by Keely Hutton
The terrier sniffed twice and then took off down the gallery toward the Maedelstede Farm mine.
The voices of the others, echoing off the shaft walls, grew closer, but George couldn’t wait for them. Heart pounding, he chased after Max and calculated how much time was left before the mines were detonated.
Two hours.
Two hours to find Thomas, climb back up the shaft, get out of the tunnels, and get back to the safety of the support trenches before the mines exploded, taking anyone on or under no-man’s-land with them.
Plenty of time, he thought, but he still kicked up his pace.
* * *
As Frederick and Charlie chased the shrinking light of George’s lantern, Charlie tried not to jostle Poppy too much in her cage or think about the last words Boomer had shouted to them as they’d descended the shaft ladder in pursuit of their friend.
The mines are firing at 3:10 whether you’re out of there or not.
A string of mumbled vulgarities and the heavy footfalls of Mole trailed them through the gallery.
“I’m gonna kill Shillings when I get my hands on him,” the kicker wheezed as he lumbered behind the boys.
* * *
As George neared the tamped portion of the gallery, he came upon an overturned lantern and Max whining and pawing at broken beams on the floor. Beneath them, George spotted a stockinged foot.
“Tommy!” He lifted the beams off his friend’s motionless body.
Thomas didn’t answer. Blood from a gash on his forehead ran down his face and stained his blond hair a dark red.
“Tommy,” George whispered, wiping Thomas’s face with his sleeve, “please wake up.”
A pained groan grumbled in Thomas’s throat as he struggled to open his eyes. “Ouch.”
Max placed his front paws on Thomas’s chest and licked his chin and cheeks.
“It’s all right, boy,” Thomas said, patting the dog’s head. “I’m all right.”
The remaining beams above them creaked, and clots of clay broke free under another barrage of shelling.
“You will be as soon as we get you out of here.” George took Thomas’s hand and started to help him up, but Thomas cried out.
“What’s wrong?” George asked, lowering him back to the ground.
“My leg. I think it’s broken.”
“Then I’ll have to carry you.” George looked around Thomas. “Where’s your gas mask?”
“I couldn’t see with it on to find my necklace. I threw it to the ground just before the beams fell.”
George searched under the broken beams and pulled Thomas’s mask from the rubble. The material was torn, and the lens shattered. “It’ll have to do.” He pulled the mask over Thomas’s head.
Thomas winced when the coarse material dragged across his cut.
“Sorry,” George said, adjusting the mask, so Thomas could see through the cracked lens.
“I’m the one who should be apologizing. I just wanted to find my necklace. I didn’t mean to get us in this mess.”
“Did you find it?” George asked.
Thomas pulled the broken chain and saints medals from his pocket.
“Good.”
The earth around them shook as another explosion echoed on no-man’s-land. George covered his and Thomas’s heads as more chunks of clay fell from the ceiling.
“I’m really sorry, George.”
“Let’s save the apologies for when we’re aboveground.” Trying not to jostle Thomas’s injured leg, George started to pick him up when he spotted Frederick, Charlie, and Mole running toward them.
“Don’t come any closer!” he hissed. “This section’s not stable!”
Mole and the boys stopped and watched George carefully lift Thomas into his arms. He took a step forward, but Max paced circles around his feet and pawed at his legs, trying to get to Thomas. Afraid he was going to trip over the dog, George ordered the terrier to go to Mole. Ears and tail low, Max reluctantly obeyed. As soon as the dog was within reach, Frederick scooped him into his arms before he could scoot back to George and Thomas.
Another distant explosion rumbled, shaking more clots from the exposed clay ceiling. No one moved until the ground around them settled again.
“Have they started blowing the mines?” Thomas whispered to George.
“They’re not supposed to for another couple hours. That must have been an artillery shell or a bomb from one of our planes.”
George secured his grip on Thomas and started to walk again. At the other end of the gallery, Charlie gnawed on his fingers while Frederick held a squirming Max in his arms and Mole motioned for George to hurry.
