by Pat Kelleher
“It’s the clean air here,” Reggie informed them. “Clears out the tubes!” he said, thumping his chest. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Even Lieutenant Mathers seemed to relax now. Before, he had been a bundle of nerves in the tank, always on the verge of funking it, but now he seemed to relish driving it. Then again, they all did. Mind you, it helped when you were not being constantly shelled by Fritz artillery or hammered with machine gun fire. It was quite like the old days driving round Elveden as if it were a fairground ride. The days when they weren’t in it were fraught with tension and short tempers. Even the engine, after some initial troubles, seemed to run smoother.
It was the fuel itself. They’d heard stories of how the Tommies that had drunk it saw things, hallucinated. That’s why it was declared unfit for human consumption. But they weren’t drinking it. They didn’t have to. Fumes from the engine filled the small confined space. Ordinary petrol fumes would give them carbon monoxide poisoning. They’d end up with vicious headaches, convulsions and, in extreme cases, delirium or psychosis. They’d stagger from the tank and vomit. The petrol vapour would sting their skin and give them itching rashes and impetigo.
This new fuel had different side effects. Once they discovered the effects of petrol fruit fumes, they vowed amongst themselves to keep it quiet. It gave them a sense of euphoria, changed their vision. Under its influence they began to see the bright little whirls and eddies of indigo as the vapour swirled lazily about the cabin. The white painted iron plate surrounding them throbbed green with the vibration of the engine. Alfie soon found he could identify the state of the engine by the colour it gave off. But most of all he liked looking at Nellie. Great gaseous expanses of soft yellows billowed gently from her like silk sheets in the wind and oh, how she shone. If only he could tell her how beautiful she was. She thought herself rather plain. But he doubted anybody had ever seen her the way he had.
He hated leaving her now. Before, all he had was the crew of the Ivanhoe. Now, there was her.
He recalled the last time he saw Nellie, a day ago now, just before they left, but it seemed an age away when he wasn’t in her company. They’d received orders to move out on another seek and find patrol. He’d spent half the night checking and tuning the engine, oiling it, having to use rendered down fats as grease. The rest of Ivanhoe’s crew were full of pep and up for it, knowing they’d be able to partake of the intoxicating fumes again.
The only other person who might have an inkling of the effects was Tulliver, the RFC chap. He used the same petrol fruit liquor to fuel his aeroplane. But he wasn’t confined in a dark, airless cabin with it. The wind would soon whip away any fumes he might inhale.
As the others stocked up on supplies, carefully watched by Company Quartermaster Sergeant Slacke, Alfie had wandered off to say goodbye to Nellie. He found her trying to haul a large pan of some sort of edible, well, stew, for want of a better word.
“Alfie. Can’t give us a hand, can you, m’duck?”
“Sorry, Nellie. Moving out. Another one of the infantry’s explore and patrol missions.”
“Oh aye. And keep an eye out for—”
“—Jeffries, yes,” he finished. They laughed together.
He peered into the pot. “Cor. What have the mongey wallahs come up with this time? It looks disgusting.”
“Yes, well, it isn’t for you. It’s for them poor beggars in the Bird Cage,” she said, nodding her head towards the barbed wire enclosure where the shell-shocked men were housed.
Lieutenant Mathers had climbed the steps out of the communications trench that led to the battalion HQ, his shoulders hunched and a sullen look on his gaunt, pasty face.
“Perkins. Don’t dally. We’ve got to shove off.” He sniffed the air and homed in on the cauldron. “Mmm, what’s that?” He reached in and pulled out a lump of something, put it in his mouth and chewed experimentally.
“Oi!” Nellie slapped his hand. “This is for the poor shell-shock victims, not the likes of you, sir.”
The rebuke caught Mathers off guard. He looked towards the enclosure at the shuffling, jerking scraps of manhood within and at least had the manners to look guilty. He coughed in embarrassment. “Yes. Right.” He wagged the rest of the handful at her. “Still, not bad,” he said and strode away. “Come on, Perkins. Work to do.”
Alfie had shrugged an apology, “Must dash,” and he’d followed his commanding officer. The last he saw of Nellie was her lugging the pan towards the Bird Cage...
