Текст книги "Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon"
Автор книги: Mark Hodder
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The loss of the harvestman came much sooner than Burton expected. Less than two hours after he'd expressed his concern to Trounce, they encountered a thick band of jungle too dense to chop a wide enough path through and too high for the vehicle to pick its way across. Honesty ran the spider along the edge of the barrier for a mile southward, then back and for a mile to the north. He returned and shouted down from the cabin: “Stretches as far as the eye can see. No way through. Shall I go farther?”
“No,” Burton called back. “It wouldn't do to get separated. I don't want to lose you! We'll have to leave it. We knew it was going to happen at some point. I suppose this is it. And at least the porters will be able to dump the coal supply.”
Honesty turned off the machine's engine and climbed down a leg. “Should destroy it,” he said. “Prussians might follow. Don't want them to have it.”
Burton considered a moment then nodded. “You're right.”
While the safari began to machete its way through the dense undergrowth, the king's agent and the detective tied a rope around the upper part of one of the harvestman's legs and used it to pull the vehicle over onto its side. Honesty drew his Adams police-issue revolver and emptied its chamber into the machine's water tank. They picked up rocks and used them to batter one of the spider's leg joints until it broke.
“That'll do,” Burton said. “Let's press on to Nzasa. The sooner we get there, the better. We're all tired and hungry!”
The band of jungle sloped down to a narrow river. Mosquitoes swarmed over the water and crocodiles basked on its banks. The crossing was difficult, perilous, and uncomfortable, and by the time the expedition emerged from the tangle of vegetation on the other side, everyone was covered with mud, scratches, leeches, insect bites, and stings.
They moved out onto cultivated land and trudged past scattered abodes concealed by high grass and clumps of trees.
They were seeing kraals now-large round huts or long sheds built from sticks woven through with grass. Around these, in a wide circle, thorny barriers had been erected. Constructed by slaver caravans, their presence indicated that the inhabitants of this region were hostile and didn't welcome strangers at their villages.
The trail broadened and the going became easier. They slogged up a hill then descended into the valley of the Kingani River-called Wady el Mautand Dar el Jua, the Valley of Death and Home of Hunger-which they followed until they spotted Nzasa, which Burton knew was one of the rare friendly settlements in the area.
He and Said rode ahead. They were met by three p'hazi, or headmen, each with a patterned cotton sheet wrapped around his loins and slung over his shoulder, each sheltering under an opened umbrella. The Africans announced themselves as Kizaya, Kuffakwema, and Kombe la Simba. The latter, in the Kiswahili language, greeted the two visitors with the words: “I am old and my beard is grey, yet never in all the days I have lived have I beheld a catastrophe like this-the muzungo mbayaonce again in the land of my people!”
Muzungo mbayatranslated as “the wicked white man.”
“I understand thy dismay,” Burton responded. “Thou remembers me not then, O Kombe?
The ancient chief frowned and asked, “I am known to thee?” He squinted at Burton, then his eyebrows shot up and he exclaimed: “Surely thou art not the Murungwana Sana?”
Burton bowed his head and murmured, “I am pleased that thou recollects me as such,” for the words meant “real free man” and were the equivalent of being called a “gentleman.”
Kombe suddenly gave a broad smile, his jet-black face folding into a thousand wrinkles, his mouth displaying teeth that had been filed to points. “Ah!” he cried. “Ah! Ah! Ah! I see all! Thou art hunting the shetani?”
“The devil?”
“Aye! The muzungo mbayaof the long soft beard and gun that never ceases!”
“Thou art speaking of my former companion, John Speke? Thou hast seen him of late?”
“No, but a man from the village of Ngome, which is far north of here, came to us this many-” he extended the word to indicate the time that had passed: maaaannny, “-days ago and told of a bad man with bad men who came to his village intent on bad things. They were led by the muzungo mbaya, and when he was described to me, I remembered the one thou callest Speke, though now they say his head is half of metal.”
