A woman’s horrified scream cut off the murmurs of assent.
Porgy was the first to jump and grab his rifle from the tee-pee of arms, causing the others to clatter to the ground.
“That bloody bastard. I knew it. If he’s harmed her—” he said as he dashed off into the dark past other men, now standing up from the campfires and looking out into the night.
Atkins grabbed a rifle and ran after him, weaving between the fires and the muttering troops. Reaching the edge of the mud flat Atkins jumped the three or four feet to the plain and, without breaking step, ran on after Porgy toward the small copse of trees not twenty yards from the mud.
The screaming continued hysterically.
Atkins made it to the trees to find Porgy standing silhouetted against the light from a hurricane lantern hanging on a low bough. He rounded Porgy, accidentally standing on a discarded crutch as he did so. Then he saw Edith kneeling on the ground, her apron and nurse’s uniform drenched in blood. The headless body of Corporal Sandford lay sprawled across her lap, blood now only gently pulsing from the open neck and pooling in the trough of her apron. There was no sign of his head.
A crack and a rustle from the foliage above alerted them and Edith screamed again, attempting to straighten her legs out in front of her and push her way back from under the trees. Porgy went down on one knee and clamped a hand across her mouth. Her eyes darted wildly to the canopy. Atkins put the rifle butt to his shoulder and scanned the foliage.
With his boot, Porgy clumsily struggled to push the headless body of the dead soldier off Edith’s legs. “Shhh,” he whispered in her ear before dragging her to safety.
Several other soldiers came running. Atkins beckoned them to stop and dropped down on one knee, eyes still fixed above him. He heard the sound of magazine cut-offs opened and loading bolts ratcheted back as one or two of the men circled round warily. He was aware of the sobbing nurse somewhere behind him, the noise growing fainter as Porgy took her back to the safety of the entrenchment.
His awareness immediately refocused as he caught movement on a bough above him. He gave rapid fire, five rounds as per. There was a sudden crack and crash as it fell through the canopy. The men backed off as something hit the ground. It was the soldier’s head. The rustle continued high up in the tree as something jumped from one branch to the next in an effort to escape. Atkins and two other men followed the sound, firing blindly up into the foliage. Several others moved round outside the copse to cut it off. Whatever it was, they had it trapped now.
There was a scream as something snatched a soldier up into the foliage. His rifle clattered to the ground. There was a wet crunch accompanied by a strangulated sound before a head dropped down, bounced on the ground, and ended up staring, horrified, at Atkins.
Men blazed away into the trees, lost in fear and anger.
“Stand back,” said a voice.
It was Porgy. From somewhere he had acquired a Lewis gun, slung from his right shoulder by a canvas strap and carried on his hip, a fresh circular magazine fixed to the top and several others in their canvas webbing slung over his other shoulder.
“Where?” he growled.
Atkins jerked his head upwards.
Somebody, an NCO, fired a Very flare into the trees. It burst with an angry hissing white light, setting the leaves ablaze and casting its stark glare over the area. There came a hoarse throaty screech and a rapid chattering as something thrashed about in the tree.
“There!” shouted someone as the dying glow of the Very light caught something shiny and brown. Porgy opened fire. The magazine rotated and the rapid rattle of the Lewis gun ripped through the foliage. There was an ear-splitting screech, like nails on a blackboard, and a large body crashed down followed by another.
Atkins stepped forward to examine the large, insect-like creature. Nearby, there was the decapitated body of the second soldier. “Yrredetti,” he said, recognising the creature and its mottled markings from their mission in the forest, before putting his rifle against the creature’s head and firing. Rather than dying, as he had every right to expect it would, the now headless insectoid body began trashing about and only stopped when Porgy unloaded another entire magazine into it.
As the flames from the flare spread above them and the trees in the copse began to blaze, stretcher-bearers arrived to carry away the two dead soldiers. They left the body of the Yrredetti to burn.
INTERLUDE THREE
9th November 1916
Dearest Flora,
I should be writing this from Sans German, by rights. We should have been relieved and back in the reserve line by now, but all that’s gone to pot. We’re sans Germans all right, but we’re sans everything else too. Although things are looking up. We had a picnic this evening, al fresco, as they say, to celebrate our first harvest. Like all picnics we got pestered by insects, well only the one, but you should have seen the size of it.
Porgy is sweet on a nurse. He’s quite serious about her, I think. It’s sad and funny to see. But all the boys love our ‘Roses of No Man’s Land’ and she has a fearsome Sister over her who forbids fraternisation, so I don’t hold out much hope for him, though he seems proper determined and pines like a lost puppy.
Mercy is up to his scrounging ways again. He’s found something special for Lt Everson that he won’t tell us about. Loves a secret, does Mercy. Hasn’t stopped Gutsy starting a book on what it might be though. I put a tanner on a bath tub, because well, we haven’t washed for nearly two weeks now, so God knows we could use one. Well, I say a tanner, but we haven’t had any pay for the last few weeks and it don’t look as if the payroll will come any time soon, either.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AFTER THE YRREDETTI incident, fires were set on the plain in a controlled slash and burn policy, forming a cordon sanitaire around No Man’s Land to deny further cover to any predators. Atkins watched as the smudgy black smoke drifted into the sky. It felt as if they were finally making their mark, conquering the land that had seemed so hostile to them when they first arrived.
As the days passed, hope began to fade that they would be transported home as quickly as they had arrived and the new survival practices became an established part of the daily military routine. With the most suitable trees nearby having been cut down for firewood, shoring or building materials, the Foraging Parties had to move further and further afield. Poilus continued to improve and Napoo, in high spirits, continued to educate the soldiers in hunter-gathering.
He had pointed out a fruit tree, the large purple fruits of which were the size of mangoes and wincingly sweet. This gave Mercy an idea. To be fair it was obviously an idea he’d had for quite a while because it didn’t take him long to put it into action. In an abandoned dugout, Mercy constructed a crude still from water drums and Ticklers’ jam tins, and even managed to scrounge some copper piping for a condenser. He also acquired some yeast from the cooks’ supplies.
One night Mercy slunk into the Section’s dugout carrying an old stone rum jar, almost tripping over Gordon as the creature chatted the seams of Pot Shot’s shirt. “Here, he said. “Try this. I’ve already sold half to some lads from 4 Platoon.”
“You haven’t been nicking the rum rations, have you? Hobson’ll have your guts for garters,” said Porgy.