BRIGHT GREEN RIPPLES burst from the floor of the compartment as the tank lurched and Alfie cracked his head on an overhead pipe. “Watch where you’re driving!” Alfie bellowed at Wally’s back.
“Plenty of room up bloody top if you’re not bleedin’ happy with it!” Wally retorted.
“Got a real bee in his bonnet about that bounder Jeffries hasn’t he, that Lieutenant Everson?” Norman was yelling above the noise of the engine. “I mean this is the fifth time he’s sent us out on patrol to try and pick up his trail, and have we? Have we, billy-o. Not a sign. One of the promising directions picked out by Tulliver? Bollocks. I bet everything looks promising from a thousand feet up. Oh, and here’s a map what a nurse saw. Sorry it’s mostly empty, would you chaps mind filling in the blank bits as you go?”
“We could run right over Jeffries in Ivanhoe and not even notice,” Cecil yelled back.
Norman nodded in agreement. “Wild goose chase is what it is. Waste of time.”
“Not at all, dear chap,” Reggie chipped in. “Travel broadens the mind, you know.”
“In a place like this, Hell’s back yard? Loosens the bowels, more like. Thank God I’ve got armour plating between me and it, is all I can say.”
“Well, I’m all for these little trips of Everson’s. Very nice of him. Don’t care if we never find this Jeffries,” said Reggie.
Frank spat on the gangway. “Jeffries, my arse.”
“Frank! Please.”
“Yeah, mind your language,” scolded Norman. “Has Reggie taught you nothing?”
“Yeah, I holds me pinky up when I use me canteen now,” Frank said, demonstrating to wild laughter. “Besides, if he ain’t got a boojum like us then frankly he’s probably dead meat. Why else d’you think they send us out here? ’Cause every bugger else gets eaten, that’s why.”
“Just makes us tinned bully beef,” said Norman with a grin.
“Quite frankly I don’t care if we never find the bleeder. Don’t need the blighter mucking up the sweet little deal we’ve got going here.”
“Well I don’t feel too happy about that,” Alfie shouted across the engine. “It doesn’t seem right, somehow. Doesn’t it bother the rest of you? Maybe we should discuss it again, that’s all I’m saying.”
Frank reached out, grabbed Alfie’s coveralls and pulled him towards him under the starting handle. “And all I’m saying, Alfie, is you need to back off a little, mate. We’re getting fed up with your holier-than-thou attitude. It was the Sub’s idea. If our plans make you breezy, why don’t you just do one and take up with your long-haired chum back with the mud sloggers?”
“Why? Because we’re tankers. I’m maybe not so crazy about this idea, but I’d take a bullet for any single one of you, you know that, right?”
“Do we, Alfie? Do we? We don’t even know if we can trust you.” Frank thrust Alfie away from him with a snort of derision as the others looked on.
Alfie shook his head in despair. Their devotion to Mathers, who had seen them through, who had kept them supplied with the petrol fruit fuels and kept them safe and alive inside their shell of iron, was slipping into the fanatical and tinged with paranoia. Even Mathers’ moods seemed to fluctuate between insanity and lucidity. Their world had shrunk and they no longer noticed nor cared. But his? His world had been expanded. He saw beyond the horizons of armoured plate and rivets. His world was illuminated by Nellie, a moon whose tidal influence was pulling him slowly from their orbit.
There was a hollow krunng. And another, accompanied
by brilliant green migraine flashes radiating from the roof of the compartment.
“Rockfall?”
The tank lurched to a halt, and the engine died to an idle. Alfie held his breath, straining to listen above the chug of the engine. If it was a rockfall, they had no chance of getting out of there in a hurry. Their top speed was barely above walking pace.
Norman stuck his head out of the rear sponson hatch. A rock smashed into the sponson, just missing him.
“Bloody hell, we’re under attack!” he yelped, ducking back in and slamming the hatch shut behind him. “It’s an ambush. Place is lousy with ’em. Buggers are throwing rocks at us. Reminds me of a show at the Leeds Empire. Bloody hell, they were a hard audience that night.”
The others did likewise, shutting the other hatches, their only illumination now the small electric festoon lamps.
“Language, Norman,” warned Reggie.
There was another round of bangs as more rocks rained down on the hull.
