The Ironclad Prophecy (42 page)

A heartbeat later the newly birthed creature, oiling the tunnel as it came with its greasy black vapour, shot out, arcing into space, glands on its body spraying Atkins with the disgusting stuff as it passed.

The limbless thing tumbled down through the air to the jungle canopy below, losing the slug-like shape forced upon it by the constraints of the passage. Freshly extruded tendrils writhed helplessly in mid-air.

Atkins breathed a sigh of relief. “Blood and sand, that was too close by –”

He felt a tug on his leg, and then a wrench that almost pulled him from the cliff. The creature still had a tendril wrapped round his leg as it fell, threatening to drag him down with it. He could feel the root he held tear from its anchorage. Wide with horror, his eyes met those of Mercy.

Mercy made a desperate grab for Atkins’ wrist, but his hand was as sweaty as Atkins’ own. Atkins slithered from his grasp.

“Only!” roared Gutsy, fumbling to free Little Bertha.

He could feel his wet clammy fingers slipping from the root. His eyes still locked on Mercy’s as he shook his head, absolving him of any blame. There was nothing more to be done.

The coarse texture of the root began to slip away under his fingertips.

With a rapidity of movement none had seen from it before today, Chandar scuttled, face-down, over Atkins’ back. The chatt’s mandibles scythed through the tendril holding his ankle, and the creature crashed down through the canopy below and was lost from sight. Atkins felt Chandar’s vestigial claws bite deep into his tunic, gripping him long enough for hands to reach down and haul him back up.

They clambered back into the tunnel and the shocked party caught their breath.

Gutsy looked at Chandar and shook his head in wonder. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I didn’t know they could do that. Did you know they could do that?”

Slumped against the tunnel wall, Atkins looked up at his saviour. “Thank you.”

The chatt sucked in a chestful of air. “It was Kurda,” it lisped.

Atkins nodded, still catching his breath. He regarded the chatt for a moment. “What is that place?” he asked, waving a hand at the crater beyond the tunnel mouth.

Chandar hissed and sank down on its legs. “Forbidden. That place does not exist.”

“Well, it clearly bloody does exist. It damn near killed me!”

“It is forbidden to the Ones.”

“I like the sound of that,” said Gutsy. “Anywhere the chatts can’t go has got to be good.”

Mercy snorted. “I wouldn’t be too sure. This world would kill you at every turn. If you ask me, there’s probably a bloody good reason why they don’t want to go there.”

Atkins got up and stepped towards the chatt. “You’ve been windy since we came across the Gilderra enclave. When the Zohtakarrii captured us, you knew then where we were, didn’t you? You knew about that place down there, that crater.”

“It is forbidden, forbidden to speak about. It does not exist for us. Other Ones, like the Zohtakarrii, whose territory borders it, patrol to make sure no One goes in and nothing comes out. It has been that way for spira upon spira.”

Atkins stared hard at the chatt, but its facial plate gave nothing away. It had no expression to read. He had no choice but to take what it said at face value. For now.

“Let’s get moving before another of those things decides to corner us here again.”

In the birthing gallery, two creatures were cracking the dead chatts’ chitinous shells. Another freshly-birthed horror had fallen upon the urmen bodies, gripping them with extruded tendrils, and sucking the meat from them, leaving nothing but ichor-covered skin and bone, like discarded greasy chicken carcasses. Such was their voracious appetite that they paid no attention to the Tommies.

Atkins tapped the air with a finger, pointing towards a passage on the opposite side that seemed to run upwards. They skirted the repulsive, shapeless things and, once the section was safely in the tunnel mouth, Atkins ordered Pot Shot and Mercy to throw a brace of Mills bombs into the centre. The creatures exploded in balls of flame and silent thrashing tendrils that shrivelled in the heat.

They followed the passage as it curved upwards, until Atkins felt sure they had climbed more than the hundred or so feet that would bring them back to ground level. Light blossomed in the distance, filtered through hanging foliage. With the point of his bayonet, Atkins parted the curtain of leaves and vines. “Blood and sand, not again!”

Wherever the passage may once have led, it now looked down on a large overgrown amphitheatre formed by the collapse of the entire central core of the edifice, the once raw and jagged violence of the edifice’s destruction now softened by alien nature’s reclamation, overgrown with tangles of creepers, fighting for dominance. Tree-like things clung to the shattered walls. Around them, on the now exposed and weathered walls, they could see other tunnels and runs, at various levels and angles, opening just as abruptly out into the central space.

It reminded Atkins of when he and his brother William dug up woodland ants’ nests as boys, breaking open the mound to reveal the network of tunnels within, Flora protesting as the disturbed ants swarmed around their feet.

Looking down into the ruined bowl beneath them, it became clear that the great creatures that had pursued them through the chatt-built tunnels, that had come out to the jungle to search for prey, were not many creatures at all, but a single many-tentacled one. The small ones they killed were merely hatching young.

In the basin of ruined tunnels and collapsed chambers, something huge and shapeless heaved and pulsed. They could see no eyes or mouth, in fact no organs or limbs of any kind other than the tendrils that fed into open tunnels like roots.

Atkins had no doubt that Jeffries could well have summoned what he saw from some demonic circle of hell. Its existence stirred a deep revulsion, not just in him, but the whole section, and this from men who had seen bloated corpses move and writhe obscenely in the Somme mud, infested by feeding corpse rats burrowed into their putrefying innards.