Another tremor shook the ground surrounding them as explosions rocked the battlefield. “Come on, Shillings!” Mole ordered.
Keeping an eye on the creaking beams straining to hold back the tons of earth, sand, water, and clay above their heads, George walked faster. “Just another one of our wild adventures, eh, Timothy Bennett?” He chuckled, but his smile was strained, and Thomas could tell from how fast his friend kept talking that the London street urchin who’d scaled the chimneys of lit fireplaces and bet his hands in games with dockworkers was scared. “I’ll be honest with you, Tommy. I was hoping for a front-row seat to the fireworks tonight, but this is a bit too close for my liking. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed our time working the tunnels together, but I have no desire to spend eternity with you down here.”
Thomas managed a weak smile. “The feeling’s mutual.”
George stopped as another series of explosions fell on no-man’s-land. He and Thomas looked up as the beams lining the stretch of ceiling between them and the others started to snap.
“Watch out!” Mole yelled.
“It’s gonna fall!” Frederick screamed.
Losing his grip on Thomas, George stumbled backward as the ceiling above them collapsed in an avalanche of wood and clay.
THIRTY-EIGHT
SHARP PAIN LANCED through Thomas’s injured leg as he dragged himself away from the collapsed portion of the gallery.
“George!” he yelled, grabbing the overturned lantern.
“Over here,” a weak voice answered.
Thomas swung the lantern in the direction of the voice. George sat on the ground, his back pressed up against the tunnel wall. A broken beam lay beside him. The lantern cast George’s face in a jaundiced yellow, and as he bent forward to press up to his feet, he groaned in pain.
“Are you hurt?” Thomas asked.
George held his side. “Probably just a bruised rib. Nothing I can’t handle. How about you?”
“Nothing new.”
“Good.” George hobbled over to the wall of clay and timber.
“Do you think the others are all right?” Thomas asked.
“I hope so. We’re going to need them digging on the other side if we’re to get out of here before these mines blow.”
Thomas glanced down the stretch of gallery behind them to the wall of sandbags separating them from the charged mine.
George cupped his hands around his mouth. “Mole! Mouse! Eton!”
Thomas and he listened for a response.
“They’re not answering,” Thomas said.
“Either they can’t, or this wall’s too thick for us to hear them.” George put on his gas mask. “Either way, we need to start digging.”
Gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg, Thomas hobbled over to the collapsed wall and helped George pull large clumps of clay and pieces of timber from the pile. Sweat ran down their faces, necks, and backs as they worked. Pain accompanied their every movement, but they kept digging. The alternative was to sit and wait for the Allied commanders to detonate the mines, a thought that made them work faster.
“Hey, Tommy,” George said, thrusting his fingers into the clay. “About this plan of yours for after the war.”
“What about it?” Thomas asked, pulling another clump of clay free from the pile.
“Were you serious
about me coming to Dover and helping your brother and you start up your shipping company?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then we should probably work out the terms of my contract.”
“Now?” Thomas asked as he pushed and pulled against a broken beam to work it free.
“Can you think of a better time?” George asked.
“Yes. Several, actually.”
“Well, I’m not comfortable accepting your offer of employment until we’ve agreed to the wages and terms of my position in your company.”
Despite the pain in his leg and the fear that at any second the mines could detonate, Thomas chuckled. “Okay, but we won’t be able to pay you until we get some steady business.”
George grabbed another handful of clay. “That’s not an ideal proposition, Tommy, but I guess I’d be willing to work for a place to sleep and two home-cooked meals a day.”
“We can do that.”
“Until you turn a profit. After that I expect my fair share.”
The chunk of timber broke free, and Thomas tossed it aside. “Of course.”
“And,” George added, heaving another handful of clay over his shoulder, “I want one of the boats named after me. Every king has boats named after him. And I am the King of the Secret Soldiers.”
“This is true. Is that all?”
