Black Hand Gang (13 page)

"Sssh." She put a finger to his lips.

She was so close he could smell her hair, the scent of her perfume - Lily of the Valley - the brief scent vanished and the familiar fug of war and corruption closed about him once more.

Raucous cries rang overhead as furred creatures with long necks, leathery wings and hooked beaks flocked into the sky from somewhere in the hills, congregating over the muddy sea of the battlefield. They dived and banked with rasping calls, like gulls in the wake of a fishing trawler, tempted by the human harvest of No Man's Land.

From somewhere down the line a couple of shots went off into the flock followed by the sharp, scolding bark of an NCO. The shooting ceased.

Atkins shifted his body uneasily against the wooden planking of the revetment and wiped his sweat-slick hands on his thighs before repositioning the stock of his rifle more snugly against his shoulder. He looked out again across the landscape of mud and wire towards the forest. He hated this time of day; as the light failed, shifting shadows played tricks on the eyes. It seemed to him that whatever gloom slunk sullenly in the forest was now flowing sinuously from it.

"What else is out there, d'y reckon?" he wondered. "I'm hoping for wild women myself."

"Don't know, but a target's a target," replied Gazette, his eye never leaving his rifle's sight. It was clear he had his 'business' head on. "It's either alive or dead."

"Yeah, either way, Porgy'd probably make a pass at it, eh?"

Gazette didn't reply.

"Never thought I'd miss Fritz," said Atkins. "At least with 'im you knew what to expect; the odd Minniewerfer or Five Nine. You knew where you were."

"Reckon you'll have cause to be even more nostalgic by the time the night's out," said Gazette. That was Gazette - a real barrel of laughs, but you didn't have him round for his sparkling repartee. He was the sharpest shooter in the platoon, so you forgave him the odd lapse in manners.

Ginger was no company at all, either. He whimpered and patted absent-mindedly at his tunic. The squeaking from inside it grew more frantic and agitated. As Ginger fumbled to catch his wretched rat his rifle slipped from his grasp. It landed heavily, butt first, on the duckboards. Atkins flinched but it didn't go off.

"Fuck's sake, pick your gun up y'daft sod. If Ketch catches you, that's 'casting away your arms in the presence of the enemy'," Gazette hissed, his eyes never leaving the darkening landscape.

Ginger ignored them and carried on wittering and cooing to Haig.

"Shhh. Ginger. Button it!" Atkins' brow creased, he cocked his head. "Gazette, you hear that?"

From out in the mud came a desperate scrabbling sound, like a drowning soldier trying to claw his way out of a slurry-filled shell hole.

"Just some poor injured sod out in No Man's Land. Usually is. That or one of them hell hounds from this afternoon caught on the wire. Either way, be dead by morning."

A scream went up from the forward observation post but it was stifled, drowned out by thousands of shrieking squeaks and the splatter of countless feet. In the fading light the mud itself seemed to ripple like a mirage. But it was no illusion.

From further up the line, the sound of surprised yelps, the discharge of rifles, spattered bursts of machine gun fire leapt from bay to bay towards them.

Alert, Gazette altered his stance almost imperceptibly, shifting his centre of gravity, bracing to absorb the anticipated kick of his Enfield.

"What is it?" Atkins asked.

Gazette just shrugged. He either didn't know, or didn't care.

Ginger shuffled about on the firestep as Haig skittered around inside his clothes, squealing, while his arms flailed and contorted trying to reach his ersatz pet. He pirouetted clumsily. Atkins tried to grab his webbing but Ginger tumbled from the firestep, falling awkwardly and cracking his head on the sodden duckboards, writhing and screaming as the rat seemed to bite and claw at him inside his clothing.

"Jesus! Shut him up!" snapped Gazette.

Atkins jumped down and clamped his hand over Ginger's mouth.

"Keep quiet, you silly sod. You'll end up getting us all killed if not up on a bloody charge!" Atkins was astride his chest now, a hand clamped over his mouth, trying to keep eye contact with the thrashing soldier, to calm him somehow, all the while trying to undo his tunic and shirt buttons one handed in order to free the damned rat.

"Ginger, calm down, mate. Stop it! It's me, Only."

Ginger's eyes bulged and he tried to scream, but it was muffled by Atkins' hand. Ginger sank his teeth into the skin between the thumb and forefinger.

