The Mammoth Book of Terror (54 page)

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.

Something was coming toward them.

“Off the road,” Sterling commanded in a harsh whisper.

They scrabbled into the bushes as the disembodied sounds of many booted feet approached.

“Bloody hell,” Liggett muttered, “if it’s a fight they want, we’ll give it to them.”

“Quiet,” Morris whispered.

Out of the fog a column of men appeared. French infantry. A slackness pervaded their tattered ranks. The soldiers looked exhausted, covered with dust and dripping with sweat. Gloomy and silent,
the procession passed by their hiding place.

Sterling called out a challenge and the ranks halted. They stared at the soldiers in the ditch, showing no hint of surprise. In halting French, Winston conversed with them. Then they shuffled
onward.

“What news?” Sterling asked him.

“I’m not sure, Crown Sergeant,” Winston replied, a look of confusion on his face. “Apparently, a major offensive is about to begin in the Argonne trenches. But
they’re not participating. They’re leaving this area.”

“Deserting,” Liggett snapped. “How do you like that?”

“No,” Winston countered, “that’s what doesn’t make sense. They said that they just had an encounter in a village up the road here. I couldn’t understand it
though. My French is lacking. Something about the dead in the ground.”

“What do we do, Crown Sergeant?” William asked.

Sterling shrugged. Shouldered his knapsack. Slapped a fat fly from his cheek. “We move on.”

Edging along the fog enshrouded road, they encountered the sad dregs of a fleeing army. Soldiers and civilians passed by in disorder and panic; women carrying children in their arms and pushing
them in small carriages; young girls in their Sunday best; boys and old men hefting all sorts of pointless artifacts of their safe life before the war. Soldiers slumped on peasant carts, gazing at
nothing.

An infantryman galloped by on an officer’s horse. Spying them, he dismounted and threw his arms around the animal’s neck. He gasped something in French and then dashed off into the
fields.

“What did he say?” asked Liggett.

“He thanked it for saving his life,” Winston replied.

“That’s an officer’s horse,” Sterling observed. “The fellow fled on his captain’s horse!”

Another soldier paused to speak to them.

“Ask him why it is he doesn’t have a rifle, knapsack, or equipment,” Sterling told Winston.

Winston listened to the soldier’s reply and then translated. “He says he lost them swimming across the Meuse.”

“Bollocks,” Liggett replied critically. “His clothes are dry! Here we are, fighting for their country, and they flee like schoolchildren!”

Darkness encircled them like a steel trap as they approached the village. The procession had trickled down to a few stragglers, the last of whom approached them through the dispersing mist. He
bore the rank of officer and greeted them in English.

“Where are you going?” Sterling inquired. “We’re on our way to the Argonne forest. Do you know what’s happening there?”

“I wish only to be away from this cursed ground,” the Frenchman replied.

“But sir,” Sterling said, fighting hard to hide his exasperation, “why have you left your unit?”

“I am a company commander,” he stated proudly. Then he cast his eyes to the ground. “And my company’s only survivor.”

“But what the hell happened?” shouted Sterling.

“I can speak no more of this place. Let me by!”

The Frenchman brushed past them and William caught a brief glimpse of the tears streaking his grimy face. Then he vanished into the dark along with everyone else.

Face set with steely determination, Crown Sergeant Sterling motioned them onward. With the sounds of the battle drawing closer – the noise of death seemed to be carried further by the
night – they entered the village.

Nothing remained save for a few crumbling walls. The five men walked slowly, rifles at the ready, their hearts hammering with fear. The road was paved with rubbish: linens and undergarments;
litters of clothing; letters; burst mattresses and eiderdowns; fragments of furniture and shattered pottery.

And the dead lay everywhere.

Retching, William stumbled across five corpses in a tattered heap, all of them children, all of them hugging each other for comfort in death. Farther along lay a young mother and her two
daughters, all dressed in their Sunday best, their faces forever frozen in an horrific visage.

Morris placed a comforting hand on William’s shoulder as the young man heaved into the dust.

“What do you think happened here?” William rasped.

“I don’tknow. They don’t seem burned or shot. Yetmosthave been—” The private’s answer was cut short by a piercing squeal from behind a ruined building,
followed by a guttural grunt.

William jumped to his feet and dashed after Morris and Sterling.

Another squeal ended abruptly as a rifle echoed in the darkness.

They rounded the corner and halted in shock. In what had once been a courtyard, bodies had been stacked like cordwood, limbs flung out in deathly abandon. Pigs wandered through the pickings,
feasting on human flesh.

Winston sighted and squeezed the trigger. A second bloated beast sagged to the ground, ignored by its brethren. Liggett was frantically reloading, his efforts punctuated with more swearing.

“Stand down,” ordered Sterling. “If there’re snipers about, you’ll bring them down on our heads!”

Liggett cursed again and brought the rifle up to his shoulder, drawing a bead on the nearest swine.

“Stand down, Corporal! That’s an order, Liggett!”

The shaken Corporal looked at them, and in the moonlight William noticed the tears of rage and bewilderment that streaked the dust on his face.

“This isn’t right,” Winston exclaimed. “It’s not natural!”

Sterling stepped forward to survey the makeshift abattoir. “I spent twenty years on the farm, lads,” he said quietly. “And I never saw pigs do this. They’ll eat most
things, but . . .”

“Crown Sergeant,” called Morris. “Come and look at this!”

He was standing before a small mound of dirt. The men approached, wondering what new horror was about to be revealed. Slowly, they took their places next to Morris.

In the ground before them was a gaping hole. The yawning entrance led down into the earth, disappearing from sight. A peculiar smell wafted from the chasm. It reminded William of pig iron and
summer storms.

