Adam Foulds - In the Wolf's Mouth

This was the worst ever. It couldn’t get worse than this. The noise, emplaced guns, planes ripping over, guns, single shots, bursts, everything. From different heights. The ground surging up ahead, sinking away behind. Ray saw Randall fall just ahead of him. He ran over, crouching, holding his rifle in one hand. In the heavy fire Randall had gone down softly, crumpling into the foetal position. Randall’s eyes were shut. Both hands were closed around the barrel of his rifle the way a mouse holds onto the stem of grass with its little white hands in the picture on the cereal packet. There was a sore on his face but that was old, crusted dry around the edges. Ray yanked his arm. ‘Hey!’ He couldn’t see any blood. ‘Where are you hurt? Where are you hurt?’ Three yards to the right the ground stuttered with impacts. Ray could see Randall’s mouth saying quietly ‘What?’ then he sort of settled his lips together, swallowing. He pulled his rifle a little closer. He was sleeping. ‘Holy shit, Randall! Wake up!’ Ray slapped down hard onto Randall’s face. ‘Wake up! Wake the fuck up!’ He dragged his shoulder and got some movement out of him and then ran. Fire was coming in. He ran up around a corner of ground, tufted with growth. The path was a grease of trodden mud. He glanced behind. Randall was with him. A mortar thumped the place where they’d been.

They sheltered in a slit trench, someone else’s. Whoever had dug it was gone. Now Ray and three others were there. Above them was a bush charred black on one side. On the side closest to them it was green, its leaves dry and warped with heat. The earth of the trench was striped, layered, with stones in it and fine tangling yellow-white hairs of roots, the colour of under ground, of seeing no light, exposed now, like wiring ripped out of a wall. Once Ray had seen a building going up in his neighbourhood. The old one, condemned, had been pulled down in an enjoyably violent, almost festive demolition. He’d seen the new building constructed in stages, bricks and cavities, pipes, laths and plaster, toilets. It shocked him. He’d thought homes were as solidly consistent as prisms, definite places full of families, family odours, meals and arguments and objects. But they weren’t. They were fabricated out of layers of materials. They weren’t really anything. Artillery showed this to be true of the whole world. Life was a skin: it could be peeled away like strips of wallpaper with its coherent pattern. The soil wasn’t that deep. A shell gored it and there was rock beneath. Plants burned, uprooted. It could all be scraped off easily.

A curving arm up ahead. A voice calling. They had to get out and run. They were getting higher. This was good. They were getting up onto higher ground, safer ground. Where was George? Was he firing? Was he safe? There he was. They shivered, shouting to themselves. They ran.

All the cloud cover had blown away. The sky was empty. The planes seemed to race through it faster, towards the sun. The mountains were difficult now with light and shadow. Their eyes couldn’t adjust quickly enough from one to the other. It was blind darkness or blazing saturation. Not that they wanted to move from where they were. They’d watched other men run past to be slapped onto their sides by a sniper across the valley. They were safe. They had cover. Alice bounced up and down on his bent legs. He said, ‘Nng. Nng God. Nah. Hmm.’ Below them down in the pass the fighting had gotten insane. All the American boys had to get through the same narrow throat of the mountain where Randall’s brain had given out and fallen asleep. The Germans had artillery positions now above it. The guns were pounding and pounding. Men were stuck there, among rocks, being mixed with the rocks. Stone bowl of his ma — what was it called? — a pestle. Garlic and salt in it. Smash. Her strong round dimpled hand on the stick thing. Smash. Molecules. The fragrance coming out.

Okay, fuck. That was something new now. A crater to their left from a new position throwing up a crown of dirt as it appeared. They couldn’t stay. George was fumbling at his fly. He was pissing himself and trying to get his penis out, spraying his hands and weapon before he could angle the stream clear.

‘We have to run! We have to run!’

‘What?’

‘Run!’

Ray held the brim of his helmet, stooped and ran. Rough ground rising and falling underfoot. Through wet matter, a soldier spread open, daubed across the rocks. Shit from everywhere, from overhead and the sides, the whole world lethal, folding over them and around, swallowing them. A bigger blast. Ray threw himself down. Film this. Take a camera and throw it. Put it on a rope and swing it. See everybody die. Another blast so close it hit him like a punch in the head and his whole body jumped an inch off the shuddering ground. He landed with grit of shattered earth burning him. Got up again and ran. His footsteps sounded strange. Strange that he could hear them, inside his body. His head was light, altered. He felt his face for blood. A high thin tone was ringing in his head. Beneath that there was a crackling, a sifting of something pulverised and shifting about. Voices, the explosions were quiet as though distant. There was blood on his cheek where stones had hit him. He found with his finger that there was blood in the hole of his right ear.

A hand on him. George pulling him. They had all turned to run in different directions but he hadn’t heard them say where.

Floating now weightless without sound

fear

Fear so great it had washed him empty

Up through his bones his foot beats told him he was

running

Two thumps of explosion, mud splash, fire in it

small shots pecking the ground in several places

People lying on the ground like what are they?

Running, burn of ankle twist over

Like people, shaped like people?

over rocks. Behind rocks, a piece of sky,

towards that

Like dolls! Dropped.

Everything dead already.

Dead piece by piece

a man lying

with one arm already dead

the rest of him thrashing

Dead and running, fast as he could. Dropping to hide flat with the others and wait and his shoulder against the hip of a man in front solid bone, rapid trembling

Over there a man trying to dig a foxhole with his helmet metal pranging off the rocks

Just in front, something moving, effort to focus

to see, before it was too late, but

it was so close, a bug, nothing, moving in a

small circle

on its disturbed patch, jointed feelers dabbling

the ground.

Smart black. Crumb of sand on it.

Planes screaming over.

All matter just matter, jerking with life, some of it. Just jumping a little bit, tearing against itself, fraying, frittering, bleeding, lying still, scattered.

Whizz of eighty-eight. Just short. Throwing stuff in his face.

Pushing himself flatter against the earth. Nothing underneath. Earth darkness. Up.

Running.

Low ridge to get behind and settle and up.

He had to join in now, pulling his trigger at those shapes over there. The crack of his gun faint by his ear.

George! Was George doing the same? Or was he lying, dropped?

Couldn’t see him anywhere.

Smoke rolling across from something.

Up again, into blasts from all directions that he couldn’t survive.

running

Several days after seeing the prison, when Will finally cornered Draycott and told him his story, Draycott listened, wincing and shaking his head, and was no help at all. His gaze kept flickering past Will or over him; that reminded Will of their difference in stature. He complained relevantly at the bloody filthy behaviour of the French and affirmed that in no way could they be trusted. When pressed for support for action, he offered none. Will argued his position — something should be done just for decency’s sake and think of the advantage to Anglo-Arab relations here. Draycott, holding the door jamb, looking at Will’s dusty shoes, countered that they should be very wary of upsetting the local balance of power. Perhaps Will could gather intelligence and write something up. Draycott glanced again over the top of Will’s head, stepped backwards into his office and, without saying anything further, closed the door.