The Ironclad Prophecy (10 page)

He could tell from her accent she wasn’t a northerner, but Lord Almighty, she never stopped talking, and he let her talk, because she spoke of gears and pistons and carburettors and, quite frankly, he’d never met a girl like her. He’d come all this way from one world to another and there she was, large as life and twice as brassy. Nellie bleedin’ Abbott. And he’d shook his head in wonder. She’d spent time in the FANYs driving ambulances and knew how to strip an engine. Had to. No bugger else to do it for her, half the time. She’d ridden a motorcycle once or twice. They talked of the country rides they might take together if they got back, but she wouldn’t have it, not in a sidecar at any rate. Oh no. Not her. She wanted a motorcycle of her own. That was when he fell in love with her. Right there. Alfie’s face split into an involuntary grin at the memory.

The rest of the crew were wary of her. They were used to their secrets, their own company. They didn’t welcome outsiders. They wouldn’t let her in the tank. Crew only, they said. But he’d snuck her in anyway. Once he’d had to shove her out of one sponson door as Jack squeezed in the other.

The crew had been despondent at the time. It looked like their fuel would run out, and without petrol, the tank was just so much scrap. Without the tank they would be transferred into the battalion to be Poor Bloody Infantry again.

But then one of the Tommies had brewed some evil alcoholic concoction that killed a couple of men daft enough to drink it. Unfit for human consumption, they said. But it gave them a new fuel. It ran a little better than the petrol they were used to, but then that was nearly all ‘flogged’ inferior stuff anyway. This new stuff had been distilled from what they now called petrol fruit. They were back in the game.

That was when everything changed.

They had been breathing the fumes for a week or so before they noticed. At first they felt keener, their senses seemed more acute. Colours were brighter, crisper. Sounds were clearer and smells sharper and more distinct.

“It’s the clean air here,” Reggie informed them. “Clears out the tubes!” he said, thumping his chest. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Even Lieutenant Mathers seemed to relax now. Before, he had been a bundle of nerves in the tank, always on the verge of funking it, but now he seemed to relish driving it. Then again, they all did. Mind you, it helped when you were not being constantly shelled by Fritz artillery or hammered with machine gun fire. It was quite like the old days driving round Elveden as if it were a fairground ride. The days when they weren’t in it were fraught with tension and short tempers. Even the engine, after some initial troubles, seemed to run smoother.

It was the fuel itself. They’d heard stories of how the Tommies that had drunk it saw things, hallucinated. That’s why it was declared unfit for human consumption. But they weren’t drinking it. They didn’t have to. Fumes from the engine filled the small confined space. Ordinary petrol fumes would give them carbon monoxide poisoning. They’d end up with vicious headaches, convulsions and, in extreme cases, delirium or psychosis. They’d stagger from the tank and vomit. The petrol vapour would sting their skin and give them itching rashes and impetigo.

This new fuel had different side effects. Once they discovered the effects of petrol fruit fumes, they vowed amongst themselves to keep it quiet. It gave them a sense of euphoria, changed their vision. Under its influence they began to see the bright little whirls and eddies of indigo as the vapour swirled lazily about the cabin. The white painted iron plate surrounding them throbbed green with the vibration of the engine. Alfie soon found he could identify the state of the engine by the colour it gave off. But most of all he liked looking at Nellie. Great gaseous expanses of soft yellows billowed gently from her like silk sheets in the wind and oh, how she shone. If only he could tell her how beautiful she was. She thought herself rather plain. But he doubted anybody had ever seen her the way he had.

He hated leaving her now. Before, all he had was the crew of the
Ivanhoe
. Now, there was her.

He recalled the last time he saw Nellie, a day ago now, just before they left, but it seemed an age away when he wasn’t in her company. They’d received orders to move out on another seek and find patrol. He’d spent half the night checking and tuning the engine, oiling it, having to use rendered down fats as grease. The rest of Ivanhoe’s crew were full of pep and up for it, knowing they’d be able to partake of the intoxicating fumes again.

The only other person who might have an inkling of the effects was Tulliver, the RFC chap. He used the same petrol fruit liquor to fuel his aeroplane. But he wasn’t confined in a dark, airless cabin with it. The wind would soon whip away any fumes he might inhale.

