by Pat Kelleher
“You mean there could be more of them?” asked Nellie, hefting the unfamiliar weight of the revolver in her hand and glancing up at the scree slopes around them.
The rest of the section were eyeing the boulders and rocky clefts warily, too. A wind gusted between the rocks stirring little dust devils as it passed.
“There could be, and we’re a lot more vulnerable here than a bloody tank. We’d better move on,” said Atkins.
They proceeded cautiously along the canyon following the faint tank tracks. There was no sign of any living Yrredetti, forest or stone.
Around another crook in the rock, the canyon widened again. Large boulders sat patiently on the scree slopes, perfect hiding places. A landslide had slipped down to the canyon floor in a fan of scree and rocky debris, blocking their path. The tank tracks led right up to it. Atkins’ stomach plummeted. The tank wasn’t under there, was it? Nobby scrambled clumsily up the landslide and stood triumphantly at the top.
“I can see tracks on the other side,” he said with a grin. “So they’re not buried, then. That’s something,” said Chalky. “Nobby, get down before you fall,” said Prof.
“I’m the king of the castle!” yelled Nobby, spinning round, arms out, his voice full of boyish glee. “Whoooo-hoooo!” his voice echoed off the canyon walls.
“Nobby,” barked Prof. “I’m not going to tell you again. Down.
Now.”
Nobby stopped and gave him a sullen stare. “I was only havin’ a bit o’ fun. There ain’t no harm in that.”
“There is if you bring a ton of shit down on our heads, you dozy git,” said Porgy.
“Porgy! He didn’t mean no harm by it,” Nellie protested. “He didn’t have to.”
Sulking, Nobby came clambering down. He trod awkwardly on a rock, then slipped and fell, his rifle clattering down the rocks. “I told you...” Prof began to say.
Nobby tumbled face first into a large blue-green blister, which burst under his impact. He didn’t even have time to scream. His fists beat the rock and his feet kicked feebly for a second but subsided and stopped before anyone could reach him.
“Nobby!” cried Prof.
Nobby didn’t answer.
“Careful!” warned Mercy.
They turned him over to a collective gasp of horror. Atkins turned his face away.
“Jesus!”
“Poor sod!”
Nellie gasped and buried her head in Porgy’s webbing. Atkins had seen many things on the Front and worse here, but this had them beat. The front of Nobby’s head and chest—his uniform, flesh, muscle, fat, cartilage, down to his sternum—had gone. It had been eaten off where he’d fallen into the thing. There was nothing but fizzing bone.
Through his ribs, his internal organs continued to dissolve into a slop from the inside out where he’d breathed the stuff in.
“Nobby!”
Pot Shot held Prof back.
“He’s gone, Prof,” said Pot Shot. “He’s gone.”
“No!” Prof slumped in his arms. “I warned him. I told him a thousand times to be careful, the soft bugger.” Prof’s voice trailed off. He looked lost. He’d taken it upon himself to shepherd the hapless Nobby through the war. He’d got all the way through the Somme, and three months of this place and the clumsy sod trips over his own feet and dies. With nothing else to do, they buried Nobby under stones from the scree slope. There wasn’t even an identity disc to collect. The acid had seen to that. Useless, clumsy Nobby. Nobody deserved a death like that.
AS THEY SAID a prayer over Nobby’s grave, a flash of light caused them to shield their eyes.
“What the hell?” Atkins squinted up to find the source.
There, on the canyon wall, where the scree slope met the rock face, a large expanse of metal had been exposed by the rock fall and was catching the sunlight. It was a flat, featureless wall of dull silver metal, hidden behind the rock until it had been blasted away.
Atkins looked to Napoo, who just shrugged. Chandar let out a long wet hiss that set its mouth palps flapping.
“Holy Mary Mother of God, will y’look at that.”
“Blood and sand!”
“What is it?”
“I have no idea,” said Porgy. “It has to be the result of some sort of manufactory, though. I mean, look at it. There is no way that’s natural. Maybe whatever brought us here is inside. I’ll bet this is exactly the sort of thing the lieutenant wants us to keep a look out for.”
