by Pat Kelleher
As the skyward bolt dispelled, the fungal carpet was briefly dormant.
“Now!” commanded Everson.
Atkins stepped from the temple and aimed the electric lance at the edge of the fungus now covering the clearing. He squeezed the Chatt trigger pads and felt the lance kick and jerk in his hand, as the untamed bolt of lightning bucked and writhed, vaporising a patch of fungus. Fruiting pods had no chance to spore and surrounding mycelia shrivelled. He soon found that by varying the pressure on the trigger pads, he could vary the strength of the electric bolt.
“It’s working!” yelled Mercy into his ear.
The Talbot-thing waved a hand and the clearing began to blossom with more swelling fruit pods.
Atkins fired again, moving forwards to clear a path out towards the surrounding jungle, sweeping the lance from side to side like a Flammenwerfer.
Following them, the rest of the party edged nervously along a narrow causeway of cleared ground through the deadly garden. Bringing up the rear, Gutsy turned the crank handle as Tonkins’ bolts licked away at the ground, repelling the fungus threads trying to close in behind them, lapping at their feet like a rising tide, cutting off their path back to the temple.
“Keep cranking!” yelled Atkins to Mercy over his shoulder.
The grey fungus-possessed corpses kept their distance. The electric lance wasn’t a useful long-range weapon, but it was enough to keep them at bay.
The tight knit group shuffled forward behind Atkins as he cleared a path, edging past the Urmen bodies smothered by the thick blanket of mycelia, like the cobweb-cocooned bodies of flies in a spider’s web.
But the time between recharges was getting longer, and the strength of the electric bolts weaker. Gutsy and Mercy were tiring at their crank handles, leaving the Tommies vulnerable. Everson ordered Pot Shot and Gazette to take over the cranking.
With a fresh charge, Atkins’ lance spat another convulsive stream of electricity into the growing fungal mass as the Talbot-thing watched impassively, out of range.
Tulliver stumbled, and several hands caught him up before he fell. “Wait!” he cried.
Another telluric discharge, somewhere within the crater this time, ripped up into the sky with a blinding flash and a concussive wave of thunder that Atkins felt roll through him.
Around them, the fungal mat convulsed and the advancing mycelia shrank back involuntarily.
Atkins pressed home their advantage, white bolts of energy carving a path through to the forest. From there, with Pot Shot behind him cranking the magneto handle, he covered the rest as they made it to the comparative safety of the tree line; the padre and Napoo helping the semiconscious Tarak, Alfie hobbling along, aided by Nellie, followed by Jack and the tank crew; Cecil, Norman, Reggie and Wally, leaving Hepton to struggle alone, weighed down by his equipment. Mercy and Gutsy came next with Riley, who kept his eyes nervously on the backpacks. Everson followed them in and Gazette and Tonkins brought up the rear.
Even here, gauzy curtains of fungal threads hung from the trees, but they were thinner, as though the fungus had been conserving its energy for its assault.
“More spore pods,” called Cecil as huge great plum-pudding-sized balls swelled in the fungus-covered undergrowth nearby. Atkins turned and swept a jagging electric bolt across them.
“It’s at times like this I really wish we had the Ivanhoe!” cursed Alfie.
“I agree. But it’s out of fuel and ditched,” said Reggie.
“Fuel?” said Pot Shot. “I saw a stack of fuel drums go over the side of the crater during the Zohtakarrii attack. Rolled right over the edge, they did.”
“Why the bloody hell didn’t you tell us before?” asked Norman, aggrieved.
“I had other things on my bloody mind, all right?”
Atkins squeezed the trigger pads of his lance. The lance tip fizzled. “Pot Shot, stop gossiping and get cranking.”
“You know I’ve already got a wife, don’t you, Only?” he sniped as he set about the magneto handle with a will.
They advanced through the jungle. Shrouds of fungus hung from the boughs above them, where more fruit pods began to balloon.
“Overhead, Atkins,” cautioned Everson.
“I’m on it, sir.” Atkins brought his lance up. Behind him, Pot Shot’s handle turning began to slow and he stopped again, shaking his wrist to try to bring some life back into it.
