Amidst the falling dust (The Green and Pleasant Land) Read Free Page B

find when I got there even more so. Out here in the sea of darkness to entertain a hope seemed as futile a gesture as to try and catch the moonlight, both were out of reach, and were a matter for the heavens alone.
    My misery was both compounded and alleviated by the arrival of Sergeant Trowler. Alleviated by the minute contact with another living, breathing, non flesh eating human. Compounded by the fact that he told me that Lieutenant Tasker wanted to see me.
    I suspected this might happen, I'd heard rumour of such on the carrier, I dare not call it home. On the ship Tasker was Skellens right hand man, but out in the wilderness he was the king of the night and was to be crossed at your own peril. Whisperings abounded on the ship about expedition members who had fallen out with Tasker and then failed to return from the foraging. Whether or not the captain was aware of these rumours no one knew, whether he believed or not it mattered little, he trusted Tasker and that trust would continue regardless of the path it followed the lieutenant down.
    So I was led to the court of the king who sat pretending to pour over maps in order to keep me waiting by his tent door. Taskers face is one of those held in a perma-sneer, maybe he was born with it, maybe some ill fated wind changed on him one day, either way it did little to ease contact with such a jagged, corrosive personality.
    “Comfortable?” he says finally, barely glancing in my direction.
    “Very” says I to he. He scoffs, there are no answers to anything he can ask me which will not lead to such a response, this I know, this I accept.
    “Tell me about Edenpark?” he says. There are no other chairs in the tent aside from the one on which he sits. He does not beckon me closer, I am an ant on his periphery, yet I know his focus is utterly upon me, his dismissive poise is subterfuge, I am his prey.
    “What would you like to know Tasker” says I, irritated by the line of questioning. Within a split second he is standing nose to nose with me. His face is calm but I can see the fury in his eyes, it is always there, just like the sneer, lurking in the background and capable of far more destruction than any facial expression. His skin is pockmarked and dry, a single purple vein throbs and bulges on this forehead.
    “Lieutenant” he says very quietly just inches from my face “Lieutenant Tasker” he breathes the words into my face accentuating his rank as he does so. I gulp and nod. Lesson learned. Armageddon has not made a brave man of me.
    Lieutenant Tasker proceeds to quiz me about the aspect of the mission with which I have been charged. He asks me dozens of questions to which he already knows the answers. He feigns surprise at many of them, he delights in telling me how likely we are to fail. In no uncertain terms does he make it clear that such failure will be my responsibility. He sounds almost gleeful as he tells me that he will be keeping a close eye on me.
    Finally I am dismissed. I resist the urge to bow and curse the coward in me as I leave the command tent and head back to my own equally humble shelter.
    It used to be that no matter where I lay I could hear cars and trains and planes. Now there is the golden silence after which so many of us yearned, and it is suffocating. I lay for a while listening to the absent owl. I lay there and consider that there are many dangers in the world and some of them are in this camp.
    We are one of the tiny lights of civilisation left, and it terrifies me to think of all the darkness in our midst. Sleep does not come easy, and when it finally rolls around it is a haunting experience. Did I even sleep at all?

    We are up at first light. No one wakes me. I roll off the pallet bed and poke bleary eyes and a weary head out of the tent. A chorus of frowns and shaking heads greets me. I was not well liked on board the ship, I was not respected. It strikes me that whereas as on the carrier my failings were tolerated out here they may