Limbo 56 - Mike Morris (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud TXT) 📗

when Sadie refused to accept their money, and then they went away and came back with stuff.” Arthur looked questioningly at him. “Chocolate and beef jerky,” the man said. “Of course, we figured that they wouldn’t taste like anything, but some of us bought some. Then they got the idea of bringing in tools, and bags, and belts, that sort of thing. Good stuff, military strength”

“Discipline is breaking down,” Arthur muttered. “What will they do next?”

“This lot will probably join the others in the other pubs,” the man at the bar told him.

“Damn,” why didn’t I think of that,” Arthur cried. He dashed into the street.

The man at the bar looked mildly surprised. “Give me another beer Sadie,” he said.

She looked at him and tried out a simpering smile. “You was a real gentleman, coming to my rescue like that,” she said, blinking.

“Don’t push your luck, Sadie,” he told her turning away.

Arthur pedaled frantically through narrow rainy streets. The Limbo Arms, when he got there was quiet. No soldiers had been seen there. The Deuragon on the other hand, erupted in violence as he arrived. Soldiers and citizens spilled from the doors waving bottles and sticks as they burst, cursing, out into the street. He walked into the bar where one or two Citizens were still thoughtfully swigging their beer, helping themselves liberally from untouched glasses left by the fighters. “Out,” he told them, sweeping them grumbling into the rain. “Lock up, and keep the place locked until I tell you different,” he said to the barmaid.

The Deuragon and the Red Cow had seen fighting; the barmaids were tidying up. Outside battered soldiers and citizens were knitting themselves together again. He left them to it and pedaled on towards the Pig. The place was wrecked. Tables and chairs lay smashed in the street, sometimes wrapped around a battered, but stirring corpse. It appeared that most of the furniture had exited through the pub windows, and he crunched through broken glass towards the bar. He heard a thump as he walked in and discovered the barmaid, bodiceless, lying on her back across the doorway. He stepped over her into the wreckage and took stock.

“Oh, it’s just you, Governor.” He jumped. The ugly barmaid was peering over his shoulder, pressing her naked breasts into his back.

“Dammit, Olga,” he told her. “Get dressed and start cleaning up.”

After leaving her detailed instructions, he pedaled back to the foundry. He marched up to Shadrach who was single-handedly tossing moulds on to the belt as if they were empty beer bottles. "You have to come with me," he said grimly. "I need you."

The path to the field was becoming increasingly familiar. As they suspected, the army encampment after several days of rain was a sea of mud. A few soldiers in shirtsleeves played bad-tempered soccer and the sentry they spoke to was bored and distracted. They walked over to where General Scott, as spruce as ever in his clean and pressed uniform stood outside his tent watching over the camp. Arthur marched up and began describing the events of the previous night. The General listened politely, occasionally brushing a trickle of blood from his forehead when it leaked from his wound. He was, he said, sorry that a few of his men had shown a lack of discipline. The General began to stroll through the camp, and Arthur and Shadrach were forced to follow. Most of the men straightened up and saluted tiredly as he passed among them. “Good man,” he said once to a man hopping on one leg. “Exercise, keep fit.”

Arthur was tempted to take hold of the General and shake him. They kept passing terribly wounded soldiers, men with one arm, one leg, half a face, hopping, jumping and occasionally crawling, and Arthur realized that the officer remained completely unmoved by wounds he refused to see.

“When will your men be redeployed to the battlefield,” Shadrach asked, destroying Arthur’s train of thought.

“We’re awaiting orders,” General Scott said evenly. “I’m told that there’s a lull in this theatre of the war, and my men are enjoying a well-earned break for R and R. These men,” he said, opening his arms to encompass the entire camp of hopping, crawling and staggering soldiers, “need to be healthy and rested prior to fighting the enemy again.” He turned abruptly to Shadrach, “Don’t you think so, sir?” He asked, almost saluting. The General was obviously becoming confused as to who or what the big man was.

Arthur and Shadrach exchanged glances. “Do you recognize me?” Shadrach asked. “I was at Isandlwana, almost forty years ago.” General Scott stared at him perplexedly. “But I don’t understand,” he stuttered.

“Yes, you do,” Shadrach shot back. He turned to Arthur “Give me an hour,” he said. “I have to do something.”

With Shadrach gone, the General calmed down a little. Questions of his mortality, and that of his army seemed to recede somewhat. They were in his tent, and his imaginary world was firmly in place when Shadrach returned, accompanied by General Scott’s flustered aide. He was no longer Shadrach Jones, the formidable ironworker. He was clean and shaven and his hair was a military brush. His moustache was neatly trimmed, and his bright field uniform was as neat and clean as that of the General. The decoration patches he wore were impressive. Shadrach saluted and the tension that had held General Scott together seemed to leak away, and he returned the salute and swayed slightly. “My God, it is you,” he said, his eyes fully focused for the first time. He nodded. “Colonel Jones, and you haven’t aged in forty years.” He sighed. “You were killed not long after that attack.”

