Storm of the Centuries
Chapter 4
The next thing Tim knew he was standing outside, watching a large group of men in uniforms like the one Tommy had worn (and Tim himself was now wearing) gather in a flat open area about 500 yards from where Tim stood. He started walking towards the group but was stopped by a man with a red cover on his cap.
"Harris. You've recovered?"
"Yes. Yes, sir."
"Good. Wouldn't want someone to think you're a coward, now would you?"
"No, sir." The man nodded curtly and strode towards the group of men. Tim let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, collected himself and followed the man in the red cap.
When he reached the area where the men were gathered he stopped, wondering what he was supposed to do.
"Oi! Harris!" He turned and saw a closely clustered, smaller group of men, with one motioning for him to join them. He walked over and then man who had called him, a gangly red-head with an abundance of freckles and wide green eyes looked him over.
"Brannigan said you were addled. Looks like he was right."
"Sorry. Guess I'm…not quite myself today."
"That could be a good thing," another man laughed as he shoved a lock of black hair under his cap, his deep brown eyes twinkling. Suddenly, Tim realized where he had seen these men: they were all from one of the photographs he had seen in Edwards' box.
"What did Lt. Holy want with you?" a third man asked.
"Lt. Holy…?"
"Grail, the MP that was talking to you before you came over. What did he want?"
"Uh…he was…making sure I was fit for duty, I guess."
"Are you?"
"I… As I'll ever be."
"Then where's your rifle?"
"Here," Tommy replied as he joined the group, a little breathless and carrying two rifles, one of which he handed to Tim. "All ready to go." Tim silently took the rifle and examined it, wondering if he'd actually have to use it before this whole weird dream ended.
"Look sharp," Tommy muttered and nodded towards an older man that was approaching with a much younger man following behind. Tim recognized them both from the photo, and the boy looked even younger in person. He was the one Ducky had suspected was far too young to enlist.
The men with Tim quickly formed a line as the older man (Tim recognized the bearing of an officer, so he was likely the lieutenant in charge of this particular unit) stopped in front of them. He began giving orders and Tim did his best to follow along, amazed at the vividness of the dream he was experiencing, and wondering one thing in particular.
Why am I not waking up?
XXX
Gibbs walked into Autopsy to check on Tim, expecting to find his agent awake, embarrassed, and apologetic but instead found Ducky setting up the portable x-ray over the chest of the still unconscious man.
"What's going on, Duck?"
The expression on Ducky's face when he turned to Gibbs sent a twist of worry through Gibbs' gut. "I'm afraid Timothy hasn't regained consciousness, and the congestion is sounding worse. I suspect pneumonia may be setting in, or it could be something even more dire."
"What do you mean?"
"I sent samples up to Abigail for a tox screen, in addition to the tests for bacterial and viral markers."
"You think he was poisoned?"
"I can't rule it out." Ducky finished setting up the machine and draped a lead apron over Tim's lower half. "If he was administered some sort of toxin, hopefully the test will narrow down the time of exposure." He shooed Gibbs from the room and the lead agent waited while Ducky took a series of x-rays. When he had finished and started the developing process, Gibbs returned to Tim's side to study the younger man. Tim's hair was soaked with sweat and Gibbs noticed that Ducky had inserted an I.V. into his right arm.
"That didn't wake him up?" Gibbs asked when Ducky returned, pointing to the I.V. in Tim's arm.
"Unfortunately, no, and by now he should be conscious. His pupils are even and react to light, but I can find no other signs of awareness. The fever is dehydrating him so the I.V. was a necessity."
"Is the fever going down at all?"
"A couple of degrees, out of the danger range but still too high." Ducky checked Tim over once again and sighed. "I'm worried, Jethro. I have no idea what could cause this. He should be awake, but he is not."
"Does he need a hospital? If we need to get him there, I can call in some favors…"
"I wouldn't want to risk moving him until we know what's causing this. He's stable, at least, but that may change if we try to take him out of here. All we can do is wait." Gibbs let out a growl of frustration and Ducky's eyebrows rose in surprise. "What is it?"
"Waiting. Hate it." Gibbs reached out and wiped a sweat-soaked strand of hair from Tim's forehead. "We've got a suspect, a good one. Bishop found the information McGee uncovered from Edwards' computer, and we've placed Grail in the area at the time of the murder, but…we've got no way to get to him."
"Well, look on the bright side, Jethro. It's unlikely he will be going anywhere, either. You really should get some sleep. I don't need another patient in here so soon."
Gibbs nodded reluctantly. "Let me know if anything changes with McGee."
"You'll be the first to know."
Gibbs nodded and left, hoping that at least something would get better, and soon.
