The Ironclad Prophecy

by Kelleher, Pat

  Atkins ran for his life.

  THE GREAT IRON hulk of the Ivanhoe sat where they had left it, hunkered in the clearing, waiting patiently like a faithful beast.

  Exhausted, the tank crew staggered towards the waiting behemoth.

  Norman, Reggie, Cecil and Wally set down their coverall loads of chatt jars and stretched. In the daylight, Mathers’ swollen face looked much worse than they had imagined.

  “And I thought impetigo from petrol fumes was bad,” Norman remarked.

  “How comes he’s the only one that’s got it, though?” asked Cecil.

  “Officer in’t ’e? They’ve got more sensitive skin than us lot. Known fact, is that.”

  “The sooner I’m back in the Ivanhoe, the better I’ll feel,” said Wally.

  “Best get the tank started up, then, I reckon,” said Jack.

  Nellie patted Napoo on the forearm. “Thank you.”

  With a faint smile, the urman gave a grunt of acknowledgement and nodded as she left his side.

  He squatted down on his haunches, looking decidedly uncomfortable. He was wary of the Lieutenant, but just as cautious about the tank. Although aware that men operated it, he was convinced that there was sorcery involved. Alfie approached the urman, “Thanks for looking out for Nellie – I mean, Miss Abbott.”

  Napoo looked up at him. “She is a good woman.” It was a threat as much as a statement of fact.

  “Yes. Yes, she is,” replied Alfie, sensing that he had outstayed his welcome. He made for the tank. His path took him past Nellie, who was splashing water from her canteen on the back of her neck. She was relieved to see that Alfie’s eyes had almost returned to normal. He wanted to tell her about the thing inside Mathers, but changed his mind. “Will you check the Lieutenant out, again? He doesn’t look too clever.”

  “Do I tell you how to tune your precious engine?” she remarked.

  “Yes, actually.”

  She beamed as she made her way over to check on Mathers, who seemed to be enjoying the soothing wind on his face. “Then I’m much too good for you, Mr Perkins.”

  Norman saw her examining the Lieutenant. “We just need to get the engine started up, is all, Miss. Once the Sub can take a drag on the fumes he’ll be top o’ the bill again,” he insisted.

  “Top o’ the bill?” said Nellie. “He’s had so many turns he’s a regular Marie Lloyd. It’s not those blessed fumes he needs, it’s rest and proper medical attention.”

  Frank intercepted Alfie on the way to the tank. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To start the engine, if three of you lazy buggers’ll lend a hand.”

  Frank shook his head. “I don’t think so, Alfie.” He leaned in. “You may have won the Lieutenant over, but he’s not quite himself at the moment. Me and the lads? We ain’t decided on you yet, you and your sweetheart. You see, we was all cushy ’til she and them Tommies showed up. The Sub’s scheme has all gone to pot since then. You was never for it, was you? I reckon you’ve been sabotaging us all along. You stay there, with your lady friend.”

  “What the hell’s got into you, Frank?”

  Frank crossed to the tank and noticed an oily stain on the grass under the sponson. “Bloody hell. Perkins. I knew it. Look like something has been leaking here!” He went to open the sponson hatch. His forehead creased with disbelief as he tugged at the handle. “It’s stuck.” He pulled at the handle again.

  “Put some oomph into it!” jeered Cecil.

  The door resisted, then came free with a sticky, sucking sound. He toppled backwards onto his arse, causing a ripple of belly laughs across the clearing.

  Frank’s brow buckled under the weight of incomprehension as he sat staring up at the open hatchway.

  Something slick and black filled the tank compartment. Something with the texture of tripe.

  Tendrils whipped out from the mass, wrapped around Frank’s head, and yanked him into the tank. He didn’t even have time to scream.

  1 SECTION RAN hell-for-leather down the narrow sloping tunnel, almost stumbling down the incline. Cracks and rumbles accompanied the sound of tide-sucked shingle behind them, as the creature’s extruded limb ploughed after them, shattering the walls as it went. All the while, the passages resounded to the ultra-low keening rumble that made Atkins want to loose his bowels.

