“Get him out of here Valentin—now!”
Donald was outside the cabin without his feet touching the ground. They put him down, all of them panting and trembling from adrenalin.
“That fucking idiot,” Donald said, straightening up. “Let’s get the wounded moved anyway.”
From the street, they heard a shout. A diesel engine snarled and an eerie, metallic singing echoed up and down the walls. Donald ran to the windows. Armoured cars and glory troops armed with sawn-off shotguns were flooding in from the main boulevard.
Donald flung an iron-framed chair through the panes of Banner’s office and yelled into the splintered hole: “Clear the hell out, it’s the glories!”. He could not believe how sluggish they were. Some crowded at the end of the cabin, peering down into the street with remote curiosity. Others stood watching the others peering down into the street. Only the leading basic took off like a scatting cat. Donald gripped Sarah-Kelly by the hand and with coos and urges drew her away from Banner.
“What about them?” asked Valentin, pointing at Banner’s crowded office.
“They’ve had their chances.”
He managed to get Sarah-Kelly down two of three flights before she yanked him to a halt.
“I’m not going with you.”
A racket like bull-whips lashing a sheet of brass, screams and pounding feet. Another burst from the brass-muncher, then a fusillade of crack-crack-cracking. Sawn-offs at work—repellent spray.
Donald wrenched her down the last flight and threw her into a corridor. The base of the stairs was in full view of the reception hall. Glory troops were creeping in, cautious, spreading out, stepping amongst the patients.
Donald lay flat, peering around the base of the wall. An account-captain first class stooped, inserted the muzzle of his pistol into the mouth of a terrified young man on the floor and fired. The blast threw up a spray of blood and saliva, fouling the golden shield on his sleeve. Wounded men leaped up and dashed for the door, slamming into each other and getting shot down in the salvo that filled the hall with sparks and flashes.
Donald stretched his arm and fired at the account-captain’s head—and missed! The man stood shooting all about as if at a rabbit hunt, oblivious to the bullet’s wake inches from his face amid a cacophony of gunfire was so overwhelming that it was like silence. Donald aimed at the chest and fired again. The account-captain arched over backwards amidst the writhing bodies. The glory troops dropped flat.
He ran Sarah-Kelly off her feet, pulling her down the corridor to the end, kicking down the door into a lecture theatre. Shots down the corridor sprayed clouds of plaster from the far wall. He smashed out a window with a chair.
“Get out the window.”
She hesitated, deterred by shards of glass. Donald risked a sneak glance up the corridor and found it was clear. Another person was firing from the well of the steps. Well God bless you, whoever you are, we’d be dead ducks without you. Grabbing up another chair, he swept away the last of the shards and shouldered Sarah-Kelly out into the alley, followed landing beside her, folding her flat on the cobbles while he checked both ways. Far off, at the boulevard end, troopers stood silhouetted against the light, their backs to the alley. The other way, the view was blocked by an armoured car.
They rolled across the alley to a high brick wall, which he gave Sarah-Kelly a leg up over, shoving her boots high overhead without a clue where his strength came from. She made a thud like a dropped crate on the far side. He hoped to Christ she had not broken her ankles. As for getting himself over, he had to run at it across the alley and drag himself over by brute force.
They were in a concrete yard running along the back of a gloomy brick row. All the ground floor windows were barred. A sense of hopelessness closed in on Donald. Yells and shots already came from the broken window across the alley. Cascades of broken glass rang down, some pieces smacking around them. The windows of the top floor office had been shot out by a sweep of submachine gun fire. The tremendous voice thundered.
“Get out! Get out, you filth!”
Another burst of machine gun fire and the voice was silenced forever. A body ejected and hurtled down head first, the face gaping at the exact spot of cobbles into which it impacted with a vile crunching of bones. Another man came screaming down, then another. Glory troopers leaned through the windows, laughing. Donald and Sarah-Kelly grovelled against the base of the wall for its meagre cover. She tried to say something. He could not understand her. She shoved him flat and crawled over him as one rat passes over another. Boots clattering in the alley, just the other side of the wall. He heard jeers and snorts.
“Proper Icarus, he was,” one of them jeered.
Laughter.
Sarah-Kelly stood up, back flat on the wall, panting, easing her head forward to look back up to the top floor office that had been the core of the National Party. Without speaking, she darted forward and was gone into a passage barely a yard wide running between two blocks. Donald followed. At the far end, Sarah-Kelly kneeled down and Donald leaned over her, his chin touching the top of her head. The passage emerged into a street largely overgrown with bushes. There were even thickets of birch trees. The buildings opposite presented an unappealing façade of bricked-up windows three storeys high, topped by gutters laced with barbed wire. These would be the backs of private residences. Glory troops guarded both ends of the street. There was no way out.
“So much for the clientele,” Donald said bitterly, looking along the deserted roof tops. The shooting had not drawn one rabbit from all those burrows. He crawled forward to survey the buildings along their side of the street. They were college buildings, all shuttered up
