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  WITNESSES

  ANTHONY WATSON

  Copyright © 2017 Anthony Watson

  This Edition Published 2017 by Crowded

  Quarantine Publications

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All characters in this publication are fictitious

  and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any

  form or by any means without the prior

  permission in writing of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or

  cover other than that in which it is published

  and without a similar condition including this

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-9954537-3-9

  Crowded Quarantine Publications

  34 Cheviot Road

  Wolverhampton

  West Midlands

  WV2 2HD

  For Judith. Forever.

  PART ONE

  REVELATIONS

  The sun hangs low in the sky, lends it a redness that casts tints on the high wisps of cirrus. The sound of cicadas seems tonight to be overwhelming, filling the air with its rhythmic susurrus. The relentless heat and humidity brings beads of sweat to your forehead, makes your shirt cling to your back, the nylon soaked through, becoming almost transparent.

  You march in line towards the plane, still some hundred or so yards distant across the concrete of the runway. You glance down at the ground you walk over, see the cracks in the hard surface, the weeds pushing their way through, widening the gaps, crumbling the concrete. Nature reclaiming the world.

  The man in line directly in front of you hawks noisily, a deep inhalation that rattles the phlegm from his throat. Turning nonchalantly to the left he spits out the ball of snot which arcs upwards before falling to earth. It is, you notice, black with streaks of bright red running through it. He walks on and you follow, maintaining your place in the line. His shirt is pink, the colour intensified by the setting December sun. Sweat patches are visible beneath his armpits. His spine is clearly defined by a line of wetness running down the middle of his back, to which his shirt clings in wrinkled folds. He carries a black briefcase in his right hand, that wrist bearing a chunky gold Rolex.

  A sudden breeze picks up, a zephyr that spins across the runway disturbing the still air and bringing a welcome – but all too fleeting – coolness. You feel it on your forehead, on the dampness of your back, relishing its cold caress.

  The line slows and comes to a stop as the passengers make their way up the steps into the belly of the Boeing 737. As you wait your turn to climb the steps you glance around you, watch as the wind that cooled you moments earlier reaches the fringe of palm trees at the airport perimeter, ruffles the fronds as it passes through.

  The rhythm of the cicadas has increased, so too their volume. The beginnings of a headache gnaw at the space between your eyes and you squeeze the bridge of your nose to alleviate the pain.

  And then you’re climbing the metal steps, the clanking of your footsteps and the others around you adding to the relentless noise of the insects. A fly buzzes past your face and you waft at it ineffectually as you step into the metal tube of the aeroplane.

  The air-conditioning inside the plane chills you as you make your way towards your seat. Tension hangs in the air, the fears of the nervous mixing with the frustration of the impatient as they wait to stow their luggage.

  Finally, you settle into your seat, shuffling awkwardly to extricate the seat belt from beneath you. You click the buckle shut and try to relax, grind your shoulders into the grey plastic of the seat. Waves of body odour waft over you as your fellow passengers on this short-hop flight stow their luggage, find their way to their seats. You glance to your right, look past the empty seat to your side, out through the small oval window. The sun is a red orb, hanging low above a stand of palm trees. A truck passes by, orange light flashing on the roof of its cab. Sighing, you close your eyes...

  ...and awaken, slumped in your seat, to the distant drone of the plane’s engines, the monotonous hum of the air-conditioning. The world is dark outside the window; regular flashes of red from the wing-lights reflect against its thick Perspex.

  You stretch, slowly rotate your head to iron out the cricks in your neck. Around you, your fellow passengers read newspapers, sip coffee from polystyrene cups. You glance at your watch and discover that you have slept for most of the flight. Final descent can only be minutes away.

  In the row in front of you, across the aisle, a man has turned to look at you. He does not look away, even as your gaze meets his. Instead he smiles, a wide grin spreads across his face, teeth bared, eyes narrowing. His face is not familiar to you and yet somehow you feel as if you know him, that you must have met before. You search your mind, try to recollect a name. Still he grins at you. No words pass his lips and uneasiness settles heavily in your stomach, his smile suddenly seems manic to you...

  “Do we…?” You begin to speak but your words are interrupted by a scream from the front of the plane. You lean out into the aisle, crane your neck sideways in an attempt to see what the commotion is.

  Another scream and then a loud bang – the unmistakable sound of a gunshot. Before your mind has time to comprehend what is happening, a second shot rings out, followed immediately by more screams. Panic grips you, spreads through the cabin like a wave. The air is filled with shouts, fear and incomprehension lending them weight.

  Some passengers are standing now, the need to know what is happening driving them to their feet. Then the plane lurches forward, tilts downwards, falling into a dive, and they are thrown to the floor.

  In the cacophony of screams and shouts time seems to slow. Your heartbeat reverberates like a bass drum, a slow pounding that shakes your body with every contraction.

  Ahead of you, at the front of the aisle, a man bursts out of the cockpit. He is brandishing a gun, shouting, but his words are lost amidst the noise that fills your world, the shouts and screams, the pounding of your heart...