Burton said, “So his expedition is taking the northern trail eastward?”
“Aye, and killing and stealing as he goes. Dost thou mean to do the same?”
“Absolutely not! My people seek only to rest for a single night, and for this we shall pay with copper wire and cotton cloth and glass beads.”
“And tobacco?”
“And tobacco.”
“And drink that burns the throat in a pleasurable manner?”
“And drink that burns the throat in a pleasurable manner.”
“I must consult with my brothers.”
The three p'hazistepped away and conversed out of Burton's earshot.
Said gave a snort of contempt and said, in a low voice, “They will come back and demand much hongoto allow us passage through their territory.”
“Of course,” Burton answered. “What else do they have to bargain with?”
Sure enough, Kombe returned with what amounted to an extravagant shopping list. Burton and Said, both experienced in such matters, bartered until an agreement was reached. The village would receive around two-thirds of the specie demanded-which, in fact, was a much better deal than the elders had expected.
Kombe, well satisfied, allowed the expedition to set up camp beside Nzasa and announced that a feast would be held to honour the arrival of the Murungwana Sana.
Their first full day of African travel had exhausted them all. Isabella Mayson said to Burton, “I'm confused, Sir Richard. My body tells me we've travelled many miles, but my head says we've hardly progressed at all.”
“Such is the nature of our task,” he replied. “This was a good day. On a bad, a single step must be counted an achievement.”
As the afternoon wore into evening, the tents were put up, the animals corralled, and the supplies secured.
The rains came.
There were no warning droplets or preliminary showers. One minute the sky was clear, the next it was a dark purple, then the Msikafell, a sheet of unbroken water. It hit the tents like an avalanche, and Burton, Said, Trounce, Honesty, Krishnamurthy, Spencer, Sister Raghavendra, and Miss Mayson-who'd all gathered in the biggest of the Rowties-had to raise their voices, first against the sound of the deluge pummelling the canvas, then against the cacophonous thunder, which grumbled without a pause.
“Excuse my language, ladies,” Trounce shouted, “but bloody hell!”
“Can the tent stand it?” asked Krishnamurthy. “I think the ocean is being emptied on top of us!”
Honesty pulled the entrance flap aside and peered out. “Can't see a thing!” he called. “Solid water.”
“There'll be two hours of this,” Burton announced, “so if Sadhvi and Isabella don't mind, I propose a brandy and a smoke.”
“I don't mind at all,” Isabella said.
“Nor I,” added Sadhvi. “In fact, I'll take a tipple myself.”
A reedy sigh of frustration came from within Herbert Spencer's many robes and scarves.
Pox, perched as usual on the clockwork philosopher's head, gave a loud musical whistle, then squawked, “Flubberty jibbets!”
“Hurrah!” Krishnamurthy cheered. “That's a new one!”
“The nonsensical insults are definitely the most entertaining,” Isabella agreed.
“By Jove!” Trounce blurted. “That reminds me. I say, Richard, those horrible plant things we saw at Mzizima-”
“What about them?” Burton asked.
“I was wondering, what with Eugenicist creations, such as Pox, here-”
“Pig-snuggler!” Pox sang.
“-always displaying a disadvantage in proportion to whatever talent the scientists have bred into them-”
“Yes?”
“Well, what might be the drawback to those vegetable vehicles, do you think?”
“That's a good question, William, and one I can't answer!”
Burton served brandies to them all, including the women, and the men lit their various cigars and pipes, with many a nervous glance at the tent roof, which was billowing violently under the onslaught of rain.
Sister Raghavendra distributed small vials of a clear liquid that she insisted they all add to their drinks. “It's a special recipe we use in the Sisterhood of Noble Benevolence to deal with fevers,” she said. “Don't worry, it's quite tasteless.”
“What's in it?” Honesty asked.
