Private Doughty thrust the spade into the dirt of the trench and dug, just as he’d been told to by his superiors. The thin pale sun was finally giving up the struggle to bring light to the world and night was swiftly approaching. A chill had settled on the land and the full moon was already visible, casting a cold light of its own. Not that Private Doughty or Private Wrigley felt the cold, nor did any of the soldiers toiling along the entire length of the front line. The order had been passed down to dig, and as the chill of evening settled, that is what every man did, working with rough, calloused hands, cigarettes balanced from corners of mouths, sleeves rolled up to elbows, cursing and chatting and singing through their work.
For two days, since they’d arrived at Fampoux, all it seemed that one did was dig, defend or die in lunatic assaults on the enemy line, which achieved nought but kept the blood stations busy.
Doughty’s back was stiff. He thought back to ‘Badger’ Thomas, his mate from childhood, who had died attacking the German front line earlier in the day. “Join the army, and be stiff,” Badger used to say, “Bored stiff, frozen stiff, scared stiff.”
For three hours they’d been at this same portion of earth, Private Doughty and Private Wrigley, digging at a part of the trench at the very far end of the front line. “Just our bloody luck,” Doughty had said, “to get the part of the front with all the stones.”
He threw the blade of his spade with all his anger and annoyance and was confused when it vanished halfway up the neck of the handle in the earth. He stopped, perplexed, and withdrew the spade, which came out easily, too easily for a spade buried blade and handle deep in trench soil. He kicked forward with a boot into the small hole he’d left and fell forward, his boot vanishing up to his shin in the earth.
“’Ere, Mick! There’s a hole here!” he called to Private Wrigley behind him, extracting his foot and kicking forward with it again to enlarge it further. Soil tumbled away into darkness below.
“What’s that, Doug?” Private Wrigley asked, wiping a sleeve across his forehead. “Found a hole? Should bloody think so! You’ve dug it, you daft bastard.”
“No, there’s a hole,” replied Doughty, peering closer to the blackness and trying to look inside. He reached forward with his spade and shovelled a blade-full of earth to one side, and then another and another, his digging growing quicker and more urgent, as if he’d discovered buried treasure. “Tell you what,” he stammered, getting down on his knees and heaving the dirt aside with his hands, “it’s a bloody tunnel!”
He sat to one side to allow his mate to have a look.
“Blimey,” exclaimed Wrigley, stepping nearer, “wonder if it’s one of ours.”
“Course it’s not one of ours,” Doughty shot back, “we’d have the plan of it on one of our maps if it was one of ours, you daft bugger!” He stuck his head down into the hole and peered into the gloom of it. “It must be one of theirs,” he said, pulling himself out.
“Who? The Germans?!” Private Wrigley took a step back and crouched behind his spade.
“Dunno.” Doughty put his head back into the hole. He then retracted it. “Bloody dark in there. Can’t see a flaming thing. ’Ere,” he said, looking up the trench, “pass us that there lantern.”
“You should go back and tell the Lieutenant,” Wrigley advised, handing him the lantern at arm’s length.
Doughty lit it, corrected the height of the flame and lowered it into the hole, following with his head and shoulders. “Coo-eee,” he called, his voice muffled by the depths of earth into which he had plunged. He pulled himself out and looked up at his chum, who was now inching forward, hooked by the intrigue of it. “It goes back a long way.”
“Must be a German tunnel,” Wrigley continued, turning the handle of the spade in his hands. “Do you think it’s a tunnel?”
“Course it’s a bloody tunnel!”
“Let’s go back and tell Lieutenant Frost.”
But Doughty was lowering himself in feet first and vanishing into the darkness, taking up the lantern after him.
“Where you going, Doug?” Wrigley hissed quietly, as if fearful of being overheard. Private Doughty’s head appeared up out of the hole. “Come on. Let’s go and have a little explore!” he urged, before vanishing back into the darkness.
“Doug!” Wrigley called under his breath, glancing back down the trench to see if anyone was looking and then back at the hole. “Dougie?” he muttered at the dark yawning mouth in the middle of the trench. Just silence and dark. He called again, inching his way forward, his hands around the shaft of the spade, as if strangling the life out of it. “Doug!” he cried, kneeling down at the dark edge and peering into it. A head suddenly reared up from inside, tumbling the Private backwards, swearing and cursing quietly.
