Pat Kelleher - The Alleyman

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.

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 and 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.”