She wrestled with the brakes and the ambulance lurched to a halt. Hopping down, prepared for horrors, she sank up to her puttees in squelching mud. Under a canvas lean-to, the stretchers were all occupied. She had room for five patients, but there were at least fifteen men ready to be shipped back to Amiens.
The officer in charge of the post was Captain Tietjens, a decent man eroded by years in the mud. He recognised Kate under her layer of dirt and offered to get her a cup of tea. At the front, vampires took char with a squirt of rat's blood.
'No thank you,' she said, not wishing to use any of the meagre supplies. 'I've a parcel of scroungings under the seat. Some tea, a chunk of usable bread, a packet of humbugs. A few other things.'
She handed over the precious goods, which had cost almost the last of her money. She was a vampire, she could forage for herself. Tietjens made the parcel disappear: he would dole it out to the deserving cases.
Most of the wounded were Americans, a new development. The influx of Yanks was depended upon to block the offensive. Already, fresh troops were seeing action.
A doughboy, bent like an ancient crone, knelt by a stretcher, holding hands with a fearfully wounded comrade. The boy on the stretcher seemed to be only an upper body: below his hips, the blanket lay flat, soaked with sweet blood. Embarrassingly, her fangs popped.
The wounded man's friend looked at her, too numb to be afraid. It was Bartlett, the doughboy who had tried to pick her up in Amiens. He was changed. The cocky eagerness was blasted away: he seemed at once a lost child and a mad old man. From his mind, she took impressions. She wished she had been able to shut herself off.
'Bloody hell,' she said.
In weeks, Eddie Bartlett had lived through a million years of war. Apart from the half-man on the stretcher, Bartlett was the last of the group of friends who had been at the café in Amiens. He was practically the last of the boys who had come over together on the boat.
She wanted to offer herself to Bartlett. He could have her body, her blood, anything. She wanted to make things better.
Tietjens and she were the only personnel spare to lift stretchers into the ambulance. With extreme reluctance, Bartlett let go of his comrade’s white hand to help.
'Hang on Apperson,' he said. 'Gotta parlay-voo, buddy.'
Carefully, the three of them got the first casualty - an American sergeant with rag bandages round his eyes - into the ambulance. When they came to Private Apperson, the boy was dead. Tietjens looked to Kate and shrugged.
The air was full of a whistling that hurt her ears. Tietjens, oddly, reached out and touched her hair.
She was about to apologise for having left her best bonnet at home when the whistling exploded. A wave of sound shocked Tietjens off his feet and threw him against her. They were both slammed against the ambulance. The sound was followed by heat. Then a great deal of earth. Something had hit very near. She saw a trench wall collapsing, slowly, on to the remaining stretchers, burying wounded men.
Tietjens was pulling something out from Apperson's bedding, robbing the dead.
Kate struggled towards the wounded. The next shell burst and she was knocked down again. Her back stung and she knew she was hurt. Tietjens was close behind her.
The officer jammed Apperson's tin helmet on her head. Seeing the sense in it, she fastened the strap under her chin. The rim rested on her spectacles, pressing them into her nose.
She dug with her hands, like an animal, trying to shovel the sliding loose earth off the face of a coughing warm doughboy. The more dirt she shifted, the more tumbled down. There was no room to pull the man out of the path of the earthslide.
As she dug, her claws came out. She scratched the earth. Her mouth was distorted by her fangs. She was reduced to the basest of monsters. The boy looked at her with panic and began to struggle, thinking she was attacking him. When he opened his mouth to scream, dirt fell into it, choking him. She thumped his chest, and he coughed up mud. She tried to tell him she was helping him, but could only snarl and hiss.
There was more whistling, louder and concentrated. Glancing up at the slice of sky visible from the trenchbed, she saw dozens of trails and sparkles.
Din, flame and force lifted her off the ground. The ambulance had taken a direct hit. Blood was in her mouth. The vehicle jolted into the air and came apart, screaming metal, spilling dead men. A hundred tons of mud flew up and fell down. Kate shut her eyes and her mouth as the grave-earth closed over her, pressing her down. There was sudden, shocking silence.
40
Kill the Dragon
Winthrop sat in Albert Ball's chair, staring at nothing. The mess was crowded but quiet. The new-born Cundall hands were playing cards. Some elders were toying with a plump French girl, exciting tiny squeals from her. She called herself Cigarette, and was shared like a smoke in the trenches, passed from mouth to mouth.
Since Ginger had passed on the rumour that Richthofen was truly dead, Winthrop felt like an exorcised ghost. There was no earthly reason for him to remain with Condor Squadron, but he was bound here. Ball and Kate were with him still, and his red thirst - worse, his red hunger- was rising, making him feel like a drunkard for raw meat.
His stomach was not improving. He could keep down only small amounts of very undercooked beef, swimming in blood. When sick, he disgorged alarming amounts of ground-up red meat.
The scabby necks of filles de joie like Cigarette had a fascination for him but he knew he could not drink warm human blood. He wished profoundly to be free of the dizzying taint that swarmed inside him, colouring his mind red.
If only he could kiss Kate again and set things right.
A shadow fell on him. Allard had appeared.
'Confirmation of our victory. The Germans have made an announcement.'
4Your victory,' Winthrop admitted. 'You finished the Boche.'
'It was a Richthofen but not the Richthofen.'
Winthrop's blood leaped.
'We killed Lothar, Manfred von Richthofen's brother. No insignificant ace. Forty victories.'
The Bloody Red Baron lived. The job for which he had transformed himself was not finished.
'I see what lurks in your heart, Winthrop. You are pleased. You want this prize for yourself.'
Winthrop did not try to blind the American with talk of all for one and one for all and winning the war and seeing it through.
'You may yet have your chance at the eagle,' said Allard. 'And maybe at greater prey.'
Winthrop was stricken with shivers.
Cigarette yelped through giggles. Allard glanced at the girl, not approving. She was in the lap of Alex Brandberg. His mouth was fixed to her breast.
Winthrop excused himself and got up, reaching for stirrups fixed to the timbers for Albert Ball.
'I need air,'he said.
It was March the 20th, official spring. In France, the weather was wintery. Winthrop stood outside the farmhouse, breathing cold air, concentrating. He still needed his vampire blood. The sense of purpose filled him again. But he was ailing. Every time he tried mentally to get above himself, to sort out Ball and Kate and the rest of it, he was paralysed. His mind was shrinking, intent merely on survival and murder. There was more, but a red mist hung over it. What separated him from the troglodytes? Or from old killers impressed into uniform?
Two orderlies struggled through the kitchen door, a long bundle between them. Winthrop smelled blood. The men carried Cigarette, drained unconscious. They left the girl in a lump against a fence by her bicycle.