Page 46 of The Unknown Birds

Chapter 15

Pas-de-Calais, April 1917

A year ago, sleeping safely abed in Whitechapel, Ashley’s nightmares had been of fire raining down from zeppelins like tongues of the Holy Spirit. Now her dreams were haunted by the fiery shrapnel of Allied aeroplanes torn apart by the bloody Red Baron. It was the first time she’d ever seen such a contraption.

The zeppelins which had plagued her home in London were mammoth floating monsters that drifted through the sky like weaponized whales. Arriving at night under the cloak of darkness made them all the more frightful for what you knew was lurking beyond what you could see.

When the Red Baron flew his agile Fokker over the trenches near Arras in the light of day, Ash couldn’t help gazing up at the sky in awe-struck wonder. Well aware of the danger, she was too tired and too mesmerized to look away, though he had shot down countless Allied pilots like children knocking bricks out of a ring.

“Blimey,” Tom said with a shiver.

“That’s sure something,” Cooper agreed.

“If men were meant to fly, God would have granted them wings,” Blake argued, hunkering down in his funk hole for cover.

“He did,” Ashley said. “Baron von Richthofen’s are just made of iron.”

“Running’s a bit like flying, isn’t it?” Cooper asked, still staring up at the sky.

“You sound like you admire him,” Blake scoffed.

“I don’t admire him. He didn’t invent that machine, he only pilots it.” She didn’t even admire the planes so much as stand in awe of what they could do—what they would be able to do outside of war.

Still, it was almost a mercy when the snow turned to rain just ahead of the next push, because even the Red Baron dared not attempt to fly through wind and hail.

They traded their wool blankets for gum boots and a reminder to change their socks.

“Every day,” the captain cautioned them. “Twice on Sundays. Pair off to check each other’s feet for signs of trench foot. Remember, once prepared, twice rewarded,” he added, echoing the quarter bloke’s favorite line.

Sleep came but fitfully in those spring days, punctuated by constant rumbling that might be bombs as easily as thunder, and a chill settled into Ashley’s bones along with the damp. To keep their minds off their discomfort, she read to her friends from The Life of the Fields, the volume Rook had given her for luck before the Somme, though by now she could just about recite it all from memory. Its imagery of England was a balm for their homesick souls.

In quieter moments, she tried to lull herself to sleep by pretending she was little Amy Dorrit, tucked in a makeshift bed inside a drafty church near the Marshalsea.

One day she dozed off curled up in a two-man cubby, only to dream the mad Red Baron had invaded Little Dorrit’s church and was setting upon her with sharp fangs and fingers that writhed like snakes.

She jumped awake.

Had she actually just screamed?

And what was pawing at her now? Her helmet had slid down over her eyes and she fought the heavy hands that groped her, wrestling and flinging them away, one and then the other, and then the first again—until she managed to knock off her tin hat and she was met with beady red eyes, not a man at all, she realized in equal horror.

“Rats,” TomTom murmured, awakened by her kicking and flailing, as she struggled to get them off her chest. It still felt like thousands of tiny feet and heavy swarming spiders tickled her skin.

She wanted to scream and scream and scream, but she bit down hard on her lip until only a whimper could escape.

“Oy!” Rook yelled from his nearby post, holding one up, large as a cat, impaled on the end of his bayonet. “Did you just toss a bloody great vermin grenade at me?”

Tom and Ash burst out laughing, a pressure valve for her hysteria.

From a nearby funk hole, Cooper hollered, “Shut it, mate,” making them dissolve deeper into fits of sleep-deprived giggles.

“Thought you might be hungry,” Ash teased Rook.

He raised his eyebrows, examining the rat like he might consider it. “I was going to save it for the dog, but now you mention it...”

“S’pose they come for the water,” Tom said, trying to press himself deeper into the hole.

“And stay for the corpses,” Rook replied turning back towards No Man’s Land, rain dripping off his helmet and down his sodden coat.