'Andre,' he said, 'it's Andre - he threw the grenade.' And he knelt
beside him.
Curled naked upon the concrete floor, Andre was alive but dying as the
haemorrhage within him leaked his life away. His mind was alive and he
heard the crump, crump of Bruce's grenades, then the gunfire in the
street, and the sound of running men. The shouts in the night and then
the guns very close, they were in the room in which he lay, He opened
his eyes. There were men at each of the windows, crouched below the
sills, and the room was thick with cordite fumes and the clamour of the
guns as they fired out into the night.
Andre was cold, the coldness was all through him. Even his hands drawn
up against his chest were cold and heavy.
His stomach only was warm, warm and immensely bloated.
It was an effort to think, for his mind also was cold and the noise of
the guns confused him.
He watched the men at the windows with a detached disinterest, and
slowly his body lost its weight. He seemed to float clear of the floor
and look down upon the room from the roof. His eyelids sagged and he
dragged them up again, and struggled down towards his own body.
There was suddenly a rushing sound in the room and plaster sprayed from
the wall above Andre's head, filling the air with pale floating dust.
One of the men at the windows fell backwards, his weapon ringing loudly
on the floor as it dropped from his hands; he flopped over twice and lay
still, face down within arm's length of Andre.
Ponderously Andres mind analysed the sights his eyes were
recording. Someone was firing on the building from outside. The man
beside him was dead and from his head wound the blood spread slowly
across the floor towards him.
Andre closed his eyes again, he was very tired and very cold.
There was a lull in the sound of gunfire, one of those freak silences in
the midst of battle. And in the lull Andre heard a voice far off,
shouting. He could not hear the words but he recognized the voice and
his eyelids flew open. There was an excitement in him, a new force, for
it was Wally's voice he had heard.
He moved slightly, clenching his hands and his brain started to sing.
Wally has come back for me - he has come to save me. He rolled his head
slowly, painfully, and the blood gurgled in his stomach.
I must help him, I must not let him endanger himself these men are
trying to kill him. I must stop them. I mustn't let them kill Wally.
And then he saw the grenades hanging on the belt of the man that lay
beside him. He fastened his eyes on the round polished metal bulbs and
he began to pray silently.
'Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.' He moved again,
straightening his body.
'Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus.' His hand crept out into the pool of blood, and the sound of the
guns filled his head so he could not hear himself pray.
Walking on its fingers, his hand crawled through the blood as slowly as
a fly through a saucer of treacle.
'Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. Pray for me now,