Jack and Norman manned their six pounders and peered out of the vertical gun port slits, looking for a target. Cecil and Reggie loaded the breaches then readied their machine guns, threading fresh belts into the mechanism.
“Where are they?” said Reggie, peering through a pistol port. “I can’t see anything. Where the deuce are they?”
“Above us.”
“Well, we can’t sit here,” said Mathers. “Carry on, Clegg. They can’t harm us.”
“Sir.”
The engine roared into life again and the Ivanhoe rumbled forwards for a minute before Wally raised his right fist. At the signal, Alfie threw his left track gear into neutral, disengaging his track. Frank pushed the right track gear into first speed. The tank began to swing right to avoid a large boulder the size of a terraced house before jerking to a halt. Another signal from Wally. Alfie pushed his gear into first speed too and the tank lurched straight ahead for another ten yards as it passed the boulder.
“I can’t see anything. Just rocks!” said Reggie, becoming agitated, his face pressed to a loophole.
They heard a succession of softer thuds on the roof followed by a scratching clatter above them.
“They’re on the roof.”
Another signal from Wally and Frank slipped his track gear into neutral while Alfie pushed his into first speed. Ivanhoe swung sharply to the left. There was a thud on the sponson and Reggie lurched back as something chitinous blocked the light.
“It’s outside!”
“Well, bloody shoot it!”
Reggie squeezed the Hotchkiss’ trigger and the belt feed zipped through a few feet, firing a hail of bullets. There was an anguished squeal and light flooded in from the pistol port again.
“Damn it!” Mathers stood up and squeezed back down the port gangway past Norman and Reggie, drew his pistol and opened the manhole hatch in the roof above the rear of the engine.
There were three Yredetti on top of the tank. Ugly buggers, reminiscent of beetles, with mottled green chitinous armour. They walked upright, like Chatts, but they had better developed powerful middle limbs that they used for gripping, and were just as comfortable and fast on on all sixes. They were primitives, a race of carnivorous hunters. They had no weapons and didn’t need them. Their large sawtoothed mandibles were capable of decapitating a man. One was trying to wrench off the exhaust covers. Mathers fired, and it fell over the side with a squeal. Another turned and lunged at him. He got off a second shot, which raked down the carapace and sent it spinning from the roof to bounce off the starboard sponson.
More were emerging now from behind boulders and closing in on the tank.
They charged the Ivanhoe. One was crushed beneath the track, and a second was cut down by Wally with a burst from the forward facing machine gun. Half out of the hatch, Mathers wrestled with the creature. A third Yrredetti was using its mandibles to slice through the ropes holding the drums of spare fuel to the rear of the tank. There was a hearting-rending thung and a drum fell loose and bounced off the tank’s steering tail and back along the canyon, coming to rest against a couple of small rocks.
Mathers fired at the creature again. It hissed and he ducked down and grabbed the hatch, partially shutting it after him, and bellowed down into the cabin.
“Clegg, for Christ’s sake stop the tank. We’ve lost the spare fuel!”
The tank lurched to a halt, the engine still idling. Mathers thrust himself up, slamming the opening hatch into the facial carapace of the creature, crushing a mandible. He fired point blank into the stunned creature’s face and paused momentarily to watch the head explode in a myriad of colours, creating a rainbow of mist in the air. He looked back over the roof of the tank to where the fuel drum had come to rest. Several Yrredetti were gathered around it and were pounding it with stones. He boosted himself up onto the roof, ran down the rear of the track, leapt off the back and charged towards the insect-creatures, waving his pistol and bawling like a maniac.
“Bloody hell, the Sub’s blood is up,” said Jack as he followed the thumping footfalls over the roof and peered out of the sponson door loophole. “Better give him a hand, lads. Stick close to me, Cecil. Norman, Frank? Keep me covered. Wally, stay with Ivanhoe. You too, Reggie.”
“Really? Don’t mind if I do,” said Reggie with relief. “Most kind.”
Jack glanced dismissively at Alfie as he opened the sponson hatch and clambered down. It was a deliberate snub. They didn’t need him. They didn’t want him. Cecil followed Jack out, cocking his pistol as he went.
“Bloody hell!” Alfie muttered, clambering out and joining Cecil by the rear starboard track horn anyway.
