Overkill by James Rouch

had stopped as he saw the blood oozing sluggishly from the wound, and then flowing faster as the limb was pulled away from the jagged spear of metal projecting from the armour of the APC. The piece of rocket motor casing had been blown back to penetrate the armoured troop carrier’s floor and almost its roof, finding Andrea’s leg as it lodged in the thick aluminium that had failed to stop it quite soon enough.
    ‘It’s severed an artery.’ The field dressing that Revell applied only slowed the flow, it didn’t stop it no matter how much pressure they applied.
    ‘We’ll use my transport. There’s a hospital on the corner of Altonaer Strasse that won’t be too busy at this time.’ Thorne picked the girl up and started back to the Jaguar.
    Revell followed, and almost tripped at every other pace. He had eyes only for the arm she had thrown round Thome’s neck. In him was fear for her and hate for him, and both grew stronger with every step.
    Over a thousand casualties had been packed into the boiler room and the adjoining store. Several hundred more had to take their chances above ground, lining the corridors and entrance hall on the ground floor and covering every inch of space in the administration offices.
    New cases were being admitted all the time, and were put into one of three categories: those who could be patched up and sent on their way, those who needed surgery that would require a period of immobilisation afterwards, and those for whom no treatment could hold out any hope.
    The terminal cases were sent straight to the hospice across the street where everything possible was done to make their passing easier. Patients who fell into the other two groups were allotted a place on the surgeons’ lists. On admission Andrea went immediately to the top of the list and was given a local anaesthetic within a minute of being carried through the doors.
    Thorne hung about long enough to check that she was going to be alright and then went off to visit members of his group in the hospice. For a while, Revell tolerated being harried and shunted about by the overworked and tired nurses, then after being told to go for the fifth time, he went to give blood. It was the only way he could think of staying near to her.
    Even patients about to be discharged were there. Many of them looked far from well, but they insisted on donating at least a half-litre. Often they must have been giving back what they had themselves received by transfusion only days before. Afterwards he sipped without tasting a lukewarm cup of tea, before leav- ing it half drunk and going back to the theatre.
    She wasn’t there, but he managed to corner a charge nurse long enough to discover that Andrea had been moved to what had been the porter’s locker room at the back of the building, and would be there for two or three days while the wound began to heal.
    It took some doing, but he managed to evade the determined efforts of the nursing staff to let no visitors into the crowded makeshift ward and found her wrapped in a bright yellow sleeping bag between an old woman who had lost a hand, and a little girl whose bowels lay in a bag beside her.
    In that room was all the misery of the war. The whole spectrum of violent injury was there: amputations, chest wounds, disfigurement. She’d had only the local anaesthetic for the operation but tranquillisers administered afterwards had put her to sleep. Her face had been washed hurriedly and her fringe left wet and pushed back. It gave her a childlike appearance, very touching, and he wished he could stay there and look after her. He’d have done anything for her, anything, but he couldn’t stay. Already a nurse had spotted him and from the doorway was trying to catch his eye.
    Revell knelt beside Andrea. With just the tips of his fingers he stroked her fringe back into place and saw that even by that light touch he had soiled her smooth suntanned skin. There was a small dark mark on her cheek that no washing