‘
Take your positions,’ whispered the Reaper, its deathly voice penetrating the silence like a stiletto. They did as instructed.
♠♠♠
Red four,
thought Carroll as he moved to the edge of the game-board. Shortly he found his place and stepped onto it, his shoes clicking on the glassy surface. To his right was green five, quickly occupied by a World War II GI. Brown three, to his left, remained unoccupied.
The GI was a heavily built man with cropped red hair and thick features.
Dressed in an American army-issue flack-jacket, camouflage trousers, black boots and a helmet he seemed the archetypal yank, down to the half-smoked Havana clamped in the corner of his mouth.
‘
Jesus Christ!’ he said, then, ‘Name's David Ellery. What's yours?’
‘
Jason Carroll,’ He tried not to laugh at this rote politeness, since he felt his laughter might not sound too healthy. About to continue he paused, noticing something odd with Ellery's face.
Like the corporal.
In set along his jawbone was a grid half an inch by an inch. Carroll was about to ask about that, but then reached up and touched his own jawbone. He had one as well.
‘
What is that?’ asked the GI.
‘
You should know as well as I,’ said Carroll. Ellery reached up and touched the grid set in his jaw and panic twisted his features. Carroll continued, ‘No doubt to complement the translators in our ears.’ He glanced around and saw that all the fighters whose faces he could see had one of these inset grids.
‘Tell me, Carroll, did you die?’ Ellery abruptly asked, the question almost a plea.
Carroll
pretended to consider the question as he fingered the grid and dragged his thoughts to order, then replied, ‘Yes.’ He distinctly remembered the taste of heart's blood in his mouth. ‘You also, I presume?’
Ellery was reluctant.
‘Yeah... well, I think so. It happened pretty quickly... grenade.’
‘
Do you believe in Hell?’ asked Carroll.
‘
No way bud, there has to be a reason for this...’
‘
Yes, presumably there has to be,’ said Carroll, turning away.
‘
You going to fight, Carroll?’
Carroll
turned and gazed back towards the Reaper. Nearby the SS officer was putting on a new uniform he had been given. A short distance from him lay his still-smoking primary corpse.
‘
There was not one moment of spontaneity during that briefing. Our friend there was probably primed to act the way he did, even though it might have been against his will. They do not want robots I think, but I wonder what rules there are to limit how they may tamper with us...’ He touched the grid again then studied Ellery. The GI was peering at him in confusion. Carroll gestured to the SS officer. ‘Yes, I shall fight.’
Ellery
peered uncertainly in the same direction, then he grinned wryly. ‘Yeah, guess I'll fight as well. Sure gave that bastard a taste of his own medicine though.’
Carroll
nodded, half to Ellery but mostly to himself as he mentally recited his litany,
listen, learn, act.
‘
It seems to me,’ he said after a moment, ‘that we were brought here the moment we died, but not immediately resurrected.’
‘
Yeah, that's what I thought. Looks like a military history pageant, but where is here?’
Carroll
regarded the twilight sky. There were stars but no recognizable constellations.
‘
Not on Earth.’
Ellery
peered up also. ‘I guess not.’ Then again studying Carroll asked, ‘When did you die?’
‘
Nineteen eighty-four,’ said Carroll.
‘
Eighty-four! Hell! I could be your granddad!’
‘
No, I think not. I am strictly British. By the way, Hitler's Germany lost.’
‘
That was going to be my next question,’ said Ellery wryly. ‘When did it end? I got snuffed in forty-four.’
‘
You missed it by a year.’
‘
Hell! … Ah well, I guess it’s good to know we won. By the way, what are you? You look like a banker.’
Carroll
peered down at his grey suit. It was the same as the one he had been wearing when the bus had run over him, only this suit did not conceal a silenced automatic. That had been one of the first things he had checked.
‘
Special Air Service,’ he stated flatly, aware that Ellery had probably never heard of it, ‘for a while, then I did a little freelance work.’
‘
Mercenary?’
‘
Sometimes...’
‘
So I guess you got yours the same way as I did?’
‘
More or less,’ said Carroll, feeling slightly embarrassed.
Ellery gave him a probing look then turned away
to check his surroundings. After a moment he turned back, finding words to try and hold back the reality of their situation.
‘
Come on, how? How did you...’
‘
I got run over by a bus,’ said Carroll succinctly.
Ellery burst out laughing, his laughter holding that
hysterical edge Carroll feared his own might have held had he allowed himself laughter. Carroll waited patiently for him to finish before continuing, ‘You see, I was too good to end up getting killed by an enemy soldier, or agent, so it had to be something like that, or old age.’ It then occurred to him that the bus driver had not blown his horn, and when he had seen himself dying there had been no bus visible. Ellery eyed him uncertainly, not sure what to make of him.
Shortly brown three was occupied by the SS officer, dressed in a new
and perfectly-pressed black uniform. He was subdued, frightened, and Carroll almost felt sorry for him … almost.
‘
You lost the war!’ Ellery shouted over at him.
‘
I am aware of that,’ said the officer, the voice Carroll heard bearing no relation to the movement of his lips and confirming Carroll's thought about the purpose of the grids, ‘I was stabbed to death by a Jewess at the Nuremberg trials.’
Ellery looked askance at
Carroll, who gave him a short but concise explanation of said trials.
‘
Ha! So much for the Thousand Year Reich and the Aryan super race.’
