'There's a good twenty of the fuckers up there.' Walters climbed down from the Land Rover, riot shield in his left hand, automatic pistol in his right. 'They can't go anywhere.' There was a leer on his swarthy face, his small eyes seeking out Kenny as they usually did, making him flinch. 'We need to take another ten.' He laughed.
Kenny would love to have had the courage to enable him to ask, 'And what about the other ten, Sergeant? Or are we just going to slaughter the bloody lot?'
That's up to them, boy. Our orders are to drive 'em out of the towns but there's only one way up and one way down from the multi-storey. It's a long way down from the top, the choice'll be theirs.
'Look out!' The shout came from over to the left, triggering trained soldiers into instant evasive action; a line of riot shields forming a semi-circular barricade, rifles at the ready. Looking up.
A maroon Marina with a black vinyl roof was mounting the concrete wall of the top storey, the underside of the chassis scraping and screeching on the concrete blocks. Front wheels spinning in space. A jerk; it rested level for a second then began to tip downwards. The back wheels caught, held it like a fly on a wall. Then it was free, airborne, an aeroplane without wings, a clumsy useless thing yielding to the law of gravity. A weapon of death.
Maybe in other circumstances Kenny would have screamed but he had got used to not doing a lot of things that came naturally when Walters was around. The rookie's mouth opened in terror and he would have run had he not been hemmed in by riot shields. Something inside him said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, 'You're OK, son, it won't reach us from there.'
The car fell vertically, a straight drop down, once catching a jutting parapet that dented and spun it, seemed to slow it up, a circus acrobat falling from the high wire; a trick, he did it twice a day, got some kind of sadistic pleasure from making his audience throw up, kids screaming and crying, hiding their faces.
The car hit the concrete pad adjacent to the park, a crash of buckling metal and showering glass, leaped up a good six feet as its suspension found enough bounce for a spectacular swan song; came down on its roof, a heap of scrap that gave it anonymity.
'Get in there, up the ramp,1 Walters roared, led the charge forward, a habitual zig-zag that would have made him a difficult target for any marksman. 'Shoot at will.'
Some of the soldiers were already firing, a hail of rifle bullets aimed at the radiator of a Datsun which was just appearing over the rampart where the Marina had come from, ripping into highly polished metalwork.
Then they were on the ramp, safe from an overhead attack. Another car smashed on the forecourt outside. The throwbacks had not forgotten the battle techniques of their ancestors; repel all boarders.
The ground and first storey were deserted. Systematically the soldiers searched every parking lot, checked vehicles; most of them were locked. Shoppers and businessmen had parked their cars and never returned to them. Probably some of those very people were up above now engaged in a last-ditch defence. Innocent victims of a vile unspeakable mode of warfare who would be over-run by the very soldiers who should have been protecting them against a foreign foe. Kenny King hated himself almost as much as he hated his jumped-up commander.
Sergeant Walters fired. It was a woman, darting out from the open back of a van, sprinting for the second elevation. She screamed, bowled over like a shot rabbit, a complete somersault, and came to rest hard against a Cortina 2000, spottling its grey finish with crimson. She sat bolt upright, cursing them with dead eyes; somewhere behind her blood was pouring out, seeping round her body and following the fall of the floor.
Walters approached her, pushed her with his foot so that she slid slowly sideways. Now the wound was visible, a jagged hole at the nape of the neck where the dum-dum bullet had struck her. That was good shooting.
Kenny King swallowed, his eyes misting up and distorting the scene. She was young, maybe not quite seventeen yet, and her features could have been Asiatic; apart from the straggling hair and rough skin, dressed in modern clothes she might not even have attracted a second glance, except for the obvious reasons. He had dated a girl up in Wakefield before he joined up who had looked very similar to this one. It might even have been her lying there in that spreading pool of blood. A chance in several millions. He hoped it wasn't. You bastard, Walters, you didn't have to kill her!
'Aren't we supposed to be taking prisoners, Sarge?' A tall sallow-faced soldier asked the question that everybody was thinking.'I mean . . .'wishing suddenly that he hadn't voiced his thoughts, 'that is . . .'
'You take your orders from me, Private.' Walters wheeled and for a second the swinging barrel of the pistol took in all of them. ll said fire at will because those fucking animals up there are fighting backV They don't have any business trying to drop cars on us. They should run the moment they see us coming. 'Anybody not obeying orders will be court-martialied when we get back to base. Get it, all of you lousy fuckers?' They all nodded because they didn't have any option.
Up there, above them on the top elevation, was a group of very frightened people, people who had once been ordinary peace-loving folks now horrifically transformed into primitive Man by terrible germs released into the atmosphere, were now trapped like rabbits in a dead-end burrow. They could be taken alive but Walters didn't want it that way. He was glorying in a one-sided battle, lusting for a massacre. In a way perhaps the poor wretches would be better off dead. Kenny King was sure he would throw up before it was all over. Afterwards he might even desert at the first opportunity.
The second and third storeys were devoid of life. So was the fourth. Only the fifth remained now and they were up there all right. The soldiers could hear them as they fanned out into an arrow-shaped formation and began to ascend the steep sloping concrete ramp. Textbook perfection in their approach, ready to unleash a hail of fire at the first sign of trouble.
Kenny's eyes focused on the sergeant's broad green and brown blotched camouflaged back. You bastard!
A crash from far below, muffled, lingering like the sound of a coin tossed into a deep wishing-well. Another car had gone over the wall. And then the floor levelled out on to a giant sunlit balcony, a line of cars on either side. The top elevation and the throwbacks were right here.
Seven or eight of them were struggling to lift a Ford Escort up on to the rampart, powerful muscles bulging as they took the strain. Some more were dragging out a Metro. All had their backs towards the oncoming soldiers except a bunch of children who huddled together beneath an awning.
No! Kenny King felt every scrap of decency and fair play in him rebel. Helpless youngsters ranging from five to possibly ten; they could have been mistaken for trained chimpanzees at a cursory glance, hairy creatures who were busily filling an empty ice-cream tub with sand and unsuccessfully trying to make a castle from it on the concrete floor. Each time it crumbled, powdered, and they tried again.
Kenny didn't care any more, didn't want to be any part of this. Something inside him took over, had him rushing forward with pistol raised, marksman-style, trained on the back of Sergeant Walters. 'No, you're not going to murder them. I won't let you. I. . .'
A shot rang out. Walters should have died instantly because the young rookie was already taking a trigger pressure, hesitating at the last second because that same spark of decency which had hurled him forward was also quavering, a fleeting flash of conscience that said, *You can't shoot a man in the back. You can't take human life!'