Atkins pushed back the cap on his head and puffed out his cheeks. Hopes suddenly welled up, unbidden. It was true. There was no way this could be natural. It was artificial, made, constructed. And if that was the case, somebody must have built it. They may even still be in there. Could this be it? Could the reason they found themselves here be found in there? Maybe even a way home? Home to Flora. The thought overwhelmed almost all else. He had to know.
“Gutsy, you and the others take cover on the far side of this rock fall while me and Porgy go up and investigate. Gazette? Keep us covered. If anything goes wrong, you should be able to make it out of the canyon.”
“If anything goes wrong? What the bloody hell are you planning to do, Only? We’ve got orders. We’ve got to find the tank.”
“Shh!” snapped Atkins, flicking his eyes toward Chandar.
“Sorry,” said Porgy sarcastically. “Skarra.”
“Look, Porgy. This is the first thing we’ve found here that isn’t built out of dirt or sticks; no offence, Napoo. Don’t you want to know?”
Atkins and Porgy scrambled up the scree slope towards the metal wall. Rocks and stones slipped away beneath their feet and skittered down to the canyon floor as they clawed their way up the spoil. “Look for a door, a hatch, anything,” Atkins said. “There must be a way in.”
Prof turned towards him. “And what do we do if we find one? Nothing else has been too friendly lately.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, eh?”
As they drew closer, he could see that the metal wall had been hidden behind a crust of rock three or four feet deep. The surface wasn’t polished, but brushed; their reflections were misty shapeless hazes of khaki, like a fogged funfair mirror.
A cursory examination, however, revealed no seams or rivets, no joins of any kind. Porgy rapped on the metal with his knuckles. It was solid. Atkins unshouldered his rifle and slammed the butt into the metal, half expecting—half hoping—to hear a hollow ring. All he got was a dull, solid thud. He tried scratching it with his bayonet but the blade slid impotently across the surface patina without leaving a mark. He smacked it with the palms of his hands. “Hello! Hello? Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me? Open up!” Nothing.
He put his ear to the metal, expecting it to be cold, only to find it warm. He looked at Porgy and put a finger to his lips hoping to hear signs of life within. He heard nothing; no gentle electrical hums, no machinery and no great thrum of turbines, nothing, except the rocks shifting and clattering beneath his feet as he tried to maintain his balance. Not that that meant anything in itself. The wall could be so thick as to prevent him hearing anything. Anger and frustration welled up. Were there beings in there now, observing them, judging them?
He was contemplating his next move when there was a shout from the canyon floor. The dull crack of a rifle shot echoed briefly round the canyon walls. Atkins glanced along the scree. The Yrredetti were emerging from behind large fallen blocks of stone, and were scuttling across the slope towards the two men. They seemed to have found their nerve. That, or they were desperate.
“All right, Porgy, time to get out of here.”
“No argument from me.”
Porgy turned and started scrambling clumsily down the scree, half running, half trying to keep his balance, riding a small wave of rock fall as the spoil slipped from beneath his feet.
Several more shots rang out from below. Atkins took aim at an Yrredetti that was hunkered low along the scree line and fired. The creature’s head exploded and the bo
dy tumbled several yards down the slope before coming to a halt. Atkins grimaced as several other Yrredetti turned their attention to it instead, and began tearing at it and cracking its carapace with rocks to get at the still warm meat within.
Porgy had almost reached the base of the scree and hands were reaching out to grab him.
Atkins was about to follow when he hesitated. “Ah, what the hell. It’s worth a shot.”
He pulled a Mills bomb from a pouch on his webbing and hastily set it against the base of the metal face, jamming it between two rocks. Maybe he could blast a hole in it. He took a deep breath, pulled the pin and leapt down the scree slope. He landed heavily, skidded, stumbled, and lost his footing. The world became a disorientating whirl and tumble as he careened head over heels down the slope.
Seconds later the concussion wave of the grenade blast caught him, propelling him further and showering him with dust and dirt. Small pieces of rubble rained down about him.
He felt hands pick him up and set him right, dust him off and thrust his rifle back into his grip, even as he blinked tears from his eyes and coughed out dust. Words gradually resolved from the ringing in his ears.