XXX
Tim flopped onto his bed, exhausted. He could hear his companions, the men in his unit, joking with one another and hitting their own beds with similar enthusiasm, but he couldn't manage to open his eyes enough to see if they had all entered the barracks. He had names to go with some of the other faces he had seen before in a faded photograph: Carey Finch, a short, stocky, hazel-eyed and brown haired youth from Guildford with a quick grin that reminded him strongly of Tony; Nathan Ames, also from Guildford who could have passed for Carey's brother; David White, a thin, pale young man with black hair and light grey eyes who hailed from Stratford on Avon and his cousin Dennis, of similar complexion but with eyes a few shades darker than David; Bradley MacKenzie, the red-head that had called out to him on the training field, who had been a fisherman in Portsmouth before joining the Army; and Willie Mann, with mousy brown hair and brown eyes, who had no-doubt been a school-boy in Derby before he had made the trip to the recruitment center five months prior.
Several of the faces Tim had seen in the picture were absent, although he gathered they had been among the first casualties in this unit during their first trip to the front. The oldest man in the picture, Lieutenant Edmund Richards, who was probably younger than Tim when he started at NCIS, reminded him a lot of his college roommate, serious, but with a well hidden sense of humor that would only emerge infrequently and was hard to recognize if one wasn't paying attention. One thing Tim had observed was that the Lieutenant, while not much older than the men under his command, had taken responsibility for them and trained them well. Tim had been surprised that he – or the person he was in this 'verse', knew the drills just as well as the other men and could perform them efficiently. It occurred to him, more than once, that all of this had to be the result of his own imagination, but it felt so real that he found himself accepting all he observed as fact. If nothing else, it would make an interesting story to tell when he woke up.
If he woke up.
This situation…dream… was unlike Tim had ever encountered before: the sights, the smells, the sounds, everything felt so real. It was like the nightmare he had recently experienced, magnified ten-fold. He wondered what could have caused such a vivid hallucination—which it had to be, since he was fairly sure he hadn't made a trip aboard the TARDIS—and what kind of condition he would be in when he finally regained consciousness.
Tim felt something nudge his arm and he opened his eyes, hoping to find himself back at NCIS, only to find Tommy standing over him with a rather battered deck of cards in one hand.
"Join in?"
"I don't think so."
"Hey, enjoy it while you can. Back to the trenches tomorrow."
"Oh. OK, I guess it won't hurt." He levered himself off the bed and joined the group of men gathered around the makeshift table. Tommy dealt out the cards and as the game progressed, Tim began to feel oddly at home with this group, like he somehow did belong here, in this time and place.
The next morning arrived way too quickly and soon the unit was on the march. Weighed down under sixty pounds of gear, Tim feared he wouldn't make it very far and would once again fall under the scrutiny of 'his holiness', Lt. Grail (Tim's companions had related several horror stories of the MP's hatred for any behavior deemed 'cowardly'). To his surprise, he was able to get used to the load fairly quickly and kept up with his platoon as they approached the front lines.
Tim had seen pictures of the trenches in his history books, and had been forced to watch a few 'war movies' with Tony, but nothing had prepared him for this. Before him was a strange maze of open tunnels, fortified with sandbags and planks, topped with gun turrets and bordered by curls of barbed wire. The surrounding vegetation had been laid to waste by enemy fire, and in the desolate space known as 'No Man's Land' between the trench networks, battered fences and curls of razor wire littered a landscape pockmarked with craters from artillery shells and collapsed, shallow graves.
The sight, however, was nothing compared to the stench. Rotting food, sewage, and decomposing corpses contributed their odors to create a miasma of foulness, the likes of which Tim had never experienced in years of dealing with dead bodies. He barely managed to keep from gagging as the wind shifted and wafted the malodorous clouds towards his unit.
"Home, sweet home," quipped Tommy, who was marching to Tim's right.
"If your home smells like that, you should burn the damn thing down," Nathan replied with a strangled laugh.
Tim said nothing as the group descended into the first network of trenches. They had just reached the bottom when a loud retort shook the ground around them.
"Welcoming party," David shouted and the group ducked down and crouched against the crumbling mud walls of the trench. The sound of shells hitting the tops of the trenches around them was deafening, but thankfully over quickly. Tim's ears were still ringing as he checked the area around him for damage. Much to his surprise, all of his companions were still alive.
"Get to work," Lt. Richardson ordered and the platoon began repairing the damage. By the time they had finished, the sun was setting and several members of the group had moved off for sentry duty.
"You ever wonder why we decided to do this?" Tommy asked Tim as he dropped down beside him and leaned against the wall.
"I'm going to guess someone wanted adventure," Tim remarked, drily.
"Yep. What were we thinking?"
"Stop the bloody Kaiser, that's what we wanted to do. 'It will be over by Christmas', they said. Ha!" Dennis chortled, his voice laced with derision. "It bloody well better be over by next Christmas."
Tim didn't have the heart to tell them it wouldn't.