Down: Trilogy Box Set (65 page)

At that moment the mission objective was the farthest thing from his mind. John was focused on his medic, Ben Knebel, clutching his abdomen and screaming in agony next to the man he’d just been treating, SFO Stankiewicz.

John rushed over, cursing at the sniper who’d already been atomized by cannon fire. John had assumed a crouching position between the farmhouse and Knebel to protect him as he worked on Stankiewicz’s leg. The bullet that got Knebel must have threaded a needle—a ridiculously fucked-up shot in a ridiculously fucked-up war.

By the time John made it to their side, Stankiewicz had transitioned from patient to medic, ignoring his own bullet hole to divert his pressure dressing to Knebel’s belly, pushing down hard to staunch the flow.

John had to pull the earpiece from his canal because Knebel’s screams in his headset mike were too loud. He ripped open another pressure dressing from Knebel’s kit, tossed it to Stankiewicz and kept pressure on the medic’s abdomen.

“Stank, tape yourself up. I’ve got doc. Doc, stay with me. I’m going to bind you up and give you candy, all right?”

Through gritted teeth, the medic yelled. “Pouch in my bag. Can’t move my fucking legs. Fuck, fuck!”

John used a roll of surgical tape to bind the pressure dressing tight against his gut then unwrapped a fentanyl lollipop and shoved it between the medic’s cheek and gum. Then he put his earpiece back and called in the helo.

“I need you to evac two casualties, one of them’s my medic. Now!”

The Black Hawk pilot radioed back, “Are we extracting all of you?”

“No, just the casualties.”

“That’s going to leave you naked, Major.”

“You get my men out now. On my beacon. We’ve still got work to do.”

“Roger that. Our ETA is thirty seconds. We’ll get another bird to pick you up. I’ll get you their ETA when I’ve got it.”

John told the wounded men to hold on for a few more seconds and radioed Mike Entwistle on the north side of the farmhouse. “Mike, we’re going to be on our own for a while. Are you taking any more fire?”

“Negative. I think we’ve got ’em suppressed.”

“All right. As soon as Stank and Doc are evac’d we’re going to squeeze them from the north and the south, make entry, take our HVT, and get the fuck out of Dodge.”

As the fentanyl kicked in, Knebel’s screams faded away into something almost more disturbing, the high-pitched whimpering of a newly paralyzed man who seemed to understand that the life he knew was gone forever.

They awoke well before the alarm went off and took turns showering and dressing. They had carefully selected and modified their clothing to avoid the wardrobe malfunctions that had plagued them previously. All the fabrics and stitching were made of natural fibers, wooden buttons replaced plastic ones and metal zippers, and their boots had leather laces and soles.

They kept their conversation sparse and light; they didn’t feel the need to remind themselves what would happen in a few hours. As he checked the contents of his canvas and leather backpack one last time, John remembered the dream he’d had and realized his current mindset was similar to his pre-mission thinking in Iraq and Afghanistan: concentrate on the preparation, not the execution. Once a mission started, it almost never went to plan. Training and attitude was what kept you alive.

When it was time to go, they collected their gear and turned out the lights. He saw her look wistfully at the dark flat and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll be back.”

Rix and Murphy were up early to start a fire and begin cooking a breakfast porridge of wild oats sweetened with foraged honey. For a week they’d kept to the same daily routine—provide basic sustenance to their guests then set off into the woods to look for Molly and Christine.

The village of Ockendon was set in a clearing on poorly drained, boggy ground teeming with flies and gnats. When Rix and Murphy first led Martin and the others from the dangerous forest, the ramshackle village of crude thatched huts had seemed like a sanctuary, but after a week, it seemed more like a prison camp. Ever distrustful of their fellow villagers, Rix had all of them bed down in their one small cottage, using every square inch of floor for the purpose. For the last thirty years Rix and Murphy had lived there with Molly and Christine and it was plenty cramped with the four of them. Eight was more or less an absurdity. They had given their beds to Alice and Tracy and had taken to the floor with the men, Rix closest to the door and Murphy by the hearth. Martin had washed Tracy’s punctured foot and after he had declared the wound minor, he had wrapped it in a reasonably clean piece of cloth. Murphy and Rix possessed a meager collection of men and women’s clothes and shoes, and everyone had dealt with their wardrobe problems as best as they could.

