Atkins watched them go as the light from their torches receded up the slope and the tunnel faded into blackness again.
Below them, the sounds became more urgent, as the repeated clinker and clatter of tumbling debris told them that the creature was breaking through.
“Stand to!” Atkins ordered. He knelt with Chalky and Pot Shot in the tunnel. In a rank behind him stood Gutsy, Gazette, Porgy and Mercy, their packs and webbing bulging with stone jars. Despite the number that the men were carrying, Chandar looked despondently at the containers they had to leave behind. “So many, so much… knowledge…”
The intermittent smash of rubble became constant as the creature found enough momentum to push through the barricade, ploughing a wave of rubble as it raced up the tunnel incline towards them.
“Fire!” ordered Atkins.
A fusillade blasted into the darkness. The onrushing wave of rubble didn’t slow.
“Fall back!” yelled Atkins. “Fall back!”
THE SOUND OF gunfire behind them spurred Nellie, Napoo and the tank crew on, passing through several galleries, taking any upward tunnel, the jars clanking together as they tried to pick up their pace without breaking any.
“We’d get out of here faster if we didn’t have to carry these bloody things,” Wally groused. “Why can’t we just dump ’em?”
“Because, like the infantryman said, these things can hit the chatts where it hurts, wherever the hell that is. And I’m all for that,” said Norman.
“Just imagine you’re on ration party and quit griping,” said Reggie.
Mathers stirred. “Sir. Are you all right?” asked Jack.
He shook off his crewmen’s help. “Never better, Tanner, never better,” he said, breathing deeply. The pain in his stomach was fading fast. Mathers felt calmer than he had done in days. It was as if whatever fever he had been suffering from had broken.
He felt an insistent need to feel the wind on his face. He stopped, confused. There, a faint cooling air current from a branching tunnel to the left. He turned towards it, not a doubt in his mind. The draft in his face drew him on and he gave in to the impulse.
Behind him, his crew called after him, perplexed, “Sir! Sir!”
“Stay there!” he commanded. He did not need them now. He walked on down the tunnel, and the breeze grew stronger. He luxuriated in the feel of it upon his skin. He heard the sound of something rushing up the tunnel towards him, but he wasn’t afraid. He smiled to himself, content. He saw a slick, black bulk that filled the tunnel bearing down on him, and he stopped and welcomed it with open arms.
ATKINS AND THE others, meanwhile, raced up the tunnel and took a fork, which led to another gallery. Passages and chambers led off in several directions, up and down. The discordant whistling from the choked ventilation system seemed amplified here, making the men, tense and edgy already, feel even more windy. Chalky had started to fret and whimper.
In the centre of the gallery, they found recently dead chatt bodies. Atkins recognised the scentirrii and the priests. “Zohtakarrii,” he said, as he passed them. Something had deposited them here. The Section spread out and scouted the gallery.
Gutsy pointed at another pile. “Urmen. Must be that shaman’s bunch.”
“The chatts were killed outside. Why have they been left here?” wondered Atkins.
A hard translucent substance plugged several adjoining chamber entrances, sealing them. Atkins cupped his hands to one and tried to peer through. For a moment, he couldn’t make anything out. Something moved, slapping against the translucent barrier, something with the texture of tripe. The pressure from within grew. The whole of the barrier began to click and snap under the pressure. Cracks raced across the surface. The plug began to splinter.
“I think that’s why!”said Atkins as he stumbled back with the others, retreating to the centre of the gallery, as the seals on the other chambers began to creak under the strain from within.
Chandar sank down on its legs and hissed.
Chalky whimpered, a wet stain spreading down his khaki trousers. Poor sod. Atkins reckoned it was as much from the unsettling sound of the whistling, that reverberated unpleasantly in the bowels, as from fear.
“Stick with me,” he said, patting the lad on the shoulder. Chalky looked at him through the tears he was trying to fight back. “I’ll see you, right, lad.”
“I don’t think it’s a good time to be here,” said Mercy.
The seal shattered and something began uncoiling from within. Two shapeless black creatures, the size of motor cars, slopped out of their foetal chambers on a tide of thick fluid that sluiced across the gallery floor, washing up against the piles of bodies and depositing the creatures on the chamber floor. The glistening creatures lay like great excised viscera. They seemed totally without skeletal support, with no discernable head, limbs or features of any sort. Then after a moment their shapeless bodies began to contract and flow, drawing themselves in; whether as a defensive reflex or like the first awkward attempts at movement by a newborn calf struggling to stand, it was hard to say. At the same time, orifices formed, gaping black lipless holes that began to suckle blindly at the air.
Gazette nudged Pot Shot. “Better hope it goes for the dead ones first.”
“Would you go for Machonochies when there’s steak?” asked Gutsy.
“Fair point.”
The heaving black bulks extruded tendrils, which quested blindly towards the waiting bodies and, finding them, began to drawn them towards their open maws.
A third creature was expelled from its chamber like afterbirth and, unable to reach the food thanks to its birthmates, it sent tendrils out after the Tommies.
“And for my next trick,” Gazette announced, “pick a tunnel, any tunnel.”
Atkins picked one and they ran, the stone pots and jars chinking and clattering as they did.
THE TANK CREW, abandoned in the passage by Mathers, began to turn on themselves.
“We’d better go after him,” said Frank.
Norman shook his head. “He told us to stay here.”
Reggie stepped forwards. “He’s ill, even if he won’t admit it himself.”
Norman glared at him. “Well, there’s no point us all going. Send him.” He jerked his thumb at Alfie. “If he’s got the balls. I want to see him put himself on the line for the Sub.”
“No!” Nellie protested.
“It’s all right, Nellie,” said Alfie. “I’ll fetch him. I’m not afraid.”
“Alfie, don’t!”
Alfie smiled shyly and gave her a wink that exuded more confidence than he felt. “I won’t be long. Back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. The Lieutenant can’t have gone far.”
“And why the hell should we trust you?” snarled Cecil, stepping into his path. “You’ve never understood the Lieutenant’s plans. He’s a genius, he’s got it all sorted out, up here,” he said, tapping his forehead. “He’s a man of vision. He has plans for this world and he’s taking us with him. But oh, no, you don’t want to go. You know better. You’d rather be with your bint, here.”
“’Ere, you watch your lip!” snapped Nellie.
“Or what,” Cecil jeered, “your beau will swing for me?”
Nellie’s eyes narrowed, full of focused fury. “He won’t bloody have to, I’ll do it myself.”
Alfie sighed. He didn’t want to do this. Not here, not now. “You can’t see it, can you? Any of you! It’s the fumes talking, all of this. This isn’t the crew I knew back in Norfolk. You lot have been riding my back about my loyalty. I’ve done as much to keep the Ivanhoe going as any of you, and we’re standing here arguing about it while the Lieutenant could be in danger. He’s not himself.” Cecil didn’t back down. “Fine. In return, I’m trusting you. With her!” he pointed at Nellie, knowing that he didn’t have to trust them. The urman, Napoo, would keep her safe, and she had her revolver.