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

they waited calmly for a vehicle traveling to Verdun. A few minutes earlier, an army lorry full of fresh troops had stopped to give them the news that reinforcements were moving up to strengthen the crumbling British lines. “Maybe I’ll see you later at the front,” Shadrach called and a friendly sergeant threw them a pack of Gitanes.

Corporal Williams looked critically at the newly minted captain. “Uniform looks a bit peculiar, sir” he commented.

“That’s because it took me all of ten minutes to fix up,” Shadrach said. “I don’t think we’ll have any problems. “We’re in the middle of a war in the middle of nowhere, and no-one is going to inspect us too closely.” They continued to smoke the strong cigarettes. “They taste much better out here,” Shadrach said.

They saw a cloud of dust in the distance, watching as it grew larger in the still air. Metal glinted in the sunlight, the features of a long, battered convoy labouring down the narrow road. They watched as the old trucks, mud-spattered, some without glass coughed their winding way closer, crawling past, crammed with dull-eyed soldiers, many of them bandaged. The final truck stopped to let them on, after Shadrach showed his forged papers. A truck full of dead-tired soldiers swayed sleeping on their feet, led by a young lieutenant who looked as though he had long ago moved past sleep into a kind of wired attention, ready to explode at the slightest touch.

They tried to ignore him but he began to talk about the front in jerky phrases. He spoke of men, dying by hundreds in the withering machine-gun file, officers, ordering men to certain death, then, suicidally, jumping from the trenches, and attacking the wire, the screams of the dying, the smell of the dead, the implacable hail of rifle and mortar fire.

“Why do you keep attacking?” Shadrach asked. “When your officers know it’s suicide.”

“Yes, they know,” the lieutenant replied. He looked avidly at the Gitanes, and Shadrach shucked one out of the pack for him. “They know it’s suicide, the General knows it and the colonels know it and the majors and the captains, the sergeants and the corporals and the men, most of all the men, they all know it’s suicide.” The lieutenant’s hands were shaking and he puffed hungrily at the cigarette. The General, he sits in his chateau in Verdun, ordering his men to death. He sits there sipping champagne, playing golf and night after night we jump out of the trenches and run for the wire and get cut to pieces, and when my colonel refused to attack, the General sent for him, and charged him with cowardice and desertion and had him shot.” The lieutenant was shouting now, shaking uncontrollably. “I’m going to kill the bastard,” he said.

A burly sergeant wearily grabbed the lieutenant and shook him. “Don’t say these things, sir, especially not in front of strangers. He’s been through hell, he doesn’t know what he’s saying,” he said, turning to Shadrach. “He’s a good officer.”

“Surely General Cross wouldn’t shoot good officers,” Shadrach said.

The sergeant stiffened. “You know General Cross?” he asked.

“I have orders to report to him,” Shadrach said carefully.

“Talk to the General,” the sergeant said harshly. “Tell him what it’s like in the trenches. You do know what it’s like in the trenches?” he asked suspiciously, and for a moment the two big men glared at each other, until the Sergeant looked away. “Reckon you do, sir” he said.

“The lieutenant need not worry about me,” Shadrach promised.

They traveled in silence after that, the young lieutenant nursing his own thoughts, the sergeant keeping a watchful eye on Shadrach. As they approached the city, the jolting of the ramshackle truck grew less violent. There were fewer potholes and the road was surfaced after a fashion. The city had seen its share of war but had been quiet for a while. The truck finally shuddered to a stop on a pleasant shady street of large houses set well back from the noise of the road. Shadrach and the corporal jumped out, followed by the young lieutenant and his sergeant, and the truck rumbled away with its cargo of dispirited soldiers They stood at the end of a driveway, looking at an avenue of trees, behind which was a mansion with a couple of bored privates tending some flower beds.

“Shouldn’t we be growing vegetables?” Shadrach murmured.

They approached a couple of tough-looking guards and Shadrach presented his orders. Curtly, the largest guard waved him through the iron gates, and Corporal Williams slipped through the gate behind him. They waited for the sergeant and the lieutenant. The guards took their time over the grubby documents that the lieutenant presented, and they searched both soldiers, confiscating the lieutenant’s sidearm. “What are you waiting for,” the guard snapped at Shadrach.

“We came down here with them,” Shadrach said calmly.

Inside the building, soldiers moved around, rifles at the ready, some carrying documents. This time a guard subjected them all to a search, and Shadrach was disarmed. When he started to protest one of the soldiers pointed his gun menacingly. “Orders of the officer in charge,” he snapped. They were shown into a waiting room with bars in the windows and large double doors that obviously led to the General’s quarters. They sat down and waited for a long time.

“What’s going on here,” Corporal Williams whispered. “I’ve served in a couple of headquarters locations, but they were nothing like this.”