“Well, Only, you scared them Yrredetti off, good and proper,” Gutsy was saying. “Scuttled back under their rocks like spiders in a privy. You should have seen ’em.”
Atkins doubled over and coughed again, a deep chesty cough that made his diaphragm ache, before hawking out a gobbet of dusty spit. “Good. What about the wall?”
Gutsy shrugged.
“What?” Atkins looked up. Another rock fall completely buried the metal face. He had hoped to blast a hole in the metal wall, but the bomb seemed to have had the opposite effect. “Bugger!” His shoulders slumped. Nellie came up to inspect his injuries, but he brushed her off. She had her webbing and pack all stuffed with field dressings and whatever medical supplies she could beg or steal. Atkins suspected she was almost as good a scrounger as Mercy.
“Porgy, mark it on the map. Lieutenant Everson can send another party along to investigate it.”
“If we don’t push on and find that tank, there might not be anybody else left to investigate it,” Gazette reminded him.
Atkins was in low spirits. After Nobby’s death they all were, especially Prof. For a brief moment, Atkins had hoped the mysterious metal wall hinted at a way back to Blighty. All these months, thoughts of Flora had driven him on. Now he felt he had lost her again. He lashed out and kicked a stone.
Gutsy stepped forward to comfort his mate, but Porgy shook his head.
As they headed for the mouth of the canyon, Atkins thought his spirits couldn’t get any lower.
He was wrong.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“The Chances...”
DESPONDENT, 1 SECTION left the canyon and picked their way over a fan of debris down on to a great fractured plain with deep cracks and fissures crazing the landscape.
Mercy pushed his battle bowler back on his head. “Bloody hell, just when you think things might get easier.”
“My wife says the same thing about our marriage,” said Gutsy, slapping him on the back.
An escarpment behind them, through which the canyon ran, rose several hundred feet and stretched away on both sides into the distance. With no compass reading worth spit on this world, landmarks like this scarp were invaluable. Atkins scratched another ‘13/PF,’ their battalion abbreviation, on a boulder by the canyon mouth to mark their trail before they moved off across the plain.
It was hard going for all, so Atkins cut Chandar’s wrist bonds to help it to deal with the uneven terrain. It now scurried about, to Atkins’ mind, like the insect it was.
Unable to follow the tank tracks directly across the wider gullies, they had to pick their own way. They scrambled and slid down the sides of great rocky protrusions like giant’s steps, before they reached level ground. There, the gullies narrowed and the rocky terrain between levelled out.
It took them longer than anticipated to cross the plain and pick up the tank’s tracks again. It was coming to mid-afternoon when they found the bodies of the jabberwock and the stone beetle on the fractured plain beyond the canyon. They could smell them on the wind before they even saw them. Nellie clapped a handkerchief over her mouth and blinked away tears.
When they came across the carcasses, they couldn’t see them at first. A moving carpet of flat, woodlouse-like scavengers the size of Labradors were burrowing inside the rotting carcasses. As the section approached they slipped into the surrounding cracks and fissures with their prizes. The sight caused the party to avoid the cracks wherever possible.
The tank tracks headed towards the belt of vermillion and damson vegetation in the distance.
“Not more bloody forest. I hate forests,” said Porgy. “You know, I didn’t see a lick o’ nature until I joined the Army. Gimme brick an’ cobbles any day.”
“See them tank tracks?” said Atkins conspiratorially.
“Yeah?”
“Where do they go?”
Porgy knew where this was headed. “Into the forest, Lance Corporal.”
“So that is where we’re bloody well going. I don’t like it any more than you do, Porgy.”
They followed the tracks into the jungle as it closed in about them completely. Atkins hated this. He hated what these places did to him. Every noise was a potential threat, every pair of eyes, every screeching call, a potential predator. The unrelenting tension was exhausting. Trying to breathe lightly so as to hear better only to have the rush of blood in your ears drown out the advantage. Starting at every crack and rustle around them. Napoo’s presence helped little in negating that. A man’s sudden death might be the only warning the rest of them got and none of them wanted it to be them. Still, thought Atkins in an all-too-brief flash of optimism, if they kept to the tracks they didn’t have to worry about things like sting-a-lings, the spring-loaded barbed plants that had killed two of their section when they first arrived.