“It’s ever so murky in here,” Doughty warned, chuckling at his friend scrambling in the dirt of the trench. “Don’t look like no German trench, neither. Can’t see any supports. And it’s wide. Very wide. And tall. Come on in and have a look.” His head vanished again and Wrigley, still cursing and muttering, scrambled after him into the blackness.
It was only a short drop down to the tunnel floor, maybe four feet. The floor was smooth and felt dry underfoot, although there was a chill and a dampness in the air. There was also a peculiar smell, not dissimilar to rotting vegetables.
“Cor, that pongs a bit!” said Wrigley, holding his nose, more to illustrate his dislike rather than an attempt to block out the smell.
“Must be old stores,” suggested Doughty, holding up the lantern and stepping forward with wonder. “See what I mean?” he said, when he’d gone a few steps, the light giving his face a shadowed and demonic appearance in the black of the tunnel. “Don’t look like no Boche tunnel I’ve ever been told about. Nor no Tommy tunnel, neither. No supports. No tool marks.”
The tunnel ran on for ten or so feet, before turning left into pitch black. They walked to the corner and peered down into the dark.
“See what I mean?” said Doughty again, reaching up and placing his hand on the roof. “No beams. How’s it stay up?”
“Maybe we should go back,” suggested Wrigley, looking back to the grey hole down which they had come. “The whole thing might come down on us at any minute.”
But Doughty ignored him, walking on. “It’s big,” he said, “a big tunnel. Some serious work has gone on here.” He stopped and looked back to Wrigley who was loitering at the corner, peering between the lantern light and the light of the trench behind. “You coming or what?”
“I think we should go back.”
Doughty laughed and looked to the tunnel’s depths.
“What if the whole lot falls down on us?”
“It’s not going to fall on us!”
“How’d you know? You an engineer?”
“No, but it’s stayed up this long, it’ll stay up a bit longer. Come on!” Doughty walked on, his light slowly being swallowed by the utter blackness of the passage.
Wrigley wavered between going forward and going back, eventually cursing and trotting after his mate.
“Have you got enough fuel in that lantern?” he asked, placing his hand on the wall and feeling its rough edge as he walked. “Don’t fancy being stuck down here in the dark.”
“No idea. Mind your head,” warned Doughty, pointing out a dip in the roof of the tunnel. “Cor!” he said, chuckling, “stinks worse than the medical tent back at Fampoux!”
“Hang on,” replied Wrigley, craning his neck to the right, “the path’s turning around to the side here.”
“Cor,” whispered Doughty, pushing back his cap and scratching his head. He moved the lantern into his left hand and held it up to shine a little more light into the passageway beyond. “This is a big tunnel. I mean, look. We’re standing up. Most of the tunnels our boys make, you have to crawl down ’em.”
“Bloody Boche engineering,” replied Wrigley solemnly. “Look,” he said, taking hold of his friend’s arm and looking at him seriously, “I think we should go back.”
“Let’s just go on a little further, see if this passage goes anywhere. Then we’ll go back and tell the Lieutenant.”
Reluctantly, Wrigley agreed and side by side they stepped into the gloom, aware of the delicate crunch their boots made on the ground.
“Should have brought a rifle,” Wrigley whispered into Doughty’s ear, as loudly as he dared. Doughty nodded. “Have you got your knife?”
“No!”
“You’re bloody useless! Come on!”
Ahead of them the passage seemed to be widening and dropping down into a larger tunnel, perhaps a room along the tunnel path. Both of the soldiers stopped, instinctively, when they saw how the corridor widened out, and they now moved forward with a dead creeping pace, one foot slowly in front of the other. Each of them was aware of the other’s breathing, unsettling wavering breaths, tight and concealed in the cold silent darkness of the tunnel. They inched forward like snails, stopping every now and then to listen to any sounds from the cavern ahead, turning their heads to catch any noise. But none came.
Private Doughty giggled and Wrigley stabbed him with a glare.
“What you playing at?” he hissed, hitting him with the back of his hand and then crouching and looking into the inky blackness ahead.
“Look at us?” muttered Doughty, in a hushed voice. “Right pair of turkeys. There’s nothing here?” he said, standing taller and holding up the lantern.
A dark shape moved across the room at the very edge of the lantern light. “What the bugger was that?” hissed Wrigley, his eyes wide.
