Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh My! by Eleri Grace

 WWII novels aren't typically scary in the traditional sense -- not in the same way that a paranormal or suspense novel might keep you up at night. 

Yet historical novels can include scenes driven by psychological terror or danger, and I like to believe my novels include plenty of page-turning scenes that leave the reader in suspense. I've written here about the fear of heights common to so many pilots and how that sense of control that most pilots feel in the cockpit evaporated in the face of WWII combat flying, especially with the ever-present odds of being forced to bail-out of a damaged plane. 

My Red Cross Girl heroines likewise faced dangers and fears during their service. In my debut novel, Courage to be Counted, my heroine Vivian was forced to flee in the dead of night when German forces overran the previously-peaceful R&R town of Clervaux, Luxembourg in the opening day of the Battle of the Bulge. She and her fellow Clubmobilers bedded down in the French countryside in the same fields as the advancing American troops, with artillery shells booming overhead. Vivian also experienced a close call with death when a German fighter bombed a US Army work-crew she was serving, forcing her to dive for cover under a nearby Jeep. 

In my 2nd Clubmobile novel, my heroine Hadley's journalistic curiosity lands her in one sticky situation after another. Wanting to write stories of substance for her newspaper back home, she accepted a pilot's offer to go up in a small plane for a quick reconnaissance trip, yet ended up in a combat scenario. Chasing a scoop, Hadley ignored protocol for having a male escort for any drives beyond their immediate work territory in New Guinea and took a female war correspondent into a remote jungle region where they were nearly killed in a crash. 

Though it has no title or cover yet, I decided to share a brief scene of danger and fear experienced by my latest heroine Maggie in my work-in-progress (ever-hopeful that this 3rd Clubmobile Girls novel will be published early next year). Maggie is serving with the Red Cross in eastern India, near the Burma border. She and her fellow Clubmobile worker Jill had done a Clubmobile run to serve doughnuts, coffee, and cheer to the work crews building the Ledo Road, which would later provide the much-needed land route from India to China. Though they had a male Field Director escort in the Clubmobile runs on the Ledo Road and camped overnight with Army troops, the women shared a basha (small hut constructed of native bamboo and grasses) at the edge of camp. An unexpected visitor to their basha kept Maggie pinned to her cot in terror for hours one night. 

Source: Davidvraju via Wikimedia under CC BY-SA 4.0

Consciousness returned in gradual waves. Her body didn’t want to relinquish its hold on a deep, restful slumber, yet something in her brain continued trying to rouse her. 

Something warm and moist nudged the mosquito net flat against her face and moved the netting in a gentle caress over her nose, her cheek, her jawline. Like a lover nuzzling, hoping to reignite an earlier passionate interlude. 

It was the deep throaty rumble near her ear, similar to a cat purring — but deeper and with a hint of menace — that jerked her mind into hyper-alertness. Every muscle in her body tautened. 

Its warm breath near her own mouth carried a coppery tang — an unfamiliar smothering scent that spiked her already rushing adrenaline levels. Blood. Blood in its breath. Blood on its mind.

With soft chuffs, it raked the mosquito netting down her arm, then across her hand. As it nudged its nose against her waist, Maggie’s heart froze in her chest. 

Her escalating fear could prompt it to attack at any moment. An ice-cold shiver snaked down her spine at the thought of its sharp teeth and claws. The engineers and work crews working on the Ledo Road had reported several tiger attacks — men who had been mauled, grievously wounded, or even killed. 

Maggie fought through her suffocating panic and forced herself to center enough to consider options. 

What did she know about tigers? Was it a tiger? It was a big cat — she had grown ever more certain of that. The deep rhythmic sound it was making — akin to a saw scissoring through wood — put her in mind of a cat. It wasn’t a continuous purr like a house cat makes, but similar enough. There were bears here too, but she didn’t think a bear would make this sort of sound. 

 To Maggie’s ears, its investigatory noises reverberated through the basha. Could Jill hear it? She might be deep in sleep and blessedly unaware of their plight, or she too might be lying there, frozen into panicked silence. 

It might grow bored and disappear. As badly as Maggie wanted that outcome, it seemed unlikely. 

If one of them screamed for help, would that scare it off? Or would it pounce, snarling and ripping and sinking its long teeth into her tender flesh? It was the threat of the latter that kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her body completely rigid and still. Her every breath seemed to amplify and must be every bit as loud as the birds and other animals who continued their nighttime conversations, oblivious to the mortal danger in which Maggie and Jill found themselves.

Its soft fur brushed against her arm, what might be its tail swished in the air near her ear. The deep chuffing noise allowed her to follow its progress as it moved around her cot and now pressed against the netting on her other side. Maggie still didn’t dare open her eyes. Feigned sleep had worked so far. On the other hand, it surely must sense her wakeful state from her thudding heartbeat and accelerating pulse. 

It circled the cot twice more, insistently pressing its nose against her body from head to toe through the netting. It seemed to like the texture of the netting - Maggie had the sense that it was rubbing its face against it as cats so often rub their heads against furniture and objects. Grandpa said cats rubbed against things to mark them as their own. Was this one marking her as its next meal, or was it merely enjoying the texture of the soft, feathery netting? 

I hope you enjoyed the above teaser (and yes, Maggie is the heroine, so she does survive her night of terror, though the experience left its mark). 

In case you missed my earlier novels, you can find my Clubmobile Girls novels on Amazon. You can learn more about me and my writing on my website and by following me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.