This was the evil spirit that had been stealing urmen. This was what they had come to kill.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“You Have Only Once To Die...”

T
HE THING SQUATTED
in a large ruined central chamber. The roof had collapsed around it, leaving its back, if that’s what it was, half-exposed to the elements. It was a great black mass larger than several zeppelins. The black, feathered tripe-like flesh bore a cross-hatching of scars, old and new. It had tentacles sunk into lower tunnels, like roots. Others were constantly dipping into seemingly random passage openings around it, even as others withdrew. It seemed rooted to the spot. That would explain the absence of animals around the edifice. It had exhausted its local food supply. Forced to stretch its tentacles further to find food, it had encroached on the enclave’s hunting grounds to snatch urmen.

The thing throbbed as it withdrew a tentacle from a tunnel below where the Tommies stood. It was wrapped delicately around the remains of one of its young. Following some primitive instinct, it dangled the sloppy, burnt, shapeless mess before it, shaking it gently, trying to revive it. It created other, more delicate, tendrils to prod and probe it. After a cursory examination, they retreated into the mass. Then it drew the tendril, holding the dead creature, back into its body, and its offspring along with it.

“It doesn’t look happy,” said Mercy.

Gutsy peered down. “You wouldn’t be, either, if someone had killed your baby.”

“It just
ate
its dead baby, so I hardly think it’s that bothered,” Porgy declared.

“What the hell is it?” Atkins asked Chandar.

“This One does not know,” it wheezed, forcing out the words. “It – it is not mentioned in any aromapedias. It is not GarSuleth-made.”

“Whatever it is, I think we’re going to need the damn tank to take it out,” said Gazette, unfazed, his mind never straying from the job.

“Hell, no!” Porgy slapped Atkins on the back. “Only here can do it single-handed, can’t you, Only?” He grinned at his mate. “Come on, Chalky’s told us all the tales.”

“Aye,” said Mercy with a grin. “Seven at one blow!”

Atkins curled his lip. “Piss off. How many bombs do we have left?”

Gazette did a quick tally. “Six.”

Atkins leant forward to get a better look at the thing, doubting that they would be enough. He stepped back sharply as the edge of the lip crumbled away beneath his feet. Several large chunks skittered down the exposed walls before hitting an outcrop, and bouncing off over the lower slopes, where some were ensnared by thickets of creepers. The rest bounded down in ever increasing arcs, before landing on the creature’s back in a shower of thuds.

A stream of tendrils exploded upwards towards them from around the fallen rubble.

“No, it’s definitely not happy,” said Mercy.

“Back!” ordered Atkins, but the section was one step ahead of him. Chandar, though, hesitated, mesmerised by the sight, until Atkins put a hand on its carapace and pulled it away.

He took a last look over his shoulder as thin black tendrils appeared over the lip of the truncated tunnel. Some had already begun searching the gaping hole where they had stood. As they explored the tunnel further, they began to entwine and merge into one, growing in bulk, thickening and expanding until one single tentacle filled the space, blocking out the light.

Rushing down the tunnel, it expanded further until the walls began to crack and shudder under the pressure of its passing.

Atkins ran for his life.

T
HE GREAT IRON
hulk of the
Ivanhoe
sat where they had left it, hunkered in the clearing, waiting patiently like a faithful beast.

Exhausted, the tank crew staggered towards the waiting behemoth.

Norman, Reggie, Cecil and Wally set down their coverall loads of chatt jars and stretched. In the daylight, Mathers’ swollen face looked much worse than they had imagined.

“And I thought impetigo from petrol fumes was bad,” Norman remarked.

“How comes he’s the only one that’s got it, though?” asked Cecil.

“Officer in’t ’e? They’ve got more sensitive skin than us lot. Known fact, is that.”

“The sooner I’m back in the
Ivanhoe
, the better I’ll feel,” said Wally.

“Best get the tank started up, then, I reckon,” said Jack.

Nellie patted Napoo on the forearm. “Thank you.”

With a faint smile, the urman gave a grunt of acknowledgement and nodded as she left his side.

He squatted down on his haunches, looking decidedly uncomfortable. He was wary of the Lieutenant, but just as cautious about the tank. Although aware that men operated it, he was convinced that there was sorcery involved. Alfie approached the urman, “Thanks for looking out for Nellie – I mean, Miss Abbott.”

Napoo looked up at him. “She is a good woman.” It was a threat as much as a statement of fact.

“Yes. Yes, she is,” replied Alfie, sensing that he had outstayed his welcome. He made for the tank. His path took him past Nellie, who was splashing water from her canteen on the back of her neck. She was relieved to see that Alfie’s eyes had almost returned to normal. He wanted to tell her about the thing inside Mathers, but changed his mind. “Will you check the Lieutenant out, again? He doesn’t look too clever.”

“Do I tell you how to tune your precious engine?” she remarked.

“Yes, actually.”

She beamed as she made her way over to check on Mathers, who seemed to be enjoying the soothing wind on his face. “Then I’m much too good for you, Mr Perkins.”

Norman saw her examining the Lieutenant. “We just need to get the engine started up, is all, Miss. Once the Sub can take a drag on the fumes he’ll be top o’ the bill again,” he insisted.

“Top o’ the bill?” said Nellie. “He’s had so many turns he’s a regular Marie Lloyd. It’s not those blessed fumes he needs, it’s rest and proper medical attention.”

Frank intercepted Alfie on the way to the tank. “Where do you think you’re going?”