For there was no scene beyond. Just a grey blankness. A heavy, still blankness, tinged with yellow.
They stood in awe and dread of its obscuring density and were only dimly aware of the telephone that rang persistently from the room next door.
They had tried to warn the city of the approaching doom. It had appeared suddenly, a cloud swept onwards by a strong wind. After two days of searching, just when they had begun to relax, it appeared, at first hidden by the pre-dawn mists, but then rising as though it had been lying in wait, mustering its forces, waiting for its new ally, the north-east wind. Many had panicked, for they were directly in the path of the fast-moving cloud, and had scattered in three directions. The bravest remembered to radio their mobile operations base before and as they fled, but the majority were concerned only with self-preservation.
As the fog swept over the countryside, it grew larger. It passed through the smaller towns, then through industrial estates which belched out their filthy fumes even during the night, and it welcomed the polluted air, drawing it to its poisonous womb, growing with it. It reached the suburbs and its size began to make the wind less effective. It drifted inwards towards the city.
The scattered army was regathered and the troops sped ahead of the fog, loudspeakers blaring out their ill-timed warning. They realized it was virtually useless, that by the time the people had rubbed their blurry eyes and the message registered, it would be too late, the growing fog would already be on them.
But they tried. Or at least, two-thirds of the forces tried. The remaining third raced into London to perform other tasks.
Janet Halstead was aroused from her sleep by one of her assistants. She slipped on her robe and went through to the office adjoining her private sleeping quarters. Picking up the phone, she asked the switchboard to put through the call that had been waiting for her. She listened in silence, her expression never changing, only her eyes betraying a sad weariness.
When she finally put down the phone, she stared at it for a few seconds longer. Then her body seemed to draw itself together and she began to snap instructions at her bewildered assistant for the immediate evacuation of the Research Centre. All equipment, notes – anything useful that could be dismantled – were to be moved to another location. A secret location. Transport was already on its way to take them there.
Stan Reynolds, a middle-aged security guard, strolled along the lush carpeted corridor towards his favourite room at the very top of the giant oil company building that towered over the black River Thames. It contained the largest boardroom table he’d ever seen, and he’d seen a few over the years in the various companies he’d been employed in as a guard. It was made of the deepest oak and was reputed to have cost over six thousand pounds; sixty people could be comfortably seated round it. He opened the heavy boardroom doors that reached the ceiling and stepped into the room, switching on the lights as he did so.
Walking the length of the table, he stopped behind the magnificent leather chair that belonged to the chairman. He sank into it, removed his boots and placed his feet on the table. With a contented sigh, he lost himself in a colourful reverie of big business deals and boardroom power games.
His nightly dream fulfilled, he swung his legs off the table, put his boots back on and strolled towards the huge windows that looked south across London. It was a view that always filled him with immense pride in the vast city, the lights shining like star clusters on a black velvet universe.
But on this occasion, the view was different. There was an orange glow in the sky and he drew in his breath as he realized the cause of it. He saw a line of fires stretching across South London, huge fires at regular intervals, their flames red and frightening. For a moment, his mind travelled back in time and it was the war and the blitz, the fires caused by the bombs of the enemy.
Then the flames seemed to lose their brightness as though they were being covered, one by one, by a semi-transparent blanket, leaving only a red glow shining dully through.
He thought he heard the sound of a loudspeaker coming from somewhere in the distance, but it was too indistinct and he was too puzzled by the phenomenon before him to concentrate on its message.
He stood and watched the approaching fog as it gradually obscured the million lights, crawling forward, swallowing the town, piece by piece, until it reached the river just below him.
And then the river was gone and the fog was brushing against the large plate-glass window in front of him.
Dawn. McLellan, Holman’s colleague at the Ministry of the Environment, stared from his bedroom window out at the fog. His eyes were heavy from unshed tears. He knew it was the fog, its yellowish tinge told him that. And he had been expecting it; his faith in his own government in times of crisis had never been great and he had expected them to bungle this.
He was much more aware of the danger than most of the general public for he had been closer to the strange occurrences through Holman and the dead Spiers, and many people still did not understand that it was not the fog that killed, but the madness it caused that drove people to their deaths.
He turned to look at his wife still snugly curled up beneath the bedclothes, asleep and vulnerable. As he thought of his children in the adjoining bedrooms, the tears of bitterness and frustration broke. How long would it take for the poison to work on their minds, to make them insane? What would it do to him? Would he be the one to take the lives of his own family? He struck out at the air blindly. There must be a way to protect them.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, taking care not to wake his wife, he tried to calm himself. There had to be an answer! Could he tie them up, or lock them in their rooms? But what about himself? What would protect them from him? Could he make sure they were protected from themselves and then go out and hopefully lose himself in the fog? No, he couldn’t leave them; it would seem like desertion. He had to think fast; God knows how long it took for the poison to take effect. For Spiers it had taken a day, for Holman, it was almost immediate.
Then he had the answer! It wasn’t ideal, but it could give them a little time; time enough perhaps for the authorities to take some kind of action, time for them to start saving lives.
