Tales From Beyond Tomorrow: Volume One

by Catton John Paul

  Then he saw it. The gas. Curling in from the east, a rolling cloud of thick, yellow-green smoke.

  A movement to his right made him start, and he saw Kelsey, climbing up on the neighboring ladder. From somewhere he'd got his own pair of binoculars – the woman with the gun, maybe, and he looked nervously at Blake.

  "The Hun's got a new secret weapon," Blake hissed. "First it was those godawful flame-throwers, then mustard gas, and now this. It's a poison gas that…eats people. Like acid. The gas attacks have kept us here, unable to get back to the reserves."

  "And the Angels he mentioned?"

  "Be quiet. I think you'll see for yourself."

  The hideous miasma rolled along the shattered landscape. The Germans tried to outrun it, but they were too slow. The mist enveloped them. They floundered, limbs waving, their twisted figures reeling through it, the sound of their screaming voices growing more and more distant, until they disappeared.

  "You told me that's a German secret weapon," Kelsey said.

  "Yes."

  "So why are they killing their own troops?"

  Blake stared ahead, thinking. He'd been wondering the same thing himself. "The wind must have changed."

  Kelsey gave a quizzical look.

  "Now look. Over there," Blake said.

  In No-Man's Land, materializing at the heart of the swirling yellow cloud, was the figure that haunted Blake and his men. Shining metal, barely recognizable as human. It seemed to be composed of reflective surfaces, moving in small jerks, grouping together, then splitting apart and reforming, diminishing and enlarging, forming columns and lines. The armored shape was surrounded by a brilliant glow that illuminated the churned-up mud.

  "Good God," Kelsey whispered. "Is that what you saw before?"

  "Yes."

  The figure melted back into the cloud, and Blake felt his skin crawl as he saw the opaque mist churn faster, and shift direction.

  "Captain, do you see that? It's coming this way."

  "Yes. By God, it is. We found a concrete bunker back there, and for the last couple of days we've been holing up during these gas attacks. It's a room we can make air-tight."

  "Excellent. Let's get moving!"

  Blake turned his head and glared. "I am giving the orders, Dr. Kelsey," he snapped.

  In the wooden frames and wire mesh lining the trench was an opening disguised by netting and debris. Blake flicked aside the filthy curtain and hustled all of them into the tunnel. The soldiers and the two new arrivals ran, hunched over, into the chill safety of the bunker, and Blake's men immediately began pushing rags into the spaces between door and wall. The other two doors had already been sealed with tape.

  Blake adjusted his uniform, standing in the center of the room where he could command attention. "Now Doctor Kelsey, and Miss Browning. Let me make one thing quite clear. I am in charge here, and you will explain yourselves at once."

  "Actually, Captain, I honestly think it would be best if you explain what's going on first. Then we'd be in more of a position to help. You can't deny that what we saw out there was…extraordinary."

  "We got cut off from our squad," said Gerrard.

  "Shut up!" yelled the Sergeant.

  "No." Blake sat down tiredly on an old wooden chair and waved at everyone else to do the same.

  Before anyone could speak, the bombardment began.

  The entire structure of the room vibrated as the shells pounded into the earth above. The music of the trenches. A continuous, visceral noise, like the workings of an infernal factory. Rumbles, roars and detonations, heralded by approaching whistles and hisses, shaking the ground as if giant hands had gripped the very earth and were trying to rip it apart like calico.

  The recurring barrages of sound had made Blake an insomniac. For the last few days he'd been unable to sleep, except for fitful dozes where he was still aware of vibrations just beneath the threshold of the senses. Lack of sleep, and the constant attacks from the Bosche, had made it impossible for him to collect his thoughts. Since this hellish gas affair began, he'd spent every night staring into the darkness, endlessly recalling fragments of conversations from home, his parents, his sister. It was not fear of death, or injury, or even the killer gas and the Angels within it, that haunted him; it was the feeling that this would never end.

