Page 57 of No Man's Land

“You’re talking about a man bitten by a ghoul?” Josef guessed.

In the firelight, the silver pin in Dutta’s turban gleamed as he nodded. “He’d been stranded in no man’s land overnightbefore the stretcher bearers could fetch him back behind the lines.” His expression turned grim. “The ghoul had feasted on him.”

“That’s... I remember the screams at night.” Josef shivered, his mind turning back to those bleak months in the salient. “You could hear them even from the reserve trench. It was horrible enough, but I never imagined they were...”

...being eaten alive, wounded, dying, and alone in the cold dark.

“How could you imagine?” Alex said softly, reaching over to set his hand on Josef’s knee.

Startled out of his thoughts by Alex’s carelessness, Josef threw a panicked look at Dutta. He didn’t seem to have noticed the indiscretion, and Josef quickly crossed his legs, dislodging Alex’s hand.

“We can’t permit the body to leave London,” Dutta was saying to Alex. “Good Lord, Saint would skin us alive! And the last thing we need is one of the blighters setting up a nest in Brookwood.”

Alex looked up at that. “Is it? I can’t help thinking that a huge cemetery in the country would be a more natural place for a ghoul. In the past—”

“That’s your uncle talking,” Dutta said sharply. “And we don’t live in the past; there’s no natural place for ghouls in the twentieth century.”

Alex went quiet, his expression turned inward. Dutta lifted his chin in a way that suggested,I regret nothing.

Josef held his breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

After a moment, Alex said stiffly, “Well, there’s certainly no place for a ghoul nest in the London sewer system. That’s the salient point tonight.”

“Quite.” Dutta rose. “Come on, then. We’ll have to be quick; the body will be on the train to Brookwood in the morning.”

Alex nodded grimly. “All right.”

He turned a regretful look on Josef, but before he could apologise for leaving, Josef said, “I’m coming too.”

The words left his mouth almost without thought. But why not go? Somehow, he’d stumbled into the most incredible story of his life—ofanyone’slife. Secret societies, monsters lurking in the sewers? He’d be a right bloody idiot not to find out everything.

“Absolutely not,” Dutta said.

Josef ignored him, but Alex was frowning too, shaking his head so hard a lock of dark hair tumbled over his forehead. Irritably, he pushed it back. “It’s not safe. And this isn’t your business, Josef. I can deal with—”

“Bollocks.” Josef sat forward in his chair, elbows on knees, and fixed Alex with a serious look. “Those bastards nearly killed me, twice. And now they’re skulking about inmycity, undermystreets, threateningmypeople. Not my business? Give over.”

“What Beaumont means,” Dutta said crisply, “is that you’re not a member of The Society.”

“Oh, piss off,” Josef snapped. “These things are attacking ordinary men; they’re infecting fucking soldiers at the front. They’re turning them into monsters! And you’re bothered about whether I’m in your bloody club?”

“He’s absolutely right, you know.” Alex looked up at Dutta. “Thisishis concern as much as ours. Of course it is.”

Dutta’s lips thinned, but he didn’t argue. He didn’t look pleased, either.

“In which case,” Alex went on, flashing a breezy smile that Josef didn’t buy for a moment, “we have an appointment with the London Necropolis Railway.”

Chapter Eighteen

In the middle of the last century, London’s boneyards had been filled to bursting. When he was a boy, Josef’s father, who’d loved a gory tale, had terrified him with stories of rotting corpses falling through the walls into people’s cellars, or being dug up by stray dogs, or just emerging, rotting, from the mud when it rained.

Something had needed to be done, and so a ring of huge cemeteries had been built beyond the city’s edge—the most ambitious of which had been the London Necropolis in Brookwood, Surrey, miles away from London’s sprawl and accessed from the city by the ‘Stiffs Express’ running from Cemetery Station.

These days, the gothic station entrance loomed over Westminster Bridge Road in a gloomy tribute to those twin Victorian obsessions: death and railways. Many times, Josef had walked past the ornate iron gates, not yet sacrificed to the war effort, which guarded a grand stone archway large enough to admit a hearse. But he’d never been inside.

Tonight, or rather, this morning, because it was already past one o’clock, the lightless station building looked eerie and forbidding. And Josef was starting to regret his impulsive decision to join Alex and Dutta on their little adventure. London was darker than ever these days, what with the lights being dimmed in case of air raids, and while the darkness would probably help their housebreaking endeavour, it only added to Josef’s jitters. Every sound had him jumping out of his skin, expecting a ghoul to leap from the shadows at any moment.

“Let’s cross,” Alex said quietly, glancing along the empty street before heading over the road towards the station.

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