Black Hand Gang (19 page)

"We believe in GarSuleth the sky god, weaver of the world, and in his brother, Skarra," said Napoo, reciting in the manner of a credo.

Everson could see the Padre's eyes narrow in the face of this new heresy but of Jeffries' countenance, he could make nothing.

"You do not know of them?" said Napoo uncertainly. "But all Urmen worship them, the Ones decreed it..."

Everson shook his head and shrugged.

"The Ones. The Children of GarSuleth," said Napoo impatiently. "Whose land this is? How can you not know? This place borders Khungarrii territory. They killed many of my clan, so we stay away. You should too."

"Khungarrii?" queried Jeffries.

"The Khungarrii of the Ones, aye."

"When we first met you spoke of Free Urmen. I take it there are those who are not free?" asked Everson.

"They serve the Ones."

As Napoo continued to talk it seemed to Everson that, here on this world, Man had never risen to his full potential. Here, the majority were indentured servants to a race greater than they. Those Urmen that chose freedom rather than serve the Ones grubbed a meagre subsistence, living among the unforgiving fields and beasts of this god-forsaken world. That Man should be so humbled was an anathema to him and, for a moment, he felt the same hot fury that he had once felt toward the Bosche.

That evening, cooks prepared the foods as best they could. The men built and lit fires and gathered round them, some digging out such treasures as harmonicas or penny whistles. Mercy even managed to find a battered wind-up gramophone and a surviving record. The strains of old songs and laughter rose with the smoke from the myriad campfires towards the unknown stars above.

Edith Bell, Nellie Abbott and Sister Fenton sat apart on empty grenade boxes nibbling tentatively at skewered alien meat.

"So why did you become a VAD, Edith?" asked Nellie Abbott.

Edith was silent for a moment as if considering something before deciding to speak. "I was running away, I suppose."

"From what?"

"The past."

"Well they say it always catches up with you."

"That's why I thought the Front would be the best place to confront it."

"The Front? You deliberately came to the Front?"

"To face it head on, to punish myself for surviving," said Edith, shaking her head. "Oh, I don't know anymore. I don't care. Seeing all this suffering - at least here, this time I can do something. I can make a difference, can't I? You see I know we're all going to die, it's just that on the Front you have a better idea of when."

"What could be so awful that you think you're punishing yourself by serving here?" asked Fenton.

"It was two years ago," she said in a hushed voice, half hoping that they wouldn't hear her and she could pretend she hadn't said anything and not have to go through with it.

"What was two years ago, the start of the War?"

"No, it was before that."

Fenton and Abbott exchanged questioning glances, each shrugging. They waited. Nelly took Edith's hands in hers and gave them a small, warm squeeze then held them lightly.

"The Lamb -" she could barely get the words out. She stopped, smiled apologetically and cleared her throat. "The Lambton Grange Murders."

There was a sharp intake of breath from Nellie. "Oh you poor thing. Were - were you there? That was an evil thing what happened there. Our Bertie read it to us from the papers, he missed out the worst bits to spare us, silly sod. But I read the paper myself, later. Horrid, simply horrid."

"No, that's the thing, you see," said Edith. "I was supposed to be there."

"What do you mean?" asked Fenton.

"I knew the girls that were murdered, Elspeth Cholmondley and Cissy Pentworth. We were a bit of gang. We met him, at a party a month earlier."

"Dwyer the Debutante Killer? Strewth!"

"Yes. I believe that's what some of the more sensationalist newspapers called him. He seemed so charming. Of course, we knew he had a bit of a reputation. That was what poor Cissy found so alluring. He invited us out to his place for the weekend. Only I couldn't go at the last minute. Great Aunt Lil decided to come up from Brighton."

"That was some luck."

"But I let them go alone, don't you see? I should have been with them," she said, sobs welling up. "It should have been me, too."

Edith saw Lance Corporal Sandford approach them tentatively, hobbling along inexpertly on a crutch, a pal by his side, and hastily wiped her eyes, cursing herself for weakening and sharing her private burden. She pasted a smile on her face for Nellie's sake. "I'm all right," she said. "Really."