  "All right, Kelsey, you win. I'll tell you. God knows, I've been wanting to tell someone. My name is Captain Martin Blake, this is Sergeant Jessup, Corporal Ford, and Privates First Class Summerton, Tate and Gerrard. We were mounting a push towards the Passchendaele Ridge when we got cut off by…that. We thought it was mustard gas at first, because the Hun started using that last autumn."

  "But it's something even worse," said Summerton vehemently. "It doesn't just choke people, it bloody dissolves them!"

  "Pull yourself together, lad," the Sergeant warned.

  "The Angels," Virginia prompted. "When did they first appear?"

  Blake rested back in his chair, trying to work the tension out of his spine. "Have you ever heard of the Bowmen of Mons?"

  "Yes," said Kelsey. "Of course…"

  "It's a rumor that's been circulating around the troops for a couple of years. Most believe it's a story, a work of fiction from some magazine, but quite a few claimed it actually happened. They say that at the Battle of Mons, in August 1914, the British soldiers called on St George to help them, and a group of…" Blake hesitated, trying to find the right word. "A group of…spirits appeared. A long line of shining beings that resembled archers, like the warriors of Agincourt. They helped drive off the attacking German forces." Blake stumbled to the end of his explanation and wiped his forehead, avoiding the eyes of the two strangers.

  "I see," murmured Kelsey. "And now, these spirits, these visions, have returned. Are they always accompanied by that cloud of gas?"

  "From what I've seen, yes."

  "This is vitally important."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Thank you for your information, Captain, now I'll tell you what we know. Have you ever heard of a place called Tunguska?"

  "No. Is it on the Eastern Front?"

  "Actually, it's deep in Russian territory, in a remote part of Siberia. Nine years ago, there was a mysterious…explosion. It devastated the land around it in a way that nobody had seen before. Most scientists believe that it was caused by a fluke event, a large meteorite entering the earth's atmosphere, but my superiors thought that might not be the case."

  "I see," said Blake, interrupting. "You think someone was testing a new weapon?"

  "That's one interpretation."

  "So what's the connection with this new poison gas?"

  "We're trying to find one. Since the Tunguska event, we've noticed a number of anomalous events across the world, and we are looking for correlations. It's as if the Tunguska event triggered a number of…irregularities in the continuum of time and space. Miss Browning and I are part of a team, and we have three other members who…landed in the nearby trenches."

  "Then they're already dead," muttered Corporal Ford, getting him a black look from the Sergeant.

  "Oh, I don't know, our men can be pretty resourceful. They're using these Ultra machines to track the irregularities – a kind of triangulation, if you like. But right now I'm worried about something else. I'm worried about why the gas is so interested in you, Captain."

  Cold sweat broke out all over Blake's skin once again. He stared back at Kelsey in defiance, trying to ignore the reference to the gas as a living thing. "I don't know what you mean."

  "Do you have any scientifically trained men in your squad? Any chemists? Any lab technicians?"

  Blake frowned. "No."

  "Any mathematicians? Scholars, or university lecturers? Or even any artists?"

  Blake glanced at Corporal Ford, who was staring at Kelsey in alarm. "Are you referring to me, sir? I've had some books published…but they were scientific romances. Just fantasy, entertainment."

  "Corporal Ford?" Kelsey said, excitedly
. "Are you William Lennox Ford?"

  "Yes, I am."

  "The author of The Curious Case of Luther Kingsley? And The Silent Lands?"

  "Just a minute," shouted Blake. "Get back to the subject. You said that you've been tracking these gas attacks as a possible part of a larger campaign. Lennox Ford has got nothing to do with it – and I'm sure you'll agree, won't you, Corporal?"

  Ford stared, open-mouthed, at Kelsey and then at Blake.

  "Be that as it may," continued Kelsey, "and I am not questioning your authority, Captain, I suggest that we try to get out of these trenches and join the rest of my team. By my readings, they were about one kilometer west."

  "Damnation Corner," said Summerton, and laughed. "Turn right at Dead Man's Dump."

  Kelsey looked at the soldier with interest. "Oh, yes, I forgot you have a pretty colorful turn of phrase back here."

  "This here pisshole you've landed in is called Shrapnel Corner," said Tate, with a tone of undisguised contempt. "You can bloody well see why."