Jack pushed Cecil forward. “Take over, lad; give the mud-slogger a break.”
Cecil stepped past Pot Shot, who nodded his thanks, and the young gunner whizzed the handle round. Hearing the hum build, Atkins held the lance firmly, squeezed the trigger pad, and played the arc of electric energy across the trees. Super-heated instantly to high temperatures, wood and sap exploded above them like Woolly Bears, even as the gossamer veils and fruit pods were vaporised. The Tommies ducked as hard wood shrapnel exploded around them like Whizz Bangs. “Jesus! Watch it, Only. It’s not us you’re trying to kill!” yelled Gazette. “Sorry!”
Atkins looked back and saw that the mycelia had reached the temple; the path by which they had made their escape was lost again under the tide of alien filaments that now covered the entire clearing.
Watching them, the Talbot-thing lifted its feet from the tightly knotted fungus fibres around it and, dragging a train of them behind it, began to lumber after them, the other grey reanimated Fusiliers turning to follow.
“Go on with the others!” Atkins ordered Tonkins, “I’ll follow.”
Atkins waited. Behind him, Cecil kept cranking the handle, building the charge. “Keep going, Cecil. I want to teach this thing a lesson.” The whirring upped its pitch as Cecil redoubled his efforts.
Atkins fired. The lance kicked violently in his hand as a bright bolt of electrical fire snapped out at one of the grey mouldering dead, incinerating the puckered growth on its chest and flinging the creature backwards, where the carpet of corpse-fed filaments cushioned its fall.
The others halted their advance.
From under his hood, Atkins curled his lip with grim satisfaction. “That ought to buy us a minute or two. Come on, Cecil.”
As he turned to leave, Atkins heard a whirring.
“Cecil, it’s all right, you can stop cranking now.”
“But I have,” said the young tanker, standing by his side in his coveralls and gas hood.
The whirring noise continued. Was something wrong with the backpack? Atkins twisted his neck in alarm, trying to look over his shoulder for signs of damage, but couldn’t see any, and with his gas hood on it was difficult to tell where the sound was coming from.
“Then what the hell is that... noise...” His voice trailed away as he turned.
Hepton stood with his box camera set on its tripod, cranking the handle and panning it across the shroud-covered clearing and its fungus-animated corpses.
Atkins didn’t know what was worse, the fate of those Fusiliers or Hepton’s exploitation of them. Did the man only have eyes for the main chance? Those were men out there, dead men who deserved better. Perhaps he should have left him to them.
“I can see the caption card now,” bellowed Hepton cheerfully from beneath his gas hood. “Attack of the Crater Mass!”
Atkins shook his head in disgust and deliberately barged into the kinematographer with his shoulder as he pushed past, jarring the camera.
“I say, there was no call for that,” said Hepton, looking up from the viewfinder. “I’m only doing my job!”
Atkins strode off after the others without looking back. Cecil followed, leaving Hepton alone.
Alarmed, the kinematographer hoiked his tripod and camera box onto his shoulder and hurried after them.
“Wait, don’t leave me!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“What Dead Are Born...”
RAGGED WHEEZES AND dry gasps filled the air as men collapsed against tree trunks and rocks to catch their breaths; all except Napoo, who looked at the rest of them impatiently, as if they were
dawdling children. Slowed down by Alfie and a dazed Tarak, Everson had let them rest only when he felt they were safe. Although here, safe was always a relative term.
Atkins’ lungs burned with effort. Running and breathing in his gas hood, sucking in air through the thick layers of flannel and blowing out through the red rubber-titted non-return valve was hard work at the best of times. Couple that with your limited vision, the stink of the chemical-impregnated cloth and the stifling heat of the whole thing; it was a relief when he dragged the thing from his sweat-drenched head, before shucking off the clay battery backpack and lance.
They might have put some distance between them and the fungus, but neither could he hear the usual sounds of the jungle. They weren’t out of the woods yet.
Riley and Tonkins began inspecting the Chatt weapons, fussing over them as if they were old family heirlooms.
“They worked. We did it, Corp. We saw the buggers off!” said Tonkins, flushed and ecstatic.
