Connie Willis - All Clear

He needn’t have panicked. Next to one arrow it read, “Berlin” and next to the other, “Good Old USA.”

He almost wished the colonel’d seen it, but when he glanced back, his eyes were closed again.

Ernest drove on another mile and then pulled the car to a jolting stop opposite an aeroplane-filled field. “I don’t think this is the right road,” he said. “We passed these planes before.”

“No, these are Hurricanes,” Cess said. “The ones before were Tempests.”

“No, they weren’t. I think we should have turned left at that last crossroads.” When Cess still didn’t catch on, he said, “We’re lost.”

“Oh,” Cess said, the light dawning. “No, this is the right road.” He opened the map out. “Look, here’s where we are. We came through Newchurch, and Hawkinge’s that way.”

“Here, let me see the map,” Ernest said, snatching it away from him and holding it so the colonel could see it. “Where did you say we are?”

“Here, just north of Newchurch,” Cess said, pointing. “See, here’s Gravesend, where we picked the colonel up. We came across to Beckley and then took the Oxney Road.”

Ernest sneaked a glance in the mirror. The colonel was looking intently at the map as Cess traced their route.

“And this is the road we’re on now. It takes us through Dover, and then we take the Old Kent Road to London.”

“You’re right,” Ernest said. He started the car and yanked on the gear stick. The gears ground. He jiggled the knob back and forth, trying to get it to shift, and it finally slid into reverse. He backed the car out onto the road and went on, past more camps and storage dumps and so many airfields he lost count, full of P-51s and DC-3s parked wingtip to wingtip.

“Good Lord, will you look at all this?” Cess said, sounding awed, and Ernest wasn’t sure that that was just for the colonel’s benefit. He’d known the D-Day invasion had been a massive project, but the sheer magnitude of the undertaking was impossible to get one’s mind around—thousands upon thousands of planes, tanks, and trucks, and tons of equipment.

As they drove, the colonel seemed to grow more and more ashen and to sink into himself, deflating like one of their dummy tanks.

He knows there’s no way they can win against this, Ernest thought. He wondered if that was part of the plan, if the purpose of this trip was not only to fool von Sprecht into believing they were invading at Calais, but also to show him the overwhelming might of the Allied invasion force and convince him of the hopelessness of the Germans’ resistance. If so, the plan was succeeding. He looked more defeated with every passing mile.

But he wasn’t the only one being affected by the sprawling tent cities, the squads and companies and battalions drilling in the fields and crammed into the trucks that passed them. I’ll never be able to find Atherton among all these camps and all these men, Ernest thought. Atherton could be anywhere, in any one of the fifty fields they’d passed or the hundreds of transit camps. There was no way Ernest could find him in the next five weeks—correction, three weeks—even if he dumped Cess and the colonel out of the car right now and started asking for Atherton at every Army HQ from now straight through to the fifth of June.

“A chap I met said there are a million men in this corner of England,” Cess said. “Do you think that could be right?”

No, Ernest thought bitterly, it’s two million.

“I mean, one would think Kent would sink under the weight. Perhaps that’s what the barrage balloons are for,” Cess said, pointing to hundreds of silver specks in the sky ahead. “To hold England up.” He grinned. “We should be coming to Dover soon,” he added, consulting the map.

Which meant Portsmouth. That meant they were on schedule, in spite of their late start. At least something was going right. At this rate they should be in London by three and he might still be able to deliver his articles to Mr. Jeppers before the Call’s deadline.

He’d spoken too soon. Half a mile on, they ran into a convoy of very slow trucks. They were behind a canvas-covered four-by-four that he couldn’t see around at all, and it was slowing down till it was scarcely crawling. “Can you see what’s causing the problem?” Ernest asked Cess.

“No,” Cess said, rolling down his window and leaning out. “We’re coming into a village. Burmarsh, I think.” The behemoth ahead slowed to a stop between a church and a pub, with no room to squeeze past on either side.

Cess leaned out again and then got out and walked past the truck to see. “It looks rather bad,” he reported, getting back in the car. “There are vehicles and tanks and artillery as far as one can see, and it doesn’t look as though they’ll move any time soon. Some of them are sitting on the bonnets of their lorries, drinking tea and eating sandwiches.”

“We’ll have to go back the way we came,” Ernest said. Cess nodded and reached for the map. Ernest put in the clutch and tried to shift it into reverse. It ground and then jammed.

A movement from in front of the car made him glance up. An American MP was walking toward them.

Jesus. He was bound to ask them where they were going. Ernest jiggled the gear stick, trying to work it back into gear, but it wouldn’t budge. “Cess,” Ernest said, glancing quickly in the mirror. Hopefully the colonel had fallen asleep again. No, he was awake and watching interestedly.

“Cess, roll up your window before the colonel catches a chill,” Ernest said. “Cess!”

“Hmm?” Cess said from behind the map.

The MP was nearly even with the car. Ernest yanked on the gear stick, trying to force it into gear, any gear. “Roll up the goddamned window. Cess!”

“What?” Cess said, and finally looked up, but too late. The MP was even with the window. Cess shot Ernest a look of panic. “There’s a soldier—”

“I see him,” Ernest said grimly and gave the gear stick one last desperate yank. It slid into reverse, and he let out the clutch. And killed the motor.

The MP leaned in. “You can’t get through this way, sir. The road ahead’s full of troops and equipment. You’ll have to go back the way you came.”

The MP leaned in. “You can’t get through this way, sir. The road ahead’s full of troops and equipment. You’ll have to go back the way you came.”

“Right,” Ernest said, restarting the car. “Sorry.”

“Where were you trying to go, sir?”

Don’t say Portsmouth, Ernest ordered Cess silently. Or Dover. “Bunbury,” Cess said.

“We’ll be out of your way in a moment, Officer,” Ernest said, and put the car in gear. He laid his arm on the back of the seat and looked back to see a half-track pull up behind them.

“Bunbury, sir?” the MP repeated. “Do you mean Banbury?”

Which was close to Bletchley Park. Ernest leaned across Cess. “We’re blocked in, I’m afraid. Can you ask the vehicle behind us to move?”

The MP nodded, but the half-track’s driver had already taken matters into his own hands and pulled up beside them on the driver’s side, with inches to spare.

Good, Ernest thought, and started to back. In time to see a Jeep driven by a Wren pull up behind the two of them.

“Bunbury’s near Bracknell,” Cess was saying to the MP, who’d leaned in the window again. “West of Upper Tensing.”

“Upper Tensing? Is that near P—”

“It’s near Lower Tensing,” Cess said desperately.

Disaster was seconds away. Ernest had to somehow get the MP away from the car and out of earshot so he could explain their mission. He snatched up their papers and opened his car door, but there were only inches between it and the half-track, and while he was in the process of squeezing out and making it to the other side, the MP would say something fatal, and he wouldn’t be there to stop it.