Martin awoke at the first whiffs of smoke and tiptoed over sleeping bodies to squat by the fire.

“Morning,” he whispered.

“How you doing, doc?” Rix asked.

“Hellaciously,” he answered, his now-standard quip. “Going out again?”

“After some grub,” Murphy said.

Rix stirred the heavy iron pot suspended over the fire and grunted but with each passing day he was losing hope.

“I’d like to go with you,” Martin said. “I’m getting a serious case of cabin fever.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Murphy said. “It’s been a month since the sweepers last came through. They’ll be coming again, they always do. Everyone in this fucking village knows you’re in here. They may not know your secret but they know you’re here. They’ll grass you out in a heartbeat. You’ll need every last one of you to defend the ladies.”

Martin gestured at the makeshift weapons propped against the walls—wooden clubs, an iron bar, a bent sword.

“I’ve told you. I’m a doctor, not a fighter. None of us are. If they come we’ll be taken.”

Rix shook his head. “If they come you’ve got to fight,” he whispered. “You lot will be scattered to the four winds. The women will be raped and sold off as sex slaves. They find out you and Tony are poufs, you’ll be raped too. Just do as you’re told, all right? We’ll be back after a few hours to check on you.”

Tony had been awake, listening with eyes closed. He propped himself up. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but I don’t think you’re going to find Molly and Christine. And I object to your calling us poufs.”

“You’re right,” Murphy fumed. “I bloody don’t want to hear it so shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you.”

His outburst woke the others and they began to stir and sit up.

Martin jumped to Tony’s defense. “It might not be a popular notion but if everything you’ve told us about this place is true then it stands to reason that whatever forces, physical or supernatural, that catapulted us here may have sent them back to our place and time.”

“It’s just a load of bollocks,” Murphy said. “The lasses are in the forest somewhere. Either the rovers have them or they’ve already escaped and they’re trying to get back to us.”

Rix stirred the bubbling pot. “Maybe it’s bollocks and maybe it isn’t,” he said. “You can say it’s bollocks that a bunch of live people came to Hell but, here they are. I’ll tell you one thing, Colin, I’d give anything to know that our lasses are right this minute strolling along some sunny High Street in the county of Kent in the country of England on the planet Earth in the year 2015, than in the clutches of some fucking rovers in this shithole of a land. But until we know it for a fact, we’re going to keep looking for them.”

Tracy began to do what she had done almost every waking hour—she began to cry. Alice had been her self-appointed caretaker when she wasn’t sewing everyone’s clothes. But this morning she seemed too lethargic to offer any more support. Charlie, sitting next to a yawning Eddie, picked up the slack by putting a large hand on Tracy’s shoulder and telling her everything was going to be all right.

But none of them actually believed it.

During their first night in Hell, Murphy and Rix had returned to the cottage following a fruitless day-long search for Molly and Christine, and laid out the shocking realities of the situation to their six shell-shocked guests. Initially, none of them believed a word of it, even after the two hosts described in some detail the day they had both died in 1984.

“Do you have a better explanation for what you’re seeing with your own eyes?” Murphy had asked contemptuously.

Martin, ever the rationalist, had replied, “No I don’t. But that doesn’t make your cock-and-bull story less so.”

“When we first arrived here it was hard for us to accept it too,” Rix said. “But it’s the truth.”

“If what you say is true, that one can’t die here, then these lads’ father and grandfather are not dead.”

Rix had shaken his head. “Maybe yes, maybe no. I’ve never seen a live person in Hell before so I can’t be sure.”

Charlie had lifted his head from his chest at this turn of conversation. “You say they could be alive? We have to go back to the woods and get them.”

“I said I didn’t know,” Rix had said.

“For fuck’s sake, let’s get a move on,” Eddie had said springing to his feet.

“In the morning,” Murphy had said. “The rovers who almost had you are likely to be out and about.”

In the gloomy dawn Martin and Eddie had accompanied Rix and Murphy into the forest, retracing their route until they reached Charlie’s father first. Martin had waved Eddie off as he inspected the headless, butchered body. He was very much dead and gone. At the river, they found his grandfather who had suffered the same gruesome fate. Much of his muscle mass had been cut away.

