Ian Slater - World in Flames

“Ja,” said the Belgian with a distinct Flemish accent. “They are marksmen, those ones, believe me. They are the best those bastards have got.” The Belgian nodded toward the canals and poplar woods beyond. “Probably miles from here by now.”

David overheard the conversation, but something, he couldn’t explain what, told him Lili was alive. The next stretcher he saw coming out had the military police sergeant on it — a neat hole above the left ear — the small hole and dark color of the blood telling David the sergeant had been killed by an expert shot, quickly and some time ago. It fueled David’s hope, for it meant the ambulance teams had probably left all the really hopeless cases till last, first having taken all the survivors, few though they may have been.

“Why aren’t they using body bags?” asked Parkin tactlessly but with the directness of natural curiosity. “Poor buggers can hardly get ‘round them corners with those frig-gin’ stretchers.” As if to underline his point, a swirl of thickening mist swept up against the carriage, momentarily hiding the ambulance team from view, the man carrying the front of the stretcher not having yet touched ground. The man stumbled for a moment, and had it not been for David helping the man at the rear of the stretcher to take the weight, the sharp angle of the stretcher would have caused the dead sergeant to slide forward beneath the restraining straps onto the sodden grass.

“Ran out of body bags,” explained the Belgian driver. “Used over sixty already. We’re running out of everything.”

“How come?” asked Parkin, surprised. “Thought ruddy Antwerp and Ostend were fair flowin’ over wiv supplies.”

“Some more trouble with the convoys from America, they say.”

“Blimey — I thought we’d fixed that lot.”

“So did everyone else,” shrugged the Belgian. “But apparently the Russians have something up their sleeve. New sonar, I guess.”

Parkin was watching the ambulance men bringing off more of the dead.

“Jesus!” said Parkin. “They wipe out all the reinforcements?”

“Ja. Shot every one of them. Train staff as well and the hospital cases — the wounded.”

Parkin could hear steam bubbling away, and he swung angrily toward the still locomotive. “Why the hell doesn’t somebody turn that friggin’ thing off?”

“The engineer is dead, too,” said the ambulance driver. “No one here, I think, knows how to shut it off.”

“I’ll have a go,” said the corporal.

A whey-faced ambulance man emerged from the end of the third carriage and began to negotiate the steep stairway.

“Excuse me,” began David.

“Je ne parte pas anglais,” said the stretcher bearer, using his head to indicate the driver who’d been talking with Parkin, who was now climbing aboard the engine whose mournful dying sound seemed to fill the forlorn field.

“Can I help you, sir?” the driver asked David.

“Is it all right if I go in now?” David told him. “Have a look around?” The driver spoke to one of the ambulance men, who managed to shrug despite the weight of the dead body — a marine, his arm in a cast, face jaundiced-looking and frozen in pain.

“They say you can have a look,” the driver told David. “But do not move anything. More ambulances are on the way. The police may want photographs.”

“What for?” put in Parkin, returning down the track. “Nothing to investigate, is there?”

The Belgian driver shrugged. “Regulations.”

Parkin drew heavily on the cigarette. “Regulations ain’t gonna help those poor bastards,” he said, looking at the ambulances filling up on this, their second trip, eight shrouds in each, dead laid out on the wet grass for the additional ambulances on the way.

David hesitated before going in as Parkin, heading on down to the other end of the carriage, called out, “Beg pardon, Lieutenant, but what’s she look like?”

“About five four,” said David, entering the second to last carriage, looking at the slumped bodies which the ambulance men still had to clear. “Blue eyes—” he told Parkin.

“Very good, sir, but I mean, what was she — is she— wearing?”

Brentwood tried to think, recoiling from the stench. “Well, she had a sort of yellow raincoat on — the kind fishermen wear over here—”

“Slicker,” said Parkin. “Right, but I mean, she wouldn’t be wearing a coat in the train — probably bit stuffy in here before— I mean, not when she was busy looking after the wounded—”

“Yes,” replied David, “I guess you’re right. I don’t know — a kind of floral patterned dress — skirt,” he said. “Red and yellow flowers — I think — white sweater. A bonnet. Blue.” David eased his way down the body-strewn aisle, each hand on the corner of one of the day-sitters, the upholstery torn here and there where the bullets had passed through, some of the beige-colored sponge rubber filler oozing from the seats speckled with blood. He remembered she was wearing a red poppy, too, for Remembrance Day, even though the actual day was weeks ago.

David paused, wiping the sweat from the cap’s band before he could bring himself to move deeper into the carriage. He could still hear the heavy, muffled tinkling of the boiler, steam still rising, floating back past the carriages even though Parkin had shut down the main valve.

He moved farther into the carnage, having to step over the bodies gingerly, trying not to disturb anything, finding a footfall wherever he could and using the web of the overhead luggage racks to keep his balance, recoiling one moment from pinkish-gray ooze of brains sticking to one seat, the upholstery black with blood.

One of the American reinforcements was slumped in a corner, and from the pinkish-white pulp that David guessed must have been bone and flesh, David could tell the SPETS had probably used high-velocity mercury or depleted-uranium tips, which would penetrate the target like a white-hot rod, exploding through the other side with the force of a sledgehammer.

“Jesus!” said Parkin softly, now entering the carriage from the far end. “Get away, you bastard!” He was waving his hand ineffectually at a large blowfly crawling, bloated, through the mash of a GI’s eye dangling by a thread. Suddenly Parkin put his hand to his mouth, and rushed back toward the toilet door. As it flung open, David heard Parkin utter another half-choked oath and saw him reappear, rushing out the doors at the end of the carriage.

As David reached the washroom, he saw the reason— another GI, crumpled against the outer wall, one leg bent impossibly between the toilet stem and sink pipe, hands protectively over his face — the impact of two SPETS bullets having blown him clean off the seat even as he’d tried to cower in the corner. Or had he simply been too terrified to move? Again it had been a head shot, and David saw the splattered slug that had ricocheted, ending up, after smashing the cistern, embedded in the copper float. There were empty nine-millimeter brass jackets all over the place — same ammunition as used by NATO forces.

David pushed open the carriage’s end door and saw Parkin, head over the rail. Beyond him David could see through the doors of the fourth carriage, another carnage of khaki bodies strewn about, several of them clustered by the water fountain. “You okay?” he asked Parkin.

“No — Jesus, never seen anything like it. Bloody slaughter. The bastards.”

David passed by him, heading for the doors of the fourth carriage, and heard ambulance men behind him starting to clean out the remaining bodies now that more stretchers had arrived. As he opened the door, he saw several bodies that had fallen from upper bunks where the wounded had been. David felt his nostrils assaulted by a stringent mixture of spilled antiseptic, saline drip bottles, medications, and excrement.