Omega

by Stewart Farrar

  Big Molly must be breathing deeply too, Doreen thought, because she kept her cool splendidly. 'Indeed. May I see your authority for that? I presume you have one.'

  'Certainly.' He had not yet produced a gun himself but now he did, and fired a single shot into the air. More screams, even more quickly smothered. When the echo had died away, he said: 'That is our authority.'

  'A typical one.'

  'Oh, don't misjudge us, Miss Andrews. There is always a proper trial.'

  'I'm sure there is. With you, Mr Crane, as judge and jury.'

  'You're misjudging us again. I am the judge. Four of my friends are the jury; allow me to introduce them – Beaver, Mac, Jake and Fatso. And Garry over there is the executioner.'

  Breathe very slowly. Very, very slowly. And don't scream, whatever you do. Kathy's convulsive grip almost cracked Doreen's fingers but she was managing to keep silent, too.

  'You're the headmistress, I take it, Miss Andrews?'

  ‘I am.'

  'Then since everybody knows this is a witch school, you're the one to stand trial…' He looked around, unhurried. 'The netball field, I think. Garry, bring what we need from the van. The rest of you, take everybody over there.'

  Most of the girls were by now numb with shock and it was a stumbling procession that made its way to the netball field, flanked by the four gunmen. When they reached it, all but Big Molly were herded together in a group facing one of the tall posts.

  'Which of you is Miss Andrews' second-in-command?'

  Barbara, who had been trying to soothe one of the youngest of the girls, stepped forward without speaking.

  'Your name?'

  'Barbara Simms.'

  'Then only one sentence is possible. Executioner, do your duty.'

  . When the man called Garry flung the canful of petrol all over Molly's clothes, the screaming really started; and when he set light to it, most of the girls hid their faces, clutching each other. Even Kathy buried her head in Doreen's shoulder; only Doreen, summoning strength she didn't believe she possessed, stood upright and wide-eyed, trying to pour her soul's help into Big Molly at the moment of flaming death, trying to remember in one impossible instant all that her parents had taught her about fighting against evil. She believed, then and afterwards, that her help reached Big Molly, for Big Molly never screamed, only opened her mouth in a single gasp which became without pause the rictus of physical death. Big Molly herself was gone.

  A few minutes later, the twenty survivors lined the wall of the gym, five gunmen facing them like watchful NCOs while Walter Crane inspected them.

  'Right,' he said when he had finished walking along the line. 'You're witches, every one of you – we know that. And you're damn lucky not to be going the same way as she did. Remember that – and remember we can always come back another day. Right now, we're letting you off lightly, but it'd be wrong to let you off altogether. So I'll tell you what is going to happen. Six of you are coming with us, for penal servitude on behalf of the others.'

  Doreen called out, loudly and deliberately: 'And just what do you mean by that, you sadistic, murdering bastard?'

  Miss Simms, beside her, tried to shush her but it was too late, it had been said, and Doreen felt better for her defiance. Walter Crane merely smiled and walked unhurriedly across to her. He looked her up and down, slowly, unblinking as ever. 'Beaver, come here.'

  One of the gunmen, who looked more muscle than brain, joined him. 'Yes, Wally?'

  'You wanted a redhead. How about this one?'

  Beaver repeated Wally's up-and-down inspection but less coolly. 'Not bad.'

  'Then as she's apparently too stupid to realize what six men mean by penal servitude for six girls – strip the bitch and show her.' He pulled Barbara Simms out of the line and once more held his gun to the back of her neck. 'The other boys can hold her down. And, girls – remember what I said about blowing Miss Simms' head off. Because if the rest of you so much as move, I'll do it.'

  The van bumped and wove along the country lanes with the six of them locked in the back. Every few minutes Wally slid open the inspection window from the driver's cab to glance at them before sliding it shut again; otherwise they were on their own.

  Doreen barely felt the pain of her ruptured hymen or the bruises on her wrists and ankles; she was transfigured by a magnificent hatred, a beautiful and treasured hatred, ice-cold, calculating and patient. She was armed with a new, strange deadliness and she was glad of it. Everything, for the first time in her sixteen and three-quarter years, was black and white without a hint of grey; fierce love for her friends, alive or dead, fierce and merciless hatred for her enemies – the six men with the guns. It was all so simple.

