A Walk in the Sun
The tunnels were dark, but there was light ahead. The sun was up outside. He propelled himself towards the glimmering. Ball stumbled in his wake, determinedly covering ground. The troglodytes, occupied with their fire, did not give immediate chase.
As Winthrop ran, his knee hurt. The field dressing that had been applied was surprisingly sturdy. His booted feet were recovering sensation. He ignored pain.
There were shot sounds but he did not think they were being fired on. Another ammunition case had exploded. Something howled like an animal.
Only a few yards away now, the curtain hung over the tunnel mouth. White dots showed through the weave of camouflage netting. Once out in the sun, they should be safe. The troglodytes were newborns, not yet strong enough to stand daylight.
And so was Albert Ball. The thought hit Winthrop just as he pushed through the curtain. It was too late to change course. He staggered, sprawling, outside and tripped, falling flat onto the pitted bottom of the shell-hole. After the dark, his eyes hurt in the milk-mild light. Blinking, he recovered quickly.
It was a pleasant, quiet day. Not even much bombardment. The air was still sharp with February chill, but the clouds had drifted apart and the sun shone gently.
Ball shot out of the tunnel mouth and, smitten, fell. His limbs twisted as tendons shortened, giving him the look of an ossified Pompeiian. His chest and head began to emit tendril wisps of smoke. His face contorted further and stiffened in a scream that came out only as a gasp of escaping gas. He held his hand over his face.
Winthrop scrambled upright and ripped the curtain from the tunnel mouth. He draped it over Ball, wrapping the vampire in cool shadow. The ace's writhing stopped. Ball couldn't last long. Winthrop had seen men burst into flames on days more overcast than this. Vampires were frail immortals, he reminded himself. You had to get a good few years behind you before you could stroll in the sunshine.
The dark cave of the tunnel mouth was alive with eyes. A cruel laugh wafted across No Man's Land. Winthrop helped Ball stand, feeling growing heat in the vampire's body.
'Lovely day,' Mellors said. He stood in the darkness, watching his prey struggle. 'Just right for potting a few grouse.'
Winthrop choked on smoke. He had to get Ball into shadow.
In the tunnel mouth, Mellors raised a revolver. Winthrop pushed Ball to one side and shoved after him, getting out of the line of fire. Mellors fired a shot, which lifted a divot a dozen yards off. He could not draw a bead on them without stepping out into the killing sun.
The troglodytes would not come out until nightfall. But Ball wouldn't be able to make any distance in the daytime. He was shaking, containing an explosion by force of will. Winthrop had a vision of the vampire bursting. He was so close to Ball that his body would be riddled with shrapnel-like bone fragments. That would, at least, be mercifully swift.
Nearby was an isolated patch of wall, remnant of an unidentifiable building. In the lea of the wall was a deep, cool pool of dark. Winthrop gathered his strength and determination, then dragged Ball across the ground. Ball missed his footing but did not become a dead weight.
The wall would afford a shield against fire from the tunnel mouth, but they had to dash across the open to get there. Mellors fired again, with a countryman's accuracy. A red gobbet exploded in Ball's burned-black side. It was a plain lead bullet, for the wound did not slow the pilot.
Before the troglodyte chieftain could draw a bead on the living man, Winthrop was behind the wall, back slammed to shaking bricks. Darkness cloaked around and Ball collapsed. He tried to reach his wound with his remaining hand, but his elbow would not bend as required. Winthrop looked at the mawlike gape. Flesh and skin swarmed actively over shattered ribs. A tiny twig of new growth sprouted from the stump of Ball's lost arm, ending with a bud which might in time be a fresh hand. His healing faculties were exerted, but his wounds were too many and profound.
Having made it behind the wall, it was hard to feel the situation much improved. They had to wait for nightfall to move on. The troglodytes would then be able to bear down on them with despatch. It was unthinkable that Winthrop leave Ball here.
