A Survivor's Guide to Eternity(53)

“I don’t really dig the noise too much, it reminds me of the war,” stated Donald.

Ed looked at the young man, observing his head to toe khaki uniform, coarsely made hobnail boots, tight spats, unattractive canvas-looking matching trousers and ill-fitting green jacket. Over his right shoulder hanging down was a small cloth-covered water bottle attached by light green webbing straps whilst on the other side some sort of canvas pouch hung down over his fading grey cloth waist belt. The traditional domed metal helmet hung behind him and span around knocking him in the side of the head as he bent down to pick up his rifle. His young, innocent face and short wispy blond hair didn’t fit at all with the harsh character of the uniform.

“Were you really in the First World War? You look so young; how could you ever have gone to war?” asked Ed, perplexed at the thought.

“I’ve heard some people down here call it the First World War, others the Great War. I can tell you, it was never known as the First World War to any of us at the time and it was certainly never fucking ‘great’. If you want to know anything about hell then I know all the fucking answers, and I was only nineteen when I died.”

Ed was momentarily lost for words. He walked over to the net, bent down and picked it up. It was tatty to say the least and appeared to be made out of old bits of cloth, probably clothes from Transients who had been and gone. He thought back to Thomas and his last departure from the tunnels and remembered how they were going to make nets to rescue stragglers in the tunnels. He lifted it to his nose, sniffed at the disgusting muskiness and then threw it back down where it had come from. He turned round and walked over to Donald.

“What now?” he asked.

“Let’s get inside - we’ve a long walk ahead of us.”

“A long walk? The last group lived near the entrance?”

“Not us. We have a six hour journey from here. It’s a total killer in these fucking boots, let me tell you that. What sort of a crappy idea is that, train an army to march for miles and then give them crappy boots that produce agonising blisters after two hundred yards? It’s better now after getting used to them for ninety years, but still not nice.”

The duo started to proceed into the vine covered tunnel. It stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see. Behind the complexity of thick bare vines, there was a generous spattering of lights casting eerie shadows onto the deep red, dusty floor. He looked down at his round faced wrist watch and twisted the dials so the date was 01/01 with both hands pointing up at ‘12’. This would give him a good idea of how much time he had to play with later on. The sand was softer than before and was scuffed and disturbed with the footsteps, just like he imagined it should be naturally. He looked over at the vines enquiringly.

“Don’t you have any Tumpleberries here?” he enquired.

“Timple what?”

“The last place had little flowers on the vines, although they only had one vine.”

“No. We don’t have any flowers on these vines, not to my knowledge anyway,” replied the young soldier as they continued walking for a while. The temperature was cool in the tunnels with very little breeze to disturb the silence around them. It reminded Ed of the first few hours after a late night snowfall in the city. There would be a quiet and peacefulness that could rarely be found in such a place. The sand soaked up virtually all the sound of their footsteps whilst the vines further deadened the acoustic. Ed also noticed how dulled his sense of smell and spatial awareness were in comparison to his outings as a cat and dog. It all seemed very flat, even unexciting.

Soon his thoughts had turned to his objectives and what he was hoping to achieve on this second visit to the mysterious ‘other world.’

“Have you heard of the Viking?” enquired Ed.

“A few murmurings. I’m not interested really. Do you want to meet him? I can set you up when we get back if you like? There are people that speak of him. I personally think it’s a bit of a myth,” replied Donald as they continued on their way.

“That's great. Please do introduce me to anyone who might know anything about him.”

“For sure.” replied Donald before they walked on for a few minutes in silence.

Ed glanced over again at the soldier’s uniform, the coarse and itchy looking material, thick leather belts and various devices and pouches for carrying things. His beautiful short cropped blond hair, smartly combed, glistened in the darts of light that shot out from behind the vines and across the tunnels. His fine young choir boy features were astoundingly youthful. Ed found it hard to imagine this youngster fighting on a brutal battlefield.