  The man is Japanese and wears a red-checked scarf around his neck. He screams and screams and you see – even at this distance – the spittle flying from his lips. As he rants, slowly he raises the revolver to his temple. You continue to watch, unable to tear your gaze away from the nightmare scenario playing out in front of you.

  He stops shouting.

  He squeezes the trigger.

  And it’s then, as the crimson fountains from his head to splash against the wall behind him, as he slumps to the floor, that you do look away and, in so doing, catch the eye of the man who had been observing you before all this madness had started.

  He looks at you again but now his grin has gone. His look is not one of fear, though; imminent death is – it would seem – of little consequence to him. His look is one of resignation. As the plane lurches once again, as its angle of descent increases even more, his smile returns and he shrugs.

  Your world is filled with screams, those of the passengers around you as death hurtles towards them, those of the plane’s engines as it plummets to the ground...

  * * *

  Through the harsh fluorescent illumination, past the whitewashed walls now yellowed by years of exposure to grease and fat, the fly spun in Brownian motion towards the purple glow of the light. For a moment, it circled the mesh before entering the cage, drawn inexorably toward its shining death. A barely audible fizz marked its demise and it fell to the ca
tch tray of the ZAP-FLY to nestle amongst a pile of its contemporaries, earlier victims of Ali’s Pizza Emporium’s pest control policy.

  “You want extra toppings?” asked the eponymous owner, appearing genuinely interested in the answer. Behind him kebab meat slowly rotated on a spit while chicken wings sizzled on a griddle, dropping fat to create small flares beneath them. “Peppers? Extra cheese?”

  “Nah, just the bog-standard tonight thanks.”

  “No probs! Ten minutes, yeah?”

  The bell above the door rang discordantly as another customer entered the takeaway. As Dave turned away from the counter to take a seat on the deep sill beneath the window, his place was taken by a burly man dressed in black jeans and a tight-fitting black tee-shirt. A swirl of tattoos extended down the man’s bulging right bicep, reaching as far as the crook of his elbow. An air of aggression emanated from him, alongside the more tangible aroma of alcohol.

  “Meat Feast Supreme,” he barked, “extra Pepperoni, extra cheese!”

  “That all?” Ali asked, his tone more muted now than when Dave had stood at the counter. I don’t want any trouble... the words unspoken but implicit.

  “Yeah, and make sure I get them extras. I’m keeping my eye on you, you’re not gonna rip me off!”

  A sizzling burst of flame from the griddle heralded the sudden arrival of the tension that now filled the takeaway. For a moment Ali stared at the man, weighing up his options, deciding whether it was really worth telling him to piss off.

  Dave felt his stomach tighten as he watched the scene playing out in front of him. How was this going to develop? All at once he felt trapped, suddenly aware of just how hot it was.

  “Don’t even know why I’m in here, had enough of his lot in Afghanistan...”

  His lot? Dave’s stomach lurched once more as he realised the man was talking to him. He looked up, saw eyes made black by widely dilated pupils staring into his own, saw a bead of sweat trickle from the bald pate to run down a nose bent out of shape by a break some time in its past. Saw the air shimmering around the man’s outline, the small eruptions from the surface of his skin, like miniature solar flares, red against the black aura that clung to him.

  “Putting my life on the line for the likes of him...” the words spat out, taking physical form, black smoke escaping from his mouth.

  Behind him, no doubt relieved that the man had turned his attention to Dave, Ali began to prepare the pizzas. Yeah, get them done as soon as you can, thought Dave, let me get out of here. He looked away from the angry man, turned to look instead through the window at the main road running through the village. Rain had begun to fall, the promise of the humidity that had made the day uncomfortably warm finally manifest. Shut the fuck up, he thought, stop talking to me.

  “I’ll have a can of Coke, too,” the words followed by a loud belch. Dave breathed a sigh of relief and looked back to the counter. The burly man was leaning over it, resting on his elbows, his attention now diverted back to Ali.

  As his heartbeat gradually slowed again, Dave was aware of just how apprehensive the short encounter had made him. Why didn’t you say something, stand up to him? He turned to look out the window again, saw only his reflection in the glass, distorted by the snakes of water trickling down it, saw the mixture of self-loathing and fear in his eyes. Because you’re a coward, shit-scared...

  “I need a piss, I’ll be back in five.” The man lurched towards the door, managed to turn the three or four steps of the journey into a much longer stagger. As the bell rang, Dave glanced at Ali, tried to gauge the expression on the other man’s face. Ali shrugged his shoulders, rolled his eyes, a light-hearted response that Dave immediately translated into one of condemnation.

  “Be pissing up against a wall round the corner!” said Ali.

  “Probably, “replied Dave, “knobhead!”

  Yeah, nice response. Never mind that your mate’s just been racially abused. Don’t try and reassure him...

  “Yeah, knobhead!” Ali said, pausing momentarily before returning to continue with the pizza orders.

