Pat Kelleher - Black Hand Gang

Along the trench tattered bursts of rifle fire raked across the alien worms.

Trench mortars popped and flew into the air, arcing out into No Man’s Land.

Beside Atkins, Gazette was in his element now. Calmly, surely, he fired off his shots, taking his time, making each bullet count. Ginger on the other hand had completely lost it and was huddled on the firestep, by Atkins’ legs, his arms cradling his knees to his chest, sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.

The Very light went out again but the ungodly wet suction noises and weakening screams continued unabated. Another Very light went up from the observation post.

The worms were closer now. One reared up over the observation post itself. An officer, it must have been Lieutenant Everson, fired the Very pistol almost at point blank range. The flare shot up leaving a brief white trail before embedding itself in the hide of the creature where it continued to burn with a white-hot fury, causing it to thrash about in voiceless agony, its tentacles flailing helplessly. Some agent in its mucus coating, or subcutaneous fatty layer, must have been flammable for, under the intense heat of the flare, the great worm began to burn like a wick. Its bulk crashed down into the mud — right on top of the observation post.

“Everson’s bought it,” said Gazette, matter of factly.

“Are you kidding?” said Atkins. “Lucky’s out there. He’ll see ’em all right.”

“Thruppence says they’re landowners now.”

“Thruppence says they ain’t,” said Atkins, spitting on his palm. Gazette shook his hand, barely taking his eye from his rifle sight.

With the landscape now dimly illuminated by the burning carcass Atkins could make out the other worm creatures. One rippled over to the burning body, reaching out its tentacles, but was driven back by the heat of the flames. It raised its head up as if giving a great call, arched its body and dived into the ground. The others followed.

A ragged cheer rose from the trenches.

“They’re going!”

The elation didn’t last long. Thirty feet from the line one of the great worms broke out of the mud, ploughing toward the fire trench with a fluid peristaltic motion, through the troughs of shell holes and the crests of their craters, heedless of the twenty yard length of barbed wire entanglement it had ripped from the ground in its sinuous advance, and which was now hanging from its body.

Men who had seen comrades blown to so much meat, who had stoically suffered days of continuous bombardment, who had risked death every day, found it hard not to flee in the face of such a monstrous vision.

The command came again. “Fire!”

As Gazette took aim, carefully squeezing the trigger and firing off five more rounds at the monstrous creature before them, Atkins felt the ground beneath him tremble and the revetment against his chest begin to creak and strain. Sandbags tumbled into the trench from the parados behind them. He and Gazette glanced at each other.

“You don’t think—”

“Thinking’s for officers. Run!”

They slung their rifles over their shoulders and jumped back off the fire step as the revetment begin to splinter under a great wave of pressure building up from below. Ginger remained sobbing on the step, oblivious or incapable of reacting as plank after plank behind him burst free of its frame.

“Shit!”

A hand under each armpit Atkins and Gazette dragged him off the firestep and round the corner into the traverse. Barely had they vacated the fire bay before it erupted behind them in a shower of dirt, dust and splinters as another worm burst up through the trench.

Probing tentacles appeared around the corner of the traverse. One caught hold of Ginger’s ankle and pulled, tugging Atkins and Gazette off balance as the screaming man was dragged back towards the shattered fire bay. Atkins unslung his rifle and thrust his bayonet into the tentacle, pinning it to the ground, and fired, point blank range, severing the member. The other feelers let go of Ginger and retracted back round the corner, the lopped pseudopod trailing a dark viscous slime behind it.

Gazette grabbed Ginger by the scruff of the neck as he and Atkins half-scrambled, half-stumbled with him into the next fire bay where Gutsy, Porgy and Mercy were laying down covering fire as the wounded worm reared up. They kept it up as Atkins and Gazette retreated round the far corner to the adjacent traverse and the next fire bay, held by Sergeant Hobson and Corporal Ketch.

There they dropped Ginger to the duckboards and took aim at the mindless monster as it blindly sought for its attackers. Gutsy, Porgy and Mercy, abandoning their own position, fell back and joined them, as Gazette and Atkins in return gave them covering fire. Gazette had fired his five rounds and was reloading from a pouch on his webbing, while Atkins was still chambering and firing his third as the great worm, flinching under the hail of bullets, sought a way forward. It fell back from sight, retreating into the ground from which it had come.

Atkins spied a bandolier of grenades on the firestep. “Gazette, cover me!” he yelled, snatching up the bandolier. He dashed forward to their ruined fire bay where he saw the tentacles of the beast vanish as it retreated back into the dark earth. He looked briefly into the darkness of the hole in the side of the trench as he opened the pouches on the bandoleer. He took out the string from his pocket and threaded through the ring pulls of about half a dozen grenades. Holding one end of the string in his hand he tossed the bandoleer into the hole. Left holding nothing but the piece of string and its collection of grenade pins he threw himself to one side. Seconds later the grenades went off with a muted roar. The ground heaved and the hole erupted with smoke and fire as torn and shredded flesh shot out of it.

Atkins picked himself up from the mud, his ears ringing with the high pitch buzzing of the concussion. Helping hands pulled him to his feet as Porgy and Mercy dragged him clear. Smoke drifted from the collapsed tunnel. The ringing in his ears distanced him from the scene around him. He was thankful for the brief respite as he could no longer hear the screams of pain and the cries of terror. Only faintly, as if from a great depth, could he hear the tattoo of the guns as the Tommies drove the worms back into the ground.

JEFFRIES WAS BARELY aware of the explosion. The sight of the creatures held him spellbound. He had read of such things in texts older than the regiment itself, but never expected to see them. “Shaitan,” he murmured under his breath as he watched them harvest the dead and dying out in No Man’s Land. “Messenger of Croatoan. It’s a sign.” He climbed the ladder and stood, exposed, on the sandbag parapet, arms flung wide in supplication.

“Sir!” hissed Dixon, his Platoon Sergeant. “Sir, get down!”

One of the giant worms burst up through the sodden ground half a dozen yards from the trench. It opened its maw, pseudopods flailing. Jeffries stood his ground and stared down the barbed throat.

He was vaguely aware of Everson stumbling down the sap from the observation post, his arms around one man’s shoulder as they helped each other along the narrow ginnel. Two others followed on behind, all four of them covered in mud and slime.

“Jeffries, for God’s sake, man! Are you mad?” he called, reaching for the Very pistol in his belt. There was a dull click and a whoof as something rushed past Jefferies’ head. A Very flare ricocheted off a failing tentacle and skittered down the creature’s length before whirling across the mud and into a shell hole. The great worm veered away from it and plunged back into the earth. However the encounter was enough to convince Jeffries. He turned jubilantly and jumped down onto the firestep.