  Ahead, the tunnel wall exploded in a choking cloud of debris and dust, as a second tendril smashed through the wall at right angles, cutting off their escape, before punching out through the opposite wall. With the thing approaching from behind, they were cornered.

  The men collided to a halt as the tentacle passed in front of them.

  Atkins pointed behind them. “Gazette, Gutsy. Watch our backs.”

  Porgy groaned. “Jesus, what’re you going to do now?”

  “Quit your griping. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “You’ll get us all killed?”

  “You’re not afraid of that, are you, Porgy?” said Mercy.

  “What? Of course I bloody am, I don’t want to die – when you die they stop your pay.”

  Atkins grinned and snatched a Mills bomb from Chalky’s webbing pouch. If he set it off here, the tunnel would channel the explosion. They had no cover. At this distance, the concussion wave would render them senseless. The shrapnel blast would shred them. Standing inches from the passing tentacle, he pulled the pin with his teeth and held down the safety lever.

  “Chalky, stab the damn thing with your bayonet,” he yelled.

  Chalky hesitated.

  “Chalky, for fuck’s sake – Now!”

  The lad’s training took over. He charged the still passing tentacle in front of them, as if the Sergeant Major was standing right behind him, and let out a battle roar before thrusting his bayonet deep into the dark, otherworldly flesh. As the tentacle moved past, the blade opened up a slit along its surface. Thick black ichor sprayed out.

  Like gutting a fish, Atkins thought. He took a deep breath and, hoping to God this worked, thrust the grenade into the gash as it raced by, flinching away from the stabbing bayonet, taking the bomb with it.

  “Down!”

  Every man in the section dropped to the ground and covered their head, smashing another couple of amphora in the process. Gutsy pulled Chandar to the floor and pressed its head to the ground. Somewhere beyond the tunnel wall, the grenade exploded, precipitating more showers of dust and rubble.

  The tentacle before them reared back sharply from the pain in a reflex action, withdrawing back across the tunnel; a ragged, torn stump leaking a trail of thick, black liquor. Within seconds, it was gone.

  “You did it! You banished Jeffries’ demon!” Chalky cried in jubilation. “Thank the Lord. I knew the Corp would kill the fiend. Didn’t I say? Didn’t I?”

  Mercy reached out, patting him on the shoulder. “Steady on, lad. We don’t want it going to his head.”

  Gutsy rolled his eyes and grinned. “Hear that, Only? Everson won’t know whether to mention you in his dispatches or his prayers, now.”

  Behind them came the rumble of a roof fall. The tentacle thrashed about as the creature reacted in shock to its injury, bringing the tunnel crashing down. A great cloud of dirt and dust billowed towards them, overtook them and left them gagging and coughing.

  “Go!” ordered Atkins, picking himself up.

  The Tommies scrambled to their feet and rushed on. All but one torch had been extinguished. It was enough to light the way, but not bright enough to give them much warning of anything else in the deep dark of the tunnels.

  They passed an earlier scrawled 13/PF chalk mark with some relief, and took a broader, descending passage.

  As they ran, they could hear muffled thuds and thumps from all around, some too far away to be of concern, some too close for comfort.

  It put Atkins in mind of the interminable Hun artillery barrages they suffered when the minniewerfers and five-nines would pummel the front lines for hours or days. The nerve-shredding pounding
continued around them, accompanied more and more often by the long, slow rush of tunnel collapses.

  “What’s going on?” cried Chalky, flinching at every crash.

  The demon creature was thrashing about, trying to find them, Atkins guessed. It was no longer content to use the chatt-built tunnels and passages to hunt them, but was tearing down galleries and punching through chambers, searching for the bugs that were tormenting it.

  “I think the damn thing’s reading its shirt, looking for us.”

  “You mean it’s chatting us?” Porgy came back.

  “You could say that, aye.”

  “Bloody cheek!” said Porgy, affronted. “No offence,” he added, nodding an apology at Chandar as it raced alongside with its hopping gait.

  They wound their way down through tunnels and galleries, threading their way back through the labyrinth as best they could, avoiding the many tentacles now ploughing through the tunnels in search of them.

