John Lanchester - The Wall

People’s eyes adapt to the dark at different speeds. Mine are pretty good. I think it took five minutes to get close to the fight and by then I could make out a group of Defenders with their backs to me, using the concrete benches as cover, and a group of Others beyond them, doing the same thing but also making darts across the Wall to cross the ramparts and get down on the inner side. When people say their blood ran cold, what they’re describing is the feeling of being flooded with adrenaline; it’s a sensation which hits all over the body, chest to guts to limbs to heart to head. In that moment I was soaked with cold. Others had got over the Wall and were getting away. The worst thing imaginable was happening on our watch. Some of us were going to be put to sea.

When bullets come close, the noise they make as they go past changes from a zing to a crack. The bullets were starting to crack when Hifa and I got to the point where our people were fighting. Some of them were on the right of the Wall, behind a bench, and some were on the other side behind a concrete bulwark. Sarge and Yos were behind the bench. We took cover with them. Three of the new people in our squad were dead on the ramparts in front of us. Four other members of the shift were in cover behind the bulwark, taking turns to fire shots. The Others were about a hundred metres from us, in the direction of the barracks. There were two vehicles on the inner side of the Wall, people carriers. I assumed they were Defenders from nearby posts come to help us, but as Hifa and I arrived one of the cars drove away, fast. I realised that the Others had assistance; the rumours of support were true. Hence the blackout. Hence maybe the explosion in our barracks.

‘Where’s the rest of the company?’ I said to Sarge. He reached around the bench, fired off a few rounds, then turned to me.

‘The barracks were sabotaged. They’re dead or wounded. No help from there.’

‘How many have got away?’

‘Too many.’

‘What’s the plan?’

‘Kill as many as we can. Hifa, when the next car starts, hit it with a grenade. We’ll give cover. That way we’ll get as many of them as have got over. Two cars have gone already.’

Maybe eight per car. Sixteen Others. The worst breach anywhere in a long time.

For the moment it was a standoff. We couldn’t get closer to them without coming out of cover and being easy to shoot. They couldn’t get across the ramparts without being shot at.

‘Where’s the Captain?’

‘Dead. He must be or he’d be here.’

But Sarge was wrong about that. A few seconds after he spoke, I heard a scrabbling and scratching noise behind me and to the left, the side furthest away from the barracks and the Others. The Captain came running up the nearest set of steps on the inside of the Wall and dived into cover beside us. He was bleeding from a cut on his head.

‘Sir, we thought we’d lost you.’

‘I was caught at the far end when they attacked,’ he said, meaning he was past Hifa at the end of our section. I thought that I would have seen him go past but I took it on trust, since in a fight nothing much makes sense.

‘We’re going to wait here until the last of them have got over, then Hifa’s going to light up their vehicle,’ said Sarge. The Captain, panting, nodded.

‘Good plan,’ he said. He looked down for a moment. Then he stepped back and shot Sarge in the head, twice. He turned the gun towards the two Defenders who were standing nearest to the bench and shot them both with a burst, side to side. Yos dived to cover beside me. A hundred metres ahead of us I could see the Others all sprinting across the ramparts. They had been waiting for this moment. Hifa and I were on the far side of the bench, largely protected from the Captain, and that was what saved our lives, because he now turned to his left and started shooting at the Defenders who were under cover from the Others on the far side of the Wall, against the bulwark. I saw three of them go down and without thinking, without processing what I was doing – that training, when it kicks in, it really kicks in – I ran forwards and shoved my bayonet into his back. He staggered and fell and as he did I smashed him on the back of the head with the rifle. He went down and stayed down. Hifa stepped past the bench and took aim at the Others’ vehicle, which was accelerating hard on the inner peripheral road. Her first grenade missed, short, but the second one didn’t. The car exploded and swerved off the road in flames. It was burning hard. No one would survive that.

I knelt down beside the Captain. Yos came over and joined me. We looked at each other but didn’t speak. The Captain was unconscious and bleeding heavily. Maybe he’d survive, maybe not. I got up and went over to Sarge. He had two bullet holes in the front of his face and the back of his head had gone. The two new people against the bench were both multiply wounded and were bleeding out. I went over to the Defenders next to the ramparts but as I was heading over I could hear engines and see lorries coming from both directions, from the next watchtowers to the east and to the west, and I knew that it was over. This part of it was over.

We were arrested. Nothing personal: when Others get over the Wall, that’s what happens next. The Defenders from the neighbouring unit were the ones who had to execute the order, and they didn’t seem happy about it, but the rules are what they are. We weren’t handcuffed or anything, but the surviving members of our unit, all seven of us, were put in a lorry and driven south for about four hours, and then locked up in a barracks room which was like a normal barracks room except instead of small high windows there were no windows at all, the doors couldn’t be opened from the inside, and we had to ask permission to go to the toilet. Yos wasn’t able to whittle, because he wasn’t allowed a knife, so he fidgeted non-stop.

We spent a month in that room. I got to know it so well I could recognise every crack in the ceiling. When it rained heavily there were damp patches and I got to recognise them too, to watch the changing shapes they made as the water seeped in: map of small island, map of big island, map of continent; then back the other way when the rain stopped, shrinking, drying, gone. A parlour-game version of the Change. The barracks room was standard, built to house thirty people, and there were only seven of us. It was me and Hifa and Hughes and Yos and three new Defenders who I barely knew. We spent most of our time talking about what had happened in the attack and trying to work it out. I imagine we were being listened to, but we didn’t really care. It’s not like we were expecting a reprieve. We just wanted to try and make sense of it.

What was obvious was that the Captain had been working with the Others. They must have had other help too – lots of it. The talk of a network of supporters was true. Someone had cut the power, someone had helped dynamite the barracks, someone had arranged the vehicles. Maybe somewhere else, somebody was getting them chipped, hacking into databases, faking IDs. It was hard to imagine how anybody could do that to us; but the truth was plain. While we Defenders were standing on the Wall, some of the people we were protecting were working to let Others over the Wall. It was like standing in front of a white-on-white painting and hearing the person next to you say that it was black-on-black. That’s the main thing we talked about, the sense of betrayal we all felt. Hifa kept telling me to let it go, that people just did what they did and there was no explaining it, but I couldn’t. I wanted to think about it, to try to understand it, but, at the same time, couldn’t bear to. Betrayal by the Captain, betrayal by whoever it was that the Captain had been working with to help the Others. I had never really thought about betrayal before; I knew the word but not the meaning. Now I knew. Betrayal was like tasting a liquid, the bitterest thing you’ve ever put in your mouth, and holding the taste just long enough to fully understand how repulsive it is, and then forcing yourself to drain the cup to the dregs.