Pat Kelleher - Black Hand Gang

Damn. He couldn’t afford to let it get beneath them.

“Hang on!” he yelled to Jeffries. Tulliver banked sharply and spun down in a wide spiral looking for the creature. It reared up almost immediately in front of them.

“Hellfire!”

He pressed the fire buttons on his machine gun, spitting lead and tracer bullets at the beast. It let out a long, pained cry and vanished over the top of the machine as Tulliver pushed the stick forwards sending the aeroplane into a shallow dive. As the creature passed overhead Jeffries fired, raking its body with a line of bullets that left it spurting a bluish viscous liquid.

“Go round!” yelled Jeffries. Tulliver banked, keeping the wounded creature within the circle of his turn. Jeffries kept it in his sights and let off another couple of bursts, one ripping through the membranous wings, another shot hitting it in its head, exploding the skull. The lifeless beast plummeted from the air, the drag from its wings sending it careening into a drunken tumble.

“Calloo Callay!” Jeffries yelled triumphantly as he leaned over the lip of the cockpit to watch the dead beast crash into the plain with an explosion of blood and offal.

Tulliver, wary of any more of the creatures, was eager to get down.

“Have you got enough?” he shouted.

“Yes, it’s dead!”

“No, have you got enough information for the map?”

JEFFRIES TURNED, SAT back down in his seat and pulled out the clipboard. He marked the stream and the forest. He’d seen no sign of cultivation or farming, no patchwork of fields, no smoke, which was vaguely disappointing. He nodded emphatically and gave his ringed okay sign to Tulliver, who turned the aeroplane about and headed back up the valley towards the muddy charnel field they had to call home for the present.

As he did so, Jeffries caught a glimpse of something gleaming in the far distance across the plain, as if it had caught the light from this world’s sun. He struggled to turn around and see. He could have sworn he saw some sort of huge spire far off, almost smeared into obscurity by the intervening aerial perspective of the atmosphere. The machine bucked on a pocket of air as it descended and dropped heavily, leaving Jeffries’ stomach briefly somewhere above his head. When he looked again the fortuitous angle was lost and the spire had vanished. But it had nevertheless ignited a gleam of hope in his heart. He smiled to himself. This was one thing he wouldn’t mark on his crude, despairingly blank map. He well knew the value of information as currency. This would only strengthen his position in the long-term and, until he knew its true value, he would sit on it and let his investment accrue.

TULLIVER CIRCLED THE field of mud as he came down and brought the machine about so that the hastily cleared green strip was ahead of him. He pulled back on the stick, opened the flaps, slowing the aeroplane down to just above stall speed, and cut the engine before they hit the ground. He saw the waiting soldiers run towards them as the Sopwith bounced and trundled to a halt.

He tore off his flying helmet and goggles before clambering out of the cockpit. The Tommies gathered round the machine like excited schoolboys, barking questions at him and Tulliver took the opportunity to bask in the moment.

JEFFRIES WAS LEFT abandoned by the machine as Tulliver and the adulating scrum around him moved off. The airman had almost recognised him. Of all the damned luck to get stuck with the same pilot that took him up when he was using Hibbert as an alias. He didn’t need anyone putting the pieces together yet, he needed more time. He would have to do something. He was reaching over to put the helmet goggles and gloves back in the cockpit when he noticed the tool box in the bottom of the craft. His usual methods might attract too much attention now, but an accident? He looked back toward the mud flat. No one was about. He leant over and dragged the box towards him. Something to make sure that Tulliver didn’t come back from his next flight? Flicking the little hooked catch he opened the wooden box to reveal a jumble of tools; spanners, wrenches, screwdrivers, wire cutters. He smiled…

4 thNovember 1916

My Dearest Flora,

Things haven’t gone quite the way the top brass expected here so I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to post this.

I know you must be sitting at home thinking me among the missing, too. Although we’re not so much missing, as lost. It’s the rest of the world that’s missing. What will my mother do? Both her sons among the missing. She must be heartbroken. I wish I could tell her I’m alive and well, although I’m not sure I like it here. The wildlife seems none too friendly. I thought rats and lice were bad, but they’ve got things here that put them to shame.

I’ve been picked as part of a foraging patrol, going out into the countryside to pick fruit and berries and the like. Mercy says it sounds like a bit if a lark. It’ll make a pleasant change from digging trenches though and no mistake. With no Hun to fight, that’s all they’ve had us doing the past few days, and on rations too. I tell you, we’re all getting fed up of Maconochie and Plum and Apple here. Half Pint says we’ll end up looking like jam tins at this rate. So here’s hoping we find something edible.

“GOD DAMN IT!” said Captain Lippett. It had been a bad couple of days for the surgeon. Apart from the usual round of battlefield wounds and infections there was a new rash of cases as the perils of the world about them began to make themselves known. The carcass of one of the worms was hacked up and roasted on the open ground between the supervision and support trenches, by some men who hadn’t had fresh meat in weeks. Those who ate the meat died agonising deaths in the night. It seemed from what Lippett was able to determine that the flesh was poisonous, containing some kind of toxin to which man had no immunity.

A Lewis gun team broke out in bloody pustules after eating a variety of knobbly yellow fruit that hung full and ripe, weighing down the rust-coloured boughs in the small grove of trees near the mud perimeter. The boils proceeded to swell at an alarming rate and to a grotesque size, disfiguring the face and body until the skin became taut like a drum, causing immense pain, before bursting so that those infected were left with terrible open wounds and died of blood loss or septicaemia.

After that the order was not to taste anything but to bring it back for the Medical Officer to conduct tests on to determine whether it was fit to eat or not.

2 PLATOON HAD been ordered to scout out the wood that lay maybe a mile away. It was the farthest any party had yet been. Although they didn’t say it Everson could tell the men were nervous. A platoon had gone out on a search for water the previous day, following the directions garnered from Tulliver and Jeffries’ reconnaissance flight. They had lost four men to animal attacks.

After Stand To, breakfast and parade the forty-two strong 2 Platoon headed out across the plain in Indian file. Every man had one in the spout. They all remembered the attack of the hell hounds and knew they were out here somewhere. Behind Atkins came Hepton, carrying his camera and tripod and several canisters of film in haversacks. He had asked for permission to join them, eager to record the wonders of this new world, if not the horrors, for he knew such vivid sights would sell seats. Then came Ginger, cooing happily into his gas helmet haversack in which he had stowed his new pet. Gordon’s flaccid whiskery snout poked out of the flap. Pot Shot, Gazette, Gutsy, Porgy, Half Pint and Lucky brought up the rear of the section, carrying a couple of rolled up stretchers to help carry whatever they managed to harvest. Sergeant Hobson and the other three sections of 2 Platoon followed on behind.