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“Sam’s burnt,” replied Nick, unable to tear his eyes off the livid marks on his friend’s wrist. “We have to do something.”
“We sure do,” said the sergeant, suddenly faceless again as the last flare fizzled out. “The boys down there are driving the Dead towards us—and they must think we’re already done for, because they’re not being real careful. We’ll be taking rounds any minute now if we don’t clear off.”
As if to punctuate his remark, another flare arced up overhead, and a sudden flurry of tracer shot over their heads with a whip and a crack. Everybody ducked, and the sergeant shouted, “Down! Get down!”
In the light of the new flare, Nick saw dark shapes emerge from the trees and start up the hill, their telltale shambling gait showing what they were. At the same time, one of the boys farther around the hill screamed out, “They’re coming up behind! Lots of—”
Whatever he was saying was drowned out by more machine-gun fire, long bursts of tracer that drew lines of red light right through the Dead, clearly hitting them many times. They twitched and staggered under the multiple impacts, but still they came on.
“Got ’em enfiladed from that hill,” said the sergeant. “But they’ll get here before the guns rip them apart. I’ve seen it before. And we’ll get shot to pieces as well.”
He spoke slowly, almost dumbly, and Nick realized that he wasn’t able to think—that his brain had become saturated with danger and could not deal with the situation.
“Can’t we signal the soldiers somehow?” he shouted above yet another burst of fire. Both the dark silhouettes of the Dead and the momentarily bright shifting lines of tracer were advancing towards them at an inexorable rate, like something slow but unstoppable, a hypnotic instrument of fate.
One line of tracer suddenly swung farther up towards them, and bullets ricocheted off stone and earth, whistling past Nick’s head. He pressed himself further into the mud, and pulled Sam closer too, shielding his unconscious friend with his own body.
“Can’t we signal?” Nick repeated frantically, his voice muffled, mouth tasting dirt.
The sergeant didn’t answer. Nick looked across and saw that he was lying still. His red-banded cap had come off, and his head was in a pool of blood, black in the flare light. Nick couldn’t tell if he was still breathing.
Hesitantly, he reached out towards the sergeant, pushing his arm through the mud, dreadful visions of bullets smashing through the bone making him keep it as low as possible. His fingers touched metal, the hilt of the man’s sword. He would have flinched and drawn back, but at that moment someone screamed behind him, a scream of such terror that his fingers convulsively gripped the weapon.
Twisting around, he saw one of the boys silhouetted, grappling with a larger figure. It had him gripped around the neck and was shaking him around like a milk shake.
Without thinking of getting shot, Nick leapt up to help. Even as he did so, other boys jumped up too, hacking at the Dead Hand with bats, stumps, and rocks.
Within seconds they had it down and stumped through, but not quickly enough to save its victim. Harry Benlet’s neck was broken, and he would never take three wickets in a single afternoon ever again, or hurdle every desk in the exam hall at Somersby just for the fun of it.
The fight with the Hand had taken them to the crest of the hill, and there Nick saw that there were Dead on both sides. Only the ones on the forward slope were being slowed by gunfire. He could see where the soldiers were firing from, and could make out groups of them. There were several machine-guns on the neighboring hill, and at least a hundred soldiers were advancing through the trees on either side of the road.
As Nick watched, he saw one line of tracer suddenly swing up towards them. It got within thirty yards and suddenly stopped. It was too far to see clearly with the rain, but Nick realized that the gun had only stopped for reloading or to shift the tripod, as soldiers moved swiftly around it. Obviously they had seen a target of opportunity: figures silhouetted on the hilltop.
“Move!” he shouted, rushing down the side of the hill in a half-crouch. The others followed in a mad, sliding dash that ended only when several boys crashed into each other and fell over.
A moment later, tracer shot overhead and the hilltop exploded in a spray of water, mud, and ricocheting bullets.
Nick instinctively ducked, though he was well down the slope. In that second, he realized three terrible facts: he had left Sam behind, halfway around the hill; they absolutely had to signal the soldiers to avoid getting shot; and even if they kept moving, the Dead would catch them before the soldiers finished off the Dead.
But with those dreadful realizations came sudden energy, and a determination Nick had never known, a clarity of thought that he’d never experienced before.
“Ted, get out your matches,” he ordered, knowing Ted’s affectation of smoking a pipe, though he was no good at it. “Everyone else, get out anything you’ve got that’s dry and will burn. Paper, whatever!”
Everyone clustered around as he spoke, their fear-filled faces revealing their eagerness to be doing something. Letters were proffered, dog-eared playing cards, and after a moment’s hesitation pages torn from a notebook that had up till then contained what its owner imagined was his deathless prose. Then came the prize of the lot, a hip flask of brandy from, of all people, the very rules-conscious Cooke Minor.
The first three matches fizzled out in the rain, increasing everyone’s anxiety. Then Ted used his cap to shield the fourth. It lit nicely, as did the brandy-soaked paper. A bright fire sprang up, of orange flames tinged with brandy blue, suddenly bringing color back to the monochrome landscape, lit by the seemingly endless succession of parachute flares.
“Right,” snapped Nick. “Ted, will you and Mike crawl around and drag Sam back here? Stay off the crest. And do be careful of his wrists—he’s burnt.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Ted, hesitating as more tracer rounds flew o
ver the hill, and white phosphorus grenades exploded in the distance. Clearly he was afraid to go but didn’t want to admit it.
“I’m going to try to find the necromancer, the man who controls the things out there,” said Nick, brandishing the sword. “I suggest everyone else start singing, so the Army knows there are real people here, by the fire. You’ll have to keep the creatures away, too, though I’m going to try to draw the closer ones after me.”
“Sing?” asked Cooke Minor. He seemed quite calm, possibly because he’d drunk half the contents of his hip flask before handing it over. “Sing what?”
“The school song,” replied Nick over his shoulder as he headed down the hill. “It’s probably the only thing everybody knows.”
To keep out of the way of the machine-guns, Nick ran around the hill before he headed down, towards the Dead, who were now behind their original position. As he ran, he waved the sword above his head and shouted, meaningless words that were half-drowned by the constant chatter of the guns.
He was halfway to the closest Hands when the singing started, loud enough to be heard even above the gunfire, the boys singing with a volume greater than the Somersby choirmaster would have believed possible.
Snatches of the words followed Nick as he dummied a left turn in front of the Hands and then darted right, turning back towards the trees and the road.
“Choose the path that honor takes—”
He slowed to avoid a tree trunk. It was much darker among the trees, the flare light diminished by the foliage overhead. Nick risked a glimpse behind and was both pleased and terrified to see that at least some of the Dead had turned and were following him. Terror was the stronger emotion, making him run faster between the trees than common sense called for.
“Play the game for its own sakes—”
