by Pat Kelleher
They crept up to the edge of the undergrowth and Lieutenant Everson drew his Webley, its cord lanyard hanging round his neck as he ran across in a stoop to the doors. Napoo followed. He reached the entrance to the building and stood with his back against the wall by the door, and listened for a moment. Inside, the chanting continued unabated. Jack and Pot Shot joined him either side of the door. He watched as the rest of the section and tank crew slipped from the undergrowth to take up their positions at the loopholes. He could hear the familiar but faint jingle and clink of equipment, of men moving and trying to be quiet. He waited for it to stop.
Gazette signalled him from the undergrowth. Everyone was in position.
Everson looked across the doorway at Pot Shot, who nodded his readiness.
He took several deep breaths, steeling himself. He could order the men to do this from the rear, but he was too much the subaltern. He’d always led his men over the top. This time wasn’t any different. Neither were the nerves.
NELLIE LAY IN the undergrowth with Gazette and the signallers. Although she had her revolver, Jack’s words still reverberated in her head. She checked her First Aid bag again. Field dressings, iodine, and morphine. It took her mind off Alfie, if only for a moment.
She thought she heard something in the jungle behind them. Or rather, she didn’t hear anything. The background jungle noise, which seemed so ubiquitous it barely registered at all. She only noticed it once it had stopped. Why had it stopped? She glanced back over her shoulder, eyes and ears straining.
EVERSON BLEW HARD. The shrill pea whistle split the air.
Pot Shot and Jack put their boots to the wooden doors, which crashed open. The large Tommies stood in the doorway, silhouetted in the rectangle of light, before stepping to the side and covering the Urmen with rifle and revolver.
With a rattle of equipment and a cycling of bolts, the men outside stood to, the barrels of their rifles at the loopholes, as they had done hundreds of times before in the trenches, pointing in and covering the Urmen inside.
The chanting churned into a jumble of screams and shouts of anger as the Urmen turned to face the intrusion, raising swords and spears, ready to defend their sacred space.
Lieutenant Everson stood in the doorway. A couple of Mills bombs in this space and the Urmen would be taken care of, he found himself thinking coldly. Instead, he fired his revolver into the roof.
The shouting and screaming died down to a ripple of sobs and muted wailing.
“I want our man and I want him unharmed. Do you understand?” Everson demanded, loudly and slowly. He indicated the loopholes around the circumference of the building and the bristle of rifle barrels and bayonets thrust though them. “We have you covered.”
The Urmen muttered darkly, restrained by uncertainty and fear, shooting nervous glances at the gun barrels.
“Where is Private Perkins?” he demanded again.
THE COMMOTION STARTLED Alfie as much as the Urmen, but when he heard the barked orders and the cycling of Enfield bolts he at least knew what was happening, even if he never expected it. He felt a flood of relief to know that he hadn’t been forgotten, and that they had come for him.
“Here, sir,” he called over the heads of the Urmen.
Alfie limped towards the lieutenant. The crowd of frightened, angry Urmen parted, allowing him to pass.
Alfie took in the rifle barrels at the loopholes. “I’ve not been harmed, sir. In fact,” he said, “just the opposite.” He hobbled forward on his splinted leg. The cheery grin of mustered bravado twisted into a grimace as pain lanced through him.
“Alfie! Thank God!” blurted Jack as he saw his crewmate.
Alfie hadn’t parted on the best of terms with his crewmates. The last time he saw them they were so paranoid, they’d forced petrol fruit down his throat to try and make him see things their way. He hadn’t expected to see them again, and now that he had, he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Anger, relief, and a bright flare of hope. Nellie. Was Nellie with them?
Everson shot a glance at the gunner over his shoulder and the man clammed up. It looked as if Alfie’s answers would have to wait.
“It’s all right, sir,” said Alfie. He turned to face the Urmen, who were looking from Alfie to Everson in muted awe. “You can put your weapons down,” he told them. “I know these men. They are like me.”
“Perkins, what’s going on here?”
Alfie glanced back at the Urmen. “Long story, sir,”
“Quick précis, then,” said Everson, brusquely, eyeing the restive savages.
