“Blood and sand, who would have thought it was that easy?” he said.
“They had us bang to rights, but they just gave up,” said Riley, shaking his head, nonplussed.
“Well,” said Gutsy, “they met their god of death, they must have–”
High pitched squeals of terror and agony rang from the cavern, the unearthly screams prolonged, magnified, iterated and reiterated by the vast chamber beyond.
“What the hell was that?”
“Sounded like the chatts,” said Everson.
Something moved in the starless black expanse beyond the entrance. It was impossible to tell what, or how big it might be, or whether it was one thing or many, from the sound alone.
The tank engine revved, snorting like a territorial beast, and lurched forward, like a hound at the leash.
If they were expecting a demonic gatekeeper, they weren’t disappointed. From the mouth of the cavern scrabbled a savage-looking creature of gigantic size, part insect, part reptile with razor-taloned feet and a wide mouth filled with sharp needle teeth for shredding and tearing. Caught between some of them were the mangled, crushed remains of the chatts. It took a mouthful of the writhing creepers and tore them from their roots. A heavily segmented carapace covered its back, and when it roared, a warm foul stench assailed the Tommies. Atkins felt his stomach heave at the smell.
“Well at least it’s only got one head,” said Pot Shot. “I was half expecting Cerberus.”
Gazette let off five rounds rapid at the creature. They hit its carapace, but they didn’t stop it. It turned in the direction of the petty annoyance and roared. The Tommies scrambled back for their recently-vacated cover.
The tank’s six-pounders fired. One missed, hitting the crater wall, and the other glanced against the beast’s carapace, blasting a hole in its side. It roared in pain. Now it was wounded and roused to anger.
From out of the sky, Tulliver’s Strutter dived on the creature, incendiary bullets streaking through the air. The beast shook it head as if trying to rid itself of vicious insects. It reared up after the Strutter and swiped the air with its talons, but Tulliver had pulled the machine away beyond its grasp.
In that moment, Everson saw their chance: the belly of the beast wasn’t armoured. The tank crew had noticed too, for the Ivanhoe’s guns spoke again, carrying a message of death as two six-pounder shells hit their target squarely this time, in the soft underbelly, ripping open the flesh of the beast, disintegrating bone, eviscerating cavities and vaporising organs as the creature fell forward through a mist of its own atomised blood. Its jaw hit the ground, slamming its teeth together, and it released its last foul breath.
INTERLUDE 5
6th April 1917
My Dearest Flora,
Today I walked a Road of the Dead that leads to Hell. I thought I had walked one before. I thought it was in Belgium on the Menin Road to Ypres, paved with mud, corpses and crump holes.
But I was wrong. This is different. This is a more personal torment. Sitting here now, with this yawning abyss of darkness before me, I can’t help but feel that with every step I have taken, my own good intentions have brought me here. Mea culpa.
I always told myself that you were the kind of girl that I would go to hell and back for, and I know William had said as much to you, too, the night before we left for training.
I have lived through hell on Earth once and not returned. Neither did William. For that, I am truly sorry, but now I have a second chance, a second hell. I hope with all my heart that this time I shall return to you.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HAVING LANDED THE Strutter on the Strip, just beyond the trees, Tulliver and the Padre walked in the dell, trusting that it would be safe now that the telluric storm, Croatoan’s Torment, had passed.
Tarak was roasting meat over a fire. Napoo was still keeping his distance, not approving of the Ruanach’s worship of Croatoan. Atkins’ Black Hand Gang and the others sat round the fire eating, Everson and Everson mucking in with them, while Pot Shot and Gazette stood on sentry duty. The tank crew sat together by the Ivanhoe. Old habits were hard to break, Tulliver guessed.
Tulliver sniffed the air. “Smells good! What’s cooking?”
Mercy was about to open his mouth when Atkins spoke up. “Don’t ask; just eat it. You’ll be better off.”
Tulliver caught sight of the slain beast and was about to venture a query when he was distracted by someone calling his name.
“Tulliver!” cried Werner, striding towards the pilot and shaking the man’s hand. Tulliver was taken aback. This was truly a day for dead men.
“Werner? How the devil did you survive? I saw your bus crash, I found the wreckage.”
Werner shrugged with false modesty. “I managed to slow my airspeed almost to a stall, so when I crashed, the tree canopy cushioned the impact. I was lucky; I was able to climb out and down a tree while those whip creatures tore my aeroplane to bits. Still, any landing you can walk away from, am I right?”
“Well, yes,” said Tulliver, still stunned at the sight of the German.
“Did you see, up there?” he asked earnestly. “I was not trying to kill you. Did you see what I wanted to show you, the Heilige linien? It is a big mystery, is it not?”
Tulliver nodded. “Yes it is, we both saw it,” he said, indicating the Padre and getting caught up in Werner’s enthusiasm. “The scale of it! It’s unbelievable.”
Everson patted the Roanoke journal resting on his lap. “We’ve learnt a lot about this world, and yet there is so much more that we don’t know.” He shook his head, daunted by the sheer scale of the task. “What is this structure that’s buried in the ground, which covers hundreds of square miles and discharges telluric energy?”
“Well, I’ve no answers,” said Tulliver, shaking his head, “but I do know we can use it to navigate by. It means I can fly further and higher. It gives us a network of landmarks, a vast geometric web, like roads or canals, to fly by. If one gets lost, one can simply follow one of these to a crossroads until you come upon some other landmark. We can map these lines, use them to explore.”
Riley joined in. “We can send telegraph signals along them, carried on the telluric current that flows through them. That gives us lines of communication. We can stay in contact with patrols and exploration parties at much greater distances. There might even be a way we can tap the telluric current itself.”
“All very admirable, gentlemen,” said Everson, bolstered by their enthusiasm, “and with an armistice in place with the Khungarrii we may be able to do just that – if we can avoid colonies like the Zohtakarrii, that is. But I don’t intend that we should stay here if there is a way home. We’ve come this far and discovered a lot about this world, but dare we go further?”
Everyone knew what he was talking about. It was hard to avoid it.
“It appears that Jeffries has descended into the chatt underworld to free the imprisoned demon, Croatoan.”