Pat Kelleher - Black Hand Gang

“Agh, y’bastard!” Atkins snatched his hand away. Ginger bucked under him.

There was a sudden volley of unintelligible oaths from Gutsy’s bay next door.

“Only!” said Gazette. “Only! Get up here!”

As Atkins looked up Ginger arched his back, turned his head awkwardly to see down the traverse and screamed. Racing round the corner and tumbling pell-mell towards them, over the parapets and channelled by the trenches, came a stampede of thousands of panic-stricken corpse rats scrabbling and scrambling over each other, driven headlong in a frenzy through the fire bays by something out in No Man’s Land, something that had alarmed them enough to flee their cosy cadavers in droves. Not even the artillery shells had ever moved them like this before.

“Jesus!”

Atkins instinctively gulped a mouthful of air and drew his arms up over his head in a desperate attempt to protect himself as the routed rats swarmed over him. Their urgent piping squeals filled his ears as they covered him in a heaving wave of mud, blood and viscera-matted fur. Myriad cold paws scratched and scuffled exposed flesh; clumsy legs and feet finding his mouth, ears or nose while the acrid tang of voided rats’ piss left him spluttering and nauseous.

And then they were gone, the verminous tide receding, washing over 3 and 4 Platoon’s positions to yells of consternation.

Gasping and spitting filth from his mouth Atkins cautiously lifted his head. Ginger was still on the duckboards, curled into a foetal position, sniffling and whimpering, a damp warm patch darkening his khaki trousers.

“Gilbert the Filbert’ll feel right at home among that lot,” said Gazette. He was impassively inspecting three of the buggers he’d managed to impale on his bayonet. “Three with one blow. That’s a dugout record, is that.”

“He’s gone,” Ginger said with a snivel, patting his torso. “Haig’s gone.”

“Yeah, well good riddance,” said Gazette scraping the rats off his bayonet on the edge of the step. “Here, Only, give us a hand.” He stood his rifle against the revetment, stepped down, grabbed Ginger by his webbing straps and hauled him to his feet. Atkins picked up Ginger’s rifle and put it back in his hands.

“Look, I know your rat’s gone. Looks like they’ve all gone, frankly and good bloody riddance. But if you don’t get back on the step, Ketch’ll do for you, got it?”

Ginger sniffed, wiped his nose with the cuff of his tunic and nodded sullenly.

“Sorry. Sorry, Only.”

Atkins straightened his battle bowler for him and helped him up onto the step.

“Good lad.”

The sun was almost gone now. The dark velvet blue of night advanced relentlessly, overwhelming the last crimson smears of retreating dusk; a salvo of stars pock-marking its wake in the night sky.

Atkins had always found some measure of comfort in the constancy of the stars, but not tonight. Tonight, he couldn’t find a single constellation that he recognised. And no moon either, nothing but a faint trace of reddish gas trailing across the firmament. Disconcerted, Atkins shifted his gaze back down to Earth, or what there was left of it.

“What was that all about? Never seen ’em act like that before.”

“They’re rats. Who knows?” said Gazette.

“Something scared ’em.”

“You do surprise me.”

“Something out there. The bodies in No Man’s Land are going to attract every scavenger and predator for miles around.”

“You may have a point,” said Gazette. “But I’ve got this,” he added patting his rifle. “And I’ll put my faith in this any day over anything you think may or may not be out there.”

They’d been here less than twenty-four hours. From what Atkins had seen of this place whatever was out there was probably far worse than anything he could imagine or, more worryingly, something he couldn’t imagine.

“Everything all right here, men?”

Lieutenant Everson came round the traverse into the bay, Webley revolver in his hand.

“You mean apart from the rats, sir?” said Atkins.

“Yes, apart from the rats, Atkins.”

“Yes, sir,” Atkins managed a perfunctory smile. “Leaving the sinking ship, d’y’think, sir?”

“Sorry?”

“The rats, sir. Leaving the sinking ship?”

“Well I wouldn’t put it quite like that, Atkins, but I’m certainly not going to miss the buggers if they really have gone.”

Ginger stifled a sob in the crook of his elbow.

“Is he — is he all right?” said Everson with a jerk of his head in Ginger’s direction, his voice tinged with concern.

“Mottram, sir?” said Gazette. “Yes sir, just got the wind up, sir, that’s all. He’ll be fine.”

Aktins wasn’t so sure but Everson didn’t seem to want to press the point.

“Very well. Any idea who Hobson put in the OP?”

“Jellicoe, Livesey and Nicholls, sir,” said Atkins.

“Right. Better check in with them. No doubt Nicholls will have something to complain about. Keep your wits about you.” Everson slipped round the next traverse and was gone.

Somewhere out in the dark, where the Somme mud met alien soil, the fading pitiful squeals of the rats were met by the snarls and growls of unseen predators.

Atkins’ tried not to listen, humming a few bars of ‘I Want To Go Home’ under his breath. He stopped as he felt, rather than heard, the noise; a deep bass note that thrummed against his chest and vibrated the soles of his feet through his hobnailed boots.

Dull alarms began jangling in No Man’s Land; tin cans containing pebbles that hung from the wire rattled out their beggar-like warnings, the cries from the injured and dying stranded in shell holes rising to a crescendo.

From either flank of the line, bursts of machine gun fire opened up in reply. Each machine gun post was positioned so that it could lay enfilading fire along the lengths of wire entanglement. They had been laid in an extremely shallow ‘V’ out in front of the fire trenches so, even at night, once the wire alarms had been set off they had every expectation of hitting whatever it was that had set them off.

From Captain Grantham’s position over in the centre of the line came the phut of a Very pistol as a flare arced up into the night sky. Atkins, Ginger and Gazette bobbed instinctively below the lines of the sandbags as it burst with a whuuff high over the battlefield, illuminating the scene with the stark white brilliance of a photographer’s flash powder.

Atkins wished it hadn’t.

About fifty yards out half a dozen great, glistening wet worm-like creatures, thicker than a man was tall and some thirty yards long, had broken the surface of the grey-churned mud, like land whales. Atkins could see no eyes, but long probing tentacles quested the air around facial sphincters that contracted and relaxed to reveal barbed gullets. No sound issued from their gaping, clenching maws as they set about scooping the dead and decomposing into their pouting orifices, grazing like elephants, lifting food into their mouths, or else dragging the corpses down into the vermiculate earth. From the terrified yells and sobs it was clear that it wasn’t just the dead they were taking.

All along the fire trenches soldiers champed at the bit, wanting to shoot but constrained by orders.

The Very light went out. Another shot up into the sky from the observation post, burning whitely.

“C’mon, give the order,” muttered Atkins, a finger playing restlessly on his SMLE’s magazine cut-off.

Sergeant Hobson’s voice rang out. “Five rounds rapid. Fire!”

“About bloody time,” muttered Atkins as he flicked open the cut-off, took aim and fired before cycling the bolt and putting another cartridge into the receiver. He took aim, fired again, cycled once more.