Chapter 8: The Key of the Bottomless Pit

PASSCHENDAELE RIDGE, FLANDERS, BELGIUM

November 1917

Freddie was trying to crawl out from under a great crushing weight, and he wondered if it was worth the effort. He was strangely warm. Then he heard a squeak. Something skittered over his face.

“Faugh!” he cried, lurching upright, alive, underground, and in a fighting rage. Nothing enraged soldiers more than the sound of rats. The bloody rats had come to eat him. Well, he wasn’t dead yet. He struck out. His hand found the yielding flesh of a dead man, then recoiled off the resilient shoulder of a live one. Freddie heard a hiss of pain and remembered then that he was not entombed alone. Winter muttered a string of German curses as he struggled upright.

There was a chittering, and then a gnawing sound. Freddie’s gorge rose. They were eating the dead. “The rats. Oh, Christ…” Then he realized he’d struck Winter, bad arm and all, when he was lashing out.

“Winter, I’m sorry, did I…?”

“Yes,” said Winter. “But I’m all right. Wait. Ratten.” A strange note in his voice.

“Rats? Yes? What do you mean…What are you doing?”

Winter had pushed Freddie away from him—they must have fallen unconscious in a heap. “We’re not dead.” Winter’s voice had a new fierce note. “And now there are rats.”

Freddie wondered, in horror, if Winter had gone mad. “There are always rats,” he said, sharp. He could still hear the chewing. The skin was trying to crawl off his bones.

Winter said, “No—you see? We’re not dead. There was—air coming in before. But now the way is bigger. The air is better. And there are rats now. The last bombardment could have done it.”

“Made a way for rats,” said Freddie, his mind starting to work again. “But for men?”

“We must feel for—for air moving. For—” Winter groped for the word. “Drafts.” A pause. “There were five men in here with me. You might find…”

Bodies in the dark.Freddie had probably killed one or two himself. He was silent.

Winter said, “Talk to me as I go, and I will do the same for you.”

But Freddie didn’t move. He tried, but his limbs cramped and he stayed where he was. He was afraid. Afraid to crawl out into the void, away from Winter’s living presence. As though somewhere in the dark, the German’s unseen voice would be cut off, and he would discover that Winter was just the product of his fevered imagination. As though he’d find himself finally, and truly, alone. Except for those dead men. He imagined them, unseen, turning their slimy faces up toward him, little lights of hell burning in their dead eyes.

Then Winter’s hand found his arm, gripping hard enough that he could feel it, even through the thick, soaked wool of his overcoat. “Iven?”

Don’t be a child don’t be a child, don’t…“I’m afraid,” he said, and was ashamed.

The hand tightened, the last real thing in his whole world. “So am I.” Winter’s voice sharpened. “Go.”

Freddie had been long enough a soldier that his body responded before his flailing mind could think. He began to crawl. He put a hand down on something yielding, recoiled, slammed his shoulder against a wall. “Winter?” he called, ashamed of how his voice wavered.

He heard a few words in German that might have been an oath, or a prayer. “I’m all right, Iven. Go on. Go on, boy.”

Freddie tried to be systematic, but it was so dark and he was so thirsty. He crawled, scraping his hands, bruising himself, bumping his head, groping ahead until he could hardly move his aching arms. He was lying there, his heartbeats shaking his whole body, when he realized that there was moving air on his face. “Winter.”

A rustle of clothing, surprisingly near, and the faint grunt of pain as the German dragged himself across. How badly was he wounded? Then Winter’s groping hand found Freddie’s and he guided their twined fingers until Winter could feel what he had: air just stirring on his palm. And a sloppy layer of sticky mud. Mud that could be dug away. Perhaps. Freddie said, with regret, “I’d matches, but they all got wet. I can’t see a thing. If we try digging, we’d be doing it blind.”

Winter said, “We must try anyway.” Something dauntless in his voice.

Their heads must be close together. He could feel the feverish warmth of the other man’s body. “I’ll start,” Freddie added. “Since your arm is hurt. I’ll tell you if I get tired.”