The Human Front by Ken MacLeod Read Free Book Online

reappeared, with his black bag. He washed his hands at the sink, stepped aside.
    “Kettle,” he said.
    I filled it and switched it on. He was scissoring the trouser-leg.
    “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Get this man to a hospital. I’m not a surgeon.”
    “No can do,” I said. “Do what you can.”
    “I can stop him going into shock, and I can clean up and bandage.” He looked up at me. “Top left cupboard. Saline bag, tube, needle.”
    I held the saline drip while he inserted the needle. The kettle boiled. He sterilised a scalpel and forceps, tore open a bag of sterile swabs, and got to work quickly. After about five minutes he had Davey’s wound cleaned andbandaged, the damaged leg splinted and both legs up on cushions on the floor. A dose of straight heroin topped up the morphine.
    “Right,” Malcolm said. “He’ll live. If you want to save the leg, he must get to surgery right away.”
    He glared at us. “Don’t you bastards have field hospitals?”
    “Overloaded,” I said.
    His nose wrinkled. “Busy night, huh?”
    Davey was coming to.
    “Take me in,” he said. “I’ll no talk.”
    My father looked down at him.
    “You’ll talk,” he said; then, after a deep breath that pained him somehow: “But I won’t. I’ll take him to the Royal, swear I saw him caught in crossfire.” He looked out at the rifles in the back porch, and frowned at me. “Any powder on him?”
    I shook my head, miserably.
    “We didn’t even get a shot in ourselves.”
    “Too bad,” he said dryly. “Right, you come with me, and you, mister,” he told Gordon, “get yourself and your guns out of here before I see you, or them.”
    Gordon glanced at me. I nodded.
    “Through the cemetery,” I said.
    I only just remembered to remove the revolver from Davey’s jacket pocket. My mother suddenly appeared, gave me a tearful but silent hug, and started mopping the floor.
    We straightened out a story on the way down, and I disappeared out of the car while my father went inside and got a couple of orderlies out with a stretcher.Ambulances came and went, sirens blaring, lights flashing. A lot of uniforms about. By this time we were fighting the Brits as well as the Yanks. After a few minutes Malcolm returned, and I stepped out of the shadows and slid into the car.
    “They bought it,” he said. He lit a cigarette and coughed horribly. “Back to the house for a minute? Talk to your mother?”
    “Dangerous for us all,” I said. “If you could drop me off up at Barr’s Cottage, I’d appreciate it. Otherwise, I’ll hop out now.”
    “I’ll take you.”
    Past the station again, at a more sedate pace.
    “Thank you,” I said, belatedly. “For everything.”
    He grinned, keeping his eye on the road. “‘First, do no harm,’” he said. “Sort of thing.”
    He drove in silence for a minute, around the roundabout and out along Inverkip Road. The walls and high trees of the cemetery passed on the right. Gordon was probably picking his way through the middle of it by now.
    “I’ll give her your love,” he said. “Yes?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Won’t be seeing you again for another couple of years?”
    “If that,” I answered, bleakly if honestly.
    He turned off short of Barr’s Cottage, into a council estate, and pulled in, under a broken streetlamp. The glow from another cigarette lit his face.
    “All right,” he said. “I have something to tell you.”
    Another sigh, another bout of coughing.
    ”You may not see me again. Your mother doesn’t know this yet, but I’ve got six months. If that.”
    “Oh, God,” I said.
    “Cancer of the lung,” he said. “Lot of it about. Filthy air around here.” He crushed out the cigarette. “Stick to rural guerrilla warfare in future, old chap. It’s healthier than the urban variety.”
    “I’ll fight where I’m—”
    His face blurred. I sobbed on his shoulder.
    “Enough,” he said. He held me away, gently.
    “There’s no pain,” he assured me. “Whisky,