Another dark shape loped across the lantern light, followed by a low, animalistic growl.
Wrigley was stepping backwards, tugging hard at this mate’s arm. “What the fuck was that?” he asked, urging Doughty away. A dark shadow lunged towards them. There was a splattering sound, like that of a heavy object being thrown down into water. Wrigley was aware of the light of the lantern moving, moving up the wall, now across the ceiling, now over in an arch towards the floor. As it flew past, it caught the soldier in its full glare, Doughty’s headless corpse, blood pumping down his uniform from a neatly severed neck, turning and falling, following the lantern down onto the floor of the tunnel.
Wrigley tried to scream, but nothing escaped from his mouth. He turned and ran, thundering back up the tunnel into the pitch black, charging headlong into the end of the passageway, his hand flapping wildly to find the corridor on the left in the utter dark. His head crunched hard into the dip in the ceiling of the tunnel, stars swarming, a sharp stinging pain on his forehead. The young private crumpled backwards onto the floor, stunned, the black entombing him like a casket. He felt warmth and wetness on his forehead, in his eye socket, on his face. He turned himself onto his hands and knees and scrambled forwards, wherever that was, lost in the pitch black, weeping, finding the wall and scurrying along it like a lost child. From behind him came the crunching of bones and of flesh, the tearing of uniform, a blood curdling howl. And then feet, many many feet, scrambling after him.
At the end of the tunnel, Private Wrigley could see a grey tinge, the grey tinge of light from the hole down which they had first slid. The light of the few torches they’d left in the trenches and the glow of the full moon, just ahead, just around the corner. He rose to his feet and leapt forwards. A sharp pain jammed hard into his left leg. He felt something rip into his left thigh and then the pain came, too great for him to think of anything else. He fell forward, mud encasing his torn limb. He cried pitifully but it was almost a mercy when jaws settled and with a crunch bit the top of his head clean off, flecking the dark mud with white.
Out of the hole they tore, feral wolves, terrible and crazed, their grey and brown hides caked with dirt and a lifetime’s filth from their world below. They tore out into the trench, the moonlight stinging their burning red eyes, glinting on their flashing talons and blood red jaws. They charged down the trench, gashing and gnashing at soldiers as they went, decapitating, amputating, disembowelling, mortally wounding with single blows from their vile claws.
The sound was terrible, like a host of berserk dogs high on the scent of blood and half-starved by their wicked owners, unleashed and sent after a desperate fleeing prey. And no prey could run from such a terrible enemy.
Amid the cries of the butchered and the howls of the wolves, blood gushed, organs flew, bodies fell and were dashed into the earth or crunched and consumed in seconds by the following feeding pack. A cry went up, a gun fired, its bullet buffeting harmlessly into the wave of insatiable blood lusting beasts. Further up the trench a bell was rung desperately.
Alarm! Alarm! Enemy in the trench! Enemy in the trench!
Soldiers scampered out of dugouts and scrambled from the outskirts of Fampoux, tumbling down into the trenches, rifles and bayonets at the ready, expecting to find the Hun, only to be dashed apart like seeds beneath a threshing machine, their bodies torn open, their blood and body parts showering the trench walls. Those who tried to flee were caught after their first few steps.
Henry saw a soldier stumble out of his trench and watched wide eyed as the wolves he was hopelessly trying to flee engulfed him. The first bite took the soldier’s head and part of his shoulder clean off, the second swallowed his lungs, ribs and most of his organs. Not a single morsel was left.
Henry turned the machine gun down the length of the trench and pulled the trigger. He watched as the stream of bullets thudded into the head of the wave of wolves leaping and howling along it. But it did little to halt their merciless drive up the trench’s length under the hail of bullets, snapping and devouring all in their path. The lead wolf leapt up at where Henry was positioned, his jaws snapping hard down on the muzzle of the gun. The beast was huge, the size of a lion, long limbed, stinking and emanating evil from every strand of its fetid coat, every inch of its terrible, taut body.
Henry pulled the trigger. The gun exploded, blasting him backwards into the gunner’s hole, showering him with shrapnel, as tumbling rocks and debris fell on top of him, throwing the wolf back down into the trench, dazed and burnt, wilder and more wrathful than ever. Henry fell, seemingly for an age. The back of his head hit something hard and sharp. Everything went black and the world faded to nothingness.