“What do you make of this, then?”

“Artillery,” Winston answered, the word almost forming a question. “The Germans must have shelled the village.”

“No,” Sterling countered, “this was no explosion, we can all see that. This was dug. See that dirt? This tunnel was made from beneath the ground, not from above.”

“Well then what in bloody hell was it?” Liggett stammered.

“Something else. I don’t know what.”

“Perhaps the Germans have some new tunnelling machine,” William offered.

“There you go, thinking you’re bleeding Jules Verne again,” growled Liggett. “Pull your head out of yer arse, William!”

“Leave him alone,” Morris retorted and stepped toward the surly Corporal.

“Enough!” shouted Sterling, his voice echoing in the silent streets. “The Devil take you all, that’s enough! Whatever made this hole, whatever atrocity occurred in this
village, we won’t solve anything by standing here. Let’s move on!”

Shaken, they departed from the village, stepping gingerly over the scattered corpses. The road wound on, cresting a hilltop a few kilometres away. Stealthily, they crept over the hill and looked
down upon the valley of the Argonne Forest.

Away in the distance, the trees stood silent watch over the battlefield. The valley was a labyrinth of trenches, both German and Allied. To William, it looked as if ants had burrowed through the
vast field, leaving no acre untouched. Ghostly fires dotted the landscape, as soldiers from both sides huddled in the mud while darkness closed upon them.

A maze of barbed wire surrounded the trenches, and they picked their way carefully through it.

William was struck by the silence engulfing the valley. During a battle, when the heavy field guns, rifles, and machine guns were all booming at the same time, the noise was so tremendous that
it seemed beyond the limits of human endurance. Amidst a storm of steel and fire, the riot of battle would change in character, volume and tempo; rising and falling with alternating diminuendo and
crescendo in both a hurrying and slackening pace. Relentless, the deafening volley of reports had always sounded to William like the clattering of a clumsy and lumbering wagon, jolting heavily over
the frozen ruts of a rough country lane. Sometimes it reminded him of the brisk hammering of thousands of carpenters and riveters. Or it could have been the rumbling of hundreds of heavy goods
trains, thundering and bumping over uneven points in the line and meeting head on in a hideous collision.

But even more awful than that hellish cacophony were the sudden and unexpected silences, which made William hold his breath and wait for the storm to start again.

It was this silence that greeted them as they entered the trench system. And William finally gasped a new breath, because the barrage had truly halted. For a time, at least.

The ground was a heavy, impermeable clay that had been gouged and displaced in a series of tunnels and ditches. Thick mud puddles filled every hole and depression, forming a sticky mire for them
to flounder through.

“Halt,” called a voice from the darkness. “Who goes there?”

Sterling brought up a hand, stopping them as they slogged through the water. “Who do you think? The bloody Red Baron?”

“I’ve got to ask. Wh-who goes there?”

William could just make out the young private who had issued the challenge, a skinny chap barely old enough to shave, with a uniform caked onto his body like a second skin. His eyes seemed far
too big for his face. His rifle was shaking, the butt clinking against the lad’s belt buckle.

“We’re from the 3rd,” Sterling said. “Any good down here?”

“Good,” the boy said blankly. “Don’t be daft. How could anything be good?”

William frowned. He had seen many strange things during his last four months in France, but the private’s nonchalance when addressing the Crown Sergeant was something new and
unsettling.

The boy lowered his rifle and slumped back against the side of the trench. He seemed to merge with the ground, such was his grubby appearance. William wondered if he’d ever move again, or
would he be sucked into the trench wall, subsumed into the churned mud of the battlefield like so many of his mates?

Sometimes, they left dead men on the edge of the trench because they absorbed more bullets.

“Come on, you lot,” Sterling said. “Let’s get some grub inside us, then I’d better track down someone in charge.”

The young soldier began to laugh. It was a sickly sound, like gritty oil being poured through a sieve; more a hiss than a chuckle. “In charge,” he said. “In bloody
charge!” He laughed again, but never once looked at William or his friends. He stared through them and beyond, as if he were talking to someone else entirely. As they shrugged past him, his
laughter broke into a rapid volley of violent sneezes.

They slopped through the trench, up to their knees in muddy water most of the time, feces or rotten food floating on its soupy surface. William closed his eyes for a few seconds every now and
then, navigating by sound alone, and tried to imagine the summery meadow back home. He could find the smells of flowers and the sounds of birds, the feel of grass beneath his hands and the sense of
one of the girls from the village sitting primly by his side . . . but he could not see it. Even when he tried to make-believe, he could not see it.

Still, he had to try. Anything was better than this. Even despair was better than this hell beyond despair.

Again his mind drifted back to the previous battle. He thought of the wounded soldier left out in no-man’s land because it gave the enemy snipers something to shoot at. Dunhill.

“This’ll do,” Sterling said from somewhere up ahead.

William opened his eyes. The Sergeant had paused in a much wider area of trench, two further burrows running away left and right. Straight ahead, a depression had been carved from the earth and
covered with roughly chopped branches and shattered tree trunks. It was flooded but there were seats gouged into the walls, an unopened crate of rations, and a dead soldier bobbing facedown in the
water.

No one liked to touch a dead man. Some thought death was catching, like bad luck or a cold.

“I’m not going in there, with him like that,” Liggett said. “Someone should bury the poor sod.”

“Go on then,” Winston mumbled, just loud enough for the others to hear.

“You do it,” Liggett said. “You and Morris drag him out of there and—”

“No way I’m touching him!” A cigarette dropped from Morris’s lips as he spoke.