“A mix of quinine and various herbs,” she answered. “It won't make you immune, but it will, at least, make the attacks shorter and less damaging.”
The tent flap suddenly flew open and a drenched imp hopped in.
“Bounders!” it shrieked. “Cads! Fiends! Traitorous hounds! Taking a drink without me! Without me! Aaaiiii!”
The thing bounded to the table and, with wildly rolling eyes, snatched up the brandy bottle and took an extravagant swig from it. Banging the bottle back down, it wiped its mouth on its sleeve, uttered a satisfied sigh, belched, then keeled over like a toppled tree and landed flat on its back.
“Great heavens! Is that Algernon?” Herbert Spencer tooted.
Sister Raghavendra bent beside the sodden and bedraggled figure and put a hand to its forehead. “It is,” she said. “And despite that display, he doesn't appear to be feverish at all.”
Burton stepped over, lifted his assistant up, and carried him to a cot at the side of the tent. “Algy tends to operate, as a matter of course, at a level that most people would consider feverish,” he said. “I think, on this occasion, he has simply overestimated his own strength.”
“Indeed so,” the nurse agreed. “Any man would require a week to recover from blood loss like Algernon experienced.”
“In which case, Algy will probably need just a couple more days, for he is most certainly not anyman!”
They dried their friend as best they could, made him comfortable, and let him sleep.
The rain eventually stopped as quickly as it had started, and the silence of another African night settled over them. They sat quietly, comfortable in each others' company, too exhausted for conversation.
A hyena cackled in the distance.
A shout came from the village.
One drumbeat sounded.
Then another.
All of a sudden, a deep, loud, rhythmic pulsation filled the air as many drums were pounded. A boy's voice hailed them from outside. Burton stepped out of the tent and a child, about ten years old, grinned up at him.
“O Murungwana Sana,” he said, “the fire is lit and the meat is cooking and the women are restless and want to dance. The men desire news of the far off lands of the Muzungu-the white man. Wouldst thou attend us?”
Burton gave a bow. “We shall come with thee now.”
So it was that the expedition's first day ended with a feast and a party, attended by all but the philosopher Herbert Spencer and the poet Algernon Swinburne.
In the tent, the brass man placed a stool beside the cot, sat on it, and leaned forward, bracing himself with his staff. Deep in the shadow of his keffiyeh, his metal face seemed to gaze unwaveringly at Burton's assistant.
And Swinburne dreamt of war.
CHAPTER 7
Battle at Dut'Humi
“To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.”
– Tacitus
Warm rain hammered against Burton's tin helmet and poured from its brim down the back of his greatcoat. An explosion momentarily deafened him, knocked him to his hands and knees, and showered him with clods of mud and lumps of bloody flesh. The black water at the bottom of the flooded trench immediately sucked at his limbs, as if the earth were greedy for yet another corpse. A head floated to the surface. Half of its face was missing. He recoiled in shock, splashing back to his feet, and ducked as another pea burst just yards away. Men and women shrieked in agony, cried out for their mothers, spat the same profanity over and over and over.
A seed thudded into a soldier's face. Blood sprayed. His helmet went spinning. He slumped as if his bones had suddenly vanished, and slid into the mire.
Burton stumbled on, sloshing forward, peering at the troops who were lining the right side of the trench and firing their rifles over its lip. He eventually saw the man he was searching for-a big Askari with a patch covering his right eye. He climbed up beside him and shouted into his ear: “Are you Private Usaama?”
“What?”
“I'm looking for Private Usaama. I was told he knows Wells.”
“I'm him. What wells?”
“Herbert Wells. The correspondent. I think he's with your company.”
The man's answer was lost as a squadron of hornets swept overhead, flying low, buzzing furiously, their oval bodies painted with the Union Jack, their guns crackling.
“What did you say?” Burton hollered.
“I said if he hasn't bought it he'll be in the forward listening post. Keep on down the trench until you come to an opening on your right. It's there.”
