“Right. Better check in with them. No doubt Nicholls will have something to complain about. Keep your wits about you.” Everson slipped round the next traverse and was gone.
Somewhere out in the dark, where the Somme mud met alien soil, the fading pitiful squeals of the rats were met by the snarls and growls of unseen predators.
Atkins’ tried not to listen, humming a few bars of ‘I Want To Go Home’ under his breath. He stopped as he felt, rather than heard, the noise; a deep bass note that thrummed against his chest and vibrated the soles of his feet through his hobnailed boots.
Dull alarms began jangling in No Man’s Land; tin cans containing pebbles that hung from the wire rattled out their beggar-like warnings, the cries from the injured and dying stranded in shell holes rising to a crescendo.
From either flank of the line, bursts of machine gun fire opened up in reply. Each machine gun post was positioned so that it could lay enfilading fire along the lengths of wire entanglement. They had been laid in an extremely shallow ‘V’ out in front of the fire trenches so, even at night, once the wire alarms had been set off they had every expectation of hitting whatever it was that had set them off.
From Captain Grantham’s position over in the centre of the line came the phut of a Very pistol as a flare arced up into the night sky. Atkins, Ginger and Gazette bobbed instinctively below the lines of the sandbags as it burst with a whuuff high over the battlefield, illuminating the scene with the stark white brilliance of a photographer’s flash powder.
Atkins wished it hadn’t.
About fifty yards out half a dozen great, glistening wet worm-like creatures, thicker than a man was tall and some thirty yards long, had broken the surface of the grey-churned mud, like land whales. Atkins could see no eyes, but long probing tentacles quested the air around facial sphincters that contracted and relaxed to reveal barbed gullets. No sound issued from their gaping, clenching maws as they set about scooping the dead and decomposing into their pouting orifices, grazing like elephants, lifting food into their mouths, or else dragging the corpses down into the vermiculate earth. From the terrified yells and sobs it was clear that it wasn’t just the dead they were taking.
All along the fire trenches soldiers champed at the bit, wanting to shoot but constrained by orders.
The Very light went out. Another shot up into the sky from the observation post, burning whitely.
“C’mon, give the order,” muttered Atkins, a finger playing restlessly on his SMLE’s magazine cut-off.
Sergeant Hobson’s voice rang out. “Five rounds rapid. Fire!”
“About bloody time,” muttered Atkins as he flicked open the cut-off, took aim and fired before cycling the bolt and putting another cartridge into the receiver. He took aim, fired again, cycled once more.
Along the trench tattered bursts of rifle fire raked across the alien worms.
Trench mortars popped and flew into the air, arcing out into No Man’s Land.
Beside Atkins, Gazette was in his element now. Calmly, surely, he fired off his shots, taking his time, making each bullet count. Ginger on the other hand had completely lost it and was huddled on the firestep, by Atkins’ legs, his arms cradling his knees to his chest, sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.
The Very light went out again but the ungodly wet suction noises and weakening screams continued unabated. Another Very light went up from the observation post.
The worms were closer now. One reared up over the observation post itself. An officer, it must have been Lieutenant Everson, fired the Very pistol almost at point blank range. The flare shot up leaving a brief white trail before embedding itself in the hide of the creature where it continued to burn with a white-hot fury, causing it to thrash about in voiceless agony, its tentacles flailing helplessly. Some agent in its mucus coating, or subcutaneous fatty layer, must have been flammable for, under the intense heat of the flare, the great worm began to burn like a wick. Its bulk crashed down into the mud — right on top of the observation post.
“Everson’s bought it,” said Gazette, matter of factly.
“Are you kidding?” said Atkins. “Lucky’s out there. He’ll see ’em all right.”
“Thruppence says they’re landowners now.”
“Thruppence says they ain’t,” said Atkins, spitting on his palm. Gazette shook his hand, barely taking his eye from his rifle sight.
With the landscape now dimly illuminated by the burning carcass Atkins could make out the other worm creatures. One rippled over to the burning body, reaching out its tentacles, but was driven back by the heat of the flames. It raised its head up as if giving a great call, arched its body and dived into the ground. The others followed.
A ragged cheer rose from the trenches.
“They’re going!”
The elation didn’t last long. Thirty feet from the line one of the great worms broke out of the mud, ploughing toward the fire trench with a fluid peristaltic motion, through the troughs of shell holes and the crests of their craters, heedless of the twenty yard length of barbed wire entanglement it had ripped from the ground in its sinuous advance, and which was now hanging from its body.
Men who had seen comrades blown to so much meat, who had stoically suffered days of continuous bombardment, who had risked death every day, found it hard not to flee in the face of such a monstrous vision.
The command came again. “Fire!”
As Gazette took aim, carefully squeezing the trigger and firing off five more rounds at the monstrous creature before them, Atkins felt the ground beneath him tremble and the revetment against his chest begin to creak and strain. Sandbags tumbled into the trench from the parados behind them. He and Gazette glanced at each other.
“You don’t think—”
“Thinking’s for officers. Run!”
They slung their rifles over their shoulders and jumped back off the fire step as the revetment begin to splinter under a great wave of pressure building up from below. Ginger remained sobbing on the step, oblivious or incapable of reacting as plank after plank behind him burst free of its frame.
“Shit!”
A hand under each armpit Atkins and Gazette dragged him off the firestep and round the corner into the traverse. Barely had they vacated the fire bay before it erupted behind them in a shower of dirt, dust and splinters as another worm burst up through the trench.
Probing tentacles appeared around the corner of the traverse. One caught hold of Ginger’s ankle and pulled, tugging Atkins and Gazette off balance as the screaming man was dragged back towards the shattered fire bay. Atkins unslung his rifle and thrust his bayonet into the tentacle, pinning it to the ground, and fired, point blank range, severing the member. The other feelers let go of Ginger and retracted back round the corner, the lopped pseudopod trailing a dark viscous slime behind it.
Gazette grabbed Ginger by the scruff of the neck as he and Atkins half-scrambled, half-stumbled with him into the next fire bay where Gutsy, Porgy and Mercy were laying down covering fire as the wounded worm reared up. They kept it up as Atkins and Gazette retreated round the far corner to the adjacent traverse and the next fire bay, held by Sergeant Hobson and Corporal Ketch.
There they dropped Ginger to the duckboards and took aim at the mindless monster as it blindly sought for its attackers. Gutsy, Porgy and Mercy, abandoning their own position, fell back and joined them, as Gazette and Atkins in return gave them covering fire. Gazette had fired his five rounds and was reloading from a pouch on his webbing, while Atkins was still chambering and firing his third as the great worm, flinching under the hail of bullets, sought a way forward. It fell back from sight, retreating into the ground from which it had come.