THE WORDS OF THEIR ROARING
The car shuddered as a ghoul bounced off its wing, Ali tightening her grip on the wheel in a bid to keep the vehicle under control. She made little effort to avoid the deadheads - indeed, it was impossible to slalom between them, so dense was the crowd becoming - and concerned herself with ensuring the car stayed central on the road. The stiffs merely shuffled into its path like bugs collecting on the windscreen, utterly ignorant of the velocity the vehicle was moving at. The front end ploughed through a skinny naked man, who exploded like a dandelion in a strong wind, fragments washing back in the Escort's slipstream.
Hewitt was right, Gabe thought. Damn things are falling apart.
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First published in 2007 by Abaddon BooksTM, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, United Kingdom, UK.
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THE WORDS OF THEIR ROARING
MATTHEW SMITH
For my mum and dad, who always knew... one day...
And for Emma, Princess among Squaxx
Latimer spake to Ridley as fire was kindled: "Be of good cheer, Mr Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England, as I trust shall never be put out." With a bag of gunpowder around their necks, they were burned and Latimer apparently died quickly and with little pain, but Ridley burned slowly, and desired them for Christ's sake to let the fire come unto him. They heaped the faggots upon him, but it burned all his nether parts before it touched the upper, that made him leap up and down under the faggots, and often desire them to let the fire come unto him saying, "I cannot burn", and after his legs were consumed, he showed that side towards us clean, shirt and all untouched by flame. In which pangs he laboured till one of the standers-by with his billhook pulled off the faggots above, and where he saw the fire flame up, he wrestled himself unto that side. When the flame touched the gunpowder he was seen to stir no more.
Foxe's Book of Martyrs,
16 October, 1555
PROLOGUE
Background Noise
"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"
"Yes."
"All like ours?"
"I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound - a few blighted."
"Which do we live on - a splendid one or a blighted one?"
"A blighted one."
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
4 November 1917
Ten Miles East of Ypres, Belgium
As the soldier ran, he barely raised his eyes from the battle-scarred earth, intent on watching one foot replace the other, propelling him from danger. The rattle of gunfire had slowly faded the greater the distance he put between himself and the trenches, and the occasional mortar explosion was merely a dull thud behind him. Even so, he dared not slow his pace, despite the growing ache in his limbs. The ground was not easy to traverse; sludge becoming quagmire, plain disappearing into crater, every movement was an effort to stay upright, and to keep his boots on his feet. He had to pick his way carefully through barbed wire, sprawl in the mud if he thought he heard whisper of the enemy (and just who was that, now that he had chosen not to belong to one side or the other?). Exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him; but one notion kept him going, reassuring him as he watched his legs driving him towards that goal: escape.
Private William Steadman did not want to die.
He supposed there was a little of the childish logic in the way he kept his head down as he ran, reasoning that what he could not see would not hurt him; and rather than stop to get his bearings, he put all his effort into the act of flight itself, pointing himself in one direction and seeing where it would take him, as if he were a schoolboy released for the summer holidays. It was difficult to deny that he felt as lost and scared as if he was twelve years old, shrunken and vulnerable in an adult's uniform. But that was hardly a unique phenomenon; he'd seen his fellow soldiers - men perhaps in a civilian context he would've considered unscrupulous scoundrels and brawlers - reduced to bawling infants. Their faces had been masks of incomprehension and fear; they knew how close they were to death, how their dreams for the future, their desire to see their families again, hinged on an order. To leave the comparative safety of the trench, cross no-man's-land and embrace the German guns was to strip a man of everything he had and was ever likely to have. And so Steadman, with his own tears icy on his cheeks, had had to listen to one of the most terrifying sounds he'd ever heard, far worse than the shriek of shrapnel cutting through the air: that of grown men crying with regret and loss. It was utterly alien and impossible to forget.
He slid his way down a bank and felt the dirt beneath him crumble. Trying to regain his balance, he increased his pace, but only succeeded in pushing himself forward and tumbling headfirst into the mud. He rolled onto his back, a part of his mind yelling at him to be back on his feet instantly, but a curious lethargy came over him, as if the earth were sapping him of strength; as if, once this close to it, it would suck him to its bosom - revenge for the damage that had been wrought on its surface. He imagined lying there, relaxing his grip on life and watching the sun and moon chase each other across the sky, his body slowly sinking into the ground, becoming part of the landscape like so many other corpses had. Every morning for the past sixteen months, he'd woken and looked out on carcasses littering the battlefield, human and animal seeding the soil. What would it be like, he wondered, to join that silent sea of the dead? To succumb to the exhaustion and close his eyes one final time? The idea stayed in his head longer than he anticipated, perversely attractive. In the last letter he'd written home, he'd said how he'd forgotten what it was like to be warm and clean, to eat and sleep in comfort, not to have the tight ball of dread lodged in his gut; those concerns would just fade away if he was to give up now, if he was to relinquish the struggle to survive...
