Chapter Eight, ‘August’
Several months later, we’re still fighting a losing battle.
My hands slip on the gun and I’m sweating. We’re at the railway bridge today, again, and the sun is pressing into my back as I kneel behind the wall; I keep the barrel as steady as I can, and spot three enemy soldiers wandering along towards us on the tracks—and I don’t think they know we’re here. I watch them for a while: they look around as they walk over the gravel, shout something to each other as if they’re taking notes on the layout of the station, they look up at the bridge and their eyes drift past my position.
As far as they know, the whole station is empty, but I can see one of the youngest soldiers look up at the dark windows of the ticketing office on my left as if he expects someone to fire at them there and then.
He’s right.
I shoot twice at the first soldier, but the gun misfires on the second shot and I have to duck back down behind the wall to find out what’s wrong with it. Did I hit him? It’s hard to tell, but then I hear someone staggering over the gravel on the tracks and a horrified moan of shock.
We’re protected by what survives of this wall—a hideous, open-toothed brickwork that I’m surprised has lasted this long—from a unit of enemy soldiers who have settled in at the foot of the signalling box further up the track. There’s a rumour that they’re going to try and overrun the town from the north, but we haven’t heard a thing till now. Our position is slightly to the east, and this lot on the tracks have been quiet all day.
Everyone else has grouped together to try and head off any attack, and that only leaves a handful of us to guard the station and deal with anyone who tries to gain control of the bridge. We did have a couple of people manning the ticket office this morning, but they were clearly bored out of their skull by the lack of action. I admit, I got a bit irate by all the snoozing and slouching, so I ordered them to go back towards the town; they were only too happy to leave.
So by the time these soldiers approach our position, we’re already outnumbered.
I eventually work out what’s gone wrong with the gun, after a moment’s panic that the whole mechanism had jammed—to be honest with you, I can’t even describe how I fixed it—and I heave myself back up to the wall to shoot, with the inching fear that my equipment is going to betray me. The two soldiers who have made it this far have already discovered our position, and they’re making good use of my temporary struggle with the rifle: I try to ignore the shards of shrapnel that land on the road behind me, the fragments of stone that break off from the top of the wall with every hard shot. My hands are covered in oil and for a minute, I’m caught off-guard by how much they’re shaking. I grab the rifle tighter and hold the metal close to my face, as close as you’d hold a lover; some stupid part of me likes to pretend that it can actually protect me.
I look over the ledge and get my finger ready on the trigger. There are only two of us left defending this bridge: me on the left, and an old guy—Roy—who lies closer to the roundabout. He sits at the top of the stairs leading down to the platform and shoots straight down at the last of the soldiers trying to climb up, with his rifle positioned lazily between two greasy legs as he laughs. The sun shines raw and red upon the side of his neck.
“This is it, hen. Just try and aim right, and that’s all you can do,” he’d said that morning with an easy smile, clapping my shoulder with unnatural force, and continuing on to his post at the other side of the bridge. That’s the last we speak to each other all day.
A terror strikes me now that he’s got it wrong, that none of the people he’s shooting at are the enemy—but he sits with his paunch hanging out underneath his untucked shirt, the spread of wet stains under his armpit from the heat that I can see even from here, and I briefly have to look away in disgust at the idea that this is who I have to fight with.
By the time I look back and readjust myself at the wall, there’s been a sharp rap of gunfire and Roy is lolling back with his head on the pavement.
Something about his sagging body lying there in the sun and the growing, dark oil slick of blood towards the road makes me jolt upwards to get a better view of the platform, and I’m only reminded of my mistake when the snick of a bullet passes close by. I immediately jump down, and end up crawling flat on my face in the dirt like an idiot, taking cover behind the wall again—then I realise that it’s only me left who’s holding the bridge. With a sting of humiliation, I scramble to get my gun back into place.
They must have heard the shots. This is pathetic. When I get my head clear again, I can see a handful of them hurrying towards me from the signalling box: some of them are slower than the others, and one soldier is trying to fasten his belt while he runs behind the group, too slow, and it’s easy to take him out as he stumbles and trips over the hard gravel of the railway line. At least I can refocus by doing this. None of them even look back at the sound—we must have disturbed them horribly, because they’re scurrying along the tracks like rabbits over a field.
I manage to fire at one or two of the soldiers as they draw level with the platform, and I think I can take advantage of their panic. But one of them looks up and spots me as she’s running to catch up: her whole body flinches when I finish off the only soldier ahead of her; her eyes wrench tight, her jaw hardens like stone. To her credit, she sprints even harder and quickly scales the steep platform as it meets the building; her clean boots pound the tarmac, the last of that lot of soldiers.
I already know what she’s going to do; she’s got a gun in her hand but she’s forgotten to shoot at me on the approach. I watch her making a dash for the staircase on my left—until she takes cover behind one of the pillars and fumbles with the weapon.
I watch her hiding in the shade. For a moment I stall as she wipes a few wandering curls of ash-brown hair out of her face; it reaches her shoulder, and her neck shines with sweat as she shouts something I can’t understand back in the direction of the signalling box—she’s not even got her helmet on.
Good. She’ll make another mistake at some point, and that’s all the opportunity I’ll need—and it’s with a sharp thrill that I see her crouch over her boots. I allow her the chance, I won’t fire when she’s down. It’s just this moment, her and me, like we know each other. The idea of shooting someone this close feels ridiculous. I wonder if she knows what it’s like.
But then she turns her face towards me and dashes out from the pillar.
I jam my finger onto the trigger before I can think any more about it. I shoot her straight through the heart.
My lapse in concentration has cost me: they’ve already sent more soldiers to follow up after the gunshots, and I realise I’ll have to make a break for it if I want to stay alive. I don’t even stay to watch her fall, but as I turn my eye catches the fact that she’s clutching her chest and hauled over, as if grief-stricken.
I know that look.
From what I’ve seen, they’ve sent the youngest first, probably for a laugh, not knowing there were any of us up here, and now they’ll use me to get even—I can hear their boots striking the platform, the foot of the staircase.
They’ll stumble into Roy at the top, I think blindly. They’ll kill him.
I don’t even bother to keep the gun, I just throw it down as I break into a hard, blind run towards the town.
I can hear an awful dragging sound that I don’t think anyone else can hear, it goes right over the air above me and into the town, and there are new sparks and screams of gunshots from the main road; they’ve been forced back towards the square. We’re done for—I feel it right through my chest. I imagine that it’s my own body making contact with the ground as they pull; I can feel the tug of my skin, and it splits as we are hauled over the gravel.
It’s pretty clear we’ve lost the town.
***