He went into his daughter’s room and took the small toy blackboard from its easel, together with some chalk, carefully closing the door as he left so as not to disturb her. He went downstairs and, sitting on the bottom step, he chalked a message in large capitals on the board. Opening the front door, he placed the message on the doorstep, praying that it would serve its purpose. Then he went back upstairs and into the bathroom, taking the bottle of sleeping pills from the top shelf of the cabinet, the pills his wife sometimes found necessary to calm her from the rigours of raising three lively children. He filled a glass full of water and returned to his daughter’s bedroom. He lifted her forward on the bed, ignoring her feeble, half-asleep protests, and forced her to take five of the pills. Kissing her forehead, he laid her down again and tucked her in, then repeated the same operation on the boys next door. Paul had been awkward, but at the promise of a staggering reward, he’d complied. The next part would be more difficult. He would have to wake his wife, Joan, and explain why he was doing this. Was it his imagination, or could he really feel the beginnings of a headache?
Joan wept and at first refused to take the pills, but after much persuasion and then pleading, she agreed. For himself, he took eight, not knowing what the fatal dose would be, sure that the amount he had given to his family and himself was not too dangerous. Besides, under the circumstances, the risk had to be taken.
He climbed back into the warm bed and drew his weeping wife to him. They lay there, waiting for sleep to come.
Irma Bidmead always rose early. At seventy-three, her days were too short to be wasted on slumber. And her cats would be hungry.
She had thirteen cats, all of them strays that she had adopted. Or perhaps they’d adopted her. She would often roam the streets late at night with a bagful of morsels and scraps for the c
ats she found in the back streets of Kennington. The cats knew her and recognized her tiny ragbag figure and hissing call as she trundled down the darkened streets and they would follow her until she decided she had a large enough gathering and stopped. Then she would feed them, talking to them, admonishing them for their greed, cackling at their antics to be the first to be fed.
Every few months there would be a van waiting at a prearranged spot, and a dozen or so of the cats would be piled into it and driven off to a South London hospital. The man who drove the van, the man she had the arrangement with, took the lion’s share of the money paid by the hospital for the animals, but she still earned a nice little sum from it. Animals for vivisection had always been a profitable business even though the RSPCA had got massive support behind their outcry against it, but because it was necessary, and the authorities knew it, they turned a blind eye.
And the money she earned from the deal went towards feeding her own cats. Because she loved her cats.
Irma was oblivious to the smell that leapt from the room as she opened the door; after a lifetime of living with the creatures, their odour was part of her own, and the fact that thirteen of them had been locked up together in a room all night had no effect on her insensitive nostrils at all.
‘Hello, lovelies,’ she greeted them, expecting them to run towards her, nuzzling against her ragged dressing gown in which she slept, as they normally did each morning. But this morning, they remained aloof, neither moving nor making any sound.
In her annoyance, she failed to notice the yellowish mist that drifted in through the thin crack of the slightly opened window.
‘Now what’s the matter with you today?’ she demanded to know, her irritation growing. ‘Showing off, are you? Well, you can feed yourselves!’
She stamped from the room and into the kitchen where she retrieved two stiff and pungent kippers from the sink. Muttering to herself, she flounced back to the cats’ room and threw the kippers in.
‘’Ere,’ she shouted, ‘an’ don’t choke on the bones, you’re lucky to get ’em!’ She trundled back into her room and climbed into bed, pushing the comfortably curled-up cat that always slept with her away from the warm spot. It bristled in annoyance, but soon settled down again. Irma called out to the other cats again: ‘Don’t you come crawlin’ ’round me when you’ve finished your fish! I don’t want to know, I’ve got an ’eadache,’ and then to herself as she pulled the covers up to her chin, ‘Ungrateful pigs! I should take them all up the ’ospital, that’s what I should do! Except you, Mogs, you love your old lady, don’t yuh.’ She turned her head and smiled at the cat that purred next to her. ‘You’re a good old girl, you are. Not like them others – all they want is feedin’! Ooh, my ’ead does ache today!’ She closed her eyes to concentrate on the pain.
The cats ignored the fish and silently padded from their room and into Irma’s where they waited at the foot of her bed as she began to doze off.
Chief Superintendent Wreford slumped down the stairs and entered the kitchen. Yawning freely, he filled the electric kettle with water and switched it on. God, he was tired! He’d worked long hours because of this wretched fog business and last night was the first he’d been able to take off. Hopefully, it was all over now and he’d be able to take a spot of leave. He congratulated himself on covering himself in the Holman affair. He could have chosen to dismiss the man as a crank, but experience had told him never to ignore warnings, no matter from what source. He’d played it right, not making his enquiries official; at least not until he’d found out there was some truth to the story, and then he’d jumped in feet first, claiming credit for precipitating proceedings before the terrible Bournemouth disaster.
I bet Barrow was choked, he smiled to himself as he emptied stale tea leaves from the pot into the sink. A bit too ambitious, that lad, he’d like to see me come unstuck.
He stood with one hand on the kettle and one hand on the pot as he waited for the water to boil, smiling at the wall before him. Still, he’s not a bad lad. Bit brutal at times, but he’ll mellow with experience and he’s useful as he is for the moment. The emergence of steam from the kettle interrupted his thoughts and he poured the boiling water into the teapot, turning the switch off as he did so.
