It was a temptation to ignore the plea for water, pretend he hadn’t heard the faint words that came with pink foam from Kurt’s mouth. But he didn’t. Leaving the Dragon, Hyde took his water bottle over.
‘No, don’t bloody gulp it. I said don’t… Just a sip, a bloody sip.’ The urge to hit Kurt was almost overwhelming. It was something Hyde had always wanted to do, and now the constantly clutching and clawing greedy hands wore at his patience, and he nearly did.
With a final wrench he pulled the bottle away. It was sticky with blood. ‘Here, have the bloody lot if you want.’ Hyde thrust it back at the East German. ‘Go on, kill your ruddy self. Do us all a great big favour.’
Through the pain Kurt heard the words, and with a weak fling of his arm knocked the water from Hyde’s grasp, sending it clattering and bouncing to spill behind an overturned counter and irrigate the draught-drifted dust.
‘Playing the tough bastard are you, reckon you’re going to make it?’ Hyde stuck his face close to the wounded man’s. ‘Now why should a piece of shit like you pull through, when a load of decent blokes never do? Have you seen the hole you got in your gut? It’s as big as that.’ He held his fist in front of Kurt. ‘I can see your lungs, what’s left of them. You’re not going to make it, so why try?’ He tried hard, but Kurt couldn’t manage to articulate again. Instead he made a familiar gesture with two fingers of his right hand. Blood ran down into his sleeve as he did so.
Once again, Hyde had to fight down the desire to hit out. He knew if he stayed there he would, and forced himself back to the Dragon. There was no target in sight on which he could vent his feelings. Every one of the dozen armoured vehicles Uttering the street was either burning or severely damaged, and there was nothing to be seen of their crews, save for a few smouldering and dismembered bodies scattered about at random. Fighting was still going on further along the street, in the vicinity of the hotel, but the hazy atmosphere made it impossible for him to be certain of any of the fleeting targets he glimpsed.
The machine gun upstairs still chattered intermittently, sending tracer zipping away into the smoke, but at what and with what effect Hyde couldn’t tell. That was one of the crazier aspects of war in the Zone. Even now, with all the modern communication aids available, even in the midst of a great set piece battle that might involve whole armies of men, it was still possible to be alone, feel totally isolated. It was eerie to hear the conflict raging all around, occasionally glimpse some part of it and yet to be completely cut off from what was happening. All you could do was kill, and keep on killing in the hope that enough of your side were doing the same to gain a victory. Not that there were many of those in the Zone.
A mass attack by Russian divisions would be met with a stubborn NATO defence. There’d be breakthroughs, local counteroffensives, withdrawals to previously prepared positions, spoiling attacks, raids… a whole alphabet of jargon phrases would be trotted out for the media and for ‘morale’. And all too often the end result was a further widening of the Zone, a million more refugees, fifty thousand dead, a couple more points on the radiation scale and both sides claiming victory.
This was a stinking little scrap. Messy, probably costly by now. No medals, no headlines, but maybe a few days’ leave, with luck. Not that he ever went far from the Zone. The civvies who lived with it on their doorstep were more tolerant of the freaks and monsters it produced, like him. And there were women too, who were used to the rough usage of camp followers. Last time he’d even found one who’d taken his money and performed with him while sober. Usually he had to wait until late, find a drunken prostitute and get her into a dark alley; and even then pray she wouldn’t see his face by the light of a match or passing headlights. But it had been good the last time, good by the standards he had to accept.
God, he had to admit it, she’d been ugly. Not just plain, but really ugly. To a face pockmarked by acne had been added the embellishment of a long razor scar. And she was fat, not obese, but well beyond plump and she’d smelt of cheap perfume, sweat and stale tobacco; but for all that he’d enjoyed her.
The flat she’d taken him to matched her perfectly, mostly scruffy, the few decent pieces in garish bad taste. By then he’d been in a hurry, two months of enforced celibacy and a huge erection urging him on. Following her into the tiny bedroom, he’d switched off the light and grabbed her as she started to undress.
Two giant breasts had filled his hands and his fingers had sought the nipples to knead them to hardness. She’d tried to break free, to remove the rest of her clothes, but he hadn’t been able to wait, had pushed her face down on to the bed. He had thrown her skirt up over her back, then grabbed the waist of the tights and knickers and tugged them down together, frantically fast.
Forcing her legs wide apart, he’d knelt between them and released his erection. For an instant he’d held it in his hand. The pale light filtering into the room through threadbare curtains revealed enough for him to savour the moment. His hot flesh reaching well out beyond his tightly clenched hand, the big twin mounds of her backside, and the long dark crevasse between them; the deep indent left by her bra strap, just visible above the bunched-up material of her skirt. He had forced one other delay on himself, lowering his body until the hard rod of muscle lay between the cool smooth hummocks of fat.
Then he’d felt himself beginning to pulsate and he’d slid down to bring its tip into her bush of pubic hair. At the fourth hard prod she’d complained, fractionally lifted her belly from the bed, and slid a hand down to her crotch. Questing fingers had sought and found him, guiding his moisture-crowned penis inside her.
The memory of that never-ending orgasm was still with him. It had seemed as though the sperm was going to pump from him forever. Beneath him, the fat legs had clamped together, trapping his body inside her and, as she fingered herself from the front, her hips had gyrated wildly and she’d matched his experience with a climax that had soaked them both. They’d coupled twice more, and between each one she’d encouraged him to use a vibrator on her, and in return she’d gone down on him and sucked him to new hardness.
Hyde removed an anti-tank round from the Dragon and replaced it with one fitted with an anti-personnel fragmentation warhead. There were infantry moving about on the other side of the road. Smoke from burning buildings made it difficult to identify them. He switched the sight-unit to infra-red, then held his fire as he recognised the distinctive weapons and helmets of NATO troops.
So it was nearly over, mopping-up had begun. It wouldn’t do any harm to sit tight a little longer, just in case some Reds had decided to play dead for a while and were now thinking of springing a surprise. If that happened, then by not giving his position away he’d be able to catch them at their own game.
And besides, there was still Kurt, he’d need help shifting him. How on earth the Grepo was hanging on to life was a mystery, but he was, and showed no sign of letting go. It would have been easy for Hyde to take advantage of the situation and finish him off. God knew the runt had enough ugly crimes against his name to warrant summary execution, but that wasn’t his way. But if he wouldn’t kill Kurt, there was no reason why he should help keep him alive. Maybe he’d take his time about getting help, he could square that with himself easily enough.