Again that inexplicable sixth sense precipitated the action. He saw the wicked double prongs start to move, coming towards him spear-like, balanced for the final thrust. And in that instant he pushed the gun forward, found the triggers and fired a double blast from the hip.
The shotgun bucked in his hands, threw him back, but he scarcely noticed the recoil. He didn't want to see, wished that he had missed, maybe fired a warning shot over the other's head but it was too late for recriminations. Concentrated balled shot at a range of three yards disintegrated Gwyther's head, put a gaping bloody hole where the face had been, embedded bone splinters in the barn door directly behind him, sprayed ribbons of flesh up the stonework so that it dripped grey matter like an old man's phlegm, pink with blood from a diseased lung.
The pitchfork clattered to the ground, the hairy body swayed but still remained standing, tottering in defiance, nerves still working. Quinn smelied the powdersmoke, coughed. Drop, you bastard, for Christ's sake drop!
The bloodied morass which had once been Bill Gwyther's features still had an expression if you stared at it long enough. A jagged hole, twisted into a snarl of fury. You haven't finished with me yet, boy. A gaping orifice spouting crimson hate, eyebrows twitching, arms jerking like a hen's wings preparatory to a clumsy attempted flight.
I'm coming to get you, boy!
Jon flung up the gun, remembered it was empty. Two spent cases still trickling smoke up the tubes. A roaring in his ears, mocking laughter. Bare calloused feet with blackened broken toenail claws moved one more pace. A pace nearer.
Backing away, screaming something because he couldn't hold it back; fear, an apology, I didn't want to kill you, Mister Gwyther.
You haven't killed me yet, boy.
And then Gwyther fell, arms outstretched as though he was making one last despairing lunge at the one who had done this to him, spraying blood from where his mouth should have been, falling full-length and sending up a cloud of dust out of a dried-up puddle.
Jon Quinn just stood there looking down at him. He wanted to laugh, to cry, both at the same time but he did neither. Seconds that might have been hours then he was walking towards the Land Rover, climbing in and putting the gun in the back.
The engine fired first time but he never thought it would do otherwise because it was still warm. A U-turn that took him back out through the gateway and on to the road, reminding himself that he had to park on that slope, facing downwards, so that he could jump-start the Land Rover tomorrow. Some strange protective brain mechanism had pushed the bloody killing to the back of his mind.
Otherwise he might have gone mad.
PROFESSOR REITZE irritated the Prime Minister; he irritated the other senior cabinet ministers. In fact he irritated everybody in the top security shelter in the Hertfordshire countryside. But that was his prerogative for without his awareness, his knowledge of the perils of germ warfare, there was a possibility that the entire population of Western Europe would have been wiped out. It was he who had alerted them to the danger, recognised what was in the atmosphere.
Close-cropped hair, it was difficult to judge what colour it was, an inch of growth would have been necessary to be sure. Rimless glasses that gave the impression of owlish eyes in that angular face. Always the white smock, you didn't even know what he wore beneath it or whether he wore anything at all. Characterless, even his American accent was lost in his dull monotone voice. The perfect scientist, a human machine.
He sat at his low desk, blinked in the brightness of the strip lighting, thumbed through sheafs of typewritten paper and made occasional notes in his sprawling handwriting on a jotter pad. The glass ashtray by his elbow was piled with Camel stubs, the fingers of his right hand stained brown, the one indication that the man was actually human, he did have a vice.
The Prime Minister took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Anxiety, exasperation. He had said repeatedly that 'we must remain calm1 but there was a limit. And Reitze went beyond that limit.
Caldecott was in his fourth year of office. Next year he had to face an election; he had considered calling one earlier before inflation and unemployment figures began soaring again but now all that was forgotten. There might well never be another government or even a next year. In his early forties, he had a deceptive boyish appearance, one that a lot of people had underestimated, including the Opposition. Forceful, disliked in many quarters, he was finding it difficult to curb his impatience with Reitze. He glanced across at Rankine, the Defence Minister, read exasperation there, too. But both of them knew the Professor well enough not to try to hassle him.
The reports are still coming in.' Reitze leaned back in his chair, shook another Camel out of a crumpled pack, flicked his lighter. 'We are now beginning to form an overall picture of what has happened both in the United States and the European countries.' Slow expressionless tones, he might have been discussing the latest trade figures. He drew on his cigarette, scribbled something else on his pad. 'The timing of the release of these microorganisms into the atmosphere was meticulously synchronised so that all major areas of population in America were struck simultaneously with the UK. Of course, it was easier to conduct an intensive attack upon Britain than a vast area such as the United States.'
