Get up, Maxwell. For God’s sake, you have to get up.
I turned my head. Colonel Albay lay on his side, facing me, bleeding badly from a deep gash across his cheekbone. He focused on me and smiled. I blinked to clear my eyes of the stinging dust, but he definitely smiled. I saw him make the effort to move. He began to pull himself towards me. Old memories came flooding back. When something bad was about to happen … and I was paralysed. Unable even to close my eyes. When something evil crushed me with its weight and I couldn’t move even a muscle to prevent it and there was no one to help. There was never anyone to help.
Using his forearms, he dragged himself towards me. There was no escape. I could barely move my eyes, let alone anything else. Unable to move, I watched him crawl over rubble and glass, leaving a bloody trail in his wake.
I never realised what large hands he had.
He placed one hand carefully over my mouth, as if to prevent me calling for help, although I couldn’t have, even if I wanted to. I had no voice. And who would have heard me?
Slowly, gently almost, he adjusted the position of his hand until it seemed he had it positioned to his complete satisfaction.
He was still smiling.
Then, using his thumb and forefinger, he pinched my nostrils closed.
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. At all.
I tried to twist my head from side to side. To dislodge his grip. To suck in some desperately needed air. I could hear my own pulse throbbing inside my head. I tried to get a hand free. I tried to drum my heels. It hurt. Everything hurt. My chest was exploding in pain. My lips were smashed against my teeth. Even my poor nose hurt.
And all the time – he smiled.
Something moved. From the corner of my eye, I caught a movement. And so, it seemed, did Colonel Albay.
Dark shadows moved in the swirling dust. I could see a little red dot jumping and jerking its way across the hall. Then another and another, then a whole bunch of them. Ruler straight lines of red light cut through the murk, others bloomed in the swirling dust.
Bloody hell, no wonder he was smiling. Reinforcements. Even more of them this time. These people had endless resources and we had nothing left. We’d given our all and, finally, we were finished. I was too tired to feel despair. Silly little thoughts danced through my mind on their way to oblivion. That the red lights in the swirling dust clouds were really rather pretty. That in all the worlds out there, somewhere, surely there was one where Leon and I managed to be both alive and together. That, somewhere, we had a future.
Albay looked down at me. I was the last thing he ever saw. He was still smiling when he died.
I heard a sound. Above me, I felt him convulse. Blood trickled from his mouth onto my face. His lips moved, although his eyes were unfocused. The pressure eased. His hand slipped away – thank God – and I heaved in great lungfuls of air.
He fell slowly to one side. His limbs twitched uncontrollably. I smelled the sharp tang of urine. And then he died.
Behind him, a helmetless officer with a brutal haircut, barely able to support himself on one elbow, his face creased in pain, let his gun fall, closed his eyes, and fell back on the rubble.
The red beams continued to track their way across the Hall. There was no one to stop them. They fanned out, searching. One found me. I could see the little red dot bouncing on my chest. Something armoured followed along behind it and stood, looking down at me.
He turned his head and called, ‘Here!’
No. I wasn’t going quietly. I found my last strength from somewhere and heaved myself upwards. I was aiming for his throat but sadly got only as far as his knee. I clamped myself around his lower leg and bit him.
He was wearing armour. I’m really not bright.
I waited for the bullet that would end my life, or for my head to be clubbed in, because unless he was prepared to spend the rest of his life with an historian clinging to his leg, it would be the only way to get rid of me.
My hearing must be coming back, because I thought I heard a faint voice.
‘Sir, this one’s trying to bite my leg.’
And even more faintly, ‘Does she have red hair?’
They’d found me.
Things blurred and became unimportant.
Nothing mattered any longer.
I became aware of people around me and panicked, flailing around like a maniac. I couldn’t see very well, but I know I hit someone because a voice said, ‘Bloody hell, that hurt.’
Another voice said, ‘Well, at least she’s not biting you,’ and I slid away again.
When I finally woke properly, I was in the female ward. A strange man in medical scrubs stared at me. I stared back, swallowed, and found a tiny croak.
‘Friend or foe?’
‘Friend,’ he said hastily. ‘For God’s sake don’t bite anyone else.’
I stared suspiciously, formulating plans to throttle him with a bed sheet.
‘How are you feeling, Dr Maxwell?’