Kara’s Game

The shells were still falling, the mortars still coming in.

Why did you come back? she asked at last.

Because I said I would, he told her. Any way to the new town other than over the bridge, he asked.

‘No.’ She was numb, confused.

Finn was emptying his bergen, cutting two holes in the bottom. ‘We’ll take three food packs with us, leave the rest for when you get back. You know how to use them now?’

Yes – she was nodding. But we can’t go now, even though little Jovan needs to go. Because the shells and the rockets are falling and we’ll be killed.

‘Warm coat and boots?’ Finn asked her.

‘Yes.’ She began to put them on.

‘Where’s your husband?’

‘At the front.’ She was still numb, still confused. ‘Two days on and one off.’

‘When’s he due back?’

‘He’s already overdue.’

The others were standing, pulling on their bergens.

‘What’s his name?’

‘Adin.’

‘Leave him a note in case you and Jovan are still at the medical centre when he gets here.’

She did as he told her. Tightened the coat round her and laced the boots.

Finn lifted the boy from the floor, wrapped the coat and blankets round him, and slid him into the bergen so that his legs were hanging out of the holes in the bottom. Then he pulled the top over him and strapped the bergen on to his back.

‘Steve in front, Ken looks after Kara. Jim behind. Put this on.’ He gave her Janner’s PNG.

‘Why?’

‘So you can see.’

She put it on and allowed Steve to tighten the straps, looked round and saw the world in shades of green, everything in tunnel vision. What’s going on, part of her mind asked. This is not real, this is not happening.

They were out of the house – suddenly and quickly, no orders. The candle blown out and the door shut. Were going down the hill into the ghost of the old town. A shell was coming in and exploding somewhere to their right. The street and houses and figures of the others were a ghostly green through the ovals of the eyepieces. I don’t believe this, she thought again, I can’t believe this. The moon was up and the houses were like skeletons around them. They were moving in stages, she realized, sheltering in the lee of a building when a shell came in, then running in the lull after it had exploded, Steve in front as Finn had said, Ken grabbing her as she stumbled, Jim just behind them. Soon be there, my son. Soon be safe and well with the doctor looking after you.

They were crouching in the shelter of the last building of the old town, the bridge in front of them and the shells still coming in. Ken had pushed her forward so that she was beside Finn and to his left, Steve and Jim to his right, protecting her and the boy on Finn’s back.

‘Go.’

They ran on to the bridge. She no longer felt the cold. Her heart was pounding and her legs were moving automatically, Ken lifting her slightly so she seemed to be running on air. They were halfway across, almost three-quarters, almost there. In the still of the night she heard the sound of the express train. ‘Down.’ Ken pushed her, the others lying on the ground round her, Finn facing away from her, so that the boy on his back was protected, Steve facing Finn, his back upstream. The shell struck the building forty metres from them, then they were up and running again, suddenly across the bridge and into the comparative safety of the new town. They turned left, exposed now; turned right again. Came to the medical centre, opened the door, and tumbled down to the basement.

The steps were lined with people, mostly refugees but some locals afraid to move, more in the basement room. Staring at them, bewildered and frightened. The doctor recognizing her as she pulled the strange apparatus from her head. Finn knelt and Jim lifted Jovan from the bergen and laid him on the table in the middle of the room. The only light came from two Tilley lamps hanging from the ceiling, the shadows flickering across the walls.

I helped deliver this boy, the woman thought. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked Kara.

Jovan was crying with pain now, almost screaming. ‘Here?’ the doctor asked. She lifted his clothes and placed her hand carefully against his right lower abdomen.

‘Yes.’

Kara felt the relief. ‘Soon be okay.’ She held Jovan’s hand and comforted him, tried to reassure herself.

The doctor looked up. Her face was ashen, partly with fatigue and stress, and partly with what she was about to say. I helped bring him into this world, she thought again, and now I am about to witness his departure from it.

‘I’m sorry.’

What do you mean, you’re sorry? The fragile security Kara had built round her collapsed. Against the wall behind her the four men looked at the doctor.