They both ducked as seeds howled past them and embedded themselves in the opposite wall of the trench. Rain-loosened dirt collapsed inward.
Burton jumped back down into the water and moved along, picking his way past the dead and the mutilated, whispering a Sufi meditation to keep himself sane.
A female Askari, who was propped against a pile of saturated sandbags, grabbed at his sleeve and said in a pleading tone: “I've lost my boot. I've lost my boot. I've lost my boot.”
He looked down and saw that the woman's left leg was a ragged mess beneath the knee. The foot was missing.
“I've lost my boot. I've lost my boot.”
He nodded helplessly and yanked his arm from her grasp.
Another explosion. More terrible screams.
The passage to the listening post, seen dimly through the downpour, was now just a few steps away. He waded toward it, the smell of cordite and rotting flesh and overflowing latrines thick in his nostrils.
Sirens wailed through the staccato gunfire and thumping detonations: “Ulla! Ulla! Ulla!”
He entered the narrow passage and pushed through the water to its end, which widened into a small square pit. Its sides were shored up with wood, its upper edges protected by sandbags. To his right, a mechanical contrivance rested on a table beneath a canvas hood. Nearby, a corpse lay half-submerged, its eyes gazing sightlessly at the sky. Straight ahead, a short and plump man was standing on a box and peering northward through a periscope. He had a bugle slung over his shoulder and his tin helmet was badly dented on one side.
“Bertie?”
The man turned. The left side of his face was badly disfigured by a burn scar. He was unshaven and smeared with dirt.
“Lieutenant Wells, if you don't mind,” he shouted. “Who the devil are you?”
“It's me. Burton.”
Wells squinted through the rain, then gave a sudden whoop of joy and jumped from the box. He splashed over to Burton and gripped him by the hand.
“It's true! It's true!” he yelled, his voice pitched even higher than usual. “By gum, Burton, it's been two years! I thought I'd imagined you! But look at you! Alive! In the flesh! The chronic argonaut himself!” Wells suddenly stepped back. “What happened to you? You look like a skeleton!”
“War has been happening to me, Bertie, and to you too, I see.”
They both jerked down as something whistled overhead and exploded in the trenches behind them.
“This is the ugliest it's ever been,” Wells shouted. “It's attrition warfare now. The Hun has abandoned all strategy but that of battering us into oblivion. Grab a periscope and join me. Ha! Just like when we first met! What happened to you after the Battle of the Bees?”
“The what?”
“Tanga, man!”
Burton took one of the viewing devices from the table and climbed onto the box beside Wells.
“I fell in with a group of guerrilla fighters. We spent eighteen months or so raiding Hun outposts around Kilimanjaro before I suffered a fever and severe leg ulcerations that had me laid up in a field hospital for seven weeks. While I was there, the guerrillas were killed by A-Spores. During my final week in the hospital, I heard from-” They both crouched as three explosions tore up the battlefield nearby. “-From another patient that you were heading to Dut'humi, for the attack on the Tanganyika Railway, so I hooked up with a company that was heading this way.”
“I can't tell you how good it is to see you again!” Wells exclaimed. “By heaven, Richard, your inexplicable presence is the one spark of magic in this endlessly turgid conflict! Is your memory restored? Do you know why you're here?”
Burton peered through the periscope. He saw coils of barbed wire forming a barrier across the landscape ahead. Beyond it there were German trenches, and behind them, the terrain rose to a ridge, thick with green trees. The Tanganyika railway line, he'd learned, was on the other side of that low range.
“I remember a few more things-mainly that there's something I have to do. The trouble is, I don't know what!”
From over to their left, a machine gun started to chatter. Four more explosions sounded in quick succession and lumps of mud rained down on them. Someone screeched, coughed, and died.
“Forgive the mundanity,” Wells said, “but I don't suppose you've got biscuits or anything? I haven't eaten since yesterday!”