The SS officer just stared at Ellery, his red-rimmed eyes showing starkly in a face that seemed paler than normal because of its contrast with his black uniform. He was another archetype: the blond-haired Aryan German officer.
Carroll studied him for a moment and realized he was inspecting the nearest thing known to an evil man. It occurred to him that if this was Hell then no one deserved it more than this man. Yet, in the deterministic world they had come from, he was blameless. Carroll, perhaps, was more evil in his killing for money. But of course this was all idle speculation. Carroll believed in evil as much as he believed life after death...
He turned away, and while doing so saw that the colour on his wristband had changed and that the number had disappeared. He held his wrist up to Ellery and the GI glanced at his own.
‘Only you,’ he said, ‘and if you don't move you end up feeling like the Thanksgiving turkey.’ Carroll nodded, smiled grimly, and then he stepped to the only blue hexagon that butted against his own.
‘
Hey, Carroll, what do you reckon the range is of that thing Rommel here got zapped with?’ Ellery asked.
‘
You're assuming it is a single weapon?’
‘
What else?’
‘
Perhaps our bodies have some kind of explosive device fitted, radio activated. I don't suppose these are our original bodies, and Rommel's certainly isn't.’
‘
The name is Kruger,’ said the SS officer.
‘
Kruger,’ repeated Carroll. ‘What was it like, Kruger?’
‘
To be burnt to death?’ said Kruger with a faint sneer.
‘
No, to be resurrected,’ said Carroll.
Kruger grinned nastily.
‘Perhaps you will be finding out soon,’ he said.
Carroll
glanced towards Ellery with his expression grim.
Ellery pursed his lips then shrugged, after a moment he too inspected his wristband.
‘My turn,’ he said with forced levity.
‘
Join the charge,’ said Carroll with bitter irony, then he checked from side to side and saw that others were advancing also. Soon he was moved forwards again, then again, the delays between each move getting shorter and shorter as the pace of the game picked up. In very little time his starting hexagon was out of sight. Ellery had moved some way in front of him and to the right, and Kruger behind him and to the left. They were closer to each other than to anyone else in the team, and as they advanced across the surreal plain they made a very odd trio indeed: the American GI, lauded as a hero by his friends, the SS officer, and the hit man. Carroll managed to dismiss the oddity of the situation and focus on immediate reality of killing and dying, no matter how temporary that death might be. After a time he saw the first of the opposition. The man was quite obviously and ancient Egyptian and he was drawing closer and closer to Ellery.
‘
What the Hell are we doing here?!’ shouted Ellery from his hexagon. Good question, one that it seemed pointless to ask at this point.
Carroll
shouted, ‘Playing games!’ His heart began to thump heavily, and he began to feel a deep fear of imminent physical pain laced with a numbing confusion. What the Hell was going on?
Stay cool. Stay cool.
What is this? Delayed reaction?
He scanned his surroundings as if for the first time. Suddenly he needed a cigarette and wondered crazily how this body could be addicted to nicotine
‘Go to it, Ellery!’ Carroll shouted across at the GI as the Egyptian moved in.
Ellery saluted to him then stepped into a green hexagon at the same time as the Egyptian. There was a scramble for something in the middle of the hexagon, then Ellery and his opponent stepped away from each other. Each of them
held a long handled mace. They circled. Ellery feinted to the left then pulled back to swing from the right, and it was all over. Ellery stumbled. The Egyptian moved in close and brought his mace down on Ellery's head. Even Carroll heard the crunch, and in a moment, saw the red liquid pooling round the GI's prostrate form. It seemed to Carroll as if it must be paint, then the pragmatic side of his nature asserted itself and he knew that it was not. The Egyptian dropped his club and moved to the next hexagon, and behind him Ellery's corpse became a sudden bonfire.
Carroll
felt sick and angry. He turned away, and in doing so, noted that there were other fires burning across the plain. Mechanically he moved to the next hexagon indicated, noting it started him on a path towards the Egyptian.
They met on a green hexagon. As soon as they stepped onto it candent flash
ignited at the centre and, then faded to reveal two poniards. So this is the way, thought Carroll. He stepped forwards and snatched up the poniard nearest him then leapt back. He bowed mockingly towards the Egyptian.
‘
My name is Jason Carroll,’ he said.
The Egyptian stared at him blankly for a moment then saluted.
‘I am Ramses, the second of that name,’ he said, and threw his poniard.
For a moment there was no pain, just b
lank shock at what had happened; such an easy and deadly trick. Carroll peered down at the handle of the poniard where it protruded from his chest. Distractedly he observed the frothy arterial blood pulsing out around it.
Then came the pain.
Every muscle in his body seemed to lock up, and he did not want to move because of the possibility of increasing this agony. He felt sick, dizzy, and fast approached that drunken state before blackout. Once, he had taken a bullet in the leg, but there had been drugs almost immediately. The pain did not compare. His surroundings seemed to dilate, blackness filled the edges of his vision. He fell. The last stutterings of his heart were a drumbeat in his head and again he tasted that salty warm gush in his mouth.
T
hen he died. Again.
Walking across the steel plain the Clown drew closer and closer to Carroll. When the clown-face finally loomed over him, it was so much sadder than a clown-face should be, and also more menacing. Frozen, a cold pain in his chest locking him to the spot, Carroll felt an awareness of geologic time... The clown-face tilted, as if preparing to speak. Carroll knew something was wanted of him but felt only terror. Then a gong sounded, and the clown-face shimmered, cracked, fragmented.