Plague Bomb by James Rouch Page A

the park, make out we don’t even know they’re there. You know what the Ruskies are like. Offer them a sitting target and they’ll wait until they’re within spitting distance before letting them have it. A second or two before they have a go at us, we’ll pour all we’ve got into them.’
    ‘Sounds fine in theory, Major. Do you think we can make the timing that neat?’ ‘Look, it’s all we’ve got. Let’s get ready to put it into practice.’
    Walking back to the Marder, a thought kept nagging at Hyde. While they were still out of hearing of the rest of the squad he posed the officer a question whose answer he suspected he already knew. ‘If we had all the time in the world, Major, you’d still have us doing it this way, wouldn’t you.’
    ‘What’s the matter, sergeant, you think you can live forever?’ 
    ‘Just a day at a time, but if I’ve got to cop it then I don’t want to go knowing that I’ve taken some of my men with me who didn’t have to die. Most of the blokes I’ve met in the Zone want to win the war by surviving it, not by throwing their lives away.’
    Revell could pretend, to himself at least, that their proximity to the rest of the squad precluded him from making a suitable reply. In all truth he couldn’t argue with the NCO, the sergeant was right; it was he who was wrong. Not that he could stop himself though. It was as if he was trying to make all the war he could, trying to keep the biggest possible share for himself.
    In some such actions might have been a death wish, but he didn’t recognize that within him. And even if that were the case then long before now he’d have had it granted. The Zone would have found it all too easy to fulfil. It did as much for thousands of others every day, when death was the last thing they desired.
    Unbidden, unwanted, to the forefront of his mind came a recollection of the pathetic group they’d provided with an escape from the Zone. Even in their case though there had been no willingness to embrace death in the solution they’d found to their suffering, distressing in the extreme though it was.
    When they’d set out to cross the Zone to reach the west those people had been full of hope. To have got so far that hope must have stayed with them until their condition had deteriorated beyond the point of endurance. They hadn’t wanted to die, and nor did he, but as he climbed back into the Marder, Revell knew that? like them, for him there was no longer a choice.

    EIGHT

‘Really, I’m not at all sure that this is entirely practical. I wait to be convinced.’ With his free hand keeping a fierce grip on the Rover’s tailgate mounted spare wheel, Edwards made feeble attempts to cut the rope lashing rough-trimmed logs together. ‘You do realize that once we have removed these from behind us we shall be quite cut off, should the repair to the track ahead not be successful.’ He looked at the ochre water beneath the piling suspended causeway. ‘I should not like to have to wade back to firm ground.’
    ‘Give it a rest, will you.’ Sherry took the axe from the professor and with a single double handed blow freed the timber for Gross to lift. ‘Go up front and help Webb place and tie the logs we bring you.’
    As the nervous academic edged past the high sided vehicle, Gross leered at the woman. ‘Did you get rid of him so it’d be just you and me?’
    ‘Oh yeah.’ She started on another binding, the blunt blade taking several hacks to get through the plaited strands. ‘Oh yeah, all day I been saying to myself how much I’d love to have your smelly fat gut crushing my bare arse into splintered wood while your soft little prick had trouble finding its dribbling way through my fanny hair.’
    ‘I like it when you talk dirty, makes my balls go tight.’ Half closing his eyes Gross puckered his wet lips toward her.
    ‘In a minute I’ll make you leak something, you creep.’ Raising her axe threateningly, Sherry took a half pace back