"Agh, y'bastard!" Atkins snatched his hand away. Ginger bucked under him.

There was a sudden volley of unintelligible oaths from Gutsy's bay next door.

"Only!" said Gazette. "Only! Get up here!"

As Atkins looked up Ginger arched his back, turned his head awkwardly to see down the traverse and screamed. Racing round the corner and tumbling pell-mell towards them, over the parapets and channelled by the trenches, came a stampede of thousands of panic-stricken corpse rats scrabbling and scrambling over each other, driven headlong in a frenzy through the fire bays by something out in No Man's Land, something that had alarmed them enough to flee their cosy cadavers in droves. Not even the artillery shells had ever moved them like this before.

"Jesus!"

Atkins instinctively gulped a mouthful of air and drew his arms up over his head in a desperate attempt to protect himself as the routed rats swarmed over him. Their urgent piping squeals filled his ears as they covered him in a heaving wave of mud, blood and viscera-matted fur. Myriad cold paws scratched and scuffled exposed flesh; clumsy legs and feet finding his mouth, ears or nose while the acrid tang of voided rats' piss left him spluttering and nauseous.

And then they were gone, the verminous tide receding, washing over 3 and 4 Platoon's positions to yells of consternation.

Gasping and spitting filth from his mouth Atkins cautiously lifted his head. Ginger was still on the duckboards, curled into a foetal position, sniffling and whimpering, a damp warm patch darkening his khaki trousers.

"Gilbert the Filbert'll feel right at home among that lot," said Gazette. He was impassively inspecting three of the buggers he'd managed to impale on his bayonet. "Three with one blow. That's a dugout record, is that."

"He's gone," Ginger said with a snivel, patting his torso. "Haig's gone."

"Yeah, well good riddance," said Gazette scraping the rats off his bayonet on the edge of the step. "Here, Only, give us a hand." He stood his rifle against the revetment, stepped down, grabbed Ginger by his webbing straps and hauled him to his feet. Atkins picked up Ginger's rifle and put it back in his hands.

"Look, I know your rat's gone. Looks like they've all gone, frankly and good bloody riddance. But if you don't get back on the step, Ketch'll do for you, got it?"

Ginger sniffed, wiped his nose with the cuff of his tunic and nodded sullenly.

"Sorry. Sorry, Only."

Atkins straightened his battle bowler for him and helped him up onto the step.

"Good lad."

The sun was almost gone now. The dark velvet blue of night advanced relentlessly, overwhelming the last crimson smears of retreating dusk; a salvo of stars pock-marking its wake in the night sky.

Atkins had always found some measure of comfort in the constancy of the stars, but not tonight. Tonight, he couldn't find a single constellation that he recognised. And no moon either, nothing but a faint trace of reddish gas trailing across the firmament. Disconcerted, Atkins shifted his gaze back down to Earth, or what there was left of it.

"What was that all about? Never seen 'em act like that before."

"They're rats. Who knows?" said Gazette.

"Something scared 'em."

"You do surprise me."

"Something out there. The bodies in No Man's Land are going to attract every scavenger and predator for miles around."

"You may have a point," said Gazette. "But I've got this," he added patting his rifle. "And I'll put my faith in this any day over anything you think may or may not be out there."

They'd been here less than twenty-four hours. From what Atkins had seen of this place whatever was out there was probably far worse than anything he could imagine or, more worryingly, something he
couldn't
imagine.

"Everything all right here, men?"

Lieutenant Everson came round the traverse into the bay, Webley revolver in his hand.

"You mean apart from the rats, sir?" said Atkins.

"Yes, apart from the rats, Atkins."

"Yes, sir," Atkins managed a perfunctory smile. "Leaving the sinking ship, d'y'think, sir?"

"Sorry?"

"The rats, sir. Leaving the sinking ship?"

"Well I wouldn't put it quite like that, Atkins, but I'm certainly not going to miss the buggers if they really have gone."

Ginger stifled a sob in the crook of his elbow.

"Is he - is he all right?" said Everson with a jerk of his head in Ginger's direction, his voice tinged with concern.

"Mottram, sir?" said Gazette. "Yes sir, just got the wind up, sir, that's all. He'll be fine."

