Suddenly they weren't dogtrotting any more, they were running as though their lives depended on their legs again.
With his new-found detachment, Butler realised as he ran that they were running away from nothing.
Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage
The Typhoons were attacking the village, drawn irresistibly by that column of smoke like wasps to a jam pot. What they were experiencing—and he could feel the same fear pounding in his own chest—was what the old sweats in the battalion, the survivors of Dunkirk, had warned him against: the panic which made men believe that every dive-bomber was lining itself up on them alone.
Not even the distant sound of explosions far behind them slowed down their speed. Rather, the explosions seemed to urge them on— Butler could feel another logic taking over, whispering to him that he couldn't be too far away from what was happening behind him. The farther away, the better,
Not until they finally burst out of the last of the thick undergrowth into a plantation of tall pine trees did they start to slow down. 'Which way?' said Audley breathlessly, skidding at last to a halt.
'Hell, Lieutenant'—Winston panted, looking around him—'I didn't come this way first time'—he pointed towards a great tangle of what looked like blackberry bushes on the far side of the plantation
—'that way, I guess.'
Audley stared at the bushes for a moment, then sank onto one knee behind a pine tree. 'What was it like? Did it look as if it's used much?' he said.
Butler was suddenly aware that the noise behind them had stopped and the drone of the Typhoon engines was dying away. The loudest sound now was the thudding of his own heart.
'The track?' Winston frowned from behind his tree towards Audley. 'It looked kind of overgrown to me, what I could see of it. You want me to take another look, Lieutenant?'
'No.' Audley was still staring at the bushes ahead, moving his head from one side to the other to scan the green wall more closely, as though there was something he had glimpsed momentarily and then lost.
'You seen something?' Winston stared intently in the same direction.
'No.' Audley's voice had dropped to an urgent whisper. 'But I can smell something, by God!'
'Smell—?' Winston cut the question off.
Butler started to draw in a deep breath through his nose and then stopped as quickly as Winston had stopped speaking.
It was a sweet-rotten smell, not the dead-cow smell, which was foul enough, but something different and fouler which caught in the back of his throat. He breathed out carefully through his mouth, grateful that there was nothing in his stomach; it wasn't that he hadn't encountered this particular death-smell before—
it was very much a Normandy-smell—but rather that here, beyond the killing ground, it had caught him Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage
by surprise.
'Yeah . . .' Winston sniffed again, crouching down behind a tree as he did so. 'Which way, d'you reckon?'
'Must be somewhere ahead,' said Audley.
'Yeah . . .' Winston peered to the left and right, and then moved silently across the pine needles to sink down beside Audley. 'Gimme the gun, Lieutenant, and I'll go take a look.'
Audley surrendered the Sten before Butler could think of protesting, but then caught the American by the arm. 'Not you, Sergeant—I'll go.'
'Aw—come on, Lieutenant!' Winston tried to shake off the hand. 'You're the brains of the outfit.'
Butler came to a lightning decision: they were both equally unsuited to scouting, the heavily built engineer sergeant and the large dragoon subaltern, and it was high time he justified his own existence as something more than the useless walking wounded. He ran lightly across the plantation to a tree near Audley's. 'Sir'—the trick was not to give them time to argue, so he started to move again as they turned towards him—'cover me—'
The thick carpet of pine needles deadened his footfalls as he zigzagged from tree to tree, heading for the only gap he could see in the thicket ahead. Beyond the gap and in the chinks in the thicket he could see the bright sunlight unfiltered by overhanging greenery: it was like looking from a cool, shadowy room into the open, where nothing was hidden from sight.
There was a thin scatter of brambles, weak and straggling for lack of direct light, among the last trees of the plantation. Their trailing ends plucked at his battle dress, but without the encumbrance of the Sten he had both hands free to part them without making any sound. As he did so the stink of dead flesh thickened horribly around him, filling his nose and his mouth and his lungs. It seemed to grow worse with every step he took, until suddenly he knew with absolute certainty that all his care in making a silent approach to the track was unnecessary: whatever there was out there, it was long past listening to anything— nothing alive and breathing could endure to hang around within range of this smell, which begged only for the mercy of a burial detail. He would stake his stripes on that.
The sunlight lay three steps ahead of him. Only as he was in the act of taking the third, when it was really too late to draw back, did it occur to him that he was staking more than his stripes on his sense of smell.
Twenty yards down the track, half hidden in the undergrowth on the other side into which it had been driven, was a German lorry. Behind it, farther down, was another vehicle—a decrepit-looking truck—
surrounded by several smashed-open ammunition boxes, and beyond that what looked like a civilian car Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage
with its touring hood half raised, its doors hanging open. Like the lorry, they had both been driven off the narrow track into the overgrown verge. The track itself stretched away beyond them, open and deserted, and so silent that he could hear the buzz of insects.