He went to the front door to collect the milk, eager for his first deep lungful of fresh morning air. It was a habit he’d acquired over the years, telling his wife it was the only time one could get a decent breath of fresh air living in London. By 9.00 the streets would be filled with fumes so he always made the most of his 7.30 deep breathing routine, standing on his doorstep for a full five minutes, taking in great gasps of air, while the tea in the kitchen brewed.
As he opened the door he was already drawing in his breath and before he saw the fog, his lungs were half full of it.
Detective Inspector Barrow slept. He’d had a heavy week and this had been his first break. Playing nursemaid to Holman hadn’t suited him at all; there were better things for him to do in a crisis such as this, chances to prove himself, to make himself felt. Hadn’t it been he who had brought Holman in in the first place? The man irritated him. True, Barrow had been rough on him at first, but as soon as he’d realized his mistake, he had tried to make it up to him. He’d protected the man when he’d been assigned as his bodyguard, had worried about him, tried to start up a more friendly relationship with him. After all, as a man immune to the disease, he was quite important, and if anything had happened to him while under Barrow’s protection, it would have been Barrow who copped it in the neck. But Holman hadn’t wanted to be friendly; he’d kept a distance between them, unwilling to forgive him for his past treatment.
Well, it probably didn’t matter any more, the scare seemed to be over. It had done a lot of damage but at least now it was under control – or so they said.
The thoughts had buzzed around his head the night before, a sure sign of extreme weariness, and he had gratefully sunk into his bed, for once unaccompanied by a girl. He had been too tired even for that.
He had immediately gone into a deep sleep and still slept as the sombre grey light filtered through the fog into his bedroom.
Samson King made his way blindly through the fog. He’d lived in London since he was fifteen, but he’d never experienced fog like this before. It was a good thing he did not live too far from the bus depot or he would never have been able to find it. As it was, he wasn’t too sure he was going in the right direction. He did not miss the sun of Jamaica as much as his old folks did for he could hardly remember the warm beaches and the deep green sea they described. No, he was used to the watery sun of England and even found the few days of intense heat that the country sometimes had uncomfortable.
Surely they wouldn’t expect him to take the bus out in weather like this. Bernice hadn’t even wanted him to report for work but he was afraid it might look bad on his record. He did not want to lose this job as he had many others; it suited him being up there behind the wheel of the big red monster, totally in control, dwarfing and bullying the other traffic on the road.
Now, where was he? ‘Goddam’ fuckin’ weather!’ he cursed aloud, to hear the sound of his own voice. He hadn’t passed anyone in the fog and it gave him a peculiar feeling of not being flesh and bone, of being a wandering spirit in a murky void.
The depot should be across the road. The zebra-crossing in front of him ran out halfway across the road, but he knew the bus station would be about fifty yards to the right of it. The crossing often helped him to get his bus out into the busy street for the flow of traffic often had to stop to allow people to cross.
He started forward, keeping a wary eye out for any approaching traffic and using the black and white stripes as a guide to the other side. His head ached, from eye strain he thought, from squinting into the fog, trying to catch glimpses of familiar sights. At least the roads should be clearer today. He giggled, not knowing why he did, and was still giggling when he reached the opposite pavement. He turned right, keeping close
to the shops on his left, using them as a guide.
Soon he reached the garage and turned into it, an occasional giggle jerking his body. He didn’t ask himself why the depot was empty, why there was no inspector to check him out, why there were no cleaners preparing to leave, why there was no crewmate waiting impatiently for him. He asked himself no questions.
He just climbed up into his cabin, still grinning, occasionally giggling, and started his engine. Then he moved the bus slowly forward and out of the depot.
Throughout London, people were waking to discover the yellow-grey fog surrounding their homes, some realizing its meaning, some not; many already too insane to care. Thousands had fled during the night, fortunate to have heard the warnings of the loudspeakers or the radio broadcasts. Those had, in turn, informed relatives, friends or loved ones, either by telephone (which, because of the chaos, was the least reliable) or by hurried visits.
But it was a big city, and the thousands who had time to flee were a small proportion compared to the millions who received no warning at all. The huge beacons were lit, but the rolling fog swept right over them, rising from the heat, but immediately descending once it was cleared.
The panic of the night before was nothing compared to the tragic and bizarre pandemonium that was to follow during the ensuing day.
19
Holman steered the Devastation Vehicle cautiously up the ramp out into the fog and away from the huge underground shelter. A man called Mason, gross and misshapen because of his protective clothing, sat in the seat next to him peering through the small, heavy lead-reinforced window, his face intense with concentration.
‘It doesn’t seem to be quite as thick as it was,’ said Holman, still looking directly ahead.
‘It’s probably settled in the London basin and now it’s spreading out a bit,’ Mason replied.
Holman nodded; it seemed logical. London was in a dip, a saucer-shaped bowl, surrounded by hills. The fog would have drifted into it and come to rest at its base, then sprawled out, filling the town. Its probable way out, unless there was a strong wind, was east along the Thames, through the flat country of Essex.
The Fog Page 22