Black August

by Dennis Wheatley

  This Gregory was loath to concede since in a time of crisis it would mean his having to support a number of useless mouths who could no longer make a return for their keep, but eventually a compromise was reached. Merrilees was to place thirty of the fittest men in his community permanently at Gregory’s disposal forthwith, to be trained in the use of arms and apprenticed to the fishermen’s craft, so that they would be a present help and an additional support, in case it should become necessary to receive the whole Labour Colony into the sanctuary of Shingle Street.

  When the treaty was concluded, Merrilees puffed thoughtfully at his pipe, filled with dried herbs, with which he was already experimenting and looked across at Gregory from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

  ‘What’s your opinion of the trend of things, General?’

  The corners of Gregory’s mouth drew down into an ugly bow. ‘Pretty black,’ he confessed. ‘It seems to me that the present civilisation is doomed utterly. Railways, planes, motor-cars, newspapers, are only words now; for all practical purposes they have ceased to exist. Even the wireless which might have kept us in touch with things, has broken down. It’s ten days now since the broadcasting stations have been silent, which means beyond any shadow of doubt that the mob have triumphed over any form of organised Government. It means the survival of the fittest, and for those who do survive, back to the land in almost primitive conditions.’

  ‘I’ll not agree to that,’ Merrilees protested. ‘We’re passing through a terrible upheaval, I’ll grant you, but the people will adjust themselves to changing conditions and the innate sanity of the British working man will prove the ultimate salvation of the country.’

  ‘Perhaps—he’s a fine fellow, but it’s difficult to keep sane on an empty tummy. I see no remedy short of a divine manifestation, and I think we can count that out.’

  ‘You’re wrong there, General. The Lord shows His will in strange ways at times, and like as not it will be in a movement of the common people.’

  Gregory nodded silently, forbearing to voice his own conviction that race movements and mass urges, either to sound policies or madness, had for their inception fundamental reasons which allowed no place for a benign or angry God.

  ‘Besides,’ Mr. Merrilees went on, ‘there must be other groups like ours scattered all over the country, whose leaders are getting into touch for the general benefit like you and I today.’

  ‘Here and there,’ Gregory agreed, ‘but you forget the great industrial centres. I can do with vegetables and you can do with fish, but neither of us would swap a rabbit for a railway train, so the poor devils in the towns stand no chance, and the trouble is that they are in the great majority. Tell me what do your people do if they fall sick, ordinarily?’

  ‘There’s the hospital at Ipswich.’

  ‘True, but from all reports nobody’s life is safe there any more. What do you intend to do with them in the future?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought, but why do you ask me this?’

  ‘Because it is our greatest danger. People are killing each other in the towns already, some are dying as we sit here, in attempts to loot; others in trying to defend their property. Soon there will be thousands dropping by the wayside from sheer starvation. It is too much to hope that even a tenth of them will receive proper burial, and it is August, remember. Their bodies will decay in the hot sun.’

  ‘Yes, I take your meaning.’

  ‘Disease will spread like wildfire, perhaps even plague will develop and sweep the country like the Black Death in 1348. What do you mean to do if some of your people begin to sicken?’

  Merrilees bowed his grey head. ‘It is a terrible picture that you paint, General. What can one do but try to nurse them back to health?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gregory leant over the deal table, ‘perhaps I’m looking on the black side.’

  ‘No, we must face facts and you have spoken of a terrible possibility.’

  ‘Then to save the majority we must sacrifice the unfortunate, you see that, don’t you?’

  ‘What is it that you would have me do?’

  ‘Isolate ruthlessly. It sounds brutal, I know, but we’ve got to do it for the sake of our respective people. Select a house a good mile from your Colony. I will do the same. The sick must be sent there to fend for themselves; if their relations care to accompany them, that is their look out, but there must be no communication and no exception to the rule.’

  ‘But they’d die there without aid or comfort, man!’

  ‘Maybe, but if you were sick yourself, which would you rather do; stay and endanger your companions, or take a chance of pulling through alone?’

  The elderly man regarded him out of sad eyes. ‘Why that’s a simple problem, General, as you know yourself. It’s these others that I’m thinking of.’

  ‘Well, we ask no more of them than we would be willing to give, and as leaders we should be prepared to enforce our judgment; otherwise we are not fitted to be leaders.’

  