‘Jovan has appendicitis. If it hasn’t burst already it’s about to.’

‘So?’

‘We’re a medical centre, not a hospital; there’s nothing we can do about it here. The nearest place where Jovan could be treated is Tesanj. We do take patients there, but only at night.’ In the hope of catching the snipers and gunners asleep. And on horseback, because there’s no petrol for the cars. ‘A group left with two people eight hours ago.’ She checked her watch. It was three in the morning, going on four. ‘Perhaps we can try tomorrow night.’ If Jovan’s still alive, which is unlikely, but we can only pray. And if there’s somebody to take him, because even at night it’s dangerous.

Not my little Jovan. Kara reached forward and held his hand, stroked his face. Not after all he’s been through.

He was awake now, his eyes looking at her. The men behind her were getting up, Finn taking out a map and asking the doctor the route; Steve wrapping Jovan again and slipping him into Finn’s bergen; Jim giving the doctor one of the food packs and telling her how it worked, telling her to use it herself, because everyone was hungry but she was the one they all relied on.

Kara realized what they were doing. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she told them.

‘You’ll slow us down.’ Finn pulled the bergen on to his back and picked up his Heckler.

‘I’m still coming with you.’

They left the basement, crouched in the doorway for the next shell, then moved into the street, Maglaj cold and bleak and battered round them, green and stark and unreal in the PNGs. They moved quickly, keeping the height of the buildings between them and the incoming shells and mortars. In the hills it will be a frozen hell, she thought, on the road to Tesanj it would be like going to the Arctic Circle.

They cleared the town, climbing now, Steve in front again and Finn following, Kara tucked into the middle. At least she wasn’t hungry, at least the stew had warmed her. The quarter segment of the moon was above them, the trees ghostly round them and the ground phantom-green with snow and ice. Behind them, and to their right, the sounds of the guns and mortars faded in the dark. At least the road to Tesanj was in the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket, she thought, at least they didn’t have to go through the lines. Just pray that the gunners are asleep or happy on slivovic.

They had been going thirty minutes and she was tiring more than she could have imagined. Two kilometres gone, she told herself, perhaps three. Oh God, the night was running out, oh God, they weren’t going to make it in time. She should have listened to them, shouldn’t have insisted she go with them. Her lungs seared every time she breathed and there was no longer any feeling in her feet.

‘You’re slowing us down,’ she was only half-aware what Finn was telling her. ‘Steve and I will go ahead with Jovan, Ken and Jim will stay with you.’

She tried to reply but they had already left, the two of them running, bergens on their backs and guns held in front of them.

‘Doing well,’ Jim told her. ‘Let’s go.’

The cold was killing her. The road was undulating, dropping then climbing, occasionally they slipped off it and hid in the bushes when someone came the other way, just in case they were Chetniks. She was no longer thinking in terms of hours or minutes or seconds, was thinking only if Finn and Steve would make it to Tesanj in time, was thinking only in terms of putting one foot before the other, making herself go on, making herself stop crying with pain and desperation. Soon it would be getting light, soon they would have to stop because soon the Chetniks in the hills would be able to see them. She was on Ken’s shoulders, not even aware how or when it had happened, Jim carrying Ken’s bergen as well as his own, and the two men still moving quickly. Not running, but not walking, something between. One man moving and the other covering him, then the second moving and the first covering him. Guns at the ready, guns across the chest, and the butt in the shoulder position.

In the distance – not too far in the distance – she heard the sounds of the guns pounding Tesanj. Perhaps they had been there all night and she had been unable to hear them because of the pounding in her ears. Jim was carrying her now, the black gone, fading into grey, and the grey soon mixing into the cold sharp light of a winter morning. They took off the PNGs and came out of the trees, dropped into the edge of the town, Finn and Steve suddenly with them – she wasn’t sure where they had come from. Finn lifted her from Jim’s shoulders and ran with her into the cover of the buildings, took her into the basement of the hospital.