His body ached from the fall down the scree. It was a bed of bruises that had begun to bloom purple, blue and yellow. Small lacerations itched and stung beneath his heavy serge uniform. A bruise on his face swelled and stretched his skin uncomfortably, but he forced himself to ignore it.
“What are the chances we’ll find the tank crew alive eh, Only?”
“Well, as I heard it told, Chalky, ain’t no more than five things that can happen to a soldier: nowt, wounded—bad or cushy—prisoner, killed or doolally.”
Napoo disappeared up ahead and every so often came jogging back into sight. Scouting. “Footprints. Urman footprints.”
“After us?”
“No, too old. With tank. With Ivanhoe. Their footprints cross the beast’s tracks.”
“It’s not a beast, Napoo.”
Napoo shrugged. “I know what I know.”
Atkins could never be sure whether the man was simple or mischievous. He suspected Napoo knew a great deal more than he let on.
“These tracks?”
“They were with it. Urmen were accompanying it.”
“Stalking it or escorting it?”
“I cannot say.”
Urmen had generally been friendly towards the Pennines, so that was good. There must be an enclave nearby. They could restock with supplies, maybe rest up. Sleeping out in the wild here was not easy, it was nigh on impossible. If the Urmen had been following the tank, they might know its whereabouts, or at least which way it went. After all, it was hard to miss.
So was the totem they came across with the body of the Urman lashed to it.
Gazette regarded it nonplussed, “Well, if this was them, they don’t seem too friendly, like. Talk about your crucified Canadian. Fritz has got nothin’ on these fellers. Jesus.”
“You don’t think this is what they do to captives, do you?” asked Mercy.
Chandar let forth a sound that could have been a sigh. It wandered up to the body and stretched out a chitinous arm, its long slender fingers reaching o
ut to touch it.
Napoo stepped forward and grabbed it by the wrist.
“No.”
Chandar flicked its gaze to Napoo, then back to the gutted corpse, enraptured. “This is wonderful,” the Chatt rasped, its fingers fidgeting, eager to touch it, but it restrained itself. “Wild Urmen. I have never seen such a thing. What is its function? What is it for?”
Gutsy’s lip curled in disgust as he watched the Chatt enthuse over the poor sod.
“Can’t we cut him down?” asked Nellie.
Napoo glanced around, examining the area around the totem without touching it. “No. It’s a warning. A totem to ward off jundurru—bad magic. Its power is strong.”
“To-tem,” repeated Chandar, its fleshy mouth palps moving thoughtfully, as if committing the word to memory.
“At least somebody’s happy,” muttered Mercy.
They walked past it, each man intent on following the tank tracks at their feet, avoiding the hollow-eyed gaze of the totem sacrifice.
THEY HAD NOT got far beyond it when the section found themselves surrounded by Urmen with spears and bark shields. Long blowpipes were aimed at them. The Tommies raised their bayonets to the guard position.
The agitated Urmen were restrained only by a strong voice that barked out of the shadows. The Enfields came up and bolts cycled. It was a stand off.
Napoo stepped forwards, fingers splayed, patting the air, as he passed the Tommies. “Lower your firesticks.”
The Tommies looked at Atkins. He nodded and the bayonets were lowered. He hoped their Urman guide could persuade his kin of their honest intentions and at least find out if they had any information before things went to hell. Atkins glowered and shook his head. An Urman with a white-painted face stepped from the shadows. Napoo bowed. “I am Napoo, chief of the Horuk Clan. This Urman is Onli of the Tohmii.”
“Those aren’t our real names,” muttered Atkins.
“This man is a shaman,” Napoo told him. “They believe given names have power. I spoke our taken names, which have less power.”
“You give your name too freely, stranger.” The shaman rolled his eyes upwards, scanning the canopy. “Here in the Thalpa groves, the spirits may take them. If they haven’t already.”