“I suppose you lot
can
die,” Murphy had said, spitting into the stream. “You’re lucky.”

Walking back to the village behind the grieving son, Martin had said to Murphy and Rix, “I’m afraid you’ve shown me nothing to support your contentions.”

“Contentions,” Murphy had laughed. “It’s not contentions, it’s fact. Tell you what. Tonight, I’ll sneak you across the village to show you your proof.”

When night fell, Murphy had been true to his word. Tony, fearful, had asked Martin not to leave but the doctor had been determined to get to the bottom of their predicament. The two men had crept past the shuttered cottages lining the muddy road and approached a low wooden building. Martin had recognized the sickly smell of decay well before they made it to the latched door and he had to place his hand over his mouth and nose to prevent gagging. Murphy had warned him to steel himself before unlatching the door and lifting his flaming torch over his head.

Martin had by necessity pressed his hand hard against his face, almost cutting off all the air but it wasn’t enough. He had to hold his breath to prevent passing out. His sense of smell had been dulled, but the sights and sounds assaulted him and had left him reeling. The rotting room was filled with decomposing bodies that were very much alive. Pitiful cries and moans filled the morbid chamber. The liquefied mass of flesh covering the floor was in motion. Hundreds of arms and legs slowly churned the putrid sewer of humanity, distorted, melting faces contorted in agony.

“Enough?” Murphy had said.

Martin had nodded, fled, and vomited outside.

Murphy had latched the door and had managed to find enough compassion to pat the doctor’s back.

“Now do you believe you’re in Hell?”

Now on the morning of their seventh day in Hell, Rix ladled the porridge into shallow wooden bowls. He and Murphy wolfed down their breakfast while the others ate slowly in dull silence.

“Right, we’re off then,” Rix said, shouldering his musket. “Remember, if anyone comes to the door, stay quiet. If anyone tries to get in, fight them and fight them hard. We’re growing fond of you lot.”

“Speak for yourself,” Murphy groused, pushing the door open and scowling at a scrawny man who was leading an emaciated horse down the road.

“Don’t you look at me, mate,” Murphy shouted at the man who picked up his pace at the threat. “I will fucking crush you if you so much as look at me again.”

The forest was damp and humid. The rain had stopped but water dripped steadily from leaves and branches. Rix led the way. They looked for fresh footprints but found none. At times he called out for Molly. Murphy was in a foul mood and couldn’t muster the lungpower to call for Cristine. Eventually they passed by the bodies. Even more of their flesh had been eaten, not by returning rovers but by foraging animals. Emerging from the woods into the large meadowland, Rix paused.

“I say we go south toward the river,” he said.

“We went there two days ago,” Murphy said.

“Any better idea?”

Murphy grunted.

“Well?” Rix asked.

“No. Fuck, Jason, I don’t know. Maybe what that fruit said is true. Maybe they’ve gone back to Earth.”

“Better than having them carried off by rovers.”

“Yeah but …”

Murphy didn't have to say it. Rix finished the thought. “I know, I know, but how the fuck are we supposed to carry on without our girls?”

Rix set off across the vast meadow and Murphy followed along, his eyes drifting to a circling hawk that suddenly fell from the sky and sank its talons into a startled vole.

The recreation center was almost unrecognizable. The polished wooden floor was protectively covered in cheap carpet with cutouts for the cabling to connect the workstations and monitors to the server room in the main lab building. Technicians manned rows of long tables running pre-startup diagnostic protocols on the hardware and software systems. A false wall had been built in the middle of the hall to hold an array of large screens to track the operational status of the synchrotron and the twenty-five thousand magnets ringing greater London inside the MAAC underground tunnels.

A staging area for the traveling party had been established in one corner and there, Ben Wellington was waiting with Trevor when John and Emily arrived.

They exchanged grim smiles and got down to business with an absence of small talk.

“Missing one,” John said.

“He’s in reception,” Trevor said. “They’ll be bringing him over.”

They had all settled on more or less similar uniforms—khaki or camo trousers, heavy-duty cotton shirts, cotton underwear, boots and leather jackets swapped-out with wooden buttons for zippers. They were checking each other’s backpacks when Brian was escorted in.