Riley carried on checking the clay battery backpack. “I don’t think so, lad. I think they’re just moving at the pace of a Hom Forty, a bit like Buckley. Even he gets there in the end.”
Keeping a discreet distance from Atkins, Hepton laid his camera and tripod down carefully, and then ripped his gas hood from his head before doubling over with a hacking cough.
Atkins eyed the man, his resentment smouldering like a moorland peat fire. “I can’t tell whether the man’s a coward or a cad,” he muttered.
“Saved his neck again, eh, Only? You’re a better man than me,” admitted Gutsy, following his gaze.
Atkins felt his cheeks flush with shame and guilt. He knew he wasn’t, and if he told Gutsy about Flora, he’d know it, too. He brushed the compliment off. “I don’t intend to make a habit of it but, like it or not, he’s one of us. Besides—”
“—it was the right thing to do, I know,” said Gutsy. “You’ll have to watch yourself. You’ll put the padre out of a job.”
Hepton began patting his pockets, idly at first and then with increasing desperation. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he panted. “I’ve dropped my gaspers!” He looked around at the disinterested Tommies, a haunted look in his eyes behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. “Has anyone got a fag? Anybody? I’ll pay.”
If they had any gaspers left, they were keeping them to themselves.
“Bastards,” muttered Hepton.
“Only.” Mercy nudged Atkins and with a wink, nodded down at his tunic pocket. In it was a packet of Woodbines, crushed but serviceable. “Lifted them from him back in the temple.”
Atkins shook his head. However incorrigible Mercy was, he took some small pleasure in Hepton’s distress and allowed himself a smirk of satisfaction.
“See,” said Gutsy, joining him, “there’s hope for you yet.” The large man nodded towards Everson. “Eh up, the lieutenant wants you.”
Lieutenant Everson was talking to Nellie and Norman from the Ivanhoe. He beckoned Atkins across.
“No rest for the wicked,” groaned Atkins.
“Or NCOs,” grinned Gutsy, tapping the stripe on Atkins’ upper arm.
Atkins heaved himself up with a groan and walked over, smartening his tunic as he went.
“LIEUTENANT EVERSON, SIR,” Norman was saying, “me and the lads want to see if we can get the tank running. If there’s fuel down here, then we’re in with a chance.”
“It’d offer us some protection from those things, at least,” said Nellie. “Possibly,” said Everson. “Splitting up might make some sense. There’s no point staying all together to be all caught in a spore cloud.” Atkins wondered whether it was really the tank or access to the petrol fruit fuel they were more concerned about. They’d become quite animated since they heard about the fuel. “Sir, we’re down here looking for Jeffries. We’re so close; we can’t give up now.”
Everson studied him for a moment, and then shook his head. “Yes, but I don’t see how, Corporal. There’s nothing we can do to those things that won’t make the situation worse. I can see no other option other than to fall back. The tank would be useful. It would give us more protection down here.”
Atkins knew Everson couldn’t afford to lose either the tank or the aeroplane. Both were major advantages in their survival on this world. From what Miss Abbott said, the tank crew had overcome their addiction, and it would take a while for the substance to build up in their bodies again. It was a risk he seemed willing to take, at least in the short term.
Atkins, however, couldn’t just cut and run. “But Talbot and his men, sir. Those things, those men, they should be... in their graves. Dead is dead. You’re their officer, sir. We can’t leave them like that. It isn’t proper. It isn’t right. It’s an abomination worthy of Jeffries himself. We owe it to them to see that they’re put to rest. They shouldn’t be walking round like some... mouldy Lazarus. It ain’t natural. What about their immortal souls?”
Everson looked to the padre. The Chaplain raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips and shook his head. “They didn’t say anything about this kind of thing in the seminary, but yes, if these poor souls can be put out of their misery and lifted to their Reward, then I think it behoves us to act, Lieutenant.”
Atkins nodded. “It’s the right thing to do, sir.”
“Atkins, we can’t defeat these things, we can’t shoot, bomb, or burn them without spreading those spores and facing the same fate ourselves.”
“I think I can help,” offered Tulliver. “Those things don’t react well to those telluric blasts and well, to be brutally honest, John, the petrol fruit fuel has sharpened my vision in some way. I can see where those charges will build.”
