through Hades, but only as much as he too so very desperately needed their support. Eventually the throng untangled but they all remained sitting wordlessly on the floor, maintaining those connections a moment longer. Lewis took a deep breath and stared around at them all.
“When we first came to these laboratories,” he started, groping blindly for the right words, “we all knew there was a very good chance that some of us, or all of us even, might die in the process. I knew that, and Wood knew that too. Despite that peril we were all willing to sacrifice our lives. Wood called that first mission here ‘the best goddamn reason he ever had to risk his life,’ and it was. Those weren’t just empty words. That was the truth. It was true then and it’s still true now, and if we didn’t intend to live by those words then we shouldn’t have come.
Twice Bitten, Twice Die (The Blood of the Infected Book 3) Page 26