  "That's enough!" Blake yelled.

  In the sudden silence, the Captain stared at each person in the bunker in turn. Kelsey's manner, with his constant hints at secret and superior knowledge, infuriated him. Blake's eyes lingered on Miss Browning more than they should have done and his face burned, ashamed. Why was she here? With her voice, she had the same breeding as Mary, back home in Birkenhead. Why did she have to come here, and make herself his responsibility?

  "There is a tunnel," Blake said at last. "It looks like it was carved out in the summer, then abandoned because of lack of manpower. We know it stretches over halfway towards the German trenches. We could go down there and finish the job."

  Kelsey nodded slowly. "I have a feeling time might be an issue here. How long do you think it would take?"

  "If we all work without a break, less than a day."

  "Okay. Let's take a look."

  Three

  They cautiously removed the rags keeping the door secure and ventured out into the trenches again. Blake led the way across warped duckboards and past dripping mud walls, the early morning sky above them lit by flashes and streaks of searing light, until they came to a makeshift door of planks and hastily riveted steel plating.

  Blake pulled open the door and scrutinized the round gut of a hole that stretched away through packed earth and shored timbers. He sniffed the musty air.

  "Gerrard, Tate, have a go at it with a couple of picks."

  After a pause both men nodded, picked up the tools that lay on the duckboards, and crouched down to enter the hole. Blake leaned against the makeshift door and looked at Kelsey's plump, sweating face.

  The two soldiers were halfway down the tunnel when a bright jet of vapor suddenly erupted from the earth above them and gushed out like a firework. Gerrard cried out, overbalanced, and scrambled desperately away from the gas, back towards the trench. Tate was cut off. Within seconds the spangled cloud had filled the narrow hole.

  "Tate!" Blake's hoarse voice echoed in the confine of the tunnel. Tate did not have time to scream.

  Blake watched the soldier dissolve. His whole body moved from solid to void, from opaque to transparent, and the last thing to vanish were his eyes, staring accusingly at Blake.

  Blake, Summerton and Jessup furiously shoved the planks back over the tunnel entrance, but Blake knew that if the gas could get through six feet of earth, it would penetrate the wood in no time at all. Boots thudding on the duckboards, they ran back to the bunker.

  "You killed him!" screamed Summerton. "You killed him!"

  "Calm down," said Blake, catching his breath.

  "Jimmy Tate, he was my pal! I'm not going out like that! I'm not dying like that!"

  "You will calm down, Private! That's an order!" roared the Sergeant.

  Summerton swallowed his panic and turned away, facing the back wall, his hands balled into fists. Blake turned to Kelsey and Miss Browning. "Dispersed," she was saying to Kelsey, in wonder and horror. "Dispersed into the ether."

  "How could poison gas get through several feet of solid earth?" Blake asked.

  "Because it's not poison gas," said Kelsey.

  "Well if it's not gas, then what is it?"

  "It's the Devil,' said Gerrard hoarsely, "and this place is cursed. We're not getting out alive!"

  "Stop that kind of talk," Blake snapped. "This is a place of war, not curses. We use our guns, our bombs, our bayonets, but above all, our brains."

  "The Landship," Miss Browning said.

  Everyone turned to stare at her.

  "I saw the machine when we arrived. Why don't we drive it over to – what did you call it? Damnation Corner?"

  Blake closed his eyes and sighed. "Because it doesn't work. The gearbox is jammed. These bloody Landships are always breaking down."

  "I can fix it", she said simply.

  "No, you can't."

  "Captain, I have worked in munitions factories," she said, her eyes blazing. "Back on the Home Front there are women working in factories building airplanes for the war effort! Don't patronize me!"

  Blake rubbed his face with his hands. If only this would stop, he thought; the same prayer was on his lips in the nights of insomniac vigilance. If only he could sink into final oblivion, into the mud, with all the countless dead Tommies. The pleasure of making the world come to an end would be the same pleasure of eating a well-prepared meal, of using a latrine that didn't stink of excrement, of even having dry feet.

  Relief…

  "This is ridiculous," he said eventually. "Even if you do get the engine to work, the tracks will just sink into the mud."

