Pat Kelleher: Black Hand Gang

“I can! We can get out of here.” He put his arms under Ketch’s armpits and began to lift him but the corporal retched and coughed, his face beginning to blacken from exposure to the gas. “Ketch!”

The corporal clawed at his throat as the chlorine reacted with the moisture inside his lungs. His eyes widened with terror. He began to kick and thrash, reeling around the floor, gasping for a life-saving breath that would never come. It was all Atkins could do to hold him.

“Atkins…” he gurgled, “one… thing…”

“What?”

“…She’s… pregnant …”

“Who?’ he asked, before he realised. Flora .

“S’you in hlll…” gurgled Ketch, his back arching as he patted his tunic pocket and his last breath bubbled up out of him, leaving a satisfied sneer etched on his face.

“Ketch! Ketch!”

Coughing and spluttering now, his own eyes watering, Atkins shook the corporal’s body. Unbidden he felt Flora’s lips on his; insistent, soft, yielding. He could taste the salt of her tears as they lost themselves in a rising urgency that, for a moment, washed away the grief; fingers fumbling at buttons and petticoats by the light of the parlour fire. Even as he recalled the moment, he tore open Ketch’s tunic and rummaged through the pockets. Inside Ketch’s pay book, he found a letter, addressed to himself in Flora’s own hand. It had been opened. The bastard! How long had he had it? He quickly shoved it inside his own tunic. Please God, let him not have told anyone else.

He took Ketch’s gas hood from its bag and rolled it down over his head in place of the urine-sodden cloth. As he headed back to the vent, he passed the Chatt wheezing for breath in the rising chlorine. He was going to leave the disgusting thing to its fate, but overcome with grief and remorse he took pity on it, if only to prove to himself that he was a good person. He squatted down to lift it up. The creature attempted to scuttle back against the wall, hissing, its mouth palps fluttering briefly with the force of the exhalation. As he put it over his shoulder it protested weakly, like a drowsy wasp in the first chill of autumn.

The blaze from the adjacent room was beginning to spread now. The encroaching flames cast surreal shadows on the rising chlorine fog. Atkins hoisted the Chatt up and fed it into the vent above his head, then took several steps back and ran at the wall, leaping up towards the hole and catching its lip. He pulled himself up into the shaft and found himself looking at the Chatt.

“Why?” it asked.

“Because it’s the right thing to do. Because I am a good man. We’re not all like Jeffries. And because no one deserves a death like that. We have to move.”

The shaft angled down steeply and Atkins could feel a strong, cold draught blowing over him as they slid down for what seemed a long way. The Chatt in front of him suddenly dropped and Atkins found himself sliding out of the vent and falling to land heavily below.

“Steady, Atkins,” said Everson, helping him as he climbed to his feet. Atkins pulled off his gas hood to see Edith looking nervously at the Chatt, who cowered against the wall of the passage.

“Shouldn’t you shoot it?”

“No, Bell, I don’t think so,” said Everson, wincing with pain from his shoulder wound.

One of her eyes was starting to puff up and bruises were blooming on her cheeks. Her hair was in complete disarray. She looked like some kind of wild woman. Atkins felt a surge of anger at what Jeffries had done to her, immediately followed by self-recrimination. Was he really any better? Oh Flora, what had he done? His whole world had been turned upside down. Again. If she was pregnant, then it wasn’t going to be hard for anyone to work out it couldn’t be William’s child. She would have to bear the barrage of gossip, the barbed comments, the withering fire of disapproving glances and the machine gun stuttering of tutting. And she would have to bear it alone.

He was aware of Lieutenant Everson shaking his shoulder.

“Atkins, where’s Corporal Ketch?”

“Gone west, sir. Gas.”

There was a series of explosions high above. Rubble erupted out of the vent followed by faint wisps of chlorine gas and, from somewhere behind them, the noise of gunfire grew louder.

“Damn.” Everson crouched down in front of the Chatt. “Which way to the fungus farming chamber?” he said. The Chatt looked up at him. “Do you understand me? Can you speak?”

“Yes, this one can speak Urmanii.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Chandar.”

“Well, Chandar, we need a way out and you’re going to have to show us. On your feet.”

The Chatt rose as Everson ushered it to the fore. Atkins took up the rear, making sure that Bell was in front of him as he cycled his rifle bolt. They hadn’t gone a dozen yards when Atkins heard shouts and shots behind him.

“Sir,” he said turning round at the sound of running feet. Sergeant Hobson, Gazette and Pot Shot came hurtling round the bend.

“Sir?” gasped Hobson. “How the hell did you get here?”

Everson nodded towards the smoking vent. “Snakes and ladders.”

The burly Sergeant took it in his stride. “Right you are then, sir.”

There were several bursts of rapid fire from behind them as the rest of the Black Hand Gang, freed Tommies and nurses crowded along the passage, pulling the sleds with the injured Napoo and Half Pint on them, Poilus among those at the back fighting a rear-guard action.

“They’re hard behind us, sir,” called Hobson.

“Only!” called Porgy pushing through the throng. “Only! Where’s Edith? Did you find them?” Atkins smiled as he turned aside to reveal Edith Bell stood behind him.

“Edi!” squealed Nellie Abbott, pushing past Porgy and flinging herself into Edith’s arms, then stood back and looked her up and down, taking in the khaki trousers. “Edi Bell! I never took you for a suffragette.”

“Times change,” said Edith.

“You did good,” said Porgy, clapping Atkins on the back.

Atkins didn’t feel as if he had. He could hardly bring himself to look his mate in the eye. “Where is the bastard? Did you get him?” Porgy pressed.

“Jeffries? Got away,” said Atkins. “But he won’t get far out there, even if he makes it. He’ll be something’s meal by night-time, I’ll bet on it. Ketch bought it, though. Gut shot and gassed.”

“Hell’s Bells,” said Porgy. “Can’t say I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t wish that on a bloody Hun.” Nellie and Edith broke their hug and he caught sight of Edith’s face. “What’s the bugger done to her?” Porgy cried, starting forward.

Atkins grabbed his shoulders. “Not now, mate. She’s fine. She’s a tough old girl.”

Reunited, the Black Hand Gang pressed on, fighting a rear-guard action against the pursuing Chatts, the tunnel taking them inexorably downward. It soon became clear they’d missed the fungus farm chamber that marked the way to their excavated exit point. They were lost.

“Where the hell are we?” Everson asked Chandar, but the Chatt refused to answer.

“Sir,” said Gazette, addressing Everson. “There are more Chatts coming the other way. We’re caught between ’em.”

“Not again,” sighed Everson. “Atkins, I don’t want to get caught between a rock and a hard place. This isn’t a good place for a last stand. See if you can’t blow us an exit.”

Atkins placed a couple of grenades against the wall of the passage and pulled the pins. “Grenade!” he hollered, dashing back round the curve. He was beginning to hate these damned tunnels. There were several dull explosions and Atkins felt his ears crackle and pop like a dropped needle on a scratched gramophone record as the concussion wave overtook him.