  The passage roof in front of them bowed and buckled, as cracks appeared. Slivers of silver daylight drove down into the dark confined space, slicing through the dust motes before the roof caved in. A tentacle punched down through the tunnel, and on through the floor, with a force that almost threw them off their feet. They darted to the right, down a smaller tunnel. Further down, daylight streamed in from some kind of window or breach. They were against an exterior wall. Atkins wondered how far they were above ground.

  “FRANK!”

  Frank did not respond.

  Jack darted towards the tank in the vain hope of rescuing him.

  The tank came alive. Black tentacles burst from the drivers’ visors, from the pistol ports around the tank, and from the hatches, all thrashing wildly.

  Jack ducked and danced, as light on his feet now as he had been in the carnival boxing ring before the war. He edged towards the open sponson through which Frank had been pulled, but was driven back as the tendrils lashed out at him.

  Napoo drew his sword and pulled Nellie behind him. “Alfie, stay back!” she screamed, as he joined the others, trying to find a way past the pseudopodia as they whipped through the air.

  They took pot shots with their revolvers, aiming for the pistol ports or at the portion of the writhing black mass that presented itself through the sponson hatch. Alfie shouted at them to stop. “You might damage the Ivanhoe!”

  Nellie peered round Napoo in horror. “What on earth is it?”

  Distracted, Mathers looked towards the tank. He seemed clear and lucid, for the moment. “It is the spawn of the thing that inhabits the ruins. It is not of this place,” he declaimed.

  Reggie started towards him, concern etched on his face. “Sir?”

  Mathers turned to him and spoke as if he might have been discussing the finer points of cricket over cucumber sandwiches on a summer’s evening. “Didn’t you realise?” He gestured vaguely towards the ruined edifice. “It has no protection of its own against the predations of this world. Its sire found its way inside the ruins for shelter. This one found its way inside the tank. Don’t you see? It’s using it as a shell, as a hermit crab does, to armour itself.”

  “But Frank. What about Frank, sir?”

  “Frank?” Mathers stared blankly at the tank, unconcerned. “Frank’s gone.”

  Norman tried to follow the Lieutenant’s logic. “So you’re saying all we have to do is winkle it out? Then we’re going to need a bloody big pin, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.”

  “A bayonet!” suggested Cecil.

  “Going to need something bigger than a pig sticker, son,” said Jack.

  Nellie frowned. “I know just what we need to lance this boil.” She ran over to the undergrowth, to the little copse of black-barked, silver-veined saplings she had spotted when they arrived at the edifice. “Napoo, help me.”

  Napoo joined her. He arched an eyebrow as he realised what she was looking at. “Corpsewood?”

  “Will it work, do you think?”

  “What is it?” asked Alfie.

  “It’s a scavenger plant. It usually feeds on dead or rotting flesh, but eats living things if it can, hence the name, so be careful.”

  “It... might work,” said Napoo, with caution. “But it must be handled with great care. We have never used it in such a way.”

  Alfie was insistent. “We need the tank back. If this is the only way, then let’s do it.”

  Since the creature in the ruins had frightened off anything that the corpsewood might feed on, pickings were thin. The wood had grown up around the bodies of small creatures, their bones embedded it its trunk and protruding from the black bark.

  The tank crew watched, fascinated, from a safe distance, distracted occasionally by the creature within the tank as its tentacles whipped and thrashed hungrily.

  Wrapping his hands in bandages from Nellie’s webbing pouches, Napoo set to work, cutting down the stand of black corpsewood saplings. Thin and reedy specimens, eager for sustenance, the silver vein-like creeper stems around them unwound and inclined towards Napoo’s hands, like a plant following the sun. He threw them aside too quickly for them to latch on. With deft strokes of his sword, he stripped them of their spiny branches and fashioned their tips into sharp points. He bound part of the shafts with a lengths of split vine to give some protection against the corpsewood for the wielder. Within fifteen minutes, Napoo had a brace of crude corpsewood spears.

