Everyone Brave Is Forgiven(88)

“Yes, but I will shoot these people before I let them torment him.”

“Then I will leave you to it, Alistair, because I am not going to lose a truck full of shells for the sake of your pristine conscience.”

The two officers stared at each other for a moment.

“Fine,” said Alistair.

He stepped around Simonson and cocked the hammer of his revolver. He fired five rounds into the air and the jeering stopped. The locals spun around, startled at first, then with faces turning sullen.

“It’s quite all right,” said Alistair. “I might do the same in your shoes. But you may go to your homes now. I haven’t seen your faces and I shan’t be taking names.”

He stood with the Enfield pointed at the ground. He looked at his shoes. The wind piled dust up against his toes and scooped out hollows to the leeward. As he watched he became aware of a slow movement in his periphery, a receding and a lightening. When he looked up, the square was empty except for the squirming body of the airman.

He holstered the revolver, buttoned it down and knelt beside the man. The poor devil was facedown and heaving as he tried to breathe through his smashed and bloody nose. As Alistair turned the head and began to scoop the dirt out of the mouth, he saw that the man’s eyes had been put out. They didn’t bleed—the sockets had been packed with yellow dust like the mouth. A bloody foam hissed in and out of the man’s nostrils as he fought for air. Alistair removed dirt until finally the man could breathe, in coughing gasps that sprayed blood.

“I’m so sorry,” Alistair said.

He cradled the man’s head. The black hair was sticky with blood, and the yellow dust had caked on to it. He was older than Alistair—in his late thirties, perhaps. An hour ago he had been flying, his tie neatly knotted.

“Look what they have done to you. I am god-awfully sorry.”

The man’s jaws snapped tight around the side of Alistair’s right hand, opposite the thumb. The splintered teeth, horribly sharp, sliced all the way through to the bone. Alistair yelled. He smashed his free hand against the man’s jaw, but the teeth only bit down harder. Alistair twisted to change the angle, but agony gave the other man an awful strength. He dragged Alistair down to the ground.

“Stop it!” yelled Alistair. “Please! I am helping you!”

But the man no longer knew what was happening to him. He took Alistair’s throat, the thumbs pushing into the windpipe. With his free arm Alistair tried to push him away. Sparks began to slide across the blue sky, which faded to indigo, and to black.

A shot came, and the thumbs released his throat. Alistair drew a long, rattling breath. The teeth loosened on his hand and released it. Alistair rolled away through the dust. As his breath came back he managed to kneel. Simonson, who had shot the German through the side of the head, was still aiming the revolver. He wore an expression of distaste, and his lips moved silently for a while.

“Get up,” Simonson said at last.

After a long moment it occurred to Alistair that Simonson meant him. He stood unsteadily. A near-semicircle of flesh was missing from the side of his hand. Blood ran into the dust. Between him and Simonson, the German lay on his back with his arms laid neatly at his sides.

“Excuse me?” said the German.

Simonson and Alistair stared. Blood and yellow fluid drained through a hole in the man’s temple and another hole in the opposite cheek.

“Excuse me?” the man said again.

Simonson shot him a second time, in the chest. Alistair supposed that some invariant politeness had caused him to wait until he was sure what the man had said. The German’s body bucked twice, arching and relaxing. Then he drew a long, hissing breath and said, “Sorry, I think you are speaking English?”

Simonson lowered his pistol and looked furiously at Alistair.

“I am confused,” said the airman. “I have had maybe an accident. Excuse me . . . for my English.”

“Your English is fine,” said Alistair.

“You are . . . what is the expression? . . . too kind.”

Alistair knelt beside the dying man. “I’m sorry.”

“Please let me go. Do not make me prisoner. I have fear for . . . my son. He is . . . not a forceful boy and I worry . . . that he might . . . excuse me . . .”

The man fought for breath. Bloody foam leaked from his mouth.

“It’s all right,” said Alistair. “It’s quite all right.”

“If I am . . . prisoner . . . he might . . . at school be bullied . . . and . . .”

Simonson shot the German again, the bullet striking in the chest. The man’s ruined mouth worked as he tried for another breath. Simonson shot him three times more in quick succession, the bullets destroying the abdomen. Blood and fluids welled through the dark flying jacket.

“And,” said the man, “and . . .”

“I’ve no more rounds,” said Simonson.

“And the . . . child is . . . so . . . so . . .”

Alistair took his revolver, aimed it quickly and fired with his eyes almost closed. It was not a good shot, the bullet striking to the side of the man’s forehead, lifting away a part of the scalp and exposing the skull but not penetrating it. The force of it had knocked the head to one side. It was Alistair’s last round too. The man took another breath, and another.