  * * *

  Dave walked through the rain, now little more than a drizzle, holding his pizza box in front of him, its warmth seeping into his stomach, against which it rested. He’d managed to get out of the takeaway before the drunken soldier had returned and he’d given Ali a hefty tip in an effort to assuage his guilt. There’d been a look in his friend’s eyes, though, one which said like that makes up for it... and then there were those little red flares erupting from his outline, a sure sign of the anger he was feeling but – and this somehow made Dave feel even more inadequate – trying to hide.

  Dave stopped, considered turning back, to go and see Ali, sort things out. A car passed by on the road, slushing over the wet surface. Its headlights picked out the drops of rain and, for a brief moment, the bouquets of flowers lain at the roadside. The flowers were beginning to wither now, a shrine to death now dying itself. Rainwater beaded on the cellophane wrapping, smudged and blurred the handwritten notes.

  A sharp bend in the road, sharper than most drivers were expecting despite the black and white chevrons placed there as a warning. All too easy to take it too quickly, all too easy to lose control. Jamie Moore had taken it too quickly two nights ago and had paid the ultimate price along with his girlfriend Sharon Robson, both killed instantly as their Ford Fiesta left the road to become a mass of crumpled metal, crushing them to death in a devastating impact.

  Now their names washed slowly from small pieces of card, fading away as would, in time, the feeling of loss in this small village perched high in the hills of County Durham. Tragedy becoming history.

  Another car passed by Dave, slowing for the bend, illuminating once more the roadside shrine. This time he saw the figures standing alongside the flowers, hand in hand, heads bowed as if in contemplation of the tributes at their feet. The sight of them made him flinch involuntarily. Where had they come from so quickly? He’d passed no one as he’d walked from Ali’s; there had been no one else on the road with him and they hadn’t approached from the opposite direction. They certainly hadn’t been there when the first car had passed by.

  Despite the heat of the pizza box against his belly, the warmth of the summer evening air, a shiver ran through him. The figures made no movement, remained stock-still, gazing down at the flowers. A young couple, the right age to be friends of Jamie and Sharon.

  He began to walk away from the shrine, feeling an inexplicable sense of relief that the figures were on the other side of the road, glad of the distance between them and him. As he walked, his pace gradually quickened so that by the time he reached home he was trotting, the pizza sliding around in its box, the sound of it for all the world like a chorus of cicadas in some tropical country.

  * * *

  They came at dawn, picking their way through the vineyards perched precariously on the steep slopes above the town. Tendrils of mist floated amongst the vines, the low sun casting an orange hue over them, over the whole landscape, a landscape unchanged since Medieval times.

  They walked in silence, no words passed between the seventy men who made up the company, the only sounds the scuffing of their feet in the brown soil, their footfalls raising small plumes of dust that mingled with the low hanging mist, that covered their boots.

  A sudden disturbance as a murder of crows took flight, disturbed by the approaching soldiers, cawing raucously to each other as they flapped away, out over the valley, over the town nestled by the river.

  Hauptmann Carl Dreschler watched the birds as they flew away, saw them stop and begin to circle above the town, all the time keeping up the cacophony of harsh cawing. Almost like an omen, he thought to himself, a sign of things to come... His musings brought a smile to his face as he raised his left arm to signal a halt to the men following him. He grinned as he turned to face them.

  “We are here,” he began, “soon our work will begin.” As he spoke, he stared intently at the men in his command, apprai
sing them, looking for any sign of fear, any sign of doubt. They’re good men, he thought, the best. “What we must do will be difficult, I make no bones about it, but – difficult as it is – it is also necessary. What we do here, in this place, is as vital a part of the war effort as any battle that will be fought in the months to come.”

  The faces of his men showed a variety of emotions. Some seemed indifferent to his words, resigned to what was about to happen, others seemed fearful, concern etched in their features. Others, however, seemed genuinely excited, and Dreschler made a special note of these men. Perhaps he would have need of them in the days ahead, men he could rely on.

  “But enough talk. The game is afoot and time waits for no man, not...” and here he paused, stretched his arms out, palms upwards as if beseeching the men, “… even me!”

  A ripple of laughter ran through the assembled men, but the sound was a nervous one, betrayed no real evidence of amusement.

  Dreschler lowered his arms. The grin faded from his face. The time for words was over, the time for action was here. “Fix bayonets!”

  A flurry of activity as the soldiers unclipped the blades from their Mauser Gewehr 98 rifles. All were equipped with the new butcher bayonets, shorter than the quill blades that were previously standard issue. The swords were wider than their predecessors, too. All the better to penetrate uniform and flesh. Some of the men had serrated blades on their bayonets and the sight of them returned the grin to Dreschler’s face.

  “Then let us begin. History awaits us.” He turned, began the final descent into the town. Rifles resting against their shoulders, the orange sun reflecting from the virgin blades, that same sun reflecting from the spikes atop their helmets, his men followed him.

  * * *

  The first to die was an old man, who met the troops halfway across the bridge spanning the sluggish, brown water of the River Demer. He had shouted at the soldiers, waving his arms, babbling in some dialect that Dreschler had found hard to decipher. He’d slapped the Hauptmann square on the chest, demanding to know why he was there, why he had brought all these soldiers.