Alfie raised his eyebrows. “They worship Croatoan, sir,” he informed him. “Seem to think he’s condemned by that Chatt god to the underworld to be punished. They believe the earthquakes and this storm, something they call Croatoan’s Torment, are signs of his hellish punishment, sir.”
Everson arched an eyebrow. “All right, Perkins, you’ve got my attention.”
“Apparently it attracted Jeffries’ attention too, sir. He’s been here.”
“Jeffries? How do you know?”
“They knew him. I thought they’d killed him, but now I’m not so sure. They wanted him to communicate with their ancestors, sir, the way they did me.”
“Spiritualism, Perkins?” said Everson archly. “I hope you haven’t been up to Mathers’ tricks.”
“No, sir!” Alfie protested. “They wanted me to read them something,” said Alfie. “Only they can’t read. Forgotten how, I daresay. To them it’s like magic. So when I read it, they thought I was channelling the voices of the dead, as it were. I suppose in some way I was.”
“Read?” said Everson. “What did they want you to read?”
“A book, sir. They claim their ancestors wrote it, like. And there’s something else, sir. This book, if it was written by their ancestors...” he started, indicating the Urmen standing around him. They wouldn’t believe his next words. He was not entirely sure he did either. “If that’s the case,” he said, “the Urmen aren’t native to this world. I think their ancestors came from Earth.”
He pulled back, steadying himself, studying the officer’s face, expecting some shared disbelief, that it came as a big a shock to Everson as it had to him, that there was, in all probability, no way home. That they were marooned here. But the revelation barely seemed to register with the subaltern. Everson’s shoulders sagged, and a sigh escaped his lips, as if it was not the bad news he had been expecting.
Alfie looked at him in a disbelief that turned swiftly to anger. He felt the bitter betrayal of the soldier denied the full facts. “You knew!”
OUTSIDE, ANOTHER BOLT of energy crackled skyward with a flash and thunderclap. This time, there were scant seconds between them. Croatoan’s Torment had begun.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“And Assemble the Engine Again... ”
TULLIVER PUT THE Sopwith down on the Strip. To avoid any damage from whatever energies ran through the lines, he and Hepton pulled the bus into the lush undergrowth bordering the Strip and camouflaged it with large fronds.
Tulliver pulled off his helmet and goggles and leaned against the wing. The elation of survival was fading. He felt like he was going to vomit. He looked at his hand. It was still trembling, and his legs felt shaky.
Hepton walked round the machine in a fury. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at? You nearly got us killed up there. When I see Lieutenant Everson, I’ll—”
“Mr Hepton.”
“What?”
Tulliver’s fist connected with Hepton’s jaw, and the kinematographer went sprawling. The immense satisfaction it gave Tulliver far outweighed the pain that now ballooned in his knuckles, but at least his hand wasn’t shaking anymore.
“I just saved your life. I won’t feel obliged a second time.”
Something the size of his leg, with nasty-looking pincers, scuttled towards the prostrate Hepton as he glared back up at him, rubbing his jaw. Tulliver swore under his breath, grabbed the man’s arm a
nd yanked him to his feet, while drawing his revolver with the other hand and shooting the thing.
Their eyes met and each could see that the other resented the action. Hepton yanked his arm from Tulliver’s hand, straightened his glasses and tugged his officer’s tunic down with nary a word of thanks. Tulliver didn’t care. He wouldn’t have accepted it anyway.
Hepton held his peace, and after retrieving his camera, kit and tripod from the aeroplane, let Tulliver lead the way towards the centre of the crater and the tower he had seen, where he hoped to find Everson.
As they pushed through the undergrowth, Tulliver felt things splinter and crunch beneath his boots. Occasionally there was a squelch or a pop. He didn’t look.
They stepped through a curtain of hanging vines, and Tulliver stopped. There, hanging in the trees before him almost vertically, as if it were a carcass in a butcher’s shop, was the burnt and broken wreckage of the Albatros. The top wing had been sheared off and Tulliver could see scattered sections higher up in the trees. The tail had been ripped off, and its lower planes hung awkwardly in a tangle of wire and snapped spars. Oil and petrol dripped and pooled on the ground beneath it. The engine casing and fuselage showed signs of recent fire, charring the struts and scorching the fabric. Tulliver ran up to the shattered machine. The engine had been driven back into the fragile space behind and he peered into the impact-crumpled cockpit. It was empty.