'Which means that we've suffered a far higher casualty rate,' Caldecott cut in.
'Proportionally.' Reitze did not alter his tone. 'But it will be weeks before any true figure can be arrived at. Communications have now broken down in most areas. Fortunately we still have a direct line to the White House, but they can only supply us with the information that reaches them.'
'What type of germ is it?' Rankine asked. 'What are the long-term effects likely to be?'
'At the moment our laboratory is working the clock round to come up with the answer,' Reitze replied, 'We know that the micro-organisms released into the atmosphere are mutants, possibly the results of years of research and experimentation. They affect the skin, adulterate the pigmentation, cause it to become hard and coarse and promote a hair growth which can only be compared with
the growth-rate of certain subtropical plants, growing as much as an inch in twenty-four hours. The brain is also attacked, reducing it only to basic thinking, the victim relying almost solely on instinct, much the same as an animal, perhaps slightly more advanced, the equivalent of primitive Man.'
'In effect,' Caldecott's voice was hushed, a frightened whisper, 'the majority of the' population of the western world have become . . . throwbacks'.
'That's it, in layman's terms.' The Professor crushed the remains of his cigarette in the ashtray. 'Man has been reduced to a primitive being. Of course, there will be individual reactions, some will be affected worse than others and vice versa. Some will escape for a variety of reasons. Micro-organisms do not have the resilience of radiation in the atmosphere. Filters in fall-out shelters will be more effective against them but unfortunately there was no chance to issue a warning. Germ warfare is far more insidious than nuclear warfare; you can't hear it, smell it or see it, and before you know it, it's got you.'
'Is there ... no chance, whatever, for the victims?' The Prime Minister asked the question which none of his ministers had dared to voice so far. Perhaps it was better not to know, just to hope.
'I can't answer that at this moment in time,' Reitze answered, and for once those eyes behind the rimless lenses flickered uncertainly, perhaps nervously. 'At the moment my team of scientists is trying to isolate the microorganisms. There may be several, but until they are isolated and we know exactly what they are, we don't know if anything can be done. Certainly the atmosphere is now clear. We do not know whether the victims will die in a short period or whether they will live a normal life-span.' 'And the whole world suffers because of Lebanon and Syria.' Rankine spoke bitterly, showed his personal feelings for the first time. 'Damn the Russians, they've threatened us with nuclear war for three decades and it was all a blind. Missile bases and counter missile bases, protests on Greenham Common and a lot of other places, and all the time we never guessed where the real danger lay. Now it's too late. They haven't even had to raze the western world to the ground! They can just walk in and take over whenever they like and we can't do a damned thing to stop 'em.'
Thank you, Professor.' The Prime Minister rose to his feet, brushed flecks of dust from his suit. He still had to maintain the image he had created as the best-dressed man in Britain, according to a recent media poll. He had the job of inspiring hope and confidence however he felt personally. 'We'll let you get on with your work—If there are any significant developments please notify me immediately. In the meantime we have an urgent cabinet meeting upstairs.'
A crisis meeting. Eight government ministers all looking to Caldecott to come up with the answer because that was what he had been elected for. Another Churchill, except that World War II was a skirmish compared to this.
Large-scale wall-maps showed every town, village and hamlet in Britain. Red drawing-pins denoted areas which were known to have suffered heavy casualties. Blue pins showed where there were pockets of survivors trying to maintain law and order, fighting for a return to normality. There were an awful lot of blank spaces awaiting a red or a blue pin.
And the Russians still had not come. They weren't in any hurry, there was no hurry. Next week, next month, next year, it would all be the same.
'Let us take the major cities first.' Caldecott used his wooden pointer, was reminded of those far-off days when he had lectured at Oxford; golden days which would never come again. You were lucky if you were left to indulge in nostalgia. 'London, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, the pattern is much the same. Wild mobs are on the rampage, their only interest being food and , . . rape!' He shuddered. The food targets seem to be basically butchers' shops and abattoirs, whole carcasses being lorn apart, the meat devoured raw. Their hunger appeased, the men turn to women, any women with whom to satisfy a carnal desire. The remnants of our law-keeping forces are stretched beyond their limits, outnumbered by thousands to one. Our only hope is to withdraw them totally to a place of safety and plan a definite strategy. We cannot win back the cities at present so we must abandon them.'
Murmurs, not dissent, but horror. Men who were accustomed to facing up to unpleasant truths found themselves backing off.