Steadman clutched a handful of mud and brought it to his nose; it smelt rotten, diseased. It served to fuel his anger and clear his mind of any thoughts of surrender. He would not sacrifice himself for this war; it meant nothing to him. As was common with most of his comrades, he knew little of the history behind the conflict, the objectives of taking part in it, or indeed how the world will have changed once everything returned to normal. They had just been shipped ove
r to this godforsaken hole, instructed to stand in a freezing field, point their guns in the direction of the Hun, and wait until they could be told they could go home. It was difficult to picture a more futile image than two sets of opposing forces facing each other down from opposite ends of a muddy stretch of earth, while somewhere - invisible, in another world - generals bluffed and blustered. It would be laughable, were it not for the thousands of men being thrown across the lines. Then, the stalemate became a massacre.
He held his commanders in absolute contempt. Their strategies were idiotic, their disregard for the troops who fought for them breathtaking; many was the time he had seen Allied shells landing on their own attacking battalions because the advance had been planned with so little forethought; or frightened, sobbing young lads barely out of puberty executed for refusing to go over the top, obviously incapable of holding a rifle without shaking let alone firing it. The injustice made him want to scream. He wanted to shout at the sky and pummel this sick, stinking earth. He was not some expendable, unthinking automaton they could put in front of the German bullets; as far as he was concerned, it did matter whether he lived or died. He thought of his parents raising him as a child, fretting when he was ill, glowing with pride when he returned from his first day at school, taking the time to show him the difference between right and wrong and the good teachings of the Lord, to be the best person he could be, and all that pain, all that effort, all that heartfelt love, blown away in an instant as he charged at the enemy and his brains splattered on the ground.
He clambered to his feet, taking deep breaths, steeling himself for the next stage of his journey. A mist was rolling in, the air chill and damp, and he assumed darkness would begin to fall within the next couple of hours. He had to find shelter if he was to last the night. He wished he'd remembered to get his watch repaired; the sky was sheathed in a thick blanket of cloud and gave nothing away, so he had little idea of the time. He didn't even know for how long he had been running; it seemed like most of the day, but he had a niggling suspicion that he hadn't covered as much ground as he hoped. The area was notoriously easy to get lost in, or to find oneself travelling in circles. He set off at a trot, intent on bedding down in the first shattered town building or abandoned farmhouse he came across.
But what exactly were his plans beyond that? He had no money, no contacts he could enlist to help him out of the country; his chance of escape seemed as slim as if he were back in the trench and awaiting that final whistle. The problem was that his desertion had been spur of the moment, a frantic bubbling of panic that eventually burst into full-blown terror. Although he had fixed bayonets in blank obedience and prepared to engage the enemy in combat, his gaze never straying to anyone on either side of him, the moment the signal came and the first soldiers went over and the shooting started, he had lost his nerve, dropped his rifle and faked injury. In the rush and confusion of men surging forward and then falling back as they were struck, he'd buried his head in his hands and played dead. As he'd willed himself to remain stationary, he could do nothing but listen to the thunderous, ear-splitting roar of the mortars, the high-pitched wail of injured men pleading for help and then cursing venomously when none arrived, and the rapid thunk-thunk-thunk of bullets meeting muscle and bone. When he'd opened his eyes, what was left of his regiment was several hundred yards away and he lay beneath a pile of bodies, butchered by machine-gun fire. Extricating himself slowly from the wretched heap, he'd crawled inch by inch in the opposite direction to the battle, praying silently that no one should see him and at the same time asking his Saviour to forgive his cowardice. Occasionally he would glance up, pulling corpses around him if he thought he heard anyone approaching, hating himself for his weakness. It was time consuming, arduous work, and he calmed himself through concentration, fixing his sight on some distant object, be it blasted tree or wire fence, and driving himself towards it. He was dimly aware that he was humming a hymn under his breath, a thin keening sound that suggested he was teetering on the brink of outright hysteria.
Indeed, this was insanity; he knew he had nowhere to go, knew he would be crossing dangerous terrain, knew he could give no excuse if he was discovered and was almost certainly facing court martial and the firing squad. But, he had reasoned, he had made his decision, however sudden, and should stick to the matter in hand, putting all his effort into finding a way out of this mess rather than questioning its wisdom. When he came to a secluded spot he vomited copiously, and some of the anxiety seemed to drain away with it; his mind was set, and every minute he stayed alive was a tiny triumph.
With that, he had wiped his mouth and started to run. Onward, Christian soldier, he had thought bitterly.
