“Not if he gets his head blown off first,” Liggett mumbled, “and that’s exactly what’ll happen if he don’t join the rest of us back down here on earth.” His mood did not improve when he found the cigarette in a small, brown puddle. “Look at this,” he gasped. “The only bit of water on this whole bleeding road, and Potter makes me drop my lastciggiein it!”
“Can we have a break, Crown Sergeant?” Winston called out to the large man ahead of him.
Crown Sergeant Sterling paused and looked back at the four men. “I suppose you lads will be wanting tea next then?”
“No, Crown Sergeant, it’s just that we haven’t stopped since . . .” Winston’s voice trailed off, lost in the warbling of the birds.
William closed his eyes and unbidden images of the last battle flooded in, the horrors of close-quarter bayonet fighting, the brutal, terrified expressions on their enemies’ faces that meant It’s you or me. Hideous memories of how Dunhill and the others had died.
Sterling softened. The past was haunting him as well.
“I guess we could all do with a break,” he said quietly. “Right then! We’ll rest here and carry on just before sunset. Should be there within another couple of hours.”
Gratefully the exhausted men unslung their knapsacks, rested their rifles upright to keep them clean and sank to the ground. William felt his muscles knotting into cramps, and he spent long minutes stretching the pain away. He did not mind the cramps. He could deal with them. There were far worse pains he had seen other people suffering, indignities visited upon them by murderous Man . . .
“What will we do when we reach the forest, Crown Sergeant?” Morris asked.
The big man drank deeply from his canteen before answering. “Find out if any of the other lads made it out alive,” he answered grimly. “See if we’re the lot of it. If so, we’ll fall in with the French and the Yanks until we reach the Hindenburg line. The Yanks are sure to have a radio. I’ll get advisement from headquarters on what we’re to do.”
“If it’s all the same to you, Crown Sergeant,” Winston joked, “I’ll just walk on to London. I’ve seen enough to the Hun and I’d like to hear a bit more about this Chaplin fellow.”
“That’s very noble of you, Private,” Sterling said with a humorless grin. “But I’m guessing you’ll stay with the rest of us.”
“Who is this Chaplin bloke anyhow?” asked Morris. “I heard some boys from the Royal Fifth speaking of him as well.”
“A politician, I should guess,” Liggett said. “One of the bastards . . .”
They chatted, bantered, avoiding any subject close enough to remind them of the war. William tuned them out because he so liked to watch, to see the way their eyes changed when the spoke of home, to sense the relaxation settling into their bones when they could forget the fight, even for a moment. Fighting men, he thought, were as close to the basis of the human animal as could be. Every emotion was emphasized, every thought clear, the fear and the hope and the dread actually felt, not just thought.
“Penny for your thoughts, William,” Morris said.
William started, realized he had been drifting away, although to where he had no idea.
“I’m not sure I could articulate them properly,” he said, pausing to think for a moment. He was aware that the others were silent now, watching him. “Have you noticed the birds and the insects all around us?”
“I hadn’t given it much thought,” Morris admitted, fishing through his knapsack.
“There’s a war going on all over, happening in their very home, yet they stay. They adapt. They sing along with the sounds of the artillery. Remember when we saw the tanks?”
Morris nodded. Then he frowned.
William wondered if they were remembering the same thing.
There had been more of them then, of course. They’d been farther north, securing a bridge to provide safe passage for the armored column. It was the first time any of them had actually seen the new form of weaponry. The tanks had been slow, ponderous things. Even Crown Sergeant Sterling, a career soldier, marvelled at the sheer destructive force the machines bespoke.
As the column had rolled safely across the bridge and chewed its way through a field on the other side, a herd of deer stood watching from the treeline.
“Those deer adapted as well,” William said to the seated men. “Something new had entered their home and they investigated, then dismissed it. The sound of artillery echoes off the hills, and the birds become accustomed to it so quickly. I was just wondering . . . how does nature accept the changes?” He shook his head. “How long before it refuses to accept them?”
He kicked at the dirt under his feet, and wondered whether it was the dust of dead men.
“And just look at the new ways we’ve devised to kill each other: the machine-gun; the tank; poison gas! The press calls this the war to end all wars. We hurtle toward our date with destiny, our date with the future. Yet what do we really know of the world we live on? What mysteries of nature have eluded our grasp? What do we truly know of this planet’s inhabitants? I wonder what other creatures have adapted to this chaos . . . creatures we don’t even know about yet. After all, this is their home too. We’re the intruders here. We’re the murderers.”
“Well, that may be,” Morris replied, “but it’s not very well our choice.” He fished around in his rucksack and pulled out a faded photograph. A young woman stared back at him. He sighed deeply.
“You miss her,” William stated.
“Oh aye, I miss her terribly,” Morris whispered. “But it’s more than that.”
“What?”
The men were silent, none of them looking at Morris, all of them waiting to hear what he had to say.
“I’m sure I’ll never see her again.”
There was something wet and red in the middle of the trench. William stepped over it as he ran. Behind him, Brown was still screaming.
Dunhill was holding something ropy and glistening. As William raced toward him Dunhill held up his cupped hands in a plea for help, and the shining strands spilled out into the mud.
William knelt to help him, the mud squelching around his knees. Desperately, he grabbed at the soldier’s innards, clawing his hands as they slipped through his fingers and into the dirt.
He scraped at the mud. A pair of yellow eyes stared up at him.
They blinked.
“Everything has adapted, William,” Dunhill spat, a crimson froth forming on his mouth. “Known, and not yet known.”
Morris careened around the corner then, running at the two men squatting in the muck. Behind him came the Hun, bayonets gleaming in the moonlight.
“William!” Morris screamed as a blade sprouted from his chest. “Are you writing this down?”
The Germans trampled over him, bearing down on William. The eyes in the mud blinked again, then narrowed. William struggled to rise and two gnarled hands burst from the earth, grasping his shoulders in a fierce grip.
“William!”
He opened his eyes with a gasp. Morris was shaking him.
“Come on then, time to get up. Something’s happening.”
“I was dreaming,” William said breathlessly, looking around in confusion. “Dunhill . . .”
“I dreamed about him too,” Morris said, nodding his head sadly. “I imagine we’ll dream it forever.”
“No,” William insisted, “this wasn’tjust the battle, not just what happened to Dunhill. There was something in the earth.”
“Look lively, lads,” Sterling hissed. “We’ve got company.”
A thick fog had descended over the countryside, obscuring the beet fields and the road in front of them. William glanced at his watch. It was nearly sundown. Already the gloom was pervasive, the mist swallowing what little sunlight was left.