The Wood Beyond

ii

Is this thing working? Right. Here we go. Here we go, here we go.. sorry. Just testing. OK, from the start. Getting into the wood were easy. Out of the ditch, over the top, and there we were. Mind you, it were like jumping into a raging sea. Wind howling, everything shaking and creaking and groaning like the whole bloody issue was alive, and so much stuff flying around you were in danger of getting your head took off. But we pressed on regardless, taking our direction from the glow up ahead. Even when you can't see your hand before your face, there's always that glow.

Then at the edge of the trees we hit wire, and we paused here to get our breath and count heads.

We were all present and correct, the whole eight of us, and Cap started in on the wire. You'll have met the Captain? Useless with the cutters but won't let anyone else have them. Sort of badge of office. Eventually there was a hole of sorts and we started through. Jacksie — that's Jacklin, the well-made one — got snagged and swore. Cap said, 'Keep it down,' like someone might hear in all that din, and Jacksie said, 'If I could keep it down, I wouldn't have got it stuck,' and a couple of us got the giggles. It's easy done when you're shit scared. Not that it mattered or Jacksie swearing either. Like I said, it were pissing with rain and blowing a gale, and you would have needed a lot more than a giggle to get noticed.

Then we were all through and the laughing stopped.

There's nowt to laugh at out there. It's a wasteland. Used to be trees but after the big raid last summer, they blew them all to hell, roots and all, and when it rains for a week, like it's been doing, the holes all fill with water and the ground gets so clarty, you can feel it sucking you down. Smells too. Don't know why it should. It were once good mixed woodland like what's still there. But now it stinks like a ploughed-up boneyard.

Someone — don't know who — said, 'This is bloody stupid. We should head back.' Seconded, I thought. But I kept my trap shut 'cos if there's one thing guaranteed to make Cap head east, it's hearing me speak up for west. I should've known better than to try diplomacy. It never works. Might as well start scrapping right off and get it over with. Cap just glowered at me as if it had been me mouthing off, and said, 'Follow me. Keep close.' And we were off, no pretence of a discussion. Whatever happened to universal suffrage?

God, it were hard going. Two steps forward, one back, and as for keeping close, with that rain coming down and the mist coming up, it was all you could do to see where your next step were going to land, let alone keep an eye on anybody else. So it came as no surprise when somewhere over to the left I heard a splash and yell and a voice crying 'Oh shit!' all spluttery. Someone had gone into a crater. My money was on Jacksie, but I didn't waste time speculating. Even someone a lot better coordinated could drown in one of them holes as easy as the middle of the Atlantic. So I headed for the noise like everybody else. Only I must've been a bit more headstrong than the rest 'cos when I got there, I didn't stop but slid right over the edge, and next thing, I were down the bleeding hole too!

For a while I thought I were going to drown, but once I got the right way up and persuaded Jacksie — I'd been right about that — to stop grabbing my hair, I realized there were only two or three feet of water down there, which was fine so long as you didn't lose your footing. The real problem was how to get out, 'cos the walls started sloshing and crumbling every time you tried to get a hold on them.

Cap and the others had arrived by now and were reaching down to grab us. They got Jacksie first and I pushed like mad and got nowt but a faceful of boot for my pains. But eventually the useless bugger got hauled out and it were my turn. I reached up and felt someone get a hold of my right hand, I couldn't see who, my eyes were so full of mud and water, and I thrashed around with my left till finally I found another hand to get hold of. Then, kicking my toes into the side, I started to haul myself out.

I soon caught on I were getting a lot of help with my right hand — turned out to be Cap who were doing the pulling — but nowt at all with my left. But before I could start wondering why, my feet slipped out of the hole I'd kicked in the side of the crater and my hand slipped out of Cap's, and I started to slide back in, putting all my weight on whoever had got a hold of my left hand.

And it just came away, the hand I was holding on to I mean. And I slid right back down into that filthy water with my fingers still grasped tight around that thing, or like it seemed then, with that thing's fingers still grasped tight round mine, and I started to scream, and some on the others started to scream too, and eventually even them buggers in the green uniforms started taking notice, and next thing there was a whole platoon of them all around us shouting and shoving and that's how we ended up getting captured. Me ciggies are all sodden. You've not got a dry one, have you?