A cry from high up on the canyon side preceded another boulder, bouncing down the rocky face, dislodging a tumble of smaller scree that chased it down the slope, like ragamuffins chasing an ice-cream cart. It bounced wide. Norman aimed his revolver and fired. The small figure of an Yrredetti tumbled forwards from its rocky perch to fall into a patch of the blue-green blisterous growths which burst under its impact.
By now Mathers had reached the drum and had shot the three Yrredetti beating it. He inspected the drum. There were several alarming dents, but it was still intact, thank God. Another group of Yrredetti shuffled warily nearby. Mathers roared at them. They scuttled back. Jack reached the drum, Cecil panting in his wake.
Jack nodded at the drum. “Better get this back on the Ivanhoe, sir.”
“What?” said Mathers, shaking his head and looking around as if suddenly realising where he was. He glanced around the canyon walls. More Yrredetti were beginning to rear their heads from behind boulders and were crawling down the scree slope towards them.
“Hmm? Yes, you’re right. Can you manage it, Tanner?”
“I can, sir.”
Mathers strode back to the tank, reloading his revolver from his belt pouch as he went. Frank and Alfie crouched by the tank, using the rear track horns and the steering tail as cover, keeping an eye on the creatures that seemed to be getting bolder by the minute, or more desperate.
Mathers thought he heard whispering. He scowled at Frank. “What did you say?”
Frank looked at him, startled. “Nothing, sir. Didn’t say a word.”
“Hmm.” Mathers held his gaze for a moment, then shook his head.
Jack rolled the drum back towards the Ivanhoe. Cecil, now dangerously exposed, was edging back towards the tank, revolver raised, wavering, switching targets indecisively. “I got you, Jack.”
“Get it stowed, quickly,” said Mathers, boarding through the port sponson hatch.
On the roof, Frank helped haul the drum into position on top of the other one while Jack, standing on the steering tail, strained as he lifted the drum above his head.
One Yrredetti flung a stone, cracking the retreating Cecil on the back of the skull. The lad stumbled and went down, clutching his head, and his revolver skittered away from him. From the cover of a nearby boulder a couple of Yrredetti darted forwards, urged on by the calls of others. A claw
snapped down on Cecil’s foot and dragged him back towards the shelter of the rock.
“Cecil’s down!” Alfie fired his revolver. The round ricocheted off the boulder.
“Oh Jesus, help me, for Christ’s sake!” screamed Cecil as he was dragged towards the boulder.
Alfie ran towards it. Time seemed to slow. Around him the air shifted in whorls of effervescent vermillion, parting as he ran and, in the periphery of his vision, orange auras blazed among the rocks indicating the position of the creatures hidden in the rocks around and above him, his fear swamped by an exhilaration.
He scrambled up the side of the large boulder even as Cecil disappeared round the back. Stood on the top, he saw three arthropods huddled behind the rock, arguing over Cecil.
A blue-green blister throbbed on a small rock, the size of a football, near Alfie’s feet. He shouted. They looked up and he kicked the rock down, hitting one of them in the head, blisters bursting and drenching the creature’s face, burning it. Its scream was bright orange, fading quickly to red as it reflected off the canyon walls, before dissipating as it died.
Alfie leapt down, landing on the arm that held the screaming Cecil. He felt the chitinous armour crunch beneath his boots as he fired his revolver point blank into the face of the second. The third tried to scuttle back to the safety of the scree slope, but Jack appeared, caught it by the leg and swung it against the boulder. Alfie heard its carapace crack and Jack let it fall limply to the ground, leaving a dark sticky stain on the rock.
Alfie pulled Cecil to his feet, ducked under his armpit, took his weight and helped him back to the tank. Jack stood his ground before backing towards the tank, picking up Cecil’s fallen revolver and guarding their retreat. The gathering creatures hissed and clicked their mandibles, but kept their distance.
By now the fuel drum had been re-secured, and Alfie could hear Wally running up the engine in readiness to move off. He passed Cecil to Frank, who hauled him in through the sponson hatch.
“Come on, Jack,” Alfie called, one foot on the starboard hatch lip as he prepared to step through. Jack danced backwards towards the tank, his eyes never leaving the rocks.