  Alfie watched in awe as Napoo threw the makeshift spears with confidence. Lashing tentacles knocked some aside to clatter harmlessly off the iron plating, but he targeted the open sponson hatch, and the corpsewood spear buried itself in the exposed black flesh. It puckered and shrivelled around the wound as the silver grey creepers wormed their way slowly into the creature. It was enough to prove that the idea worked, but not enough to rid them of the thing.

  “We can’t get close enough,” said Norman, as he and the others tried to target the creature while avoiding its tendrils.

  Mathers walked up and hefted one of the corpsewood spears experimentally. “I can,” he said, exchanging a look with Alfie. He picked up a bunch of the spears and walked towards the tank. Reggie and Norman tried to stop him, but he waved them back.

  The tendrils whipped and lashed wildly, but he pressed on, showing no fear, for he had none left to show. The things inside him saw to that, he was sure of it. He was within the reach of the flailing tendrils, but they wavered uncertainly, and then retreated before his advance, as if loath to touch him. Its sire could sense the things within him, and so, too, could its spawn. He was an anathema to them. By the time he was in striking distance of the tank, the creature had completely retreated inside it.

  He thrust the corpsewood spears through the drivers’ visors, the pistol ports, and through the view slits in the gun shield. Trapped inside the ironclad, the creature recoiled from the pain as the corpsewood sought to burrow into it.

  Mathers climbed onto the top of the tank, threw open the manhole in the roof and thrust another spear down into the compartment, driving the creature down. In desperation, the thing began to squeeze itself out of the port sponson hatch. He dropped down into the tank to push his advantage, herding the shapeless creature back out of the tank with his last spear.

  The heaving bulk flopped gracelessly from the ironclad and it grew tendrils to help drag itself away. However, the creature’s back half was dead, atrophying beneath the corpsewood. Starved for so long, the many spears had sent their vein-like silver creepers deep into the creature’s body, and had begun to leech its life from it. Weakening, the creature’s tentacles could no longer keep the men at bay.

  Once they realised it was dying, the tank crew fell on it in a fury, using sticks, wrenches and chains to take out their fear and anger.

  “That’s for Frank!”

  “Do that to our Ivanhoe, will you?” bellowed Cecil, stamping on a weakly twitching tendril.

  Wally, incoherent with rage, thrashed his chain down, over and over again. His face turned red, and
spittle flew from his lips, as he took out the frustrations he realised he could no longer take out on the Hun.

  Alfie held back, fretting. “Stop!” he cried, “stop!” But they weren’t listening. Alfie grabbed Norman’s arm as he raised it to land another blow. “Stop it! Look,” he said. “Look!”

  Amid the now beaten, shapeless bulk, its wounds running with thick viscous fluid, they could make out a shadow in the depths of the creature that looked vaguely human in shape. Because it had been.

  “Oh Jesus. Frank!”

  Norman dropped the wrench, drained. The others too, sobered up, their chests heaving.

  Mathers clambered unsteadily from the sponson, a tin of grease in his hand. He tipped it over the creature as the roots of the corpsewood spread further into it. He lit a Lucifer and dropped it on the thick lubricant. It ignited with a bright indigo flame. The tentacles writhed feebly in the flames before shrivelling. As the grease melted with the heat, it ran, spreading out, coating the rest of the creature, basting it. The flames followed, consuming it, the corpsewood, and Frank.

  Jack pulled Cecil back from the monstrous pyre. Reggie made the sign of the cross and muttered a prayer.

  “Get the tank started,” Mathers ordered, quietly.

  Alfie, Cecil, Reggie and Norman squeezed in through the small sponson hatches, one after the other. Wally followed. Mathers paused in the sponson hatchway. He heard the grind of the giant starting handle. The engine caught and the Ivanhoe awoke from its slumber with a growl.

  A breeze caught the burning creature, fanning the flames, causing the corpsewood embers to burn brighter, and the flesh to char and crackle in the heat.

  Mathers turned into the wind, a hand on his belly as if it pained him. He felt weary, too weary to worry, too tired to care, and too exhausted to fight it anymore.

  “Now it comes,” he said, almost with relief, before climbing into the tank.

  THE TOMMIES RACED down the sloping tunnel and burst out into the giant space of the ancient antechamber. It echoed with the continual pounding of the creature around them, unseen.