Pat Kelleher - The Alleyman

After what seemed like an age, she reached the top of the scree slope. There, she could take more of her weight on her legs; she realised how much her arms hurt, muscles burning with effort.

It wasn’t until she made her way down the slope, still holding the rope for balance, and found the others staring at her that she realised the extent of the torn skirt. It had ripped right up above the knee. Exposed as it left her, it did seem to allow her a good degree more movement.

“Lads,” said Reggie. “Lads! Turn your backs. We’re not brigands, you know.”

They turned round, some faster than others, earning Cecil another clip round the ear from Jack as his gaze lingered longer than it ought to.

Reggie climbed out of his coveralls, leaving him in his greyback shirtsleeves, regulation khaki trousers and puttees as he held them out behind him towards Nellie.

She reached out and took them with gratitude. “Thank you, Reggie, that’s very decent of you.”

By now, Napoo had reached them. “Napoo, could you?” Nellie indicated that she needed a screen from the men. The urman grunted and stood in front of her, glaring at the backs of the tank crew.

Nellie quickly slipped off her ruined skirt, stepped into the coveralls and buttoned them up. The sleeves and legs were too long, but she just rolled them up.

“There,” she said, arms spread as she modelled her blue coveralls. “What do you think?”

Cecil whistled, and – sensing Jack behind him – flinched involuntarily.

Jack laughed. “You’ll do.”

AS THEY DESCENDED the scree slope, the cries of unseen creatures echoed through the canopy rising before them, underscored by arboreal creaks and groans in the undergrowth ahead.

It wasn’t hard to follow the tank’s trail. Churned earth, shattered rocks, broken boughs and the exploded smears of creatures not quick enough to escape from its headlong rush marked its path. Following the ironclad’s furrowing, they headed into the jungle, where everything seemed draped with large pallid creepers.

“Lieutenant!”

“Alfie!”

They called out at regular intervals, but there was no reply.

Norman spotted the first piece of wreckage, tossed aside in the undergrowth like abandoned farm equipment.

Nellie let out a gasp.

“Don’t worry, said Reggie kindly. “It’s just the–”

“Steering tail. I know,” said Nellie. “I just wasn’t prepared.”

Attached to the rear of the tank, the steering tail had broken loose. Its great quarter-ton iron wheels lay on their sides, embedded in the ground. The boxes and packets of supplies it carried lay strewn back along its path, some lying pawed and torn open by curious scavengers. The steering tail’s hydraulic fluid had long since leaked from it, pooled, and sunk into the ground.

Norman inspected the wreckage. He shook his head. “No way can we save this. Always thought the thing was a waste of space. Only ever worked on solid ground. It’s good riddance, if you ask me.”

With all the caution that this world had taught them, they advanced slowly along the Ivanhoe’s path, feeling naked and vulnerable without the ironclad shell that they had taken so much for granted.

Nellie’s every step along the way was an agony of emotional turmoil; wanting to press on, but fearing what they might find.

“There!” cried Cecil.

In the arborous gloom of the forest floor, the huge bulk of His Majesty’s Land Ship Ivanhoe squatted half-hidden in the undergrowth, at the edge of a clearing of its own making. It had come to rest surrounded by the tangled vegetation it had dragged along with it. Facing the tank crew, its drivers’ visors down, it looked like some antediluvian beast asleep in its den.

Nellie felt a flood of relief. She wanted to rush towards it, but Napoo put out an arm to stop her.

Instead, Jack took a tentative step forward. “Lieutenant?” he called out. “Alfie!”

There was no answer.

Nellie found herself praying under her breath. “Oh, please, oh, please…”

A lingering aroma of petrol fruit vapour hung about the ditched ironclad. Nellie was quick to notice that Jack inhaled deeply once he recognised it.

“Is that the fuel?” she asked, her nostrils flaring as she sniffed the air.

Jack gave a guilty start and avoided her gaze.

With a wave of his arm, he gestured for Norman, Reggie and Wally to circle round to the starboard side. Nellie, Jack, Cecil and Napoo edged around the port side.

The tank’s two six-pounder guns hung, dejected but intact. Miraculously, the tracks were still in place, although they were gummed up with torn and shredded foliage. It seemed that the jungle undergrowth had absorbed most of the impact of its crash.

From round the far side, Nellie could hear the soothing tones as Wally tutted and talked to the iron behemoth. “What have they done to you, eh?”

At the front of the port sponson, Jack peered in through the vertical slit of the gunner’s sight alongside the lifeless gun.

“Well?” asked Nellie.

Jack shrugged. “Can’t see a thing.”

They edged along the sponson, past the machine gun toward the rear. Jack held up his hand. They stopped as he peered round the back of the sponson to the entrance hatch, before swinging round out of sight, his revolver raised. A heartbeat later, his head reappeared back round the sponson and jerked them on.

There was a squeal from above. Startled, the soldiers glanced up, guns at the ready. Something small and furry fell out of the trees above, hitting branches as it fell, to crash limply into a small grove of black saplings at the edge of the clearing, where it lay still.

Distracted by the poor dead creature, fallen from some nest, it was a moment before Nellie recognised the saplings themselves. “Corpsewood! Be careful.”

They knew the plant well enough, having used it to kill the Dulgur’s young that ate Frank, their other gunner. It generally fed on dead animal matter, but would feed on the living where it could. They made sure to give it a wide berth.

Nellie heard a despairing groan from inside the tank. Up in the driver’s cab, Wally had found Mathers’ body slumped in the starboard gangway. The Lieutenant’s revolver was still in his hand. There was a small entry wound in his right temple, but its exit had blown away half his skull. Blood, bone and brain matter splattered the white-painted interior and blood had pooled below him and dried on the wooden planking.

The Lieutenant’s death shocked the crew; not so much the fact of it as the manner. They hadn’t expected suicide.

They lifted Mather’s body from the tank with as much dignity as they could, given the cramped space, strapping the Subaltern’s turtle-shell helmet to his head to keep what was left of his skull intact. Suicide or not, he was their commander, and as such he deserved their respect. Not wanting to leave his body to predators and scavengers, they used the entrenching tools from the Ivanhoe to dig a shallow grave at the edge of the clearing.

Wally collected the Lieutenant’s paybook, a couple of letters from his inside pocket and the metal identity disc from around his neck.

They laid the body in the grave and Norman said a simple, improvised prayer. They stood for a moment round the fresh grave, lost in their own thoughts. Then they buried him, enclosing him in the clays of a cold alien star. At the head of the mound of fresh dirt, they marked his resting place with hastily-cut boughs lashed into the form of a cross and hung Mathers’ splash mask from it.

Despondent, the tankers mourned the loss of their commander, but Nellie could not mourn. All she could do was hope.

“Where’s Alfie? Where is he?” she asked each of them in turn, trying to hide her rising panic. They shook their heads and would not meet her eyes. “He could be out there, injured,” she insisted. She wanted it to be true, although she knew there were other, more likely possibilities on this world, possibilities about which she didn’t want to think. “He could be out there. We have to find him, Napoo,” she said, desperation seeping into her voice.