End of the Road (The Rozzers) (3 page)

In all the panic and fear, we hadn’t even asked the guy his name.

“Okay, Robin. Who can we call for you?”

I fished out a small notebook and pencil I always carried with me when working. With great effort, he gave me a name, address and telephone number, which he said was his wife’s. As I finished jotting it down a loud female voice made me jump.

“Hey, hey,
hey
!” she cried out. “Calm down, will you? I’m just trying to help you.”

I looked out of the shattered rear window and saw a man and woman in the moonlight. The woman was trying to shine a torch into the face of a tall soldier I didn’t recognise. A bit of a scuffle ensued and the soldier cursed the civilian woman, swinging his arms violently, knocking her away. I stared at them, speechless.

“Who the fuck are
they
?” I whispered.

“Buggered if I know,” said Cat. “Go and check it out; we’ll be all right in here.”

I hesitated but Cat was insistent, so I scrambled out of the back window and stood on the road, breathing in the fresh air. Smudge reappeared and joined me, and together we approached the strangers on the road.

The smartly dressed civilian woman proudly stated that she was a first aider and had stopped to help. She said that the man with her was seriously hurt. The agitated soldier was walking off along the road, talking to himself and waving his arms about. I stepped in front of him and saw that he was obviously in need of help. Blood was running down the side of his face from a head injury and he was mumbling incoherently to himself, his left hand cupping his left eye.

“Let me see; let me see,” I pleaded, calmly and firmly, knowing that soldiers responded to that kind of tone. I gently removed his hand from his face to see where all the blood was coming from, but he pulled it back quickly.

The woman rejoined us with her torch, causing the man to pull away from me slightly.

“It’s okay, I’m just gonna take a look,” I said, trying to sound calm. “But I need the torch, okay?”

He accepted my help, but still glared at the woman as she shone the torch on his face.

I removed his hand again but something momentarily stuck to it before it swung free and hung down his left cheek. It took me a few seconds to recognise what I was looking at – it was his left eye, hanging out of the socket and dangling on a bit of bloody thread. I swallowed deeply and turned away before turning back.

“Okay, we need to take a look at that,” I said, surprising myself. “This lady’s a medic; she’s gonna help you.” I was only too glad to hand him over to somebody better qualified than me.

I encouraged him to sit down on the side of the road, speaking constantly, the training finally kicking in. He was clearly in shock; talking to people I could do easily, but a dangling eye was something else.

I think he understood that I was another soldier and that he needed help. I managed to get through to him, calm him down and hand him over to the first aider. She pushed me aside but I let it go – I was glad to hand him over to somebody who claimed to know what they were doing. She seemed able to attend to such injuries, whereas I had no idea what you do with an eye hanging out. I don’t think I wanted to know.

She set about him with authority and, as she clearly knew what she was doing and the casualty was now accepting of her, I stood up to speak to Smudge.

“Where the fuck did
he
come from?” he asked.

I looked around and saw nothing but the black mass of the squashed civilian car with our digger on top of it. There were no other vehicles to be seen.

“Could he have been in the car?” asked Smudge.

“No, not possible.” I knew he couldn’t have been in the front seat, but neither could he have been in the back seat. There wasn’t a drop of blood in the back seat – I would have noticed. “You haven’t seen any other smashed-up vehicles on your travels, have you?” I asked.

Smudge shook his head.

I bent down to the casualty and spoke gently, noticing three stripes on his epaulette. “Listen, Sergeant. Where exactly did you come from?”

The woman attending to him looked at me irritatedly.

“What?” he replied, confused.

“You’re not with us; you’re not from that,” I said, indicating the pile-up behind me. “So where exactly did you come from?”

“The bloody army Land Rover, obviously,” he snapped.

I stood up and looked around. “
What
bloody Land Rover?”

“Tommo, where’s Tommo?” the man suddenly called out, looking around and trying to get to his feet, causing the first aider to let go of a bandage she had been fastening around his head.

She stared at me angrily. I put my hands on his shoulders and prevented him from standing. He sat back down.

“Tommo?” he whispered, looking up at me questioningly, worryingly, whilst not making much sense. He then began sobbing uncontrollably.

I ignored the woman’s protests and looked at Smudge. Tommo was the standard nickname for anybody in the army whose surname was Thomas or Thompson, and we both knew that a Land Rover was the standard mode of transport for the military, but
who
was Tommo and
what
Land Rover was he talking about? Then I remembered.

“Oh shit, of course.” I turned to Smudge. “That lump of metal back there in the road which we passed earlier? The TV thing?”

Smudge nodded.

“I think I know what it is! It’s the engine block of a Land Rover;
his
Land Rover.”

“So where the hell is the rest of it, then?” asked Smudge.

We instinctively looked around. Our truck was parked further up the road, its hazard lights still flashing. The outline of the engine block could just be seen in its amber lights, between us and the truck. Beyond that, on the brow of a hill, we could see car headlights as Pizza stopped the traffic, spoke to the drivers and turned them around. Behind us was the main accident site, with Cat inside, illuminated by the car’s interior light. Beyond that, more cars were being stopped and turned around by Donk. Out to the sides we saw nothing but the darkness of the plain.

“Where did he come from?” I asked the first aider.

She dismissively pointed over the squaddy’s shoulder into the darkness, loath to speak to me. I wanted to slap her. I stared at her, my eyes demanding a better answer.

“He just appeared from out of the darkness over there,” she said primly, pointing. “He scared the
poo
out of me,” she said, trying to swear. As she spoke, a huge figure ran from around the back of the digger and trailer, startling all three of us.