Aktins wasn't so sure but Everson didn't seem to want to press the point.

"Very well. Any idea who Hobson put in the OP?"

"Jellicoe, Livesey and Nicholls, sir," said Atkins.

"Right. Better check in with them. No doubt Nicholls will have something to complain about. Keep your wits about you." Everson slipped round the next traverse and was gone.

Somewhere out in the dark, where the Somme mud met alien soil, the fading pitiful squeals of the rats were met by the snarls and growls of unseen predators.

Atkins' tried not to listen, humming a few bars of 'I Want To Go Home'
under his breath. He stopped as he felt, rather than heard, the noise; a deep bass note that thrummed against his chest and vibrated the soles of his feet through his hobnailed boots.

Dull alarms began jangling in No Man's Land; tin cans containing pebbles that hung from the wire rattled out their beggar-like warnings, the cries from the injured and dying stranded in shell holes rising to a crescendo.

From either flank of the line, bursts of machine gun fire opened up in reply. Each machine gun post was positioned so that it could lay enfilading fire
along
the lengths of wire entanglement. They had been laid in an extremely shallow 'V' out in front of the fire trenches so, even at night, once the wire alarms had been set off they had every expectation of hitting whatever it was that had set them off.

From Captain Grantham's position over in the centre of the line came the
phut
of a Very pistol as a flare arced up into the night sky. Atkins, Ginger and Gazette bobbed instinctively below the lines of the sandbags as it burst with a
whuuff
high over the battlefield, illuminating the scene with the stark white brilliance of a photographer's flash powder.

Atkins wished it hadn't.

About fifty yards out half a dozen great, glistening wet worm-like creatures, thicker than a man was tall and some thirty yards long, had broken the surface of the grey-churned mud, like land whales. Atkins could see no eyes, but long probing tentacles quested the air around facial sphincters that contracted and relaxed to reveal barbed gullets. No sound issued from their gaping, clenching maws as they set about scooping the dead and decomposing into their pouting orifices, grazing like elephants, lifting food into their mouths, or else dragging the corpses down into the vermiculate earth. From the terrified yells and sobs it was clear that it wasn't just the dead they were taking.

All along the fire trenches soldiers champed at the bit, wanting to shoot but constrained by orders.

The Very light went out. Another shot up into the sky from the observation post, burning whitely.

"C'mon, give the order," muttered Atkins, a finger playing restlessly on his SMLE's magazine cut-off.

Sergeant Hobson's voice rang out. "Five rounds rapid. Fire!"

"About bloody time," muttered Atkins as he flicked open the cut-off, took aim and fired before cycling the bolt and putting another cartridge into the receiver. He took aim, fired again, cycled once more.

Along the trench tattered bursts of rifle fire raked across the alien worms.

Trench mortars popped and flew into the air, arcing out into No Man's Land.

Beside Atkins, Gazette was in his element now. Calmly, surely, he fired off his shots, taking his time, making each bullet count. Ginger on the other hand had completely lost it and was huddled on the firestep, by Atkins' legs, his arms cradling his knees to his chest, sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.

The Very light went out again but the ungodly wet suction noises and weakening screams continued unabated. Another Very light went up from the observation post.

The worms were closer now. One reared up over the observation post itself. An officer, it must have been Lieutenant Everson, fired the Very pistol almost at point blank range. The flare shot up leaving a brief white trail before embedding itself in the hide of the creature where it continued to burn with a white-hot fury, causing it to thrash about in voiceless agony, its tentacles flailing helplessly. Some agent in its mucus coating, or subcutaneous fatty layer, must have been flammable for, under the intense heat of the flare, the great worm began to burn like a wick. Its bulk crashed down into the mud - right on top of the observation post.

"Everson's bought it," said Gazette, matter of factly.

"Are you kidding?" said Atkins. "Lucky's out there. He'll see 'em all right."

"Thruppence says they're landowners now."

"Thruppence says they ain't," said Atkins, spitting on his palm. Gazette shook his hand, barely taking his eye from his rifle sight.

With the landscape now dimly illuminated by the burning carcass Atkins could make out the other worm creatures. One rippled over to the burning body, reaching out its tentacles, but was driven back by the heat of the flames. It raised its head up as if giving a great call, arched its body and dived into the ground. The others followed.