Fireshadow by Anthony Eaton Read Free Book Online Page B

– a nice one, he noted – slipping through the shadows to the dark, crouching shape of the campervan, then busied himself filling the billy. When he returned from the creek, she was already by the fire, poking at the coals with a long twig, a packet of biscuits and a stainless steel mug on the ground.
    â€˜So, Vinnie, what do you do?’
    What do you do? The question brought with it a surge of panic, nauseating in its unexpectedness. Vinnie fought it down, struggled for an answer.
    â€˜Dunno. Not a lot.’
    â€˜Unemployed?’
    â€˜Been in hospital.’
    Silence again. The awkwardness of strangers feeling their way around barriers.
    â€˜What about you?’
    â€˜I’m at uni. First year.’
    The billy bubbled and Vinnie poured, the two mugs throwing ghost-plumes into the night air.
    â€˜That’s good. It’s colder here than I thought it would be.’
    â€˜Yeah. You got plenty of blankets in that van?’
    â€˜Grandad’s in the van, I’m camping out. A man his age needs a little privacy. So do I, for that matter.’
    â€˜Right.’
    â€˜What about you? You warm in your little tent?’
    â€˜Yeah. Got a good sleeping bag.’
    â€˜Have a biscuit.’
    The crackle of cellophane sounded foreign in the forest darkness.
    They munched. Her company was good. He was enjoying it. That admission, and all that it implied, came as a surprise. He didn’t voice it, didn’t want to, and knew instinctively that he didn’t need to. Sitting in silence, companionable and pleasant, came the realisation that tomorrow he would find himself reassessing some things, some aspects of the person he’d become.
    Dregs of tea thrown into flames, the fire hissing an angry retort.
    â€˜I’d better get off to bed.’
    â€˜Yeah, me too.’
    â€˜You going to be around tomorrow?’
    â€˜Guess so. No other plans, anyway.’
    â€˜I might see you then. Nice meeting you, Vinnie.’
    And she was gone into the night, leaving Vinnie alone with the quiet skitter of nocturnal business, and his thoughts.
    August 1943
    Erich stood in the rain, the driving, icy rain, willing it to dissolve him, wash him away, take from him all the buzzing madness he could feel building up and up inside himself. A couple of hundred metres down the hill the lights of the perimeter glowed through the sleet-hazed night and the occasional searchlight probed the gloom lethargically. If one caught him in its gaze there’d be problems, questions, but Erich didn’t care. All he was aware of was his need for the rain to pound from his head the memory of Günter writhing in agony on the bed, four guards holding him in place while the doctor sawed.
    It had taken a little over half an hour. A bloody, horrible thirty minutes of frantic activity. The doctor, calm and controlled, hacking steadily at the shattered limb, severing tendons, muscle and bone and issuing calm instructions to Erich, who daubed antiseptic onto raw tissue. Then the cauterising, the sizzling stink of flesh and hot iron, and then, finally – mercifully – silence.
    Now Günter lay quiet again, lost in morphined sleep. The sheet fell flat on the mattress where his leg had been, gradually staining with blood that seeped from the bandage-swathed stump. The hospital was a muggy fog, a stinking combination of wood-smoke, blood and antiseptic, and Erich needed to get outside, into the rain, into the clean, pure, storm-charged air. The doctor slouched exhausted on a chair beside the bed, his shirt-front stained crimson, barely even aware of the door slamming.
    The rain drove harder, lightning crashed somewhere out in the forest, and Erich turned his face to the driving streams, savouring the delicate sting on the skin of his eyes and lips. He let them sweep him away, take him off to familiar places, smells, sounds, voices.
    â€˜Erich?’
    Someone called from the hospital verandah – a