Sample Sunday: Hell's Teeth Preview III
Tom's eyes snapped open. There was a crash, it came again and again, a repeating thunderous report every few seconds. Sombre light was filtering through the torn cloth curtain, outside, booted feet tramped to and fro, dehydrated soldier shouts filled up the lulls between shellfall. He crawled out and got to his feet, Betty's charcoaled eyes watching him go, a wry smile on her fading lips.
It was as it had always been; dirt, the dead and the flies. The storm rains had softened the trenchworks, making them suck and squelch underfoot. The Turks were sending down whistling hails of plated death into the gullies of the trenches as usual, it would take more than shitty weather to make the enemy let up their assault. Ducking down, Tom wiped sleep from his eyes, blinking, scratching the teeming flies from his hair. He made his way to Brigade Staff HQ. Lieutenant Bell would be there, he would have orders that needed taking up to the batteries. Tom did not run, he walked, not caring to duck and cover as artillery fire roared down into the ground around him. He felt a disconnection in his gut, an umbilical severance from the reality of his surroundings, a separation he could not define in words. Shouts and screams pierced his eardrums, flecks of mud adhered to his unprotected face, the concussion of a distant explosion rocked the sun helmet loose from his head, he let it fall into the drying mud, Tom tasted the traces of rum in his mouth.
Yes, he thought, this is real and happening but it's not what it seems.
Lieutenant Bell was sheltering in the shade of his make-shift office. His head was bent over a dog-eared, yellowish map of the Front, he was scratching at it with the worn, flaking stump of a pencil, marking in changes of position, few that there were. Tom stood to attention and saluted upon entering, the Lieutenant did not look up, remaining hidden from clear sight.
"Potter, good to see you. We need a man to go over tonight."
The voice of the Lieutenant was wrong. It was coming from far away, a cavern somewhere. Tom could see it in his mind; a granite grotto with a skin of lichen, sea moss and tumorous coral growths, the grotto was a serpentine length extending back into a dismal cloud of gloom. Through the salt air, Lieutenant Bell's voice came out to him, a lasting echo, the voice of a man drowned, feeling his flesh creep at the notion of conversing with the dead, Tom stiffened even further to attention, resisting the electric shivers running through him.
"Over the top, sir?"
"Yes, later tonight. It's too dangerous now. The storm destroyed our communications. I need you to go out and do some telephone-wire laying. Connect Battery A back up to the Front."
"What time do I set off, sir?"
Tom kept it formal, he wanted to get out of here, out of this canvas morgue. Lieutenant Bell made to answer him but an asthmatic coughing fit wracked him, making him heave violently and grasp at his desk for support.
Tom saw the hand in the weak light, its nails cracking into blackened splinters, cuticles gummed over with gore whilst the knuckles were bare of skin and flesh, showing only bone, whitish nodules of barnacle were visible in the folds of clinging muscle cords. The thumb and forefinger were missing, torn away. The hand was snatched back into the gloom.
"You go out at three, Potter. Be ready. Dismissed."
Tom saluted and departed, wanting to run all the way back to his funkhole, he controlled himself, keeping his pace even. He caught the eyes of the men as he passed back down to the frontline, making his way through the crumbling rabbit warren. The eyes were not tired and bored as they should be, they were searching, seeing into him, knowing that he was of the living and not the dead. The silver-black flint in their hard eyes told him one thing, that the dead would not suffer him to live.
Hell's Teeth will be released in March 2012.
Copyright © G.R. Yeates 2012
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