“I’ll bet that this command has been cut off from the rest of the army for months,” Shadrach murmured. “Once, when I was stationed in North Africa, I had to negotiate with one of the local warlords. He was out on his own, an absolute ruler, subject to no laws other than the ones he made, an arbiter of life and death. I saw him personally shoot a man because he didn’t like the way that man looked at him.” Shadrach paused. “I feel the same way now as I did then, as if anything can happen.”

The sergeant was obviously sharper of hearing than Shadrach had thought. “This is an army post, sir,” he said. “I don’t care who is running it, they have to follow army rules.”

Shadrach shook his head. “You don’t know General Cross like I do,” he said. I’ll warrant he’s been safely holed up here for quite a while.” The sergeant nodded in agreement. “Those men, those guards,” Shadrach continued, “Do they look as if they’ve ever been at the front lines.” The sergeant shook his head dubiously. “They are the General’s praetorian guard, men who will do anything he tells them to do. The alternative for them is being sent to the front and almost certain death.” The sergeant opened his mouth and closed it again. “I know the General,” Shadrach repeated.

As if on cue, an extraordinary apparition appeared at the double doors facing them. An enormously fat man stood framed in the doorway. He was obviously a British officer, but he had modified his uniform out of all recognition. He wore a Scottish tam-o-shanter on his head, topped by an ostrich plume. A General’s tunic, devoid of stars and covered with unlikely medals strained across his bulging belly. His puttees were jet-black, and his high riding boots gleamed brightly. Lieutenant’s bars shone incongruously on his epaulettes. In his right hand, he held a deadly officers pistol

“We heard what you said,” he chanted in a high-pitched voice. “We hear everything,” and with a flourish he withdrew his left hand from behind his back, and waved a large horn at them.

‘My God, he’s completely insane,’ Shadrach thought, and the young lieutenant who had sat quietly for hours in his battle-stained uniform stood up abruptly. “Where’s General Cross,” he said, walking towards the apparition, oblivious to the pistol and the horn and the insane dress of the fat man. The sergeant was fast, but Shadrach was faster, throwing himself in front of the lieutenant in time to stop the second bullet. He felt it hit him solidly in the chest, and the fat man fired three more shots into him before Shadrach could reach him and dispatch him with one massive blow. Then he felt the pain and slid to the floor.

He never lost consciousness, and when he looked down at the four neat holes in his chest, they were already healing. The sergeant was close by, gaping at him, and Corporal Williams was expertly twisting a tourniquet on the young lieutenant’s arm. “I was a medical orderly,” the corporal said to no-one in particular, “but General Scott’s brigade had no use for medics.”

Shadrach hauled himself to his feet and took a couple of deep breaths. “My regiment has been trying out some bullet-proof clothing,” he said unconvincingly. “Like a suit of armour, only lighter.” The sergeant appeared to be trying to wake himself up. “Sergeant,” Shadrach said sharply. “We need to find out what’s happened to the General, and who this clown is.”

“I know who he as,” the sergeant said. “He’s changed since I last saw him, but he’s Lieutenant Roker, the General’s aide; also his nephew.” He glanced nervously at Shadrach.

“Help me get him on his feet,” Shadrach said, “and we’ll find out where the General is.”

They hauled Lieutenant Roker to a chair and secured his arms and legs. The fat man groaned and the sergeant slapped him hard across the face. “Just to wake him up, sir,” he said to Shadrach.

“Roker,” Shadrach said clearly. “Wake up.” He covered the man’s mouth and nose until Roker began to struggle for air. “Now that I have your attention,” he said. “We need you to explain what in Hell is going on here.”

The fat man moaned. “I killed you,” he said.

“Yes, you did,” Shadrach answered. “You killed me and I’ve come back to take you to Hell.” The fat man looked at him, terror in his eyes. “What happened to the General,” Shadrach said carefully. “General Cross, your uncle.”

“I, I didn’t do it,” Roker said trembling. “You can’t take me to Hell. I didn’t do anything.”

Shadrach sighed. “You can’t get away from me,” he said. “Your bones will burn forever in Hell; the demons will dismember you, and the pieces of your body will crawl together, and then you will be thrown into the burning, choking furnace again – and this will go on for ever. Roker moaned, and pulled at his bonds. “I don’t have much time,” Shadrach said. “If you don’t answer, the devils will come and take you. Tell us now, where the General is, and what happened to him.”

“Will I be saved?” Roker asked. “Will I go to Heaven,” he said pathetically.

“How many men have you sent to their death,” Shadrach thundered, and the fat man moaned. “If you tell me how to find the General; what happened, I can save you – for Limbo, that is. But you must tell me now.”

“He went mad,” Roker said. “He couldn’t sleep; he’d have nightmares and wake up screaming. He kept raving about how many men he had killed.” Roker choked; something between a laugh and a sob. “He wanted to send me to the front to save ‘his men’. Can you imagine?” The fat man looked pleadingly at Shadrach. “Can you imagine that? He tried to stop me sending the men up to the front.” Roker looked around at them. I had to send them. We have to win the war. Of course, by then he was completely mad and I was running the show.