  She looked around the other five girls and knew, with a confidence that transcended pride, that she was their leader. Wally himself had picked Kathy, of which Doreen and Kathy were both glad, because grim as their outlook was they needed each other. Mac – the humourless fanatical one – had chosen Gina, slow and cow-like and looking more bewildered than frightened. Jake, whose apparently colourless personality Doreen could not make out yet, had picked Helen, a doll-like fifteen-year-old; he would find she had a fiery temper. Helen seemed to be bearing up well. The one Doreen was most concerned about (she had one protective arm round her as they travelled) was little Muriel, who was only thirteen and had been selected by the obese and sweaty Fatso. She was trying not to cry but was trembling uncontrollably, and no wonder. The sixth, Miriam, an eighteen-year-old Jewess, had been picked by the executioner Garry. Miriam, Doreen felt, would be a tower of strength for she was conscious of her inheritance, and two millennia of ghetto wisdom burned in the brown eyes which gazed into Doreen's across the van and seemed to be saying 'This is nothing new, my friend'. Doreen was grateful that Miriam was her closest friend apart from Kathy. The three of them should be able to hold the others together.

  Muriel turned in Doreen's arm and moaned: 'What are we going to do?’

  'Do?' Doreen glanced at the the inspection window to make sure it was closed. 'We're going to do exactly as we're told and be good, obedient, submissive little prisoners, until the chance we'll be looking for comes. And when it does, God help those bastards.'

  Philip's little group had been on the move for a week, living off the land and not quite knowing what they were looking for. They knew they should settle somewhere, with the winter coming on, and preferably in a community of some kind, particularly as they had the two children, Finola and Mark, to look after. They wondered what conditions would be like in the smaller towns, now that the Madness was over, and had taken a wary look at Kettering and Market Harborough. Kettering was silent and virtually empty, with occasional survivors always scuttling out of sight as soon as they saw them; much of what had not already been destroyed by the earthquake had since been gutted by fire, which seemed to have been widespread in several parts of the town – though how the fires had started, they could only guess. They had managed to scavenge one or two things which they needed from ruined shops and houses, though earlier looters had left little worth scavenging. Their most useful finds were enough heavy-duty polythene to turn the cart into a covered wagon, and – for Tonia – a cassette recorder, several cassettes and a whole box of batteries. Tonia, though now readerless, had all the frustrated instincts of a communicator and it cheered her up a lot to be able to keep a recorded journal, and it cheered the others to be able to tease her about it.

  Kettering they found insupportably depressing. Market Harborough was not merely depressing, it was hostile. There seemed to be a few more people there than in Kettering, but they, too, flitted on the edge of vision. In one street, three or four arrows were shot at them – not very efficiently, because only one hit the wagon, burying its head in the woodwork. They put on the best speed Bunty could manage and headed out of town. A couple of hundred metres farther on, they were fired at by a rifle from somewhere behind them. The intention was apparently merely to hasten them on their way, because the bullets ricochet
ed off the pavement exactly the same distance to each side of them, suggesting that the marksman could have hit them if he had wanted to. They took the hint and kept going.

  But the chief reason that would have decided them against taking refuge in a town in any case was the profusion of corpses, in various stages of decomposition. Most of them, if they were recent enough for the mad and the sane to be distinguishable, seemed to have been madmen – but by no means all of them. The stench of death was everywhere and doubtless the disease-germs of corruption as well.

  'Anyone who stays in those fever-traps must be crazy,' Betty said, 'or else too stupid to be able to survive where they can't find cans to open. For God's sake, let's stay in the country.'

  Nobody argued. Finola said, 'The horses don't like towns, anyway.'