There are survivors.' Caldecott's voice quavered slightly. "Somehow we must communicate with them, reorganise them if our country is not to be annihilated by mob rule, the law of primitive Man, for our enemy is our own kind, our own people robbed of their minds, reverted to their ancestors by a cruel and unscrupulous foe. Almost every means of communication has now failed.' Don't ask me right now how we are going to reorganise because I don't know. It might be an impossibility. 'At the moment we are waiting upon Professor Reitze and his team of scientists. They are working the clock round to find a way to combat this vile and despicable means of war.'
Silence.
There wasn't anything else left to say, nothing to argue about, a government that was suddenly devoid of politics, their only manifesto one of survival. They could only wait.
Reitze checked through his notes again after the PM and the Defence Minister had left. A hint of a worried frown, his forehead creased and smoothing out, Reitze becoming his old emotionless self again. It wasn't an act, this was how he was, what made him tick. If he died tomorrow he wouldn't know anything about it so what was the use of worrying? Slight concern that perhaps they had overlooked something somewhere, something just too obvious. They would check again. And again. But he had to admit that it was a hopeless task; not conceding defeat, just accepting facts. That was the hardest part of all, admitting that you were beaten.
He lit another Camel, pressed the buzzer on his desk. A few seconds later a sliding door opened and another white-coated scientist entered, A younger man than Reitze, tall and fair-haired, eyes red-rimmed as though he hadn't slept in the last thirty-six hours, just the odd catnap on the couch in the rest-room adjoining the lab.
'Brian,' Reitze looked up, almost smiled but not quite, 'we're gonna name this one the Evolution Bug. I don't reckon we can come up with anything else now. We've just gotta check in case we missed something, but I think we've gone as far as we can go and I'll have to tell them that soon. The ultimate in mutation. If we had lived in the Stone Age that's how we would have been, immune to diseases which would destroy mankind today and these throwbacks are just the same. Immune to anything we can give them because their body cells will resist everything. Evolution is the only answer, civilisation will have to start all over again! In a million years' time they'll be finding skeletons and scratching their heads, wondering how the hell civilisation reached its peak and went back again. I'm wondering whether those who have escaped can survive, even the bastards who started all this. We will be the ones without body resistance, diseases developing which modern medicine has never come across.'
'I see.' Brian Newman nodded. 'As a matter of fact that occurred to me but I kept it to myself.'
'We'll have to do just that. There's no point in panicking everybody and if we're right there's not a goddamn thing you or I or anybody else can do about it. In the meantime we just keep on working, hoping. And if you're a praying man, pray.'
Reports came in slowly over the next few days. The Continent had suffered badly, West Germany, France and Italy in chaos. Switzerland seemed to have fared better than most due to government legislation that all new houses had to be fitted with fall-out shelters. No warning except that strange and terrible things were befalling the French and Italians so the Swiss had dived for cover.
Nothing at all from the eastern-bloc countries. No communications. They might have been wiped out, they might be lurking safely below ground. There was no way of telling. The Kremlin was silent.
Rankine studied the large-scale maps in the operations room. The number of pins was increasing hourly, most of them red ones. The majority of survivors in remote rural parts had no way of contacting the authorities, probably did not even realise that anybody except themselves had survived. They would be fighting their own battles, rabbits living in warrens, isolated pockets of sanity until madness prevailed.
Fires were going unchecked, raging through towns and cities. The injured suffered and died agonising deaths because there was nobody to help them. But there was a pattern of behaviour amongst the new semi-human race. Like rats leaving doomed ships, they fled the built-up areas. Buildings were foreign to their nature, their in-born fear of anything beyond their basic understanding driving them out to the few wild places that remained in Britain.
The first step of a new evolution was beginning.
JACKIE QUINN followed where the man she knew as Kuz led. Through the night, along a main road, not knowing what it was or why it was there, making detours when they approached a village or hamlet.
In their wake came some twenty or thirty men and women, some of whom had started the journey with them from First Terrace, others they had picked up on the way. From the mists of time civilisation has always bowed to leaders, sought the security of another's decisions. And Kuz was one of those leaders.
They travelled at a fast walking pace, not slowing, not showing any signs of tiredness, and when dawn came they saw the rolling range of hills beyond. Kuz changed direction slightly, heading towards those bracken-covered slopes, and Jackie sensed the eagerness of the others, experienced the feeling herself; that of a traveller returning from a very long journey, weary, but on sighting his home in the distance is at once refreshed, hastening his arrival, that last mile seemingly ten, a mirage that you thought you would never reach.