Pat Kelleher - Black Hand Gang

“If you know who I am then you’ll know I’m facing the drop. Call that a fair trial? Besides, if you kill me you’ll never get home. You’re here because of me. Did you know that? I brought you here. Without me, you’ll never get back. Never. It’s taken the deaths of thousands of men to achieve this. I worked for years to this end; do you think I’m going to let you stop me now?”

Atkins was shaken. A way home? Flora, oh dear God, please let it be true. But having to deal with a rogue like Jeffries to get back? Atkins began to lower his rifle.

“Don’t believe him, Atkins,” snapped Everson. “The man’s a congenital liar, a fantasist.” He appealed to Jeffries again. “Can’t we talk about this like rational men?” he asked.

“Talk about what, Everson? Your ignorance, your fear of responsibility? Do you even realise what it is I’ve accomplished here? Do you realise that you’ve been party to the greatest occult undertaking of the age?”

“You can’t be serious, Jeffries. Listen to yourself. That’s utter humbug!”

“Is it? Look around you, Everson. Can your small provincial mind even conceive the scope of what has happened? No, don’t bother. Only a handful of people would truly understand my achievement. Magi for centuries have failed where I have succeeded. Only death on a truly industrial scale could have been sufficient to invoke Croatoan. I saw to it that those pointless deaths on the Front weren’t wasted. I harnessed them. Used them to charge a pentagram set into the very landscape itself.”

“You’re mad!”

“That’s what that hedonistic mooncalf, Crowley, said and where is he now? Skulking in America, plying his lies to Colonial toadies and lickspittles.”

“It’s shell-shock. Jeffries, you’re not well.”

“You want to go home? You want to see Blighty again?” roared Jeffries. “Well I know the way. Kill me and you’re stranded forever.”

Everson faltered and his pistol arm slowly lowered.

“He’s bluffing, sir,” said Atkins. “Isn’t he?”

“He’s got some sort of map,” said Nurse Bell. “He’s gone to a lot of trouble to get it.”

A grin slid onto Jeffries’ face as he arched an eyebrow. “Tick, tock, Everson. The Captain’s funked it, and you’re Commanding Officer now. It’s your call. Your responsibility. Do daddy proud. These men that survived? Nothing more than the dregs that Croatoan rejected. I have no more use for them. I commend them into your care. It may be that their deaths can return you the way they brought me!”

“The devil take you, Jeffries!”

“The name, Everson, is Dwyer!” he spat, and with that Jeffries opened his arm, threw Nurse Bell aside and fired.

Everson grunted as the impact of the bullet into his shoulder drove him back and spun him around.

Ketch fired back. Jeffries ducked behind a pile of trench supplies and returned fire.

Behind Jeffries, Bell hoisted up her ripped skirt and swung her foot between Jeffries’ legs. It connected with a satisfying thud and he doubled over.

Tears filling his eyes and distorting his vision, Jeffries fired again. Atkins ducked only to hear tiny clangs as metal struck metal. He looked around for the source and saw hissing green gas escaping from two chlorine cylinders, almost buried under a pile of trench supplies.

“Gas! Gas! Gas!” he shouted.

Jeffries grabbed hold of Bell again. “That,” he said, pulling her head back with a sharp jerk, “wasn’t nice. Just for that you don’t get to die quickly.” He released her and punched her in the solar plexus, winding her, before flinging her across the floor towards the punctured gas cylinders.

JEFFRIES FLED THE way he had come, diving out past Chandar under a fusillade of bullets from Atkins. Seconds later, there was an explosion as he set a off a grenade bringing the entrance down and cutting off any pursuit. Clouds of dust and debris billowed into the room, mixing with the rising gas and blocking the doorway. The fires they passed had spread and the entrance they came in by was now ablaze and impassable. Everson and the others were trapped.

To Atkins it smelt just like the trenches again and he almost gagged. Shouldering his rifle, he dashed over to Edith who was on all fours, gasping for breath, a deadly green tide lapping about her hands and feet. Atkins pulled her to her feet before rifling through the pile of equipment. The Chatts must have taken a gas hood or two, but try as he might he couldn’t find one. He turned around in a panic to see her giving him a pleading look as the gas, still pouring from the cylinders, began to rise around them. There was nothing else for it. He undid the bag around his neck, took out his own gas hood and pushed the stiffened flannel into her hands.

“Mouthpiece between your teeth. Tuck it into your collar and remember, in through the nose, out through the mouth,” Atkins explained as he guided her to the wall where Lieutenant Everson lay slumped. His eyes scanned the room. The only way out was a vent hole in the wall.

The stench of chlorine began to sting his nostrils and he coughed thickly as he levered the Lieutenant to his feet.

“It’s all right, Atkins. He just got me in the shoulder,” said Everson through a grimace, a dark stain spreading over the arm of his tunic.

“Gas, sir. You need to get your hood on,” he said, unbuckling the officer’s canvas bag and pulling out the contraption. Everson pulled it over his head with his good arm.

“The air shaft looks to be our only way out,” said Atkins. Linking his fingers, he boosted Everson up to the hole. Once he was in, Atkins was about to do the same for Edith, when he noticed the state of her now torn and ripped uniform. Embarrassed at the sight of her stockings he averted his eyes and caught sight of a pair of part-worn khaki trousers that he had scattered from one of the piles. He picked them up and offered them to her. She took them and he turned away as she stepped into them and tore a strip from the remains of her dress to use as a belt. “I’m ready,” she enunciated from inside her gas hood, tapping him on the shoulder.

He boosted her up on his hands and she disappeared into the vent.

The gas was thickening rapidly now, swirling in the rising currents of heated air from the blazing chamber next door. Atkins began to cough. Christ. This was no way to die. Something sprang into his mind from his early days in training. He pulled out his handkerchief, unbuttoned his fly and fished about inside. Thank God he was scared enough. After a brief moment when he thought he couldn’t, he managed to pee on the cloth, rung it out and, blanching slightly, tied it over his nose and mouth as he went back to look for Ketch in the rapidly thickening lethal mist.

“Ketch!” he cried.

He began wafting an arm about in front of him, disturbing the gas, creating eddies that swirled sullenly apart. He spied Ketch slumped awkwardly on the floor by the chlorine cylinders, a broadening stain on his tunic, one hand clutching weakly at his throat, Atkins knelt beside him. Ketch attempted to smile when he saw him, but produced nothing more than an ugly snarl, as if it were sheer vitriol that was keeping him alive.

“Bastard’s done for me,” he gasped. “You could let me die here with our secret. Nobody else would know. But you can’t, can you? That would mean you were really were a bad person. And you’re desperate to prove yourself otherwise, aren’t you?”

“Let me help you.”

Ketch coughed again and grinned through the blood and the green foam that began to froth at the corners of his mouth. “You can’t help me now, Atkins.”