Tulliver felt a pang of pity, quickly subsumed by horror. Werner had been closer to the lightning bolt than he had, and now his machine had gone down in flames. The military hierarchy on both sides had decided, in their infinite wisdom, that fliers should be denied parachutes. It would, they thought, lead to cowardice and the abandoning of their machines in the face of the enemy. There were two stark choices faced by pilots in those situations. Jump or burn.
Tulliver, himself, had never been faced with that decision, but he’d seen men who had. He’d watched them slowly burn to death as their machines spiralled laconically to Earth and he’d seen them leap and tumble through the air to escape the ghastly pirouetting pyres that would have consumed them.
Jump or burn.
It looked liked Werner had opted to jump.
“One less Hun, then,” said Hepton, appraising the wreckage. Tulliver’s eyes flashed with anger. Hepton avoided his gaze and clamped his mouth shut.
The feeling of the loss surprised Tulliver. He’d barely known Werner, but he had been a fellow pilot more than he had been an enemy. For a brief moment, he’d had someone else who could understand, someone with whom he could have shared his experiences.
The empty chair in the mess, the empty bunk in the hut, were constants in the life of a pilot, it seemed. Before, there would always be replacements. But not here. Now, with Werner’s death, he felt the ache of loneliness again.
But Werner had wanted his secret shared, and the mystery of the planet penetrated. Tulliver felt the wrapped negative plate under his arm. He could do that much, at least.
“YOU KNEW?”
Everson shook his head emphatically. “Suspected,” he said, fending off Alfie’s accusation. He studied Alfie as the man glared at him. The revelation had obviously come as a shock to Alfie, as it had to him when he found out about the Bleeker Party. The man knew that others from Earth had been stranded here, but this new disclosure was a dark thought to which he had hardly dared give voice.
“For how long?” asked Alfie, aghast.
“Honestly? Not much longer than you,” he said, aware of the Urmen’s constant scrutiny and that Alfie’s own crewmate, Jack, guarded the door. “We’ll get your leg looked at.” He turned to the door. “Jellicoe, ask Miss Driver to step inside, would you. She has a patient. Order the rest inside, too. Leave two men outside on guard.”
“Sir.”
Ranaman stepped forward, holding his musket. There was a rattle of rifles from the loopholes as they targeted him.
“No!” said Alfie, hobbling in front of the Urman. “He doesn’t know what he’s holding.”
Ranaman bowed his head and offered the musket to Everson. Looking uncomfortable, Everson took it.
“Tell your people I need them to sit down on the floor,” he said. “We won’t harm them.”
NELLIE ENTERED THE temple, the tank crew and Fusiliers filing in behind her and fanning out around the walls, covering the now seated and kneeling Urmen. The padre helped Riley and Tonkins dump kitbags containing the adapted Chatt weapons and the knapsacks full of Signals equipment against the temple wall. Mercy and Pot Shot remained outside as sentries, along with Napoo, who wasn’t happy about entering another clan’s sacred space.
Unable to contain herself, Nellie rushed forward. “Alfie!” She honestly didn’t know whether to hit Alfie or hug him. Oh, dash it, of course she did. She hugged him, briefly, aware of the eyes upon them, then stepped back and tried to assume some semblance of public propriety, all thought of the troublesome silence outside pushed from her mind.
As if her reaction had given them permission, the tank crew surrounded Alfie and Nellie both, covering up their emotions with hearty slaps and bonhomie.
Alfie met their gaze. Their eyes were free of the black oil-slick glaze of petrol fruit fuel. He looked around at his crewmates, and knew them all. Days without constant exposure to the petrol fruit fumes had restored their natural selves. He breathed a sigh of relief. These were the men he recognised, the men he trained with at Elvedon, the men he fought with in France, the crew of the HMLS Ivanhoe. These were the men he was glad to see now, not the paranoids that they had become under the influence of the alien fumes. “Thanks for not giving up on me,” he said.