While the Corporal and his mate stood talking to them, Edith could sense Nellie's awkwardness. Spotting the tank mechanic in his overalls, Nellie made her excuses, got up and slipped away, trying to catch his eye.

Sat round their own campfire, Atkins noticed Porgy stealing glances towards the nurses as the corporal sat down next to Edith, his injured leg out straight as he put an arm around her shoulder. Next to her, Sister Fenton wriggled away from his pal, rebuffing the NCO's advances. He tried again to put his arm around her shoulders, but she stood up. He couldn't hear what she was saying but he was obviously getting a bollocking. Fenton wrapped her cape around herself and stalked off in the direction of the casualty tents. Porgy had just decided to go and cut in when he saw Edith rise and help her suitor to his feet.

"Bad luck old chap," said Atkins sympathetically. "Perhaps if you'd got yourself more of a Blighty one."

"Fat lot of good a Blighty One does here!" he spat, glancing pointedly up towards the brightest star in the sky.

They watched as Edith helped Sandford walk along with his crutch. The pair passed beyond the light of one fire only to be silhouetted against another and met by encouraging whoops and catcalls as they passed the men gathered round it.

"Come on, Porgy. Face it. You lost out. Best man and all that, eh? Come and sit down," said Atkins.

"If he hurts her...," he muttered, tearing viciously with his teeth at the chunk of meat in his hands.

"My god," said Atkins, the truth dawning on him. "This isn't just about your deck of cards is it? You're actually serious about this one, aren't you?" The helpless look in Porgy's eyes said it all. "Look, he's crippled. What's he going to do, stand on her foot with his crutch? Come back to the campfire."

Atkins guided a reluctant Porgy back to where the rest of their section sat. After a while Half Pint turned the conversation to the thing that was on all their minds.

"What if we never get back? We're marooned here, I tell you. This," he said with a sweep of his arm, "is it and we'd better make the most of it."

"No, I don't believe that, I can't believe that," said Porgy. "Whatever brought us here might send us back just as quickly; the officers must think so too, why else do you think they've kept us on this stinking pile of mud?"

"Hope?" said Gazette. "But I don't think we can depend on miracles. If there's a way back I reckon we're going to have to find it ourselves."

"And what if there isn't a way back?" challenged Half Pint.

"We got here didn't we?" said Mercy angrily.

"Someone must be responsible. I say we find them and make them send us back," said Ketch.

"If there is someone, why did they bring us, what are we here for?" asked Gutsy.

"Do you really want to go back to the Somme?" said Half Pint.

"No," said Pot Shot. "I want to go back to my family."

A woman's horrified scream cut off the murmurs of assent.

Porgy was the first to jump and grab his rifle from the tee-pee of arms, causing the others to clatter to the ground.

"That bloody bastard. I knew it. If he's harmed her -" he said as he dashed off into the dark past other men, now standing up from the campfires and looking out into the night.

Atkins grabbed a rifle and ran after him, weaving between the fires and the muttering troops. Reaching the edge of the mud flat Atkins jumped the three or four feet to the plain and, without breaking step, ran on after Porgy toward the small copse of trees not twenty yards from the mud.

The screaming continued hysterically.

Atkins made it to the trees to find Porgy standing silhouetted against the light from a hurricane lantern hanging on a low bough. He rounded Porgy, accidentally standing on a discarded crutch as he did so. Then he saw Edith kneeling on the ground, her apron and nurse's uniform drenched in blood. The headless body of Corporal Sandford lay sprawled across her lap, blood now only gently pulsing from the open neck and pooling in the trough of her apron. There was no sign of his head.

A crack and a rustle from the foliage above alerted them and Edith screamed again, attempting to straighten her legs out in front of her and push her way back from under the trees. Porgy went down on one knee and clamped a hand across her mouth. Her eyes darted wildly to the canopy. Atkins put the rifle butt to his shoulder and scanned the foliage.

With his boot, Porgy clumsily struggled to push the headless body of the dead soldier off Edith's legs. "Shhh," he whispered in her ear before dragging her to safety.

