The Devil in Green (61 page)

'Well said, Mr Blaine,' Stefan agreed. 'I have every faith in you to
oversee our defence. Go to it.'

Blaine marched away with Hipgrave scurrying and jumping behind
him. Stefan and Gibson followed without a backward glance at Cornelius,
as if he wasn't there at all.

'Hard men,' Mallory said, echoing his earlier thought, 'for hard times.'

Miller was crying quietly, still in prayer with his eyes shut. He looked as
though the final supports of his life had been kicked away. Gardener, too,
looked tattered, uncommonly emotional; he wouldn't meet anyone's gaze.

'Better get to it, then.' Daniels' shoulders had sagged. He tried to make a
hopeful face at Mallory, but it wouldn't fix. 'I suppose this isn't the end of
it,' he sighed.

'No,' Mallory replied. 'I'm betting it's just the start.'

The infirmary was lit by several lanterns that gave an odd, too-bright
distortion to all the white tiles. Warwick emerged from a back room
wearing pristine white scrubs. He took one look at the leaking sheet slung
between Mallory, Gardener and Daniels, then down at his clothes and
gritted his teeth.

'Get it on the table,' he snapped.

The knights laid the body out carefully while Warwick stood in the
background, muttering with irritation. But when the sopping shroud fell
away revealing the face, the medic started, his eyes widening. He looked
around at them as if someone was playing a particularly vicious prank on
him.

'Murder,' Gardener said grimly. 'No suspects. Yet.'

'What's it all coming to?' Warwick said under his breath. He gingerly
lifted the sheet to see the extent of Cornelius's wounds, stared blankly for a
moment, then dropped it.

'I think they were hoping for an autopsy,' Daniels ventured.

'An autopsy?' Warwick raged. 'He's dead. What more do they need to
know?'

'What weapon was used. How the attack was carried out,' Mallory said.
'Who did it.'

'I'm a surgeon, not a coroner. That kind of examination requires
specialist knowledge.'

Gardener snatched a towel from the side and threw it at him. 'Do your
best.' There was so much repressed anger in his voice that Warwick's
annoyed reaction was frozen. 'From now on, we're all mucking in. Pulling
together. We'll do what's expected of us. So get on with it.'

Brooding, he stalked out of the room. Miller shifted uncomfortably. 'Go
on,' Mallory said to him. 'You don't have to hang around if you don't want
to.'

Miller forced a smile from his tear-streaked face and hurried after
Gardener. Mallory and Daniels took up seats in the corner of the room
while Warwick brought over a stainless-steel tray of instruments. After
that, he called for his assistant, an old man with long white hair who, from
his trembling hands, had overheard the news. He prepared to take notes
with a precious Biro.

Warwick worked diligently, cutting and probing, occasionally cursing
under his breath. His white gown quickly became stained.

'The first patient he's had who never complained,' Daniels whispered
behind his hand to Mallory.

As the time dragged on, Mallory's attention wandered. 'Heard any news
on your radio?' he said to Warwick.

Warwick's lips tightened and his eyes flickered towards his assistant. 'I
haven't got a radio.'

'OK, heard any news from people passing through the infirmary,'
Mallory said pointedly.

'I have.' Warwick gingerly held a pair of spring-loaded shears before
attacking Cornelius's ribcage. 'Still no news from abroad. But there has
been
.
. .
talk
...
of a Government being established in Oxford.'

Daniels grew alert. 'The PM survived, then?'

'I don't know who's
in
the Government, just that a Government is being
set up
,' Warwick said irritably. 'There'll be some kind of order established
within six months, so they say. The first aim is to get communications
up and running, including food distribution, particularly to urban
areas—'

'I can't believe anyone's crazy enough to stay in the cities,' Mallory said.
'What are they going to eat? They must have looted everything they can
get their hands on by now.'

'—and then they're hoping to get some kind of local power sources up
and running, if they can,' Warwick continued.

'How are they going to do that?' Daniels said. 'I heard all the nuclear
power stations had gone . . . wiped out somehow. There can't be any kind
of oil or gas supplies—'

'I'm only reporting what I heard,' Warwick snapped.

Daniels clapped his hands. 'Things could be getting back to normal,' he
said enthusiastically.

'Whoop-de-doo.' Mallory remained unmoved.

'What's wrong with you?'

'Don't you remember what it was like? Work, money, power-seeking,
mundanity, no time for anyone to live or breathe

'You need to lighten up, Mallory. It was never as bad as all that.'

'Yes, it was - you just get numb to it. You sink down into it, like a
swamp, and forget there's fresh air above. The clock has been set back at
zero, Daniels - it's a chance finally to get things right. It doesn't mean we
have to take on board all the shit to get the good stuff back, but that's the
way it's going to be if the same old people end up in charge again. They've
got a vested interest in the society we had before. It made them fat and rich
and powerful.'

'You know what you are Mallory - an anarchist.'

'You say that as though it's a bad thing.'

'If you two have completed your irrelevant navel-gazing, I've finished
here.' Warwick covered the body with a little more reverence than he had
shown before.

'What did you find?' Daniels asked.

'It's inconclusive.'

'That's all you can say after all that?'

'He's been torn apart with such frenzy it's impossible to tell what
weapon was used. It could just as easily have been a wild animal, if there
were any indigenous species that could attack with this ferocity.'

Daniels looked to Mallory. 'So we've got someone in here who's such a
mess in the head we can't tell if he's a man or an animal?'

'Now see what happens when you take red meat out of the diet.' Mallory
had a sudden overview of the whole situation that left him cold. 'So we've
got all those things outside the walls trapping us in here, and now we've
got this psycho inside with us. I can think of a lot of clichés to describe our
situation, but they all involve dumb animals being eaten up by smarter,
wilder ones.'

Daniels stared blankly into the middle-distance. 'What are we going to
do now?'