  Some of the villages were corpse-strewn like the towns and had been abandoned once the looters had done their work. But one or two had been cleared of bodies and colonized by refugees. These varied in their reaction to new people who came their way. One, a few kilometres from Market Harborough, had just had two typhus deaths and would admit no newcomers unless they quarantined themselves for three weeks in a designated cottage. Another was occupied by eleven men and three women, two of whom were over fifty; Philip's party were urged to stay a little too warmly, and Betty and Tonia had no difficulty in persuading Philip to move on. Another would have welcomed them and they were tempted, but although friendly the villagers seemed shiftless and impractical, and their ability to forge a working community seemed doubtful. At another, they were simply turned back at a street barricade without explanation.

  They were beginning to wonder if, after all, they would have to find a small farm they could run by themselves, when they met the Ramsays.

  They had bypassed Leicester and Burton and were working their way across country south of Uttoxeter, heading for the more open lands of the Welsh border. The going had been rough this particular day with many diversions and back-trackings because of fissures, and when in the evening they saw a likely looking field with a stream and a copse that promised firewood, they were glad to stop. A horse-caravan was there already and as usual Philip rode up to it a little ahead of the wagon to make sure that the people were friendly.

  A man was building a camp-fire near the caravan, and as Philip approached a woman and a small boy disappeared into the caravan with the signs of caution which Philip had learned to recognize. The man, who was about his own age, watched him warily but after the habitual tentative exchange of greetings apparently decided he was not dangerous. Very soon the wagon was parked beside the caravan, the women and children were making friends and Philip was helping the man to get the fire going.

  They introduced themselves as Jack and Sue Ramsay and their eight-year-old son Clive. They had lived in Uttoxeter, which was completely destroyed, they said. After the earthquake, they had fled by car, but had only gone a few kilometres when it broke a half-shaft. They had been determined to remain mobile, and all petrol would have vanished within a few days; so they had, like Philip's group, salvaged a horse and cart. Only more ambitiously and ingeniously they had then hunted for an abandoned caravan trailer which they had managed to roll on to the flat top of the cart, jack up to remove its wheels, lower on to the cart and lash in place to make a very serviceable horse-caravan.

  'Only snag is, it's a bit longer than the cart-top,' Jack said. 'So the driver has to ride the horse. Ever tried that, between shafts? But we manage.'

  'It's a marvellous job,' Betty said. 'Much better than our covered wagon thing.'

  They cooked a communal meal of rabbit-and-vegetable casserole. Philip had shot the rabbits that morning and although they were a brace of big ones they did not supply much meat for eight people. But to the Ramsays any meat was a luxury; they had no gun, and admitted they had not yet mastered the art of snaring. They had caught the occasional chicken but by now almost all stray poultry had either been killed by hungry refugees or rounded up and jealously guarded by static families or communities.

  'How did you live through the Madness?' Philip asked.

  'Oh, God, don't ask. We found a good solid barn and turned it into a ruddy fortress. Every time I went out for vegetables, I wondered if I'd make it back.' He shuddered. 'I had to kill two of them. I carried a bottle of ammonia in my pocket, to chuck in their eyes and an axe to finish ' em off. Thank Christ that's over – poor bastards. They were just the same as the rest of us. Only unlucky.'

  They were all silent for a moment, remembering. Then Sue said, unexpectedly: 'I wish we could say it's over.'

  'Oh, it's not too bad now,' Philip said. 'Since the raid that drove us out, we've covered a good hundred kilometres and we've met no more actual violence. We were shot at in Market Harborough but only to warn us off, I think. Compared with the Madness, that's nothing.'

  'Then if you don't want to see more violence, you'd better do what we're doing in the morning – get out of here. As far as you can from this area.'

  'Why? What's happening?'

  Sue's next remark was even more unexpected. 'Are you witches?'

  'No, we're not,' Philip told her. 'But we're not against them either. And we think the witch-hunt's barbaric'

  'Good. Because we are witches… Ever heard of the Crane Mob?' 'Don't think so. Who are they?'

  'A gang of organized witch-hunters. Witch-killers. Their base is about fifteen kilometres east of here, a big old manor house. Somebody's keeping them in petrol. There are six of them, all with motor-bikes and guns. Sometimes they bring a van with them, to take away any useful loot when they've finished… They had been working east and south, pouncing on witch families and wiping them out. But in the last day or two we've heard they're raiding this way. So we're moving.'