“Fucking hell, Donk, you scared the shit out of us!” snapped Smudge.

“Sorry, Sarge. Don’t wanna miss all the action, do I?” he said excitedly, eager to get involved.

A few minutes earlier a helpful civilian had stopped his car and volunteered his services to Donk, at which point Donk had legged it into the darkness, leaving the poor Good Samaritan standing alone on the road turning traffic around. Donk wanted to be involved more; he resented being stuck on traffic control well away from the accident. He couldn’t take his eyes off the guy’s blood-soaked, bandaged head.

“Who’s he?” he asked, too loudly.

I looked at the injured soldier and recalled his aggression earlier. An excitable Donk was the last thing we needed right now.
Damn that helpful civilian for releasing Donk.

“Sarge, if it’s all right with you, I’ll take Donk and go look for the other guy – this
Tommo
? Could you stay here with the lady?” I tactfully asked, nodding at the soldier’s back. Smudge understood my meaning and accepted. He seemed relieved at my suggestion.

“Donk, you’re with me. We need to find a Land Rover with a guy called Tommo in it, check out if he’s okay.”

Donk smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

“Any chance of lending us your torch?” I asked the first aider.

“No chance, sorry. I can’t do my work in darkness,” she said, leaving no room for argument.

“You got a torch, Bruce?” I asked, using Donk’s correct name, although I always thought that Donk sounded far nicer than Bruce. He hadn’t. I looked up; we could do with the moonlight but it was obscured by clouds again.

“Okay mate, let’s spread out a bit. There must be an engine-less Land Rover out there somewhere and, if we find that, we’ll likely find Tommo.”

We walked off into the darkness, eyes straining to see something, minds hoping not to. What I’d seen so far was more than enough horror for one lifetime, but was there more to come? I had to brace myself for what we might see, for what we might have to deal with out on that empty plain. I regretted not paying more attention in our first aid classes now and cursed the police for not being there. The crash seemed to have happened so long ago but, in truth, only about thirty minutes had passed since that first impact.

Come on, Tommo, where the hell are you?
I called his name, thinking that if he was lying on the grass injured somewhere, he might hear me and respond. Instead it was Donk who answered.

“Dave! Dave! Over here!”

Part one of THE ROZZERS by DIEM BURDEN

o0o

CHAPTER THREE

As I hurried towards Donk’s voice the moon reappeared, thankfully casting some light on the grasses of the plain. Just ahead of me a large, dark shape loomed. I ran closer and a Land Rover appeared in a very sorry state. It looked like it had been bombed out but had defied the explosion and remained upright, its doors hanging open.

“Donk?” I shouted.

His voice came back from the other side of the vehicle. I quickly joined him and found him kneeling on the grass, leaning over a dark shape, giving mouth to mouth resuscitation.

I knelt next to them, my heart beating madly. I watched Donk as he blew air into the man. My mind was in a whirl – I was about to apply CPR for real for the first time. I looked up and down the road for any signs of blue lights. Nothing. I tried to recall which of the ever-changing rates of heart compressions I should use as my fingers felt his chest for the right place to compress.

“Too hard, Donk, you’re blowing too hard!”

He was; you didn’t need to be a medic to know this, but he didn’t hear me. I took the guy’s wrist to feel for a pulse. It was stone cold. I frowned and leant over Tommo to check his injuries, having to forcibly push Donk off. Donk pushed me back angrily – he was determined to bring this guy back.

“Donk, wait! Just a second, will you?”

The man’s head flopped unnaturally to one side. Even in the darkness I could see how young he was and how freely his head moved. He had dark, matted hair which I assumed was blood soaked. I probed around his head with my fingers, ignoring the blood. I touched a huge hole in the back of his head.

“Come on! I gotta breathe for him!” shouted Donk.

The man’s injury was clearly fatal. There was no way he could have survived that and there was nothing we could do to bring him back.

“He’s dead,” I said, staring at the young man’s peaceful face.

“He can’t be, not till a doctor says!” Donk pushed me aside and restarted his over-ambitious mouth to mouth. He was determined to bring him back to life and repeatedly blew air into the guy in ever more desperate breaths.

I watched his futile efforts as I questioned my judgement.
Donk was right, of course; we were always told to carry on mouth-to-mouth until a doctor says stop –
we
couldn’t say he’s dead, but everything about him told me he was beyond help. Should we continue?

I looked across at the battered Land Rover. There could be others inside that vehicle, guys who
did
have a chance. Maybe this wasn’t even Tommo?

“Donk, leave it. He’s gone, mate, he’s gone!”

Donk blew again; he wasn’t going to give up that easily. Donk was a big guy, strong as an ox and in desperation he blew harder and harder. He was blowing so hard into the corpse that the man’s eyes began to come out of their sockets. I wanted to vomit again. That was far too many eyes hanging out for one night. I put my hand on Donk’s shoulder and shook him, looking into his eyes.

“Bruce,” I practically growled, “leave it, mate; there’s nothing we can do for him. He’s gone. He’s fucking brown bread.” I stared into Donk’s eyes as he slowly realised the truth of what I was saying. I nodded towards the Land Rover. “There might be others who need our help in that thing. Come on, mate, give us a hand; I don’t wanna do this alone.”

His shoulders slumped as he stared down at the body lying before him. We stood up together and I became aware of a bloody hand-print on Donk’s shoulder where I’d shaken him. I bent down and wiped my hand clean on the grass.

I took a deep breath and looked at the wreck of the vehicle. I didn’t want to go in there and see more horrors. I prayed that there weren’t any more people involved. Donk was subdued and obviously in shock, so I spoke to him gently.