“Nothing,” Burton replied. “Bertie, the forest-”
“What? Speak up!”
“The trees on the ridge. There's something wrong with them.”
“I've noticed. A verdant forest-and one that wasn't there two days ago!”
“What? You mean the trees grew to maturity in just forty-eight hours?”
“They did. Eugenicist mischief, obviously.”
“They aren't even native to Africa. Acer pseudoplatanus. The sycamore maple. It's a European species.”
“For a man whose memory is shot through you know far too much Latin. Down!”
They ducked and hugged the dirt wall as a pea thumped into the mud nearby and detonated.
Wells said something. Burton shook his head. He couldn't hear. His ears had filled with jangling bells. The war correspondent leaned closer and shouted: “The Hun have recently solved the problem with growing yellow pea artillery. The shrapnel from these projectiles is poisonous. If you're hit, pull the fragments out of your wound as fast as you can.”
An enormously long, thin leg swung over the listening post as a harvestman stepped across it. Burton looked up at the underside of its small oval-shaped body and saw a trumpet-mouthed weapon swivelling back and forth. He straightened, wiped the rain from his eyes, and lifted the scope. A long line of the mechanised spiders was crossing the forward trenches and approaching the barbed-wire barrier. There were at least twenty vehicles. Their weapons began to blast out long jets of flame.
All of a sudden the downpour stopped, and in the absence of its pounding susurration, the loud clatter of the vehicles' steam engines and the roar of their flamethrowers sounded oddly isolated.
A strong warm breeze gusted across the battlefield.
Burton was shaken by a sense of uneasiness.
Wells obviously felt it too. “Now what?” he muttered.
A shell, fired from the German trenches, hit one of the harvestmen. “Ulla!” it screamed, and collapsed to the ground. Its driver spilled from the saddle, started to run, and was shredded by gunfire.
“Something's happening up on the ridge,” Wells said.
Burton turned his attention back to the distant forest. He frowned and muttered, “Is there something wrong with my sense of perspective?”
“No,” Wells answered. “Those trees are gigantic.”
They were also thrashing about in the strengthening wind.
“This doesn't feel at all natural,” Burton said.
“You're right. I think the Hun weathermen are at work. We'd better stand ready to report to HQ.”
“HQ? Are you Army now, Bertie?”
“Aren't you? You're in uniform.”
“My other clothes rotted off my back-”
Another pea burst nearby. A lump of it clanged off Burton's helmet.
“-and I was given these at the field hospital. No one has officially drummed me into service. I think they just assume I'm a soldier.”
“Such is our state of disorganisation,” Wells responded. “The fact is, Richard, everyone is a soldier now. That's how desperate things have become. There's no such thing as a British civilian in the entire world. And right now, I'm assigning you as my Number Two. The previous, Private Michaels-” Wells gestured toward the half-submerged corpse Burton had barely registered earlier, “-poked his head over the sandbags, the silly sod, and got hit by a sniper. Be sure you don't do the same. Get over to the wireless.”
Burton glanced back at the apparatus on the table. “Wireless? I-er-I don't know how to use it.”
“Two years here and you still can't operate a bloody radio?”
“I've been-”
He was interrupted by whistles sounding all along the frontline trench.
“This is it!” Wells exclaimed. “The lads are going over!”
To the left and right of the listening post, Askari soldiers-with some white faces standing out among them-clambered from the waterlogged trenches and began to move across the narrow strip of no-man's-land in the wake of the advancing harvestmen. They were crouching low and holding bayoneted rifles. Seeds from the opposing trenches sizzled through the air. Men's heads were jerked backward; their limbs were torn away; their stomachs and chests were rent open; they went down, and when they went down, others, moving up from behind, replaced them. Peas arced out of the sky and slapped into the mud among them. They exploded, ripping men apart and sending the pieces flying into the air. Still the British troops pressed on.
“Bismillah!” Burton whispered as the carnage raged around him.
