“Good show, old girl,” he said gently. He looked round. About fifty yards away was the beginning of the mud patch. He strolled towards it with his usual insouciance, intending to report to the nearest officer, when he heard a scream. A female scream. It came from the bombed-out farmhouse teetering near the edge of the muddy escarpment. He ran towards it, pulling out his revolver, barely noticing the change of ground underfoot as he raced up the incline. The scream was suddenly drowned out by a frustrated growl.
Nearing the house, he slowed down and edged forward cautiously. He could hear some animal, probably one of those beasts he saw earlier, padding around inside.
From a boarded up window he heard the sound of sobbing, the murmur of prayer and an insistent, urgent whisper.
“Well, we can’t just sit here. There must be something we can do.”
“What on earth is it?”
“It must have escaped from a zoo!”
There was another roar from the beast, which could clearly hear and smell its prey but couldn’t reach it.
Tulliver edged along the wall until he came to a faded wooden doorjamb, its paint peeling and the door long since carted off for firewood. Cocking his pistol, he peered round the door. The huge beast was stood in the passage sniffing at the closed door within. Its great claws had slashed through the plaster to the side to reveal the fragile wooden slats beneath. It wouldn’t be long before it got through that way.
Tulliver withdrew. As quietly as possible he checked the chambers of his revolver. They were all full. He only hoped they’d be enough.
He took several deep breaths. He wished whoever was screaming would shut up. It was really getting on his nerves. Apart from which he wanted to make sure the animal could hear him. As the screamer stopped to take a breath, he stepped round the doorway and whistled. The beast looked up and growled before bounding at him, claws skittering over the debris on the floor. Tulliver got off two shots then stepped aside, back against the wall beside the door as the beast came through, bringing half the doorjamb with it. He got off another two shots before the beast realised where he was and could turn. Its back legs skidded out from under it.
It pounced. Tulliver let off the last two shots. One passed straight through its skull scattering its brains out through the exit wound. As he dropped and rolled aside, the beast crashed into the wall and collapsed to the ground, sending loose bricks tumbling down, prompting another round of screaming from inside.
“Edith! Do be quiet. I shan’t have to slap you again, shall I?”
“Sister, please, no more violence!” said a man’s voice.
“Well, if she don’t, I will,” came a third female voice.
“Hello?” called Tulliver as he walked slowly down the short passage and tried the door. It wouldn’t budge. He tried knocking and was encouraged by the sound of scraping as if someone were moving large objects.
“Well for goodness sake, Edith, give the gel a hand.”
“Thanks awfully,” came the reply, dripping with sarcasm as the door scraped open and jammed halfway. Tulliver was just wondering whether he should do the gentlemanly thing and put his shoulder to it when a final wrench from a pair of grubby hands freed it. The door crashed open sending a woman dressed in a khaki jacket and long ankle length khaki skirt reeling back into the arms of a middle-aged chap in an army uniform, under which Tulliver could see the black cloth and white collar of a Devil Dodger. Two nurses looked on.
“Careful there, Padre, this is more my area of expertise than yours I think,” said Tulliver, stepping into the room and setting the poor woman on her feet again.
“Gor blimey, a… pilot!” said the khaki-clad FANY. She blushed furiously against her better judgement but recovered admirably. “Nellie Abbott,” she said with a little bob of a curtsey. “Where’s your machine, then? Can I see it? What sort is it?”
“Driver Abbot! A little decorum, please!” said the Sister brusquely. “You are a pilot, then?”
“Lieutenant James Tulliver, RFC,” he said, clicking his heels and giving a little mock bow of the head.
“Sister Fenton,” said the nurse curtly, thrusting out a hand. “Red Cross. This is Nurse Bell,” she said, nodding at a similarly dressed young woman.
“Yes,” said Tulliver, shaking her hand. “The red crosses on your uniform did rather give it away.”
“I don’t think this is the time for flippancy, do you, Mr Tulliver?” interjected the Padre.
The young woman in the nurse’s uniform, her once carefully pinned hair now a-tumble, let out a sigh and crumpled to the floor.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” said Fenton, stamping her foot. “Edith!”
“I say, I don’t usually have that kind of effect,” said Tulliver. “Is she all right?”
“It’s not you, you great oaf,” snapped the other nurse. “We’ve just been though a lot, a motor crash, a freezing cold night in a cellar, the shelling and now to have that slavering great creature…”
“It’s dead now,” said Tulliver. “But this place isn’t safe. There are more of them. We’ll have to get you into the trenches.”
“The trenches? Are you mad?” said the Padre. “There are hundreds of men there.”
“Padre, believe me,” said Sister Fenton, “The likes of that lot hold no fear for me.”
“An’ I’ve got four brothers so I’ve seen the worst of ’em!” said Abbott jovially.
“There, that’s settled then,” said Tulliver.
“It’s totally out of the question. It’s… improper,” said the Padre. “We’re waiting on a motor ambulance to take them back to the Hospital in St. Germaine.”
“Ah,” said Tulliver, awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck and feeling the short bristles there.
“What do you mean, ‘ah’?” said Sister Fenton.
“I mean, I don’t think it’s going to be possible, I’m afraid,” he said. “At least for a while. Can she walk?” he asked, indicating Nurse Bell.
“Oh she’ll be fine. Abbott, give me a hand,” said Sister Fenton.
The khaki-clad girl hurried to put herself under the blonde nurse’s arm in order to take her weight. The woman groaned softly.
“Come on, Edi,” she said. “Time for a little promenade.”
“Where to?” asked the dazed nurse weakly.
“Padre, I need to report to, well, to somebody. Can you take me to an officer? Whose Company Front is this?”
“13th Battalion Pennine Fusiliers. I can take you to C Company HQ. It’s not far from here.”
“It may be further than you think,” Tulliver said cryptically. “Wait here.” He slipped out of the door and peered outside. He held his revolver for appearance’s sake. The nurses needn’t know it was empty. He had some spare ammunition, but it was in the aeroplane.
“It’s clear. Padre, you bring up the rear.”
“Right you are.”
They stepped over the rubble and out of the back of the ruined farmhouse facing the front line, to avoid the creature’s corpse out the front. It took the women a moment or two to catch their breath at the sight of the lush green vista now surrounding them.
“Blimey!”
“Oh. My…”
“Hold fast, Abbott, Edith’s going to faint again,” said Sister Fenton. “Mr Tulliver, where exactly are we? These mountains weren’t here yesterday. I should have been sure to spot them. How is this possible?”