Kevin Sullivan - The Longest Winter

There was a smell in the shelter, something rotten. Zlatko looked down at the ground, through the steel railings on the stairs. He saw roaches scuttling among refuse and along the walls.

Upstairs he kept the suitcase on his shoulder and walked out into the open. Terry walked beside him with Mrs Pejanović and the two soldiers moving ahead of them carrying Miro in his cot.

The soldiers began to run; Zlatko followed, the suitcase balanced on his shoulder. There was a patch of ground where the snow had been cleared away and the surface was less slippery. He kept to that part of the pavement as he ran.

The way the soldiers were holding the cot made it sway violently. Terry watched the drip, thinking the tube might become detached. She and Mrs Pejanović hurried after the soldiers into the arcade.

They turned and watched Zlatko as he put the suitcase on the ground and tried to drag it by the handle.

‘Come on!’ one of the soldiers shouted at him. ‘Don’t stop!’

There was a crash. A tank round exploded between Zlatko and the arcade. He staggered back and nearly fell over the case. He looked down at the ground and stood still for a moment. The soldier who had shouted at him ran out and grabbed the case and they came back together. Inside the arcade, Zlatko leaned against the wall and breathed deeply.

The soldier with the helmet took charge. He lifted the case and told Zlatko to take the other end of the cot. Mrs Pejanović helped lift one side of the cot and Terry walked on the other side, holding the drip in place. Like that they moved out of the arcade. They moved more efficiently, but they had gone only a few yards when there was another explosion. They retreated to the cover of the arcade doorway.

Zlatko peeped out. ‘I think they can see us,’ he said.

The attackers were in the apartments forty yards to their left. There was no cover between the arcade and the command centre. The soldier with the helmet lifted the suitcase in both hands and ran out into the street. He didn’t keep to the side of the building but ran, zigzagging, down the middle of the street and then into the doorway of the command centre. There was another explosion before he made it to the door. He disappeared behind black smoke.

‘Take Miro out of the cot,’ Terry said.

She detached the drip from the cot frame and Mrs Pejanović lifted her son out. As she did this she fumbled with the tube leading from the drip and Miro began to cry.

Terry was at that moment quite sure about what she must do.

She hadn’t come to this place to bring medicine. She hadn’t come to ease Miro’s entry into Britain. She had come to carry him across this street. His mother couldn’t do it. She would have crawled through fire for him, but now Mrs Pejanović wasn’t capable.

Terry took Miro, pressed the tube against his side and held onto the plastic hook of the drip bag. Mrs Pejanović was too confused to protest. Zlatko took Mrs Pejanović’s arm, and the soldier lifted up the cot and they ran from the shelter of the arcade out into the middle of the street.

Miro put his arms around Terry. His fingers were hot. She felt each of his fingertips on the back of her neck. His body was warm and he was very light. She knew it was dangerous to bring him out in this cold. She looked down and saw his thick black hair. There was snow all across the street and on the abandoned car halfway between the arcade and the command centre. The windows of the apartments were smashed. Bits of glass sprouted from dark squares making strange patterns, reflecting snow, reflecting the running figures.

And it was as though time slowed. Terry felt the boy’s arms around her and it was as though the two of them were floating together out across a glittering stream, as though in these few frantic moments they were contemplating the essence of what it is to live. There is, she thought, no other purpose in life than to love. Who are the brave but those who struggle to love even when they don’t know how, those who are clumsy and awkward and uncertain, those who misread relationships? All she knew now was that she wouldn’t give up. She hadn’t given up and she wouldn’t give up. There is no purpose but to love, to show kindness. She understood better now. She had tried and she had failed, but she hadn’t given up and she wasn’t ever going to.

She ran closer to the building on the command-centre side of the street. She thought the ground would be more even there.

She could hear nothing. She looked down at Miro, held him tight. The ground beneath her became uneven and she realised that she’d strayed off the concrete and onto a grass verge thick with snow. There were pieces of steel pushing up and a metal bracket protruding from the side of the building. She grabbed hold of the bracket to steady herself, and felt a sharp pain as the metal cut into her hand like a knife. She saw the path again and in two steps she had moved from the rough ground onto the smooth. From there she ran with greater confidence.

Brad woke, his head drenched in a dull pain. Someone was banging on the door. He rolled out of bed and stood up unsteadily.

Outside his room, Anna cursed softly under her breath. Either he was too hungover to wake up and open the door, or he had left for Otes without her. She started to think he might have gone without her.

If she couldn’t get into his room she couldn’t transmit what Sergeant Matthews had just told her about the airlift being shut down, and if Brad had taken the Land Rover she would be stuck in the city, unable to get into Otes and cover Terry’s evacuation of the little boy and his mother.

At last, he opened the door. It was freezing but he was only wearing shorts and a T-shirt. He walked back inside and she followed. He searched in his bag and found some Alka-Seltzer, then he went into the bathroom and closed the door.

He heard her switch on the computer terminal and start typing. The Alka-Seltzer began to fizz, drowning out the faint tap of Anna’s fingers on the keyboard. The transmission light was blinking when he came back into the room.

‘What did you send?’ As he asked her this he felt slightly dizzy and sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘You look terrible,’ she said, with more sympathy than disapproval.

He located his shirt beneath one of the bed covers and put it on. Then he stood up and put on his trousers and socks and shoes.

She waited for him to ask her again, but he didn’t. He found his sweater, then his flak jacket and coat. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

‘You’re not fit to drive.’

‘I’ve got the keys!’

Fifteen minutes later they were driving across thick frozen snow past the factory complex. When the small-arms fire started it came from close on their right, across an expanse of undulating snow punctuated by black clumps where steel and wood broke through. Brad was hungry and he would have given anything for a glass of cold fizzy water.

Anna trusted the Land Rover’s armour plating but she was afraid Brad would drive them into a ditch.

Tank rounds began exploding. There were only one or two seconds between rounds, and the explosions were close to the road.

‘Fuck,’ Brad said.

He began to steer more actively, as if that would somehow reduce their chances of being hit. He was going at twenty miles an hour. He desperately wanted to go faster, but the road was winding and the potholes were vicious.

They drove through the tank fire for less than sixty seconds, but it seemed to both of them as though they were suspended there, dangling right before the frontline. On the final entry into Otes there was a barrage of rifle shots. Bullets whizzed in front of the windscreen. They heard repeated cracks, like gravel or pebbles thrown violently at the rear section of the vehicle. Bullets at the end of their trajectory hit the van’s steel side. Then two bullets smashed into the window beside Brad with full force. A small area of armoured glass in the corner cracked into an opaque mesh.