“Yes, well, except for one small problem.”
“What’s that?” Thomas asked.
“If I’m to be spending most of my time on a boat, it would probably be good if I knew how to swim. Almost drowning once was one too many times for me.”
“James and I can teach you how to swim. We Sullivan brothers take care of our own, you know? So do we have a deal?”
“We have a deal.”
After that, the boys dug in silence, focusing every ounce of their waning energy on escaping. Fear of dying underground had been Thomas’s constant companion since his first day as a miner at age ten. It had taunted him with whispers of danger in the coal mines of Dover and stalked him to the tunnels of the Western Front. It had clung to him, cold and damp, during fitful sleep in the dugout and prickled across his skin like a low current of electricity as he’d descended beneath no-man’s-land night after night.
Yet now, as he stood on a broken leg, yards away from a chamber stacked with explosives, clawing at the cold blue clay with bare hands until his fingers ached, an unsettling calm swirled through Thomas’s mind. He burrowed his fingers into the clay and ripped two handfuls from the wall, and as he did, laughter, abrupt and deranged, burst from his throat.
“What’s so funny?” George asked.
Thomas threw the fistfuls of clay behind him. “Nothing really. I just can’t believe, after everything, we’re stuck down here.”
“Well, I don’t intend to stay stuck down here, so keep digging.”
Thomas lifted a clay-covered hand to his forehead in a crooked salute. “Yes, sir!”
George shot him a strange look that made Thomas laugh louder.
As Thomas pulled another clump of clay from the pile, the memory of finding the dead British soldier in the tunnel walls shuddered through his body. His fingers chilled at the thought of the soldier’s flesh beneath them, but he drove them deeper. James could be trapped in the clay, waiting for Thomas to join him. The grief and guilt that had consumed his every thought of James for months morphed into overwhelming relief and a strange euphoria as he felt the seconds of his own life ticking down. If he died in the tunnel, he would finally see his brother again. Maybe it was the fate of every Sullivan to dig his own grave.
He chuckled to himself and started humming “It’s a Long Long Way to Tipperary.” “Hey, George, do you remember the day we met?”
“How could I forget?”
“Remember when I told you I didn’t need help from the likes of you?”
“Yes. What about it?”
“Look at me now!” He threw out his arms. “I’m trapped under no-man’s-land, yards away from a mine packed with almost one hundred thousand pounds of explosives that could detonate at any moment and look who’s here to help me.” He pointed a clay-covered finger at George. “You! The lying, thieving street urchin from London.”
“What’s your point?” George answered. “Aside from insulting me.”
“My point is I was wrong. About you. About everything. And I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re here to help me and I’m glad you’re coming home to Dover with me after the war. It’s like you said when we met. You’re my guardian angel.”
“Yeah, well, don’t go nominating me for sainthood yet. Who says I’m trying to save you? Maybe I’m just trying to save my own hide.”
Thomas laughed. “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t be stuck down here if it wasn’t for me.”
“Then we’re even,” George said, “because you wouldn’t be on the Western Front if it wasn’t for me.”
Thomas laughed again. “That’s true. Tell you what, if we get out of here—”
“When we get out of here,” George corrected.
“When we get out of here, let’s make a pact to never lie about our ages to join a war again.”
“Deal. And let’s get that clasp on your necklace fixed.”
“Deal.”
The boys continued digging, and Thomas resumed his humming. After a few bars, his humming morphed into singing, but then he stumbled over the words, pausing between and slurring the well-known lyrics. George stopped digging when Thomas started repeating the same four lyrics over and over.
“Tommy?”
“It’s a long way … it’s a long … it’s a—” Thomas swayed on his uninjured leg.
“Tommy!” George yelled, grabbing Thomas as his eyes rolled back and he collapsed.
George eased him to the ground. “Did you get hurt somewhere else?”
Thomas moaned, and his eyes fluttered open. He tried to focus on George’s face, but his vision wouldn’t adjust. “I don’t think so.”