As the others stocked up on supplies, carefully watched by Company Quartermaster Sergeant Slacke, Alfie had wandered off to say goodbye to Nellie. He found her trying to haul a large pan of some sort of edible, well, stew, for want of a better word.

“Alfie. Can’t give us a hand, can you, m’duck?”

“Sorry, Nellie. Moving out. Another one of the infantry’s explore and patrol missions.”

“Oh aye. And keep an eye out for –”

“– Jeffries, yes,” he finished. They laughed together.

He peered into the pot. “Cor. What have the mongey wallahs come up with this time? It looks disgusting.”

“Yes, well, it isn’t for you. It’s for them poor beggars in the Bird Cage,” she said, nodding her head towards the barbed wire enclosure where the shell-shocked men were housed.

Lieutenant Mathers had climbed the steps out of the communications trench that led to the battalion HQ, his shoulders hunched and a sullen look on his gaunt, pasty face.

“Perkins. Don’t dally. We’ve got to shove off.” He sniffed the air and homed in on the cauldron. “Mmm, what’s that?” He reached in and pulled out a lump of something, put it in his mouth and chewed experimentally.

“Oi!” Nellie slapped his hand. “This is for the poor shell-shock victims, not the likes of you, sir.”

The rebuke caught Mathers off guard. He looked towards the enclosure at the shuffling, jerking scraps of manhood within and at least had the manners to look guilty. He coughed in embarrassment. “Yes. Right.” He wagged the rest of the handful at her. “Still, not bad,” he said and strode away. “Come on, Perkins. Work to do.”

Alfie had shrugged an apology, “Must dash,” and he’d followed his commanding officer. The last he saw of Nellie was her lugging the pan towards the Bird Cage...

B
RIGHT GREEN RIPPLES
burst from the floor of the compartment as the tank lurched and Alfie cracked his head on an overhead pipe.

“Watch where you’re driving!” Alfie bellowed at Wally’s back.

“Plenty of room up bloody top if you’re not bleedin’ happy with it!” Wally retorted.

“Got a real bee in his bonnet about that bounder Jeffries hasn’t he, that Lieutenant Everson?” Norman was yelling above the noise of the engine. “I mean this is the fifth time he’s sent us out on patrol to try and pick up his trail, and have we? Have we, billy-o. Not a sign. One of the promising directions picked out by Tulliver? Bollocks. I bet everything looks promising from a thousand feet up. Oh, and here’s a map what a nurse saw. Sorry it’s mostly empty, would you chaps mind filling in the blank bits as you go?”

“We could run right over Jeffries in
Ivanhoe
and not even notice,” Cecil yelled back.

Norman nodded in agreement. “Wild goose chase is what it is. Waste of time.”

“Not at all, dear chap,” Reggie chipped in. “Travel broadens the mind, you know.”

“In a place like this, Hell’s back yard? Loosens the bowels, more like. Thank God I’ve got armour plating between me and it, is all I can say.”

“Well, I’m all for these little trips of Everson’s. Very nice of him. Don’t care if we never find this Jeffries,” said Reggie.

Frank spat on the gangway. “Jeffries, my arse.”

“Frank! Please.”

“Yeah, mind your language,” scolded Norman. “Has Reggie taught you nothing?”

“Yeah, I holds me pinky up when I use me canteen now,” Frank said, demonstrating to wild laughter. “Besides, if he ain’t got a boojum like us then frankly he’s probably dead meat. Why else d’you think they send us out here? ’Cause every bugger else gets eaten, that’s why.”

“Just makes us tinned bully beef,” said Norman with a grin.

“Quite frankly I don’t care if we never find the bleeder. Don’t need the blighter mucking up the sweet little deal we’ve got going here.”

“Well I don’t feel too happy about that,” Alfie shouted across the engine. “It doesn’t seem right, somehow. Doesn’t it bother the rest of you? Maybe we should discuss it again, that’s all I’m saying.”

Frank reached out, grabbed Alfie’s coveralls and pulled him towards him under the starting handle. “And all I’m saying, Alfie, is you need to back off a little, mate. We’re getting fed up with your holier-than-thou attitude. It was the Sub’s idea. If our plans make you breezy, why don’t you just do one and take up with your long-haired chum back with the mud sloggers?”