“Yes,” Shadrach sighed. “I sent a lot of men to their deaths, and I was killed before I could make amends.” He paced the small tent. “Do you remember,” he said to the General, “we sat there, under the blistering sun with that great rock rising up out of the scrub, and I passed on my orders, only they weren’t my orders, they came from that pathological old killer, General Cross. You were a young subaltern, and you were the only one of my officers that questioned me. You risked your career for the safety of your men, something I should have done.” Shadrach gestured, taking in the three of them in the small tent, the camp, the whole of Limbo. “We’re all dead,” he said. “I’m glad you lived to make a success of your career, General, I’ve followed it whenever I could. You have a reputation for caring for your men.” He looked quizzically at the General. “Don’t lose that now.” Shadrach shook his head. “These men will follow you anywhere, but look at them. They know, deep down, that they should be at rest. Most of them don’t belong in a place like this. You have to lead them back, General. Back through the tunnel to whatever bloody battlefield, they came from. They have to lay down their arms and their bodies and achieve the peace that they deserve.” He paused. “Arthur, can you leave us alone for a few minutes, I have something to discuss with the General.”

Shadrach came out a little later. “I’m going back,” he said, “through the tunnel. Maybe I can help with some of these soldiers, maybe I can give some comfort and support to the General.” He looked at Arthur. “And, of course I can make sure they get out and never come back.”

“I’ll get you a pass, but you could be going straight to Hell,” Arthur told him. “The Council is very strict about stuff like that, and I don’t have any influence with them.”

Shadrach shrugged. “I know. Maybe that’s what I deserve. If you get a chance, though, put in a good word for me.”

“I can’t make you change your mind.” It was more of a statement than a question, and Shadrach didn’t answer.

After a few moments he said. “Can you give me a little more time here? I want to find that corporal, the man at the guard shack who wasn’t quite dead.” I want to make sure that, if there is any chance at all he can come out of this alive.”

“Of course,” Arthur told him. He watched as Shadrach wandered towards some tents, his red uniform incongruous among the khaki drab of the WWI soldiers. “I don’t know where I’m going to get anyone to replace you,” he muttered as he turned to leave.

It took the army just twenty-four hours to make ready for the exodus. The soldiers, relieved of their burden of life after death were almost cheerful as most of the natives gathered to watch them leave. General Scott had disarmed his brigade, telling his troops the truth about their situation and informing them that they were going home not to fight but to die decently. Piled in the center of the field was a small mountain of weapons, rifles, machine guns, grenades. By order of the Governor, this ordnance had been rendered useless. Arthur did not intend to allow his depressed citizens to run around with lethal weapons. The metal and some of the parts would however come in useful at the foundry.

Shadrach had been issued a colonel’s field uniform, clothing, much more practical, he informed Arthur, than the standard red and blue army uniform of the Zulu wars. He had located the young corporal who informed the colonel that there was a certain young woman in Sheffield who was currently sorely worried about her missing soldier. “I’m going to make sure that, if it’s humanly possible, he makes it home,” Shadrach told Arthur as they shook hands.

Arthur, waiting for the soldiers to march out, suddenly thought of Gladys, and seconds later, guiltily, of his wife and children. Just maybe, Shadrach could discover what had happened to them forty years ago and somehow get word back to Limbo. He noticed Shadrach slip unobtrusively into a tent and walked quickly over. Pushing open the tent flap, he ducked in. “Shadrach,” he began, and stopped in dismay. The large colonel had stripped to the waist. A couple of knives and an ammunition belt were strapped across the man’s waist, and he was contemplating three pistols that lay on a small table.

“You were all supposed to be unarmed,” Arthur said, angry with Shadrach for the first time. “You’re going to compromise this whole operation, not to mention putting yourself on a direct course to Hell.” He stood in front of the big man. “I’m not letting you go out there with those weapons.”

“You don’t understand,” Shadrach told him. “Don’t try to stop me. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“What are you going to do, shoot me,” Arthur sneered. “I won’t die, and the General will hear the shots and come running.”

“The General knows,” Shadrach said tiredly. “We talked it over. We go through the tunnel, and then Corporal Williams and I will go our own way. The rest of them will find their final battlefield and die, but you can’t expect us to go wandering about unarmed in the middle of a war.”

“Oh.” Arthur thought about it. “But you don’t need those knives and all that ammunition.” He paused. “You’re undead anyway; no-one can touch you, or the corporal - until he finds his body.”

Shadrach was looking at him intently. Finally, he let out a sigh. “The General wanted to come with us, but I persuaded him that without a leader his brigade might wander the battlefields forever.” He held up his hand. “Alright,