Soldier No More

—

Words came into his head, through his own shuddering breath—

'The bolts—bolt the door!' The hoarse cry was cut off by a tremendous crash just behind him somewhere.

'I've done it!' Another voice—a boy's voice, shrill with fear, answered.

'Get away from it, Jilly—get away from it!'

The light wasn't light—it was orange fire flaring up from the dummy5

floor, from the ruin of a lamp—fire and acrid smoke swirling up, lighting and obscuring at the same time.

Another crash behind him—

'Get away from the door!' The voice lifted. 'Now!'

Another crash. Then a pause, and a sharp crack-crack- crack

—

'Yes, David...'

The name roused Roche. 'What?'

'Roche?'

Roche's scattered senses came back to him. 'Audley?'

'Mike?' The vague presence behind the voice and the smoke and flame rose up into the semblance of a man crunching something broken under his feet. 'Mike?'

'God damn— aw, shit—God damn—' the voice trailed off into a mixture of exasperation and anguish, unintelligibly.

'Lexy?'

Roche looked down at what lay beneath him, in sudden horror.

The flames illuminated a strange dark face, open-mouthed, eyes open but rolled back, with his fingers still entwined in the long black hair.

'Lexy?' said Audley again.

Another crash at the door—

'Don't worry about that—it'll take more than muscle to move it . .' Audley's voice levelled '. . . and bullets.'

dummy5

Crack-crack-crack—the three paper-bags exploded again, the last one metallically, as though soft steel had splayed out against hard iron.

Roche pulled his hands away in horror from the thing he was still holding, the hair dragging at his fingers before it released them.

'You better do something about that goddamn lamp—or we'll choke if we don't burn,' said the American thickly.

'Put the carpet on it,' ordered Audley. 'I'll get my torch—put the carpet on it, Mike!'

'Put the fucking carpet on it yourself—' the American's voice cracked. '—I'm hit—I'm hit, God damn it!'

'You're hit?'

'Christ, man! He squeezed off half his magazine—where the hell d'you think it went?' The voice came back, this time with the anger momentarily blotting out the pain. 'Jesus Christ!'

'Roche!' Audley dismissed his friend from the reckoning.

But Roche was already moving—as much to get away from the thing underneath him: if he smothered the flames then he would smother the sight of that also.

The centre of the room was a shambles— the whole room was a shambles, with the human beings in it thrown to the wall by the sudden explosion of fire and violence. But he could see, by the flames themselves, that the lamp had fallen off the carpet on to the floorboards, spreading fire around it.

dummy5

It felt like an expensive carpet, but he ripped it up all the same and flopped it down on the fire, stamping fiercely on it to smother the flames.

Darkness enveloped him at once—the shattered bowl he could hear and feel under his feet must have been almost empty of paraffin to give up so easily. Then a beam of light blinded him. Typical Audley— not to fill the lamp—

Then the light left him, swinging round the room to pick out the American first.

He was backed up against the wine rack, sitting on the floor, covered with blood—

No, covered with wine, which had cascaded down on him from the smashed bottles behind him—his hair was plastered down with it, and his shirt was soaking with it.

He blinked in the beam, and lifted a hand still clutching an automatic pistol to shield his eyes. 'Did I get the son-of-a-bitch? But I think he's broken my fucking arm—' the shielding pistol-holding hand moved across his body to touch his shoulder '—Christ! So he has!'

The torch swung back to Roche. 'You took the other one, Roche—?'