Sample Sunday: Hell's Teeth Preview II

The world was tearing itself apart; the sky was burning, the earth beneath was shaking, the big guns spoke deafening thunder, pouring down a scorching shrapnel rain. Tom Potter ran through it all, a darting shadow, one amongst many that swarmed and multiplied in the dim, flickering trenches cut through the baked earth and stones of the Gallipoli peninsula. The British Generals must have been insane when they came up with this campaign. The beaches and the cliffs, that's all they had and it was all they ever had from the moment they splashed ashore. There was no shifting the Turks, they were tucked in cosy and tight, so much for the briefings that had gone on and on about the cowardly, undisciplined bandits they were going to rout with ease. Tom had seen nothing but evidence of sound tactics, good discipline and tenacity from the unseen enemy. The old men in charge of this fiasco seemed to have it in their heads that willpower and a vague sense of racial superiority were all that was needed to drive the other side from their positions.

Fucking ridiculous, he thought, this whole thing.

Not for the first time he wished himself far away from the blood, the heat, the dead and the flies.

Then the world tore apart again, the explosion punching him to the ground, driving the wind from his lungs in one go, curled foetal, he wheezed, gulping in great gasps of the burning acrid air. He patted himself down, shaking, steadily checking himself, arms, legs, head and torso and genitals. Lucky, he thought, as colours faded like momentary bruises from his retina, very fucking lucky. No pain, no wounds, no harm done, this time. Next time could be the last time. You never knew when or how, it was just a matter of waiting, minutes, hours, days and nights, wasting your life, waiting for death.

Tom got to his feet, blinking stinging sand from his eyes. His stomach lurching as hot wet flesh squelched underneath his boot making a bitter rush of bile spatter against the back of his throat. Up ahead was the crater where the machine gun burrow had been, the shell had gouged a great chunk out of the earthworks, throwing the Vickers gun high into the sky before it fell back down as so much twisted metal. Shredded sandbags covered the bodies of three gunners, inadequate funeral shrouds for what was left of them. The dead men were weeping bundles of bloody bits held together by tattered and torn uniforms. The life had been smashed out of them before they realised what was happening. Tom wondered if that was easier, better even, dying without knowing, having it over and done with in a moment. A glimmering caught his eye and he knelt down to see what it was. A severed finger, dirt caked in a black stripe under the cracked yellowish nail, the stump was horribly white bone and a plain band of dull metal encircled the digit, just below the knuckle. It was a wedding band.

No, Tom thought, this isn't better or easier, not at all.

Within the hour, the remains would become sticky nests; maggot factories incubating hundreds upon hundreds of black-headed bastards until they came bursting out as droning fly swarms. There was no chance of burial for these men because there was no time. It was the end of everything, the Gallipoli campaign was done, the evacuation order had been received.

At long last, they were pulling out.

Hell's Teeth will be released in March 2012.

Copyright © G.R. Yeates 2012

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