Simon Clark - The Fall

Jud looked at him. ‘You know, Sam, this reminds me of the day when I walked out onto a frozen lake in the middle of winter. There I was, slap in the middle. Ten years old and feeling bloody good about how clever I was. Then I heard all these little cracking sounds. Like hundreds of pencils being snapped in half all at once. I couldn’t see anything. The ice looked perfect. But all the time this snapping sound went on and on, and then… Yes, you guessed it. The ice just gave way under me.’

‘And that’s how you feel now?’

‘Yes, I’m standing on thin ice. I can hear it cracking. It’s just a question of when it gives way.’

‘Sir,’ one of the men barked from the back. ‘When are we going to get a shot at them bastards – sir!’

‘It won’t be long now, corporal,’ Sam said. ‘We’re going to fan out. Then we’re going to let them have it.’

‘Sir – then what?’

‘We turn one way, pause. You fire at the enemy. Then, as we turn round, the private takes his shot.’

‘Sir!’

Sam took the barked ‘Sir’ to be army-ese for ‘Okay, I understand.’

Jud groaned. ‘It all sounds more like choreography than military strategy.’

‘I know… We perform a damn Busby Berkeley number with the cars, while the soldiers fire their guns. Then we dash back to the amphitheatre to reload.’

‘Oh, well, here’s where we find out if Carswell’s plan works.’

With the Bluebeards about three hundred yards away, moving in a great amorphous mob, the vehicles fanned out so that they were travelling side by side. Still, the speed was low, no more than ten miles an hour. Beneath the snow the turf was as hard as concrete.

‘I’m remembering this right?’ Sam asked, his voice rising as tension gripped hard. ‘At a distance of two hundred yards Lee sounds the bus’s horn.’

‘And we fire.’

‘Then we stop, allowing the bus to move forward, turn to the left so it can deliver a broadside.’

‘You’ve got it, Sam.’

Right on cue came the sound of the horn.

A long, booming note, like the war cry of some warrior tribe of long ago.

The Bluebeards were still too far away for Sam to actually see individual faces, but the leading edge of the mob painted a thick black line from the river to the rock face.

‘Here goes.’ Jud pressed the strips of tin to close the contacts.

Sam stared in fascination at the rocket pods, imagining electricity spurting along the wire to the light-bulb igniters. In his mind’s eye he could see the filaments glow white-hot against the wads of gun cotton.

With a gush of smoke and a kind of zwish-sh sound the first rocket left the tube to flash like a shooting star into the faces of the mob in front.

‘One away,’ Jud shouted.

Seven left.

He keyed another strip of tin.

Zwish-sh…

The rocket sped from the tube, trailing smoke and sparks.

Six left.

Jud hit the next switch.

Nothing.

He tried again.

‘It’s a dud,’ Sam said quickly. ‘Go on to the next.’

Then, one after another in quick succession, Jud fired the rockets.

Five, four, three…

Rocket number three, no good. Another dud.

One more away in a flash of red.

Then there was only one rocket left. It left the tube with a whoosh .

Sam shot a glance to his right. Rockets were streaming one after another from the ‘wings’ of the bus.

He couldn’t tell if there were any duds. From the 16 rocket tubes there seemed to be a never-ending stream of blazing rockets.

To his left he heard the brittle thump of the cannon firing from the top of the ice-cream van.

Now he allowed the bus to pull forward and then turn so it could fire an artillery broadside at the still-advancing Bluebeards. Soon a cloud of blue smoke hung over the snow. And two hundred yards away more smoke billowed as the shells exploded in the midst of the Bluebeards.

Sam couldn’t tell what effect the rockets and artillery fire were having on the barbarian horde. But it must have been pretty devastating.

He pictured them reeling back in surprise – some in agony – as hot metal buzzed through the air slicing faces, arms, puncturing chests, stomachs. Blood would be steaming there in the snow.

Payback time.

The next part of Carswell’s plan went smoothly. The bus did a U-turn so that it presented its left flank to the Bluebeards. The two artillery guns poured a dozen or more shells into the barbarians’ advancing line.

Then, as the bus headed back to the amphitheatre to reload, the cars formed a line as if waiting in turn at a car wash. The troops sitting in the backs of the cars took it in turn to pepper the barbarians with well-aimed rifle fire.

Sam swung open the car door and stood on the bonnet, the engine idling beneath his feet.

From the line of cars spurts of smoke blasted as rifles discharged. The gunfire sounded like a crackling inferno.

Sam watched the slaughter. He could even see the red-hot bullets moving like sparks across the snow and into the crowd of Bluebeards.

By now, at little over a hundred yards, he could see individual figures, not just a mob. And the flying red sparks that were the bullets disappeared into individual bodies. Men pitched face-forward into the snow, limbs twitching.

And one bullet might strike down more than just one man. Sometimes it passed through body after body.

The slaughter was immense.

Carswell’s men were cheering from the cars.

But then, as the firing stopped and the smoke cleared, Sam’s blood ran cold. Because he saw that they had, in fact, been wasting their time.

In the borderlands William, Nicole and a dozen or so others levered open the doors of cages built from timber. Inside, women and children whimpered in terror.

‘It’s all right,’ Nicole whispered. ‘We’re here to help.’

‘Here to help us all get killed,’ came Bullwitt’s voice from the slot in the side of William’s jacket.

‘Hush, dear fellow.’

‘No, I won’t hush. This will get us all killed. You’ve just gone and cut open a couple of Bluebeards’ throats, we’re making off with their prisoners – they won’t rest until they’ve hunted us up hill and down dale.’

‘Bullwitt, shh.’

‘I hope your legs are stronger than your wits, William, because you’re going to need them to carry you and me both out of here and far away.’

‘Bullwitt, not now… ah, there.’ With a snap the door gave way. He pulled it open, helped by the boy whose upper torso and head grew out from the cow.

Nicole looked into the gloomy cage at the Bluebeards’ prisoners where they cowered beneath blankets.

‘Don’t worry,’ Nicole whispered. ‘We’re here to help you.’

‘Go away,’ hissed a middle-aged woman dressed in nothing but a long white petticoat. ‘If they hear you they’ll come back and punish us, too.’

‘They’ve gone out on a raid. We can get you away to safety.’

‘Nicole?’ came a tentative voice from the back. ‘Is that you?’

A figure came out from the shadows at the back of the cage. ‘Nicole. It’s me, Sue. Sue Burton.’

‘Sue, thank God. Are you all right?’

Sue’s voice dropped. ‘We’re alive.’

‘Come on,’ Nicole said, as calmly as she could. ‘We’re going to get you out of here!’

For a moment she thought she’d hear Bullwitt’s bitter nasal voice adding, ‘And we’re all going to get ourselves killed.’

But he’d seen what state the women were in. This time he stayed quiet.

‘We were right all along,’ Sam said as they drove back to the amphitheatre car park. ‘It’s not going to work.’