Page 63 of No Man's Land

Some silent communication passed between them before Dutta finally lowered his weapon. “Unfortunately, it will take time to clear up this mess.” He gestured around the mortuary. “It may be several hours before I’m able to return to Belgrave Square.”

Josef heard the controlled rush of breath leave Alex’s body, saw his shoulders relax as he too lowered his gun. “Thank you.”

With a curt nod, Dutta said, “Make what use you can of the time, but if it were me…” His gaze held Alex’s, bleak and dark. “If it were me, I’d want a swift end while I was still myself.”

Chapter Nineteen

By the time they reached Alex’s flat, it was closer to morning than midnight. Grey-faced, Alex stumbled as they left the lift, catching himself on the door. How much of that was exhaustion, and how much something worse, Josef dared not imagine.

“Come on,” he said, taking Alex by the elbow. “Let’s go inside.”

Glancing both ways down the dark corridor, Alex nodded and went to unlock the front door to his flat. “Christ,” he said, “we stink of ghoul.”

They did. It clogged Josef’s nose so much he could only breathe through his mouth. In horror, he wondered whether the stench was coming from Alex, from the bite on his shoulder.

It was darker inside the flat, the winter sunrise still hours away. Alex moved to a narrow table in the hallway. Gas hissed, and the bright flare of a match bloomed and faded as Alex lit the hall lamp. Then the mellow light grew, chasing away the shadows.

They stared at each other across the hallway. Alex looked ghastly. Josef had seen that grim look before, in the faces of men in the firing line, waiting for the orders to advance. He knew the look of a man waiting for death. And seeing it on Alex’s stoic, stupidly handsome face, turned him sick with dread. And rage. He refused, he absolutely refused, to allow something as stupid as a bite to put an end to this man’s life.

“Come into the bathroom,” he said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“There’s no cleaning this up. A dab of iodine isn’t going to help.”

“It can’t hurt,” Josef said, pushing open the bathroom door. “If nothing else, we can wash the ghoul stink off us.”

Alex hesitated, and then complied, moving as though he wasn’t quite there, as if his mind was already disengaging. That, too, he’d seen at the front. Dead men walking.

The bathroom was dark. Alex said tightly, “There's an electric light switch on the wall, next to the door.”

After a moment of fumbling around for the switch, Josef found it, and glaring electrical light burst into the room, steady and cold. Like a morgue. As he looked about, his eyes strayed to the laundry hamper where Alex had set his Webley while he inspected Josef for bites. It wasn’t there now, of course; Alex was wearing his gun.

And no doubt he was considering using it on himself.

Putting that thought to one side, he turned to Alex. He stood blinking in the brash light which washed out what little colour had been left in his face, leaving him a gruesome grey.

“I hate electric lights,” Josef muttered, shucking off his coat and setting it on the laundry hamper. “I don’t think they’ll catch on.”

Alex stared at him for a moment, as if in incomprehension, and then with a slight shake of his head, he made a soft sound. A laugh. “I thought you were all for progress.”

“I am!” Josef said, helping Alex off with his coat. “I’m in favour of universal adult suffrage, but not these horrible bloody lights.”

Alex winced as Josef eased his overcoat from the shoulder that had been bitten, sucking air through his teeth. Josef grimaced but said nothing. The fabric of Alex’s jacket was torn and bloody, his white shirt crimson.

“This is all going to have to come off,” Josef said.

“There’s no point.” Alex turned his head away from the wound. “Dal’s right. There’s only one way this—”

“Shut up,” Josef snapped. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Alex looked at him. There were words on his lips, but whatever they were, he kept them to himself.

Carefully, Josef unbuttoned Alex’s jacket and eased it off, then his waistcoat and shirt. The wound on his shoulder was becoming more visible with each layer that was stripped away, a clear bite-sized mark, flesh torn and ragged. A deep but not large wound. Already, though, Josef could see the signs of necrosis around its edges. Pursing his lips, he said, “I’m going to use iodine anyway. To prevent other infections. Where is it?”

Alex directed him to a cabinet next to the sink and dropped into the wicker chair Josef had used that first night. Retrieving the iodine and a dressing from Alex’s alarmingly well-stocked medicine cabinet, Josef turned back around.

Alex sat with one elbow braced against his knee, head in his hand. The other arm, the injured one, lay in his lap. The wound looked raw and ugly, midway between his shoulder and neck, but the rest of his body was undamaged. Strong, muscular shoulders, a scattering of dark hair across his chest. Josef felt aninstinctive, involuntary stab of attraction, reminded suddenly of last night.

Then, Alex had been so alive, so full of life, but now…

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