Shots thwacked against the wall, shaking the loose bricks. A few well-placed bullets and the wall would collapse on their heads. Winthrop dug out his cigarette case. He stuck two cigarettes in his mouth, lit them from his last-but-one match, and eased one between Ball's broken teeth. They sucked smoke and shook their heads.
'Really, this is foolish. You pop off home and send back for me.'
Winthrop coughed.
'Not likely help would arrive in time, I admit,' Ball said. Slabs of burned face had chipped away from his soot-blackened skull. One of his eyes was burst and congealed.
Slumped, Winthrop was overcome with weariness. He slid down the wall and hung his head. He wasn't sure he could even continue under his own steam. He had lost blood and been battered extensively. And, discounting his period of hung-up- to-dry unconsciousness, he'd not slept in nearly two days. It was also over a day since he had eaten anything.
'I always intended to have children-in-darkness. I wanted to pass on the gift.'
In his current state, Ball was not a good advertisement for the gift of vampirism. One of his legs was dead, broken in several places, slowly resolving itself to skin flakes, flesh dust and bone chips.
'If I hadn't accepted the Dark Kiss, I'd have been done for when Lothar von Richthofen shot me down. I've stayed on well past my time. Now it's over.'
Winthrop tried to contradict the pilot.
'No, old thing. I can tell I'm done for. There's less and less of me to save, and what's left is not much worth saving.'
'I can't go on either. I'm about done in.'
A shot ricocheted off bricks and spanged across the crater.
The pilot reached down to his leg and crumbled his thigh in his fingers. The skin came apart like burned paper, the muscle wafted to dust and the bone snapped into fragments like a length of chalk. A breeze scattered the dust.
'I'm finished, Winthrop.'
His jaw was loose at the hinges. Blood leaked from his mouth.
'Who turned you?'
Slug-like muscles over Ball's cheekbones twitched. Winthrop realised his lipless, fleshless face was trying to smile.
'A girl on Brighton pier.'
'Was she an elder?'
He was thinking of the centuried Isolde.
Ball shook his head. His scalp and helmet were fused into a loose, fragile covering. 'Just a new-born. An "artist's model". She said her name was Mildred.'
Winthrop could imagine a Mildred.
'Some vampires can regenerate entirely after decapitation.'
Ball's larynx clicked in an approximation of laughter.
'You're welcome to give it a bash, but I doubt you'd have much joy. I've an indifferent bloodline, I think.'
The dying vampire sat up, crinkling his stomach. Winthrop bent his ear to listen. Ball reached out and got a grip on Winthrop's shoulder. He still had strength in his wrist.
'There's only one way I can go on,' Ball whispered.
Thinking he understood, Winthrop loosened his collar. He would not mind Ball drinking his blood.
'It's too late for that.'
Ball's teeth were loose. One or two had slipped out of their holes. His purple tongue was swollen. He let go of Winthrop's shoulder and drew a sharp, thick nail across his throat, stabbing the jugular vein. Viscid blood oozed out. It was more like a jelly than a liquid.
Take my strength, Winthrop. What's left of it.'
His throat rebelled at the thought. The vampire blood was strong-smelling. In shadow, it caught the sun and shone a pulsing mauve.
'You'll be stronger. You'll take a part of me with you.'
A cloud passed across the sun.
'Evening draws on, my boys,' shouted Mellors.
Ball's eye glowed. 'Winthrop, do it quickly.'
The decision was made for him. He held up the insubstantial Ball, feeling bones dissolving inside him, and touched his tongue to the snake trickle of blood. It was not the familiar, salt tang he knew. It was not human blood. A sherbet-prickle numbed his tongue, and he found himself lapping thirstily at the wound, swallowing ropy, sweet liquid.
Ball shivered in Winthrop's embrace but his slow blood continued to flow. Then, he came apart completely. A bad taste hit Winthrop's mouth at the instant of true death. Ashes fell away from his face.
He coughed, trying hard to keep the lumpy stuff in his stomach. His mind was cleared as if by a dose of salts. His eyes quickened, catching dozens of tiny movements. It was a sensation he associated with the early, pleasant stages of being drunk on champagne.