He had been fortunate, of that there was no doubt, that he had not been picked off by some lone sniper, and he was aware that his luck could not last for much longer. It occurred to him that maybe he had been seen by the enemy, but they had discerned in him no threat; they recognised a scared fellow human being fleeing for his life, someone who had opted out of the war, and who was not worth the trouble or the waste of ammunition. The thought gave him hope; he imagined others like him, from all sides of the conflict, congregating to wait out the hostilities. But such a haven amidst this hell, he realised, sounded fantastical.
Darkness was closing in far more quickly than he had guessed. Soon it would be pitch black, and he would be stranded out on the plain; it would be a choice of freezing to death during the night (a fire was out of the question if he was trying to avoid attention, even in the unlikely event of him finding dry tinder), or blundering on through the dark, and risk impaling himself on barbed wire or stumbling in on a German gun emplacement. Neither option appealed. He scanned the horizon for any kind of shelter, but saw nothing. He slowed his pace to a walk, his eyes roving the landscape, but the light was faltering with every step; he could barely see his hand in front of his face. Resignation and a little fear were just beginning to worry at him, to gnaw away at his resolve, when something tripped him up.
Despite himself, he yelped in alarm as he flopped to the ground and immediately swore; he knew instantly that it was a body his legs were hooked across, and more often than not where there was a body there were the remnants of an army. He glanced around quickly, certain his cry would've alerted somebody on watch, and sure enough, if he squinted, he could make out the thick seam of shadow that was a trench. But there was no sign of life. Steadman lay motionless for long minutes, waiting for anyone to emerge from the darkness, the razor-sharp wind chilling his skin and raising goosebumps. He resisted the urge to shiver, and breathed slowly, watching the thin, condensed streams dissipating in the air. But from the trench there was no movement.
Gradually, he began to edge forward, kicking his legs away from the corpse and lifting himself up onto his knees. If the trench was occupied, he thought, there had to be some kind of guard. But there was no light, no muted chatter or snores. The only explanation was that it had been overrun, the soldiers inside killed; but which side did it belong to? And could reinforcements be heading this way even as he sat here and deliberated?
Steadman turned back to the body, his hands outstretched in front of him like a blind man, feeling the contours of the uniform, his eyes aching as he concentrated in trying to see through the gloom. The design of the jacket was unfamiliar; the man seemed to have been an officer. Steadman's fingers grazed a holster and he gingerly removed the revolver, running his touch over it. It was of German issue. Clutching the gun in one hand, he lightly brushed the man's face, grimacing when his index finger disappeared into a penny-sized bullet hole in the man's forehead. It came away sticky.
At least they hadn't died by gas, he mused. It meant he wasn't in any immediate danger.
Wiping himself on the corpse's tunic, he looked back at the trench; it would be ideal to see out the night, hopefully providing him with some much-needed supplies, and it was unlikely British troops would be back this way if it had been disabled. The only problem he could forese
e was a German regiment answering an injured radio operator's request for help just before he died and arriving here at daybreak. Then again, he could probably make use of one of the slain soldiers' uniforms and disguise himself amongst the dead once more.
He stood and moved to the lip of the trench, peering over cautiously; there was a dribble of light weakly spilling across the duckboards at the bottom. He returned to the German officer's body, took hold of both stiff arms and dragged it back with him, yanking it over the wire that circumscribed the trench's edge with as much strength as he could muster. The weight of the carcass made it bow in the middle, and he stepped across quickly, easing himself down into the earthwork. His eyes sought the light he had seen, and discovered it was buried beneath several corpses; faintly illuminated pale white faces stared up at him, the blood that criss-crossed their features appearing black in the darkness. He pulled them away dismissively, ignoring the lifeless thumps they made as they landed at his feet, and grasped the lamp - little more than a half-melted candle in a glass case - in his left hand before swinging it to either side of him.
"Sweet Jesus," he whispered.
It was an atrocity: the dead lay stacked like timber the length of the trench, one on top of the other. Each new sweep of the lamp brought a fresh horror, a new coupling, as soldier was piled upon soldier; they had been slaughtered like cattle in an abattoir. Steadman had thought he had witnessed every possible obscenity that man could perpetrate on his fellows, but this brought the bile rushing to his throat in an instant; there was something about the sheer scale of devastation here, all contained within the claustrophobic confines of the trench, that made him retch. That, and the noxious smell, which seemed to palpably clog the air; it was the sickly stench of matter breaking down and liquefying, yet these corpses looked as if they had only been dead several hours at the most. It wasn't as if the heat of day could have brought about such a change; it had rained steadily the past few weeks, the temperature barely a couple of degrees above zero.
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