Atkins saw the dark look cross Everson’s face. Tulliver waved it away with an air of indifference.
“Yes, yes, I know you don’t trust this petrol fruit stuff, but I’m the least of your problems. If I can get to my bus, I can lead you towards the next telluric discharge. This bizarre land storm is practically on top of us, so there should be another one or two from within the crater, somewhere along the Strip, surely? If we can lure them there, they’ll be vaporised instantly.”
Everson frowned and chewed his bottom lip. “That’s a lot of ifs, Lieutenant. By all accounts, you barely survived one of those blasts.”
Tulliver shrugged his shoulders. “But I did, and I’ve got the measure of them now; I know what I’m looking for. If we don’t move soon, these telluric geysers will pass beyond us and we’ll be back to square one. You have to make your mind up.”
Everson considered for a moment. “Do it.”
Tulliver grinned, and then paused. “I’ll need someone to fly with me. I can’t start the engine on my own.”
“Take the padre, I can’t spare anyone else,” said Everson. “Come on, Padre. We’ll make an angel out of you yet.”
“You may well have your wings, Lieutenant. I’m not quite sure I’m ready for mine yet,” said the padre archly.
Tulliver tutted. “And you call yourself a sky pilot.”
The tank crew and Nellie nodded and headed off into the jungle with Tarak, who had offered to guide them back to the tank, while Tulliver departed with the padre, leaving Everson, the Black Hand Gang, Riley, Tonkins, Hepton and Napoo to await the coming of the grey men.
Mercy watched the two groups go off.
“So,” he said cheerfully. “We’re the bait, then.”
WITH TARAK’S HELP, the crew of the Ivanhoe stuck to the edge of the Strip for as long as possible and avoided the labyrinthine groves. In the distance, through the trees, they heard the muffled roaring of the river as it headed for its underground fall.
Alfie felt an odd mixture of joy and anxiety when they finally came upon the Ivanhoe, like meeting an old sweetheart with whom he’d parted awkwardly. He barely remembered the crash over the edge of the crater, and didn’t recall Tarak rescuing him at all, but there were many other memories, not all pleasant, that stirred at the sight of the ironclad.
Looking at his crewmates, the
old concerns rose unbidden. For almost two weeks they had been without the balm of the sense-altering petrol fruit fumes, and until he saw the tank, he thought he, too, was over them. Now it sat there, he could feel the dull need deep in his bones.
The Ivanhoe was quite hidden, at first sight. The ubiquitous pale strangling creepers had overgrown and entangled themselves round the machine. Thin tendrils entwined the great six-pounder guns, quested their way in through the gun slits and loopholes and tried to force themselves between the iron plates.
The lidded eyes of the drivers’ visors peered out of the fast-growing foliage as if it were some ancient forest spirit, waiting to be invoked and awoken.
Tarak started to bow before the tank, until Alfie hobbled over on his crutch to stop him, catching his arm under the Urman’s armpit.
“No,” he said quietly. “We’ve had quite enough of that.”
Tarak stood, confused, but obeyed. He touched the still-livid scar on his chest with bewilderment. “My clan...”
“They were killed,” said Alfie softly. “I’m sorry, lad.”
Tarak looked at him, uncomprehending. Alfie shuffled uncomfortably, at a loss for something to say.
Nellie interrupted the awkward silence. “Right,” she said, rolling up the sleeves of her coveralls and taking charge. “We need to start cutting back this undergrowth and find those fuel drums. I do hope they’re intact. Jack?”
“We’ll find out,” said Jack. “Norman, Cecil, with me. Let’s hope that Fusilier was right.”
Nellie, Wally and Reggie set to work hacking at the liana with the fire axe from the tank and their entrenching tools, while Tarak set about it with his short sword.
Even as they cut it back, the insidious pale growth sought to regrow. “Watch it,” said Wally, ripping a thin stem as it sprouted along the track plates. “I reckon if you stand still long enough it’ll have you an’ all.”
“What the hell is this stuff?” said Reggie as he tore his hand away from a few grasping feelers. “It spreads like some pernicious weed.”