“Nurse!” It was Miller. He was looking in horror at Jones, who had begun fitting on his stretcher, his spine arching, his hips bucking.
“Right, get him into the aid post, we’ll have to try and relieve the pressure in those cysts,” said Lippett, all airs and graces vanishing in an instant. “Stanton, prepare the equipment, come on, man.”
As Lippett set about his operation, Sister Fenton gave Edith a look. “A word, Nurse.” She led Edith away from the Aid Post.
“Two!” said Edith through gritted teeth, doing her best to contain her anger. “Two out of twenty seven. We could have saved them if Mr Lippett had listened to me in the first place, if he had the slightest—”
“You can’t know that.”
“He didn’t even try.”
Sister Fenton fixed her with a hard stare, one that said she would brook no nonsense. “Nurse Bell. I will deal with this. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this isn’t a hospital. We don’t have the facilities of a hospital. We don’t even have the supplies of a Casualty Clearing Station or an Ambulance train. God knows, those would seem like luxuries here. The drugs, the surgical procedures, the medicines. We are all doing the best we can. This place brings illnesses, infections, things we’ve never seen before, and without the benefits that modern medicine has to offer. What more could we have done?”
“But Sister,” Edith protested.
“Nurse Bell!”
But Edith could no more keep quiet now than a whizz bang, or she felt she would explode. “I will not let a man like that dismiss—”
Sister Fenton interrupted. “You’re letting Driver Abbott’s suffrage go to your head. Mr Lippett is a qualified doctor. You’re a VAD. You’ve had, what, six months’ basic medical training? It wasn’t all that long ago you were just emptying bedpans and changing dressings. By all means, note and report your observations of your patients to me, and I will do what I can, but do not suppose to tell him what to do. Do I make myself clear?”
Edith could barely trust herself to speak. “Yes, Sister,” she managed to mutter.
SOMETIME LATER, DRAINED and blood stained, Captain Lippett came out of the tent and approached the nurses. He shook his head. “He’s dead, I’m afraid. Died on the table.”
Edith struggled to restrain her emotions and choked back a sob. Sister Fenton remained impassive.
“If it’s any comfort, the other one you brought in, Miller, is still alive.” Lippett finished wiping his hands. “Though it appears you were right, Nurse Bell. They were more than just neurasthenic,” he added with a trace of resentment. “Come and see.” He ushered them into the tent. Edith entered, wary of what she might find. Jones’ body was still on the table, covered by a bloody sheet. “They were host to some sort of parasitic infection,” Lippett continued. “Fascinating things. I managed to remove some of them from the intestines.”
He showed them a steel surgical tray. A thing, smaller than Edith’s little finger, lay in a pool of blood. At first glance, its small delicate-looking grey body seemed ribbed, but on closer inspection, Edith realised it was corkscrewed. It looked gruesome enough as it was, but to imagine it inside? She suppressed a shudder. Her real horror, however, was reserved for the small head. The body tapered toward it. It was eyeless. Needle sharp hooks, as fine as fish bones, surrounded an oral sucker. As she tore her attention away from the thing she realised Lippett was still talking.
“…it’s an intriguing pathology. Although most of them remained in the gut, I found a cluster of them curled round the brain stem, from where it seems they can affect the nervous system of the host,” he was saying.
“Making them do things against their will?” asked Edith, her face crumpled with disgust.
“It appears so. The hosts acting against their own best interest for the parasites’ benefit. It would certainly explain the patients’ uncharacteristic behaviour. From the reports, I believe a number of chatts were affected, too,” said Lippett, getting to grip with his subject. “I suspect that they might be the parasite’s natural hosts. As hive insects, they probably have weaker individual minds. As for the neurasthenics, perhaps their weakened mental state made them more susceptible to the parasites’ control. From what you’ve witnessed, I’d hazard a guess that the parasite’s life cycle required it to be eaten by those Kreothe creatures,”
“Like tapeworms?” enquired Sister Fenton.
“Quite,” said Lippett with enthusiasm. “Of course, this is only an initial theory. I shall continue to study the creatures — and we still have Miller.”
Edith opened her mouth to say something, but was silenced by a stern glance from Sister Fenton.
“For now, our first course of action is to trace the infection back to its source,” said Lippett, looking at the nurses expectantly.
“We’ve had no reports of strange behaviour from any of the other men,” said Sister Fenton. “It must have been something specific to the neurasthenics.”
Lippett nodded in agreement. “Perhaps something the men ate in the past week. It would have contained the eggs which the patients would have ingested. Once in the digestive tract, they hatched and grew into their juvenile forms. Some would have bored into the bloodstream and travelled round the body until they reached the brainstem.”
Edith’s face burned with shock. “Oh,” she said. She was going to say more, but Sister had only just berated her for presuming too much with Doctor Lippett.
Sister Fenton raised an eyebrow as Edith turned to look at her. “Yes, Nurse Bell?”
“The stew,” Edith explained.
“I beg your pardon?” said Lippett.
“The stew, Doctor. I didn’t know. Honestly.”
“It seems none of us did, nurse. Did anybody else eat any of it? Did you?”
Edith shook her head emphatically. “No, it was specifically for the patients. Although…”
“Yes, Nurse?”
Edith put her hand to her mouth. “Lieutenant Mathers. I remember Nellie saying he had some, a small amount I’m sure.”
“Mathers?” queried Lippett.
“The Tank Commander,” said Sister Fenton.
“Well, I’m sure he’s in little danger. I mean it’s not as if he’s one of Nurse Bell’s little lost sheep, is he?”
THE TWILIGHT OF the Kreothe passed and, in dribs and drabs, the soldiers climbed once more out from their dark holes into the alien sun.
Everson sighed. He stood looking at the flagpole, which was now leaning at a precarious angle, knocked by a careless Kreothe tentacle. The Union flag flapped and fluttered weakly, like an ailing dog, still wagging its tail at its master’s approach.
It put Everson in mind of the leaning Madonna and Child at Albert, in France. It had stood atop the basilica there until it had been bombed. The statue survived, but leaning at an angle. It was thought that if it fell, the war would end. If only things were that simple.
Several small nearby copses had been uprooted, but in the shelter of another, the three captured battlepillars survived unharmed. Maybe, thought Everson, because the Kreothe found them unpalatable. Still, the Kreothe’s loss might be their gain.
“Ever have one of those days, sir?” asked Hobson.
“Nothing but, Sergeant. Nothing bloody but.”
“So, what do we do now, sir?”
“Now, Hobson?” he said, looking around at the carnage and sighing heavily. “We start again.” And not for the first time, Everson’s mind turned to Atkins and his black hand gang and to that damned tank. Where were they?