“If we’re being honest,” said Reggie, taking Alfie’s hand in both of his with sincerity and speaking for them all. “We could say the same. We weren’t ourselves.”
Wally coughed politely, and the rest of the crew began to drift away. Jack put a large hand on Cyril’s shoulder and steered him across the temple. “Come on lad, let’s give them a minute.”
“What for?” he asked.
Jack whispered something in the lad’s ear and Cecil blushed fiercely. Alfie and Nellie stood awkwardly for a moment.
Nellie punched his arm. “You idiot,” she scolded. “You had us worried half to death!”
“Ow. We have to stop meeting like this,” said Alfie, scowling and rubbing his bruised bicep. He took her shoulders in his hands, pushed her to arm’s length, cocked his head and looked at her in the dark blue tanker coveralls. She looked more at home in them than she had done in the brown uniform of the FANY.
“There’s something different about you,” he teased. “New hair style?”
“Oh, you,” she said, giving him a playful shove.
“Whoa!” he yelped, pivoting round his splinted leg and overbalancing. She caught his sleeve.
“Better let me have a look at that leg,” she said.
ATKINS WATCHED ALFIE and Nellie as she ministered to his injuries, envious of their reunion. Then, unable to look any longer, he turned away, seeing Jack approach. Judging from the tank gunner’s bearing, this was trouble.
“Did you hear, Alfie? These savages are descendents of people like us from Earth. Can you believe it, that there were others marooned here before us?”
Atkins looked around at the tank crew. They were looking for reassurance, but the Fusiliers nearby didn’t return their looks of confusion. Their glances slipped away. Embarrassed. Guilty. The solidarity of the two sections, which had been fragile at best, began to fail. Whether it was lingering paranoia from the petrol fruit fumes, or justified outrage at being lied to, Atkins wasn’t sure.
Norman turned to Atkins, a dangerous edge to his voice. “What, this isn’t a surprise to you, either?”
“Not exactly,” he mumbled.
“You knew? You fucking knew? How long have you known?”
“A few weeks. Since the Nazarrii edifice,” said Gutsy.
“But we were there. You kept it secret?”
&
nbsp; “You see?” said Pot Shot. “I knew this kind of thing would happen.” Mercy’s brow furrowed with annoyance. “Come on, you lot weren’t exactly playing with a full deck out there, now were you?” Norman ignored the barb. “Who the fuck else knows?” he demanded. “Nobody,” said Atkins. “Everson ordered us not to say anything to anybody.”
“You’re all missing the point,” said Wally. “Everson knew, they knew. What else aren’t they telling us?”
Everson, noticing the altercation, marched over sharply, his face stern and resolute. “Nothing. I just wanted to avoid exactly this kind of situation, until I was absolutely sure.”
The crew of the Ivanhoe, subdued by the presence of an officer, were reduced to sullen glares.
“You would have been told,” said Everson, “along with everyone else, when the time was right.”
“When?” demanded Norman.
Nellie looked over from where she was resplinting Alfie’s leg. “For goodness’ sake!” she said in exasperation. “You know about it now.
This is why Lieutenant Everson is searching for Jeffries, to find a way home. We’re all in the same boat, so stop it, all of you.”
There was a stunned, shamed silence.
“Miss Abbott,” said Everson. “I’d be thankful if you stopped telling my men what to do.”
“I’m sorry, is it bad for their morale?” she asked in a scathing tone. “It’s bad for mine.”
RANAMAN STEPPED FORWARD, a religious joy flooding his face, to address the Urmen sat before him, like a congregation at a Sunday service, eager to bear witness to the unfolding events. He threw his arms wide and high.
“This is a day long to be remembered; that so many of the sky-being’s brethren should appear together at such a time is an omen of great fortune not witnessed in generations. The words of our ancestors are fulfilled before our eyes. Did they not say that at the time of Croatoan’s Torment a party would gather here to enter the underworld to abate his suffering? Already one has gone before to confer with the ancestors, those who dwell in the Village of the Dead in the hinterlands of the underworld. They who petition Skarra for mercy and await the day of Croatoan’s release, when the Fallen One would be reunited with his broken heart once more. And now, my kin, the time of Croatoan’s salvation is here!”
