No Man's World: Omnibus

by Pat Kelleher

  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 panicstricken 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.”

  Atkins 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.
<
br />   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 cutoff, 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.

  A ragged cheer rose from the trenches.

  “They’re going!”

  The elation didn’t last long. Thirty feet from the line one of the great worms broke out of the mud, ploughing toward the fire trench with a fluid peristaltic motion, through the troughs of shell holes and the crests of their craters, heedless of the twenty yard length of barbed wire entanglement it had ripped from the ground in its sinuous advance, and which was now hanging from its body.

  Men who had seen comrades blown to so much meat, who had stoically suffered days of continuous bombardment, who had risked death every day, found it hard not to flee in the face of such a monstrous vision.

  The command came again. “Fire!”

  As Gazette took aim, carefully squeezing the trigger and firing off five more rounds at the monstrous creature before them, Atkins felt the ground beneath him tremble and the revetment against his chest begin to creak and strain. Sandbags tumbled into the trench from the parados behind them. He and Gazette glanced at each other.

  “You don’t think—”

  “Thinking’s for officers. Run!”

  They slung their rifles over their shoulders and jumped back off the fire step as the revetment begin to splinter under a great wave of pressure building up from below. Ginger remained sobbing on the step, oblivious or incapable of reacting as plank after plank behind him burst free of its frame.

  “Shit!”

  A hand under each armpit Atkins and Gazette dragged him off the firestep and round the corner into the traverse. Barely had they vacated the fire bay before it erupted behind them in a shower of dirt, dust and splinters as another worm burst up through the trench.

  Probing tentacles appeared around the corner of the traverse. One caught hold of Ginger’s ankle and pulled, tugging Atkins and Gazette off balance as the screaming man was dragged back towards the shattered fire bay. Atkins unslung his rifle and thrust his bayonet into the tentacle, pinning it to the ground, and fired, point blank range, severing the member. The other feelers let go of Ginger and retracted back round the corner, the lopped pseudopod trailing a dark viscous slime behind it.

  Gazette grabbed Ginger by the scruff of the neck as he and Atkins half-scrambled, half-stumbled with him into the next fire bay where Gutsy, Porgy and Mercy were laying down covering fire as the wounded worm reared up. They kept it up as Atkins and Gazette retreated round the far corner to the adjacent traverse and the next fire bay, held by Sergeant Hobson and Corporal Ketch.

  There they dropped Ginger to the duckboards and took aim at the mindless monster as it blindly sought for its attackers. Gutsy, Porgy and Mercy, abandoning their own position, fell back and joined them, as Gazette and Atkins in return gave them covering fire. Gazette had fired his five rounds and was reloading from a pouch on his webbing, while Atkins was still chambering and firing his third as the great worm, flinching under the hail of bullets, sought a way forward. It fell back from sight, retreating into the ground from which it had come.

  Atkins spied a bandolier of grenades on the firestep. “Gazette, cover me!” he yelled, snatching up the bandolier. He dashed forward to their ruined fire bay where he saw the tentacles of the beast vanish as it retreated back into the dark earth. He looked briefly into the darkness of the hole in the side of the trench as he opened the pouches on the bandoleer. He took out the string from his pocket and threaded through the ring pulls of about half a dozen grenades. Holding one end of the string in his hand he tossed the bandoleer into the hole. Left holding nothing but the piece of string and its collection of grenade pins he threw himself to one side. Seconds later the grenades went off with a mut
ed roar. The ground heaved and the hole erupted with smoke and fire as torn and shredded flesh shot out of it.

  Atkins picked himself up from the mud, his ears ringing with the high pitch buzzing of the concussion. Helping hands pulled him to his feet as Porgy and Mercy dragged him clear. Smoke drifted from the collapsed tunnel. The ringing in his ears distanced him from the scene around him. He was thankful for the brief respite as he could no longer hear the screams of pain and the cries of terror. Only faintly, as if from a great depth, could he hear the tattoo of the guns as the Tommies drove the worms back into the ground.

  JEFFRIES WAS BARELY aware of the explosion. The sight of the creatures held him spellbound. He had read of such things in texts older than the regiment itself, but never expected to see them. “Shaitan,” he murmured under his breath as he watched them harvest the dead and dying out in No Man’s Land. “Messenger of Croatoan. It’s a sign.” He climbed the ladder and stood, exposed, on the sandbag parapet, arms flung wide in supplication.

  “Sir!” hissed Dixon, his platoon sergeant. “Sir, get down!”

  One of the giant worms burst up through the sodden ground half a dozen yards from the trench. It opened its maw, pseudopods flailing. Jeffries stood his ground and stared down the barbed throat.

  He was vaguely aware of Everson stumbling down the sap from the observation post, his arms around one man’s shoulder as they helped each other along the narrow ginnel. Two others followed on behind, all four of them covered in mud and slime.

  “Jeffries, for God’s sake, man! Are you mad?” he called, reaching for the Very pistol in his belt. There was a dull click and a whoof as something rushed past Jefferies’ head. A Very flare ricocheted off a failing tentacle and skittered down the creature’s length before whirling across the mud and into a shell hole. The great worm veered away from it and plunged back into the earth. However the encounter was enough to convince Jeffries. He turned jubilantly and jumped down onto the firestep.