“Why? Because we’re tankers. I’m maybe not so crazy about this idea, but I’d take a bullet for any single one of you, you know that, right?”

“Do we, Alfie? Do we? We don’t even know if we can trust you.” Frank thrust Alfie away from him with a snort of derision as the others looked on.

Alfie shook his head in despair. Their devotion to Mathers, who had seen them through, who had kept them supplied with the petrol fruit fuels and kept them safe and alive inside their shell of iron, was slipping into the fanatical and tinged with paranoia. Even Mathers’ moods seemed to fluctuate between insanity and lucidity. Their world had shrunk and they no longer noticed nor cared. But his? His world had been expanded. He saw beyond the horizons of armoured plate and rivets. His world was illuminated by Nellie, a moon whose tidal influence was pulling him slowly from their orbit.

There was a hollow
krunng
. And another, accompanied by brilliant green migraine flashes radiating from the roof of the compartment.

“Rockfall?”

The tank lurched to a halt, and the engine died to an idle. Alfie held his breath, straining to listen above the chug of the engine. If it was a rockfall, they had no chance of getting out of there in a hurry. Their top speed was barely above walking pace.

Norman stuck his head out of the rear sponson hatch. A rock smashed into the sponson, just missing him.

“Bloody hell, we’re under attack!” he yelped, ducking back in and slamming the hatch shut behind him. “It’s an ambush. Place is lousy with ’em. Buggers are throwing rocks at us. Reminds me of a show at the Leeds Empire. Bloody hell, they were a hard audience that night.”

The others did likewise, shutting the other hatches, their only illumination now the small electric festoon lamps.

“
Language
, Norman,” warned Reggie.

There was another round of bangs as more rocks rained down on the hull.

Jack and Norman manned their six pounders and peered out of the vertical gun port slits, looking for a target. Cecil and Reggie loaded the breaches then readied their machine guns, threading fresh belts into the mechanism.

“Where are they?” said Reggie, peering through a pistol port. “I can’t see anything. Where the deuce are they?”

“Above us.”

“Well, we can’t sit here,” said Mathers. “Carry on, Clegg. They can’t harm us.”

“Sir.”

The engine roared into life again and the
Ivanhoe
rumbled forwards for a minute before Wally raised his right fist. At the signal, Alfie threw his left track gear into neutral, disengaging his track. Frank pushed the right track gear into first speed. The tank began to swing right to avoid a large boulder the size of a terraced house before jerking to a halt. Another signal from Wally. Alfie pushed his gear into first speed too and the tank lurched straight ahead for another ten yards as it passed the boulder.

“I can’t see anything. Just rocks!” said Reggie, becoming agitated, his face pressed to a loophole.

They heard a succession of softer thuds on the roof followed by a scratching clatter above them.

“They’re on the roof.”

Another signal from Wally and Frank slipped his track gear into neutral while Alfie pushed his into first speed.
Ivanhoe
swung sharply to the left. There was a thud on the sponson and Reggie lurched back as something chitinous blocked the light.

“It’s outside!”

“Well, bloody shoot it!”

Reggie squeezed the Hotchkiss’ trigger and the belt feed zipped through a few feet, firing a hail of bullets. There was an anguished squeal and light flooded in from the pistol port again.

“Damn it!” Mathers stood up and squeezed back down the port gangway past Norman and Reggie, drew his pistol and opened the manhole hatch in the roof above the rear of the engine.

There were three Yredetti on top of the tank. Ugly buggers, reminiscent of beetles, with mottled green chitinous armour. They walked upright, like chatts, but they had better developed powerful middle limbs that they used for gripping, and were just as comfortable and fast on on all sixes. They were primitives, a race of carnivorous hunters. They had no weapons and didn’t need them. Their large saw-toothed mandibles were capable of decapitating a man. One was trying to wrench off the exhaust covers. Mathers fired, and it fell over the side with a squeal. Another turned and lunged at him. He got off a second shot, which raked down the carapace and sent it spinning from the roof to bounce off the starboard sponson.