“Look!” Wells yelled. He pointed up at the ridge. “What the hell is that?”
Burton adjusted his viewer and observed through its lens a thick green mass boiling up from the trees. Borne on the wind, it came rolling down the slope and passed high above the German trenches. As it approached, he saw that it was comprised of spinning sycamore seeds, and when one of them hit the leg of a harvestman, he realised they were of an enormous size-at least twelve feet across. The seed didn't merely hit the spider's leg, either-its wings sliced right through it; they were as solid and sharp as scimitars. He watched horrified as thousands upon thousands of the whirling seeds impacted against the lofty battle machines, shearing through the long thin legs, chopping into the oval bodies, decapitating the drivers. As the harvestmen buckled under the onslaught, the seeds spun on toward the advancing troops.
“Take cover!” Wells bellowed.
Burton and the war correspondent dropped to their knees in filthy water and hugged the base of the observation pit's forward wall. Eight sycamore seeds whisked through the air above them and thudded into the back of the excavation. A ninth sliced Private Michaels' corpse clean in half. A green cloud hurtled overhead and mowed into the frontline trenches.
Its shadow passed. The wind stopped. Burton looked up at the sky. The rainclouds were now ragged tatters, fast disappearing, and the blistering sun shone between them down onto a scene of such slaughter that, when Burton stood, climbed back onto the box, and looked through his periscope, he thought he might lose his mind with the horror of what he saw. He squeezed his eyes shut. Ghastly moans and whimpers and shrieks of agony filled his ears. He clapped his palms over them. The stench of fresh blood invaded his nostrils.
He collapsed backward and fell full length into the trench water. It closed over him and he wanted to stay there, but hands clutched at his clothing and hauled him out.
“Run!” Wells cried out, his voice pitched even higher than usual. “The Germans are coming!”
Burton staggered to his feet. His soaked trousers clung to his legs; filthy liquid streamed from his jacket and shirt.
“Move! Move!” Wells shouted. He grabbed Burton and pushed him toward the connecting passage. As they splashed through it, the little war correspondent lifted his bugle to his lips and sounded the retreat. With the urgent trumpeting in his ears, Burton blundered along and passed into the forward trench. It looked as if hell itself had bubbled up out of the mud. The sycamore seeds were everywhere, their blades embedded in sandbags, in the earth, and in soldiers. The troops had been diced like meat on a butcher's slab; body parts were floating in rivers of blood; and in the midst of the carnage, limbless men and women lay twitching helplessly, their dying eyes wide with terror and shock.
As Burton and Wells raced from the foremost trench and made their way through the connecting ditches toward the rear, the smaller man blew the retreat with frantic desperation, while the taller, whenever he spotted a soldier still capable of moving, gathered wits enough to shout: “Withdraw! Withdraw!”
Eventually they came to the final trench, clambered out of it, their uniforms red with other men's gore, and began to run.
Burton glanced to either side and saw a straggling line of fleeing soldiers-so few! – then looked back and gasped: “What are they?”
Wells said something but it was lost as a barrage of explosive peas came whistling down, punched into the ground just behind them, and sent up huge spouts of mud.
The world slowed down, became utterly silent, and revolved majestically around Burton. The sky passed underneath. Men performed loose-limbed pirouettes through it. Some of the loose limbs weren't attached to the men.
I have to be somewhere.
The ground swung upward to meet him.
Time resumed.
The earth smacked into his face.
He coughed, groaned, spat soil from his mouth, and lifted himself onto all fours.
Wells was spreadeagled nearby.
Burton crawled over to him. His friend was alive and conscious and his mouth was moving but there was no sound. There was no sound anywhere.
Wells pointed at the trenches.
Looking back, Burton saw the Schutztruppenapproaching. One of the Germans was very near. He was dressed in a slate-grey uniform and his helmet was spiked at its crown. He held in his hands, like a rifle, a long seedpod with a vicious thorn dripping venom at its end.
The Schutztruppenweren't human.
Burton pushed himself backward through the mud, kicking his feet, trying to get away. He couldn't take his eyes off the approaching soldier. Though a man in shape, the German's head was deformed-his jaws were pushed forward into a snout, and his slavering mouth was filled with long canines. He was a tawny-yellow colour, and black-spotted, and his golden eyes had vertical irises.
The name Laurence Oliphant jumped into Burton's mind, and in a flash he recalled a duel, a clashing of swords, with a man half human and half white panther. The memory was hallucinogenic in its power. He reached for his sword, looked into the thing's feline eyes, and whispered: “Good lord! What have you done to yourself?”
When his hand came whipping up there was not a sword in it, but a pistol, and without even thinking, he pumped four bullets into the German.
He watched as the trooper staggered, dropped the seedpod, and teetered to one side. The creature-a leopard given human shape-flopped to the ground. There were more approaching. Some of them were similarly formed from lithe jungle cats; others were bulky rhinoceros men, or vicious hyena things. Hardly any were fully human.
Fingers closed over Burton's arm. He jerked free of them and scrabbled away before realising they belonged to Bertie Wells. The war correspondent was on his feet. His mouth was working, and faintly, as if from a long way off, Burton heard: “Come on, man! We have to get out of here!”
A chunk of dirt was thrown up near his head. Something tugged violently at his wet sleeve and scored the skin beneath. It finally registered that he was being shot at.
He pushed himself to his feet and, with Wells, started to run as hard as he could.
They passed between two Scorpion Tanks whose tail cannon were spewing fire at the oncoming enemy troops. A pea smashed square into one and the war machine flew apart, sending shards of splintered carapace skittering past the two men.
Burton's hearing returned with a clap, and the dissonances of battle assaulted his already overwhelmed senses.
He and Wells veered to the right, ducked behind the swollen carcass of a long-dead mega-dray horse, and bolted through a field of broken wagons and wrecked wooden shacks.
They ran and ran and eventually reached the base of the Dut'humi Hills.
Seven British hornets, flying extremely low, came buzzing from behind the higher ground. They swept down, passed over the two men, and raked the battlefield with bullets. One of the giant insects was struck mid-thorax by an enemy cannon. It hit the earth and tumbled, enveloped in flames.
At the edge of the undergrowth, Burton noticed a bright poppy-a red beacon amid the foliage.
“This way!” he shouted, and pulled Wells toward it. They threw themselves past the little flower and into thick purplish vegetation. Careless of thorns, they heaved themselves through bushes, climbed over twisted roots, ducked under looped lianas, and forced their way uphill until the frightful noise of conflict began to fade behind them.
Vegetation snagged at and tore their uniforms. Wet leaves dripped on them, though they were already soaked to the skin. Still they kept going, passing over the brow of a jungly hill and down into a stinking swamp. They waded through it, thigh-deep, careless of crocodiles, and emerged onto firmer land where the terrain once again sloped upward. The vegetation was slightly less dense here, and they slowed to walking pace as they passed between tree boles, with a tightly packed canopy overhead.
Burton noticed another poppy off to his left. He steered his companion in that direction.
“There's a place I must go, Bertie.”
“Where?”
“I wish I knew.”
A prickly and malformed plant to Wells's right twitched spasmodically. Milky liquid spurted from it and hit the sleeve of the war correspondent's greatcoat. The material immediately started to smoulder.
Wells swore, ripped the garment open, and pulled it off, throwing it to the ground. He pushed Burton onward, leaving the plant and the coat behind.
“Bloody Eugenicist creations are starting to sprout up all over the place,” he growled. “And they're all acid-spitting, bloodsucking, needle-shooting, poison-scent-emitting atrocities! Look at those, for instance-” He nodded toward the base of a nearby tree. Burton looked and saw a clump of bulbous white fungi.
