The urman put an arm across the hatchway, blocking his way.
“GarSuleth has killed my Clan, the Ruanach,” Tarak said. His eyes narrowed as his voice hardened. “He has snared them and cocooned them in that living cobweb for food.” He looked down as his hand traced the raw, tender brand on his chest.
A voice called out from inside. “Alfie, get a move on!”
Alfie shook his head and was about to speak, when Jack’s great arm brushed Tarak’s hand aside. Alfie caught the urman’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed as Jack pulled the sponson hatch shut. Alfie was quietly grateful that the decision to abandon Tarak had been taken out of his hands. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to go through with it.
He heard the urman bang on the iron plating. “I have been spared and marked by Croatoan to bring vengeance upon the children of GarSuleth,” he declared. “Take me with you.”
Alfie closed his ears to the pleading. He was doing the lad a favour. “Cecil, you’ll have to be starboard gearsman, I’ll tell you what to do,” he said quietly.
Cecil’s eyes lit up and he looked to Jack. Jack jerked his head. “Go on, lad, do as you’re told.”
Inside the cramped white compartment of the ironclad, Wally edged forward and took his place in the driver’s seat. “When you’ve got it started, come up and sit with me,” he told Nellie as he squeezed past her on the gangway. “I need a co-driver.”
“Me?”
“You can drive ambulances, can’t you?”
Nellie grinned, despite herself. Driving a tank. Since she had seen one, it was all she had ever wanted to do. She felt the same delicious thrill she’d felt when she rode her first motorcycle.
First, they had to start it.
Norman spat on his hands and grasped the giant starting handle at the rear of the compartment with the others. Norman had never quite accepted her as the others had, and held some deep-seated resentment to her presence. The great Daimler engine coughed and spluttered into life and settled into a steady roar. Nellie clambered forward to join Wally in the drivers’ seats and tried to ignore the dried blood on the gangway and walls of the starboard bulkhead.
Wally ran the engine up and signalled the gearsmen at the back.
Norman and Cecil put their tracks into gear.
The crew exchanged wary glances as the fug of the petrol fruit fumes began to fill the compartment. Nellie held her breath for as long as she could, then took a deep breath, followed by a second, more contented one.
LIKE A BLIND and bound Samson, once the source of its power had returned, the Ivanhoe roared like a territorial beast, belching smoke from its roof exhaust as its track plates began to move tentatively, slapping the ground. The ironclad gained traction and rumbled forward, ripping itself free of the remaining tangle of undergrowth, shrugging off its now insubstantial chains.
Tarak watched the tank for a moment, touched the brand upon his chest once more in a silent oath, and then, as the iron behemoth moved off, he ran lightly up the back of the port track to crouch behind the raised driver’s cab, like a barbarian astride a prehistoric mount.
“THEY’RE COMING!” ATKINS heard Pot Shot’s warning shout. “They’ve bought it, they’re following us.” His gangly form came racing along the path, his lanky legs dwarfing Gazette’s strides as the sniper tried to keep up with him. “And I bloody wish they weren’t,” he said as he passed Atkins.
“Shut up, you daft ’a’porth. They’re just walking mushrooms.”
“I hate mushrooms.”
Atkins shrugged his shoulders in an attempt to make the electric lance backpack sit on his back more comfortably. It didn’t work. Behind him, Mercy wound the crank handle to build the charge. Atkins could feel the whirr of the magneto in his chest as Mercy’s efforts pressed it against his back. Atkins hefted the lance in his hands, his fingers fidgeting over the trigger pads. The end of the lance sparked. Mercy patted him on the shoulder. “You’re good to go, Only.”
The tide of grey filaments crept silently towards them, over the rocks and through the jungle floor detritus.
The grey dead men followed, their halting advance accompanied by the soft puffs of bursting fruit bodies and the muffled falls of creatures as they succumbed to the choking spore clouds, and whose desiccating bodies fed the ineluctable advance.
“Gas hoods!” ordered Atkins, pulling his own down over his head. He was soon cocooned inside the damp, close flannel hood once again, his vision, hearing and breathing impaired, the metallic copper tang of the return valve in his mouth.
He had a moment of doubt as the hooded soldiers with their blank eyes and red proboscises began to stumble forward in their masks. Napoo, bandanna tied over his nose and mouth, fixed him with an accusing glare, and Atkins felt abashed. Perhaps this had been a bad idea. Still, it was too late now. His repugnance for this stuff, and what it had done to decent men, drove him on. And, beyond all of that was the persistent thought of Jeffries, and above it all, Flora.
“We should be able to keep ahead of it,” warned Everson, as they moved through the jungle ahead of the slow wave of mycelia as it burrowed through the decomposing humus beneath their feet. “But not so far ahead that we lose them,” he reminded them.
“Shouldn’t be too hard. They move like they were wading through Somme mud anyway,” said Mercy.
Gutsy turned and watched their slow, implacable advance. “Still gives me the willies.”
The Fusiliers moved on at a fast walking pace, checking every so often to make sure the things were still following them and that Hepton was still with them, refusing as he did to give up any of his equipment. They needn’t have worried.
Atkins caught sight of something out of the corner of his eyes. He couldn’t be sure whether it was really there or just a smudge on his mica eyepiece. He stopped and turned his whole head. Something grey slipped between the trees to their left.
“Blood and sand. They’re trying to outflank us.”
More glimpses of grey to the right.
He listened for the drone of the aeroplane, but it was difficult under the hood. They just had to stay alive until the next telluric discharge occurred. Atkins had eagerly acceded to Tulliver’s plan since it meant Jeffries’ trail would still be within reach. Now he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of it.
More grey figures appeared to their right and left, and with them came the grey-white carpet, as more fruiting bodies burst around them like a barrage and yellow-white clouds of spore blossomed like subdued trench mortar explosions. The cloud of spores billowed and settled, the turbid mist drifting around their legs in whorls and wakes as they passed.
It was the silence of the advance that unnerved Atkins. It lent an air of unreality to their predicament, as if he were watching it unfold in a picture house. He could almost imagine the melodramatic piano accompaniment.
Atkins heard the crackle and caught a brief flash against the tree trunks as Tonkins fired his electric lance. For a moment, the spore cloud parted and the creeping white carpet was repulsed, as if he had dropped soap into oily water.
He forged on, trying to stay ahead of the rising tide of spore cloud. “Have you charged me?” he bellowed at Mercy.
“What do you think I am?” retorted Mercy with a good-natured bawl. “A Lyon’s Tea Room Gladys?” Mercy walked straight into Atkins’ back as he came to an abrupt halt. “Oi! Watch it, Only!”
Atkins raised his electric lance. “We’ve got company.”
“Bloody hell, how did they move fast enough to get in front of us?”
“Does it matter? They’ve got us surrounded.”
Ahead of them, two more grey ambulated corpses emerged shambling from the woodland, a carpet of grey filaments laying itself down before them. Even with the cankerous growths and the blighted features, it was with horror and dismay that Atkins recognised one of them and let out a groan.