Pat Kelleher - The Alleyman

Wally ran the engine up and signalled the gearsmen at the back.

Norman and Cecil put their tracks into gear.

The crew exchanged wary glances as the fug of the petrol fruit fumes began to fill the compartment. Nellie held her breath for as long as she could, then took a deep breath, followed by a second, more contented one.

LIKE A BLIND and bound Samson, once the source of its power had returned, the Ivanhoe roared like a territorial beast, belching smoke from its roof exhaust as its track plates began to move tentatively, slapping the ground. The ironclad gained traction and rumbled forward, ripping itself free of the remaining tangle of undergrowth, shrugging off its now insubstantial chains.

Tarak watched the tank for a moment, touched the brand upon his chest once more in a silent oath, and then, as the iron behemoth moved off, he ran lightly up the back of the port track to crouch behind the raised driver’s cab, like a barbarian astride a prehistoric mount.

“THEY’RE COMING!” ATKINS heard Pot Shot’s warning shout. “They’ve bought it, they’re following us.” His gangly form came racing along the path, his lanky legs dwarfing Gazette’s strides as the sniper tried to keep up with him. “And I bloody wish they weren’t,” he said as he passed Atkins.

“Shut up, you daft ’a’porth. They’re just walking mushrooms.”

“I hate mushrooms.”

Atkins shrugged his shoulders in an attempt to make the electric lance backpack sit on his back more comfortably. It didn’t work. Behind him, Mercy wound the crank handle to build the charge. Atkins could feel the whirr of the magneto in his chest as Mercy’s efforts pressed it against his back. Atkins hefted the lance in his hands, his fingers fidgeting over the trigger pads. The end of the lance sparked. Mercy patted him on the shoulder. “You’re good to go, Only.”

The tide of grey filaments crept silently towards them, over the rocks and through the jungle floor detritus.

The grey dead men followed, their halting advance accompanied by the soft puffs of bursting fruit bodies and the muffled falls of creatures as they succumbed to the choking spore clouds, and whose desiccating bodies fed the ineluctable advance.

“Gas hoods!” ordered Atkins, pulling his own down over his head. He was soon cocooned inside the damp, close flannel hood once again, his vision, hearing and breathing impaired, the metallic copper tang of the return valve in his mouth.

He had a moment of doubt as the hooded soldiers with their blank eyes and red proboscises began to stumble forward in their masks. Napoo, bandanna tied over his nose and mouth, fixed him with an accusing glare, and Atkins felt abashed. Perhaps this had been a bad idea. Still, it was too late now. His repugnance for this stuff, and what it had done to decent men, drove him on. And, beyond all of that was the persistent thought of Jeffries, and above it all, Flora.

“We should be able to keep ahead of it,” warned Everson, as they moved through the jungle ahead of the slow wave of mycelia as it burrowed through the decomposing humus beneath their feet. “But not so far ahead that we lose them,” he reminded them.

“Shouldn’t be too hard. They move like they were wading through Somme mud anyway,” said Mercy.

Gutsy turned and watched their slow, implacable advance. “Still gives me the willies.”

The Fusiliers moved on at a fast walking pace, checking every so often to make sure the things were still following them and that Hepton was still with them, refusing as he did to give up any of his equipment. They needn’t have worried.

Atkins caught sight of something out of the corner of his eyes. He couldn’t be sure whether it was really there or just a smudge on his mica eyepiece. He stopped and turned his whole head. Something grey slipped between the trees to their left.

“Blood and sand. They’re trying to outflank us.”

More glimpses of grey to the right.

He listened for the drone of the aeroplane, but it was difficult under the hood. They just had to stay alive until the next telluric discharge occurred. Atkins had eagerly acceded to Tulliver’s plan since it meant Jeffries’ trail would still be within reach. Now he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of it.

More grey figures appeared to their right and left, and with them came the grey-white carpet, as more fruiting bodies burst around them like a barrage and yellow-white clouds of spore blossomed like subdued trench mortar explosions. The cloud of spores billowed and settled, the turbid mist drifting around their legs in whorls and wakes as they passed.

It was the silence of the advance that unnerved Atkins. It lent an air of unreality to their predicament, as if he were watching it unfold in a picture house. He could almost imagine the melodramatic piano accompaniment.

Atkins heard the crackle and caught a brief flash against the tree trunks as Tonkins fired his electric lance. For a moment, the spore cloud parted and the creeping white carpet was repulsed, as if he had dropped soap into oily water.

He forged on, trying to stay ahead of the rising tide of spore cloud. “Have you charged me?” he bellowed at Mercy.

“What do you think I am?” retorted Mercy with a good-natured bawl. “A Lyon’s Tea Room Gladys?” Mercy walked straight into Atkins’ back as he came to an abrupt halt. “Oi! Watch it, Only!”

Atkins raised his electric lance. “We’ve got company.”

“Bloody hell, how did they move fast enough to get in front of us?”

“Does it matter? They’ve got us surrounded.”

Ahead of them, two more grey ambulated corpses emerged shambling from the woodland, a carpet of grey filaments laying itself down before them. Even with the cankerous growths and the blighted features, it was with horror and dismay that Atkins recognised one of them and let out a groan.

“Porgy!”

THE STRUTTER ROARED into the air, the landing wheels clipping the tree tops as Tulliver continued to climb. A few whipperwills cracked and snapped after it, but he left them behind as the aeroplane banked away.

Tulliver circled round the crater at a couple of hundred feet, out of range of the whipperwills. He could see the tower of the temple and the cobweb shroud of fungus threads draped over it. He pointed down for the Padre to see. It looked like a cobweb-covered bride cake. From the air, the extent of the fungus became clear, draping through the trees. The extent of its growth was far worse than it looked from the ground. He was glad the Fusiliers didn’t know. In his head, he was already calling it the Havisham Effect.

In the distance, beyond the crater, great plumes of telluric energy blasted into the sky. He saw the shiny patches in the air, far off, as distant energies built, but nothing over the crater. He circled over the Strip again.

Every now and again, through thinner canopy, he’d catch flashes down below as the Tommies’ electric lances flared. At least he knew where they were.

Oil spattered from the engine and built up on his goggles. He pulled them off as he scanned the crater jungle for any sign of imminent telluric build up.

As he banked round again, he saw it, out of the corner of his eye: a patch of air that shimmered as though worn through. It was on the Strip’s edge.

ATKINS COULDN’T BRING himself to disassociate the thing before him from his friend. To him, this shambling grotesque was in some way still Porgy, and therein lay the danger.

“Porgy, it’s me, Only,” he shouted though his gas hood.

“Then do him a favour and fire!” yelled Mercy from behind him as the things that had been Porgy and Jenkins lumbered towards them.

The mould-ridden men showed no sign of recognition. Anything that was Porgy was long gone. The advancing carpet of fungal threads forced Atkins and Mercy back.