The Wall(38)

‘It’s beautiful up here,’ I said over the communicator.

‘Oh shut up,’ said Hifa.

‘Get a room,’ said Hughes.

‘Keep it hygienic,’ said Sarge, meaning, keep off the communicator unless it’s to do with business. It was a sensible thing to say on a night when it was so hard to hear, but we had got a little casual up north. I don’t think any of us really believed in the possibility of an attack. Sarge added: ‘He hasn’t been around yet, which means he’ll be here any minute.’ In other words, the Captain, uncharacteristically absent from his prowling so far that night, was coming soon.

I had long since given up checking the time when I was on guard, but it was some way in between ‘lunch’ (the midnight version of the main meal, that is) and the second cup of tea. Dawn was about an hour or more away. The weather was filthier than ever. It was hard to see. Specifically, it was hard to see straight in front of you, in the direction from which the wind and waves were coming, straight at the Wall. When you looked sideways towards the guard posts next to you, all you could see was flooding, streaming, torrential rain sheeting through the Wall lights.

I remember that I was thinking, it’s hard to know what’s going on out there, it’s like a white-out, except it’s pitch black, when the lights failed. It was a sensation so strange, and the disorientation was so total, that it took a few seconds to understand. There was lots of swearing and lamentation over the communicator.

‘This is silver command,’ said Sarge, meaning, everyone else shut up. ‘Hold your posts. The lights have failed all along our sector. Stand still and shut up. The backup will kick in any second.’

In drills and training, the backup generator usually started within fifteen to thirty seconds. That didn’t happen. It was eerie, but I wasn’t worried, it was just one of those Wall cockups. The thirty seconds went past, no generator, no lights, no communication. Another thirty seconds. This was the longest period of dark I’d known on the Wall since the night in training when we had been playing at attack and had used a five-minute blackout to overrun the Defenders.

The Wall lit up with gunfire. It was at the far end from my post, close to the watchtower. Several different sets of automatic weapons were firing and none of them sounded like the kind used by Defenders. Then there were three explosions, a big one, then a bigger one, then the biggest explosion I had ever seen or heard, so loud it had a shockwave that hit a second or so after the light and flame. It came from the barracks. The brief glimpse of illumination showed me nothing that I could understand, but it was clear that there was fighting on the Wall. A voice came on the communicator, saying, ‘Others, code red,’ which told me nothing that I didn’t already know. Our training was to check if our own post was clear and then either obey orders or, if there weren’t any, to assess whether to run towards the fight or stand at post. I stood up to the Wall but in the rain and wind and dark I couldn’t see what was on the other side. There could have been an Other five feet below me, there could have been none in the next thousand metres. ‘Sergeant, orders please,’ I said, joining the three or four Defenders who’d made the same request, but there was no answer, so I said, ‘Kavanagh post thirteen engaging,’ and left my post to run towards the fight. There were two kinds of shooting now, our rifles and the flatter sound of the Others’ weapons. Hifa said over the communicator that she was engaging too. I stopped to wait for her and thirty seconds later she was beside me, the grenade launcher at her shoulder, her eyes wild, the biggest I’d ever seen them. We just looked at each other. Then we moved off, more slowly, jogging rather than running, towards the gunfire, keeping as far away from each other as we could on opposite sides of the ramparts, to make a more difficult target.

People’s eyes adapt to the dark at different speeds. Mine are pretty good. I think it took five minutes to get close to the fight and by then I could make out a group of Defenders with their backs to me, using the concrete benches as cover, and a group of Others beyond them, doing the same thing but also making darts across the Wall to cross the ramparts and get down on the inner side. When people say their blood ran cold, what they’re describing is the feeling of being flooded with adrenaline; it’s a sensation which hits all over the body, chest to guts to limbs to heart to head. In that moment I was soaked with cold. Others had got over the Wall and were getting away. The worst thing imaginable was happening on our watch. Some of us were going to be put to sea.

When bullets come close, the noise they make as they go past changes from a zing to a crack. The bullets were starting to crack when Hifa and I got to the point where our people were fighting. Some of them were on the right of the Wall, behind a bench, and some were on the other side behind a concrete bulwark. Sarge and Yos were behind the bench. We took cover with them. Three of the new people in our squad were dead on the ramparts in front of us. Four other members of the shift were in cover behind the bulwark, taking turns to fire shots. The Others were about a hundred metres from us, in the direction of the barracks. There were two vehicles on the inner side of the Wall, people carriers. I assumed they were Defenders from nearby posts come to help us, but as Hifa and I arrived one of the cars drove away, fast. I realised that the Others had assistance; the rumours of support were true. Hence the blackout. Hence maybe the explosion in our barracks.

‘Where’s the rest of the company?’ I said to Sarge. He reached around the bench, fired off a few rounds, then turned to me.