“How do you feel?”
“I feel … I feel…” Thomas failed to find the words he needed to explain the dizzying, throbbing pain pounding in his skull.
“You feel what?” George asked.
“Like I’m going to be sick.” Thomas yanked off his mask, lurched forward, and vomited all over the front of George’s uniform. When the retching stopped, he collapsed back on the ground, too weak to lift his arms to wipe off the vomit. George cleaned Thomas’s mouth with his sleeve and eased his mask back onto his face.
“Thank you, James,” Thomas slurred as his eyes fluttered closed again.
“Thomas, it’s me. George.”
“I tried to find you,” Thomas mumbled. “I tried so hard.”
“I know you did,” George said.
Thomas’s unfocused eyes fluttered open behind his gas mask. He looked up at George. “But I failed.” His voice hitched. “I’m so sorry.”
George swallowed back tears. “It’s okay, Tommy. I’m here now.”
Thomas’s eyes slid closed again, pushing tears down his cheeks. “James?” he whispered. “I’m scared.”
“Me too, Tommy,” George whispered. “Me too.” He helped Thomas sit up when he noticed crooked cracks in the clay wall, branching from across the ceiling down to the floor like a tattered spiderweb. He glanced back to Thomas and the cracks lining the lenses of his gas mask. Looking closer, he noticed a gash torn in the fabric of the face piece near the outlet valve. He fell to his knees and pulled the broken gas mask off Thomas’s head. Dropping the useless mask on the ground, he took off his own mask and placed it over Thomas’s face.
“What are you doing?” Thomas mumbled.
“Saving your life,” George said, tightening the straps.
Thomas’s eyes flew open, and he tried to push George’s hands away. “No, James. That’s yours. You need it.”
“What I need is for you to stay still,” George said, cinching the last strap. “That’s a royal order.”
“Why are you doing this?” T
homas asked. He reached up to pull off the mask, but his arm felt like it was filled with clay, heavy and wet. It fell limp beside him, and his head lolled to the side.
George leaned over and placed an ear to Thomas’s chest. It rose and fell with his shallow breaths and pulsed with a slow but steady heartbeat. Wincing against the pain in his side, George pulled on Thomas’s broken gas mask. “It’s what brothers do.”
THIRTY-NINE
THOMAS WOKE TO silence. He tried to open his eyes, but they rolled back in his head again and his eyelids drooped closed. He took a deep breath. The air was hot and stale. He drew in a second breath and forced his eyes open. His vision was cloudy and dim. The memory of the cave-in came flooding back in a rush of terror. He scrambled back, but a sharp pain radiated through his leg at the sudden movement. Thomas cried out, but his voice sounded muffled. He lifted his hands to his face and felt the rough fabric, cold metal, and round glass eyepieces of a gas mask.
“George!” Through the fogged-up lenses, he scanned the tunnel for his friend. He spotted him seated on the floor, leaning against the collapsed wall, mere feet away, wearing Thomas’s cracked mask.
Thomas grabbed hold of the lantern and crawled over to him. “George.” He nudged his shoulder, but George didn’t respond. “George!” He shook him harder, and George slumped forward.
“No, no, no, no.” Thomas pulled his broken mask from his friend’s head. The shadows of the tunnel leached the color from George’s freckled face.
“What did you do?” Thomas screamed. He yanked George’s mask from his own head and pressed it to George’s face. Ignoring the heavy dizziness swirling through his head, Thomas held the mask firmly over George’s nose and mouth and pounded on his chest. He leaned his forehead against George’s. “Please! Don’t do this to me!”
Pain, grief, anger, and fear clawed up his throat in ragged cries.
His screams filled the small cavern, echoing off the clay walls and trembling through the beams. He no longer cared who heard. Pain erupted from him with the fury of grief. He raged against God and fate and unanswered prayers. He raged until his voice broke and his vision blurred. He collapsed next to George. And then, taking his friend’s cold hand in his, he waited to die.