Several other soldiers came running. Atkins beckoned them to stop and dropped down on one knee, eyes still fixed above him. He heard the sound of magazine cut-offs opened and loading bolts ratcheted back as one or two of the men circled round warily. He was aware of the sobbing nurse somewhere behind him, the noise growing fainter as Porgy took her back to the safety of the entrenchment.

His awareness immediately refocused as he caught movement on a bough above him. He gave rapid fire, five rounds as per. There was a sudden crack and crash as it fell through the canopy. The men backed off as something hit the ground. It was the soldier's head. The rustle continued high up in the tree as something jumped from one branch to the next in an effort to escape. Atkins and two other men followed the sound, firing blindly up into the foliage. Several others moved round outside the copse to cut it off. Whatever it was, they had it trapped now.

There was a scream as something snatched a soldier up into the foliage. His rifle clattered to the ground. There was a wet crunch accompanied by a strangulated sound before a head dropped down, bounced on the ground, and ended up staring, horrified, at Atkins.

Men blazed away into the trees, lost in fear and anger.

"Stand back," said a voice.

It was Porgy. From somewhere he had acquired a Lewis gun, slung from his right shoulder by a canvas strap and carried on his hip, a fresh circular magazine fixed to the top and several others in their canvas webbing slung over his other shoulder.

"Where?" he growled.

Atkins jerked his head upwards.

Somebody, an NCO, fired a Very flare into the trees. It burst with an angry hissing white light, setting the leaves ablaze and casting its stark glare over the area. There came a hoarse throaty screech and a rapid chattering as something thrashed about in the tree.

"There!" shouted someone as the dying glow of the Very light caught something shiny and brown. Porgy opened fire. The magazine rotated and the rapid rattle of the Lewis gun ripped through the foliage. There was an ear-splitting screech, like nails on a blackboard, and a large body crashed down followed by another.

Atkins stepped forward to examine the large, insect-like creature. Nearby, there was the decapitated body of the second soldier. "Yrredetti," he said, recognising the creature and its mottled markings from their mission in the forest, before putting his rifle against the creature's head and firing. Rather than dying, as he had every right to expect it would, the now headless insectoid body began trashing about and only stopped when Porgy unloaded another entire magazine into it.

As the flames from the flare spread above them and the trees in the copse began to blaze, stretcher-bearers arrived to carry away the two dead soldiers. They left the body of the Yrredetti to burn.

INTERLUDE 3

Letter from Private Thomas Atkins

to Flora Mullins

9
^th
November 1916

Dearest Flora,

I should be writing this from Sans German, by rights. We should have been relieved and back in the reserve line by now, but all that's gone to pot. We're sans Germans all right, but we're sans everything else too. Although things are looking up. We had a picnic this evening,
al fresco
, as they say, to celebrate our first harvest. Like all picnics we got pestered by insects, well only the one, but you should have seen the size of it.

Porgy is sweet on a nurse. He's quite serious about her, I think. It's sad and funny to see. But all the boys love our 'Roses of No Man's Land' and she has a fearsome Sister over her who forbids fraternisation, so I don't hold out much hope for him, though he seems proper determined and pines like a lost puppy.

Mercy is up to his scrounging ways again. He's found something special for Lt Everson that he won't tell us about. Loves a secret, does Mercy. Hasn't stopped Gutsy starting a book on what it might be though. I put a tanner on a bath tub, because well, we haven't washed for nearly two weeks now, so God knows we could use one. Well, I say a tanner, but we haven't had any pay for the last few weeks and it don't look as if the payroll will come any time soon, either.

Ever yours,

Thomas

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"If the Sergeant Steals Your Rum..."

After the Yrredetti incident, fires were set on the plain in a controlled slash and burn policy, forming a
cordon sanitaire
around No Man's Land to deny further cover to any predators. Atkins watched as the smudgy black smoke drifted into the sky. It felt as if they were finally making their mark, conquering the land that had seemed so hostile to them when they first arrived.

As the days passed, hope began to fade that they would be transported home as quickly as they had arrived and the new survival practices became an established part of the daily military routine. With the most suitable trees nearby having been cut down for firewood, shoring or building materials, the Foraging Parties had to move further and further afield. Poilus continued to improve and Napoo, in high spirits, continued to educate the soldiers in hunter-gathering.