  'Point is, we're known around here,' Jack said. 'We ran a coven in Uttoxeter before the trouble, and everyone knows our faces. On top of which, that caravan's pretty well unique – recognizable from kilometres away. And yesterday a friend tipped us off we're on the Crane Mob's list. We haven't a gun, so we'd be sitting ducks. We're leaving at first light, travelling west. Out of the Mob's territory. And if I were you, I'd do the same. Our site may be known and the Mob isn't fussy. They might knock you off just in case you were friends of ours.'

  Betty murmured in Philip's ear: 'Let's join forces.'

  'Good idea,' Philip, said. 'Look, Jack – we're heading west, too. And we have got guns – three rifles, a four-ten shotgun and two pistols. And a spare horse, as outrider. Why don't we stick together? We'd be stronger…" He grinned. 'The kids'd be company for each other, too.'

  Sue's face lit up. 'Not to mention the grown-ups and the horses. How about it, Jack?'

  'I feel better already,' Jack said.

  They had worked very carefully on the listening-holes. Wally's bedroom (which was also, like it or not, Kathy's) and Beaver's (Doreen's) were immediately above the big sitting-room where the men always gathered in the evening. Loosening a floorboard in each, which could be hidden by rugs, was not difficult and since the sitting-room ceiling was richly moulded, the little holes they cut in the plaster under the loosened boards were practically invisible even if you knew where to look.

  Doreen and Kathy had made the listening-holes while the men were out on raids. They went raiding two or three times a week and to begin with they had always taken one of the 'wives', as they called them, locked in the van as a hostage for the good behaviour of the five left behind -and had also taken all the spare firearms and ammunition (of which they seemed to have plenty) stored in the cab of the van. But after the first week, though the weapons still remained in the van, Wally decided that the hostage was an unnecessary encumbrance. The girls had no transport and nowhere to run, and the locals, well enough aware of the conditional nature of their immunity, would have been quick to inform on the direction the girls had taken if they did try to run.

  Besides, Doreen's policy of apparent submission was working. Though it was horribly difficult, the other girls had
seen the sense of it and had pinned their hopes on Doreen's leadership. Doll-like Helen, as Doreen had foreseen, was unable to control her sporadic outbursts of temper but ironically they had merely resulted in the other men teasing Jake about being hen-pecked. Thirteen-year-old Muriel had an unexpected reprieve – for Fatso proved to be impotent. Advised by Doreen, she was careful to give no hint of this to the other men while the other girls were equally careful to give no sign that she had told them. Fatso, terrified of ridicule, was grateful for her silence and anxious not to provoke her into breaking it; so she did not manage too badly. Gina and Miriam had not been virgins, which made their ordeal a little less traumatic; Gina, too, was helped by her bovine resilience, and Miriam by the dedicated hatred which she shared with Doreen and Kathy.

  They lulled the men further by efficient housekeeping, to which the Mob were not accustomed; and Gina and Helen were excellent cooks.

  Eavesdropping on the Mob's plans, once the listening-holes were made, was simplicity itself. When Wally wanted to brief his men on the next day's operation, he dismissed the girls from the sitting-room. It was then natural and unsuspicious for Doreen or Kathy or both to go to their bedrooms. They preferred to have two listeners; it made for more accurate and comprehensive reporting.

  The night that Wally planned the raid on the Ramsays, Doreen and Kathy were both at their listening-posts.

  'Jake, you've recced the ground,' they heard Wally say. 'Let's have your report.'

  'The site's fourteen and a half kilometres from here,' Jake replied. 'No occupied houses within a kilometre of it. You can't mistake their caravan – it's a car-trailer one lashed on to a flat-topped farm cart. The field's triangular, with a river along two sides and a small wood along the third. The road runs behind the wood. If we come at them through the trees, we've got ' em trapped. The stream looks too deep to wade and anyway we could pick 'em off while they were trying.'

  'Any firearms?'

  'I couldn't see – but they might have ' em hidden. Our contact didn't think so.'