The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [392]
Everything stopped. The noise, the explosions, everything. My brother Anton. Why did she have to bring him up?
“Anton,” I whispered.
“Your dear brother Anton,” replied Aornis. “Yes. You worshiped him. From the time he built you a tree house in the back garden. You joined the army to be like him, didn’t you?”
I said nothing. It was true, all true. Tears started to course down my cheeks. Anton had, quite simply, been the best elder brother a girl could have. He always had time for me and always included me in whatever he got up to. My anger at losing him had been driving me for longer than I cared to remember.
“I brought you here so you can remember what it’s like to lose a brother. If you could find the man that killed Anton, what would you do to him?”
“Losing Anton was not the moral equivalent of killing Acheron,” I shouted. “Hades deserved to die—Anton was just doing his misguided patriotic duty!”
We had arrived outside the remains of Anton’s APC. The guns were firing more sporadically now, picking their targets more carefully; I could hear the sound of small arms as the Russian infantry advanced to retake the lost ground. I released the rear door. It was jammed but it didn’t matter; the side door had vanished with the roof and I rapidly packed twenty-two wounded soldiers into an APC designed to carry eight. I closed my eyes and started to cry. It was like seeing a car accident about to happen, the futility of knowing something is about to occur but being unable to do anything about it.
“Hey, Thuzzy!” said Anton in the voice I knew so well. Only he had ever called me that; it was the last word he would speak. I opened my eyes and there he was, as large as life and despite the obvious danger, smiling.
“No!” I shouted, knowing full well what was going to happen next. “Stop! Don’t come over here!”
But he did, as he had done all those years before. He stepped out from behind cover and ran across to me. The side of my APC was blown open and I could see him clearly.
“Please no!” I shouted, my eyes full of tears. The memory of that day would fill my mind for years to come. I would immerse myself in work to get away from it.
“Come back for me, Thuz—!”
And then the shell hit him.
He didn’t explode; he just sort of vanished in a red mist. I didn’t remember driving back and I didn’t remember being arrested when I tried to take another APC back into the fray to find him. I had to be forcibly restrained and confined to barracks. I didn’t remember anything up until the moment Sergeant Tozer told me to have a shower and clean myself up. I remember treading on the small pieces of sharp bone that washed out of my hair in the shower.
“This is what you try and forget, isn’t it?” said Aornis, smiling at me through the steam from the shower as I tugged my fingers through my matted hair, heart thumping, the fear and pain of loss tensing my every muscle and numbing my senses. I tried to grab her by the throat in the shower but my fingers collapsed on nothing and I barked my knuckles on the shower stall. I swore and thumped the wall.
“You all right, Thursday?” said Prudence, a WT operator from Lincoln in the next shower. “They said you went back. Is that true?”
“Yes, it’s true,” put in Aornis, “and she’ll be going back again right now!”
The shower room vanished and we were back on the battlefield, heading towards the wrecked armor amidst the smoke and dust.
“Well!” said Aornis, clapping her hands happily. “We should be able to manage at least eight of these before dawn—don’t you just hate reruns?”
I stopped the APC near the smashed tank and the wounded were heaved aboard.
“Hey, Thursday!” said a familiar male voice. I opened one eye and looked across at the soldier with his face bloodied and less than ten seconds of existence remaining on his slate. But it wasn’t Anton—it was another officer, the one I had met earlier and with whom I had become involved.
“Thursday!” said Gran in a loud voice. “Thursday, wake up!”
I was back in my bed on the Sunderland, drenched in sweat. I wished it had all just been