  "We're not going into No Man's Land," Miss Browning continued. "We're going along the salient, toward the communication trenches. It could work."

  Blake shrugged. Live, die, it was all the same. The visions of universal ruin were both inside him and outside in the fields of slaughter. If the iron-clad wasn't blown up by the Bosche, perhaps his own body would explode, torn apart by the miraculous forces pressing him into constant movement, like the spinning gears of a factory machine.

  The Landship weighed fourteen tons and had twelve-feet-long track frames; its top speed was two miles per hour on rough terrain. They scrambled out of the trenches and sprinted through the drizzling rain to the safety of the grey iron bulkhead, bullets whizzing and hissing past them. Blake yanked open the door and got everyone inside.

  The cabin was cramped and filled with levers and gear boxes. There were five seats, two for the driver and gunner, and three at the back, metal frames with threadbare blankets tied over them.

  They waited tensely while Miss Browning, Dr. Kelsey and Sergeant Jessup worked on the engine. Miss Browning had brought her own toolkit with her, wrapped in a thick fabric roll; one more thing that Blake found baffling.

  "We'll make the cabin airtight," ordered Blake, "so the gas shouldn't be able to get in. Summerton, Gerrard, take these rags and towels and stuff up the openings."

  The two soldiers didn't move, except for glancing at each other. "Sir, the cabin's going to fill up with diesel fumes. We'll be knocked out."

  "We won't be in here long enough. We're only going a few hundred yards along the salient, and we can put on our gas masks. At the double!"

  The two of them saluted, took the rags, and turned away. Kelsey waved to Blake from the driver's seat. "We're ready! Just give us one more minute."

  The engines started, filling the cabin with an incredibly loud clanking of gears. The cabin lurched, and the Landship crawled forward. All of the passengers within wrapped their arms and hands around the webbing and straps along the bulkheads, set for a bumpy ride.

  "The engine's working fine," Kelsey shouted with relief.

  "Now put the machine into reverse," came Summerton's voice from behind Blake.

  The Captain turned his head to look. Summerton and Gerrard were pointing their rifles, which were swaying dangerously, at Blake and at the driver's seat.

  "What the bloody hell
are you doing!" shouted Blake. "Have you gone mad?"

  "Take us back to the Allied trenches," said Gerrard. "Sorry, sir, but we're not going on this bloody wild goose chase. You take us back to the Canadian forces, or we'll shoot."

  "We've had enough," shouted Summerton above the noise of the engine, his eyes wild. "Enough!"

  Four

  "This is mutiny!" yelled Ford. "You are honor bound to remain at your post!"

  A wall of dirt and sheer force rocked the Landship as a shell landed nearby. Blake could hear bullets strike the metal of the bulkheads; the Bosche would try to hit the machine with their artillery, but it would take them some time to recalibrate the range. By that time, they had to be out of danger – one way or another.

  Blake hung onto the webbing, his mind racing. One part of him could not argue with the two soldiers; it made perfect sense to retreat, to escape this hellhole, now that they had working transport. But Blake had already given the order; Kelsey and Miss Browning had repaired the engines, and he had given his word to help them in their mission.

  He couldn't go back. He couldn't.

  He opened his mouth to speak when an almighty shudder struck the Landship and with a painful screeching of gears, the behemoth jerked to a halt. Taken off guard, the five passengers lost their grip on the bulkheads and their footing on the oily metal floor. Blake was thrown sideways into a locker but as quick as he could, he rolled across the floor and into Summerton's prone body, grabbing the other man's rifle with one hand and driving his fist into the man's chin. He could see Ford wrestling with Gerrard, throwing the rifle into the corner, subduing the man by kneeling on him and punching him into submission.

  Kelsey had thrown the engine out of gear and forced an emergency stop. Now, with the apparent mutiny quelled, he and the Sergeant started up the engine and continued rolling forward.

  Blake looked up. Miss Browning crouched near the driver's seat, a big steel wrench in her hand.

  "Are you all right?" Blake asked.

  "I was just about to ask you the same question. Good punching, Captain!"