Ball looked as if he had been dead and forgotten for years. He decomposed drily. His head shrivelled to a thinly parchmented skull. It was detached from the body.
To turn vampire, you have to drink vampire blood at the same time as a vampire is drinking your blood. What he had done with Ball would not make a new-born of him. He was just like those old fools who dose themselves with vampire bloodsalts to retain their vigour. But he did feel changed. His knee ceased to trouble him, and the wire-gouges on his wrists healed over. His weariness was washed away and his hunger soothed.
'Come, civil night, thou sober-suited matron, all in black,' quoted Mellors.
'Romeo and Juliet, very good for a grammar school oik.'
'Which of you said that?'
It was strange: as if Albert Ball had spoken through Edwin Winthrop. In his mind, Winthrop remembered flying. Not his own memories, but those of the vampire.
'Both of us, Mellors, and a very good day to you.'
Winthrop stood up and stepped out of the shadow, keeping the wall still between him and the cave mouth. Sunlight did not hurt him, though his face tingled as if he had the beginnings of a tan.
'Ah, it's Winthrop, the observer. Do you plan to run off and leave your comrade. Surely, that's not cricket, not the school spirit.'
'Ball is dead,' he said, not sure.
There was no answer. Then, a shot dislodged some bricks.
Taking the camouflage netting, Winthrop wrapped Albert Ball's skull carefully. It made a bundle about the size of a football. He owed it to the vampire to carry his head as far as possible.
With his bundle under his arm, Winthrop launched himself at the side of the crater and scrambled upwards. Shots dug into the dirt yards either side of him. Then, a push at his side.
'A palpable hit,' Mellors shouted.
He gained the lip of the crater and threw himself over it, rolling downwards and lying flat in the blighted plain. Examining his side, he found that the troglodyte chieftain's shot had punched through his loose Sidcot without touching his body.
'You'll have to do better,' he shouted back in farewell.
Even more than in the crater, Winthrop kept his head down. Now he was exposed to snipers from both lines. Anything that moved in No Man's Land was in season. A bombardment had started. The British were hammering the Germans, which was fortunate. Shells whizzed across well above Winthrop's head and landed near the Boche trenches. That should keep German riflemen concentrated on other things.
He felt a stick in his hands, wind in his face, the thrill of a spin. For a moment, he saw the blue of a summer sky, tracer bullets flaring. He smelled burning castor oil, pouring out of the engine of a Sop with Camel. Shaking Ball's memories from his mind, Winthrop got to his feet. After an experimental crouch, he stood gingerly.
Nobody shot at him. There was a strange peace. He was tiny and insignificant in this continental killing field. Nobody would notice him.
He walked away from the shell-crater and the troglodytes. By day, the paths between the barbed wire and the rubble-pits were easier. He darted from cover to cover, tacking towards the lines.
For the first time since the Richthofen creature had swooped at the Harry Tate, Winthrop felt it possible that he might survive the next few minutes. He might live a long life, if not a happy one. But he had business to take care of yet. First, he had to tell Beauregard about the bat-staffel. Then he had to get back in the air.
He was running, tasting the powdery breeze. It was easy to imagine leaving the ground, and being swept up into the clouds, there to joust with the dark knights of the sky.
He saw a wall of mottled sandbags, topped with swirls of barbed wire. He was moments away from the trenches.
He thought of the score that he must live to even.
Hurdling the wire with a new-found agility, he sailed over the lip of the trench and crashed down. He bent as he landed, coming down on his feet like a cat, and stood up straight.
'Blimey,' said a startled Tommy.
Winthrop handed over his bundle to the soldier, telling the warm man to take good care of it.
'Now, if you would be so good as to guide me to a field telephone, I have a report which must be made.'
The infantryman looked down at the bundle, which was trailing loose. A bony face was disclosed.
'Blimey,' the Tommy reiterated. 'Blimey.'