Pat Kelleher: The Alleyman

“Oh, God, the chatt!”

“Don’t worry. They’ll keep it safe, sir.”

“I hope so. Like it or not, Atkins, we need it.”

Everson took his Webley out of his holster and, with a deep sigh of regret, began to load it.

MERCY AND GUTSY, of 1 Section, stood on guard duty either side of the gas curtain to the dugout where Everson held the chatt, for its own safety. For theirs, they tucked their gas hoods in knapsacks on their chest, for ease of access. They were supposed to wear them all the time when on guard duty with the chatt. But they were hot and foul smelling, and neither wanted to be mistaken for a rioter.

Mercy, as wiry as a terrier and an inveterate scrounger, was listening in sanguine mood to the drone of the aeroplane and wash of rioting and looting that ebbed and flowed around them.

“Thought you’d want to be out nicking a few things yourself,” said Gutsy, a stocky man with large, meaty hands, a ruddy complexion and a balding pate beneath his battle bowler.

“Nah. All the bon stuff’s long gone, mate.”

“Really?” asked Gutsy. “Where to?”

Mercy just smirked and tapped his nose.

The wave of noise grew louder as a rabble of men approached round the traverse.

“Eh up.” Mercy nodded and he and Gutsy turned to face the direction of the noise, bayonets fixed. Mercy’s short, sharp bark brought them up short.

“Halt.”

The leader, a scarf wrapped round his lower face, didn’t seem concerned. His confidence bolstered by the men behind him, he stepped up to Mercy’s bayonet point.

Mercy could see the length of rope in the man’s fist. This wasn’t a rabble, this was a lynch mob. “You’ve not really thought this through, have you?” Mercy said.

“We were passing and thought we’d pay the thing a little visit. Those things killed my mates. So are you siding with one of them murderous insects against your own kind? Have you got no shame?” he snarled.

“No,” said Gutsy. “We’ve got orders.”

At that, the men surged forward. Unwilling to use bullets or bayonet their own men, Mercy and Gutsy swung the shoulder stocks of their rifles into the first wave. Men fell to the duckboards, winded, or careened off wattle revetments before sliding down into the mud.

“Bloody ’ell!” said Mercy, ducking under the swing of a trench club to land a hard punch in a soft belly.

From behind the gas curtain came a thin skittering sound that made Mercy’s skin crawl. A prolonged hiss followed.

The fight broke off as everyone’s attention turned toward the rubberised cloth covering the dugout entrance.

Something tore the curtain aside. In a swift, inhuman motion, a pale, chitinous creature leapt out of the dugout and onto the trench parapet before scuttling back down the revetment behind the mob, who now found themselves trapped between the guards and the chatt.

It stood like a man, had the height of a man, but that was all the humanity one could ascribe to it. The chatt reared up on its backward-bending legs to its full height, a posture of threat. It spread its chitinous arms wide, exposing the small vestigial limbs at its abdomen. Then it splayed its mandibles and hissed again, spraying an atomised mist into the air, enveloping the men.

Within moments, the lynch mob’s expressions softened, changing from fear and anger to contentment. Their unifying purpose forgotten, they began to wander off individually, in a daze.

The chatt sank back down and advanced toward Mercy and Gutsy, who turned their rifles upon it.

“This One has merely blessed them,” it said. “By GarSuleth’s Will they are at peace. They will not harm us now.”

Mercy and Gutsy looked at each other, wide-eyed with amazement, as the chatt returned to the dugout of its own volition, the stake and rope that had kept it imprisoned still tied to its ankle.

“Well, bless me!” said Mercy rubbing the back of his head and exchanging bemused looks with Gutsy.

Gutsy watched the mob staggering off like happy inebriates. “Best not,” he said, reaching into his knapsack for his gas hood. “Not on duty.”

NURSE EDITH BELL looked over the beds, filled with recently blinded patients newly under her charge, all of them victims of chatt scentirrii acid spit. She still berated herself for the loss of the shell-shocked men, led to their deaths by alien parasites and flayed alive by the huge airborne grazing Kreothe. However, she had experienced the death of patients before and, as Sister Fenton reminded her, the dead weren’t her purview, the living were.

Sister Fenton interrupted her thoughts now.

“No time for shilly-shallying,” she said, nodding towards the end of the tented ward. “Warton needs a bed pan.”

“Nurse!”

There was a desperate tinge to the voice. As the matron left, she bobbed in an almost imperceptible curtsy, her nurse’s apron sitting oddly over her part-worn khaki serge trousers. “Yes, sister.”

She walked along between the two rows. She reached the end bed and searched underneath for the hollowed-out gourd that now served as a bedpan.

“Can you manage?” Edith asked.

“Yes, I’m sure I can, nurse,” said Warton in a strained tone. Bandages made from an old army issue shirt covered his eyes, but didn’t hide the extent of the livid acid-etched flesh.

The gourd vanished beneath the blanket. Warton’s features softened with relief.

Edith turned her back. She heard a fast stream splash against the inside of the gourd and subside into a rising gurgle. The trickle died. She turned round as Warton carefully manoeuvred the gourd out from under the army grey blanket and handed it back to her.

“Here you go, nurse. Sorry, nurse.”

“Nonsense,” she said softly.

The gourd was heavy and warm, and sloshed. She put it under the bed for collection later. The urine wasn’t wasted. The experiment with gunpowder was still ongoing. That was one good thing to come out of the animal stampede. There was a surplus of dung. They added urine to the dung, in the hope of making saltpetre, apparently. With ammunition running low, even crude gunpowder would be welcome.

She became aware of a rowdy jeering outside. It wasn’t unusual for the men to become boisterous and rowdy, but that was usually in the evenings.

“What’s going on?” asked Warton, cocking his head toward the sound.

Edith pursed her lips. “I don’t know.”

Several men burst into the tent, throwing back the flaps.

Edith bustled towards them, arms out, preparing to herd them from the tent, out of concern for her patients.

The men stood in the entrance, leering as they looked about. Their tunics were undone. One wore a kerchief over his lower face; another wore his PH gas hood.

“Privates, what’s the meaning of this? This is a casualty ward. Please leave,” she insisted in a stage whisper.

Several other men attempted to enter behind them, and the masked men staggered forward. Gas Hood stumbled into Edith’s arms and clung to her. His mates cheered him on.

“What about some fun, nurse, eh? How about a dance?” The mask muffled the voice. “If you were the only girl in the world, and I were the only boy!” he bellowed in a rough baritone. She found herself staring at her reflection in the mica eyepieces. She looked startled and afraid, and she hated herself for that. She braced her hand against the man’s shoulders and pushed him back.

“Get your hands off me.”

The blinded patients, confused by the noise, called out in alarm from their beds.

“What’s going on?”

“Leave her alone.”

His grip tightened around her waist. His head leaned in for a kiss, the gas hood’s red rubber non-return valve poking out obscenely. Repulsed, she twisted her face away and took a swing with her foot. Her boot connected with his shin. The private bellowed in pain and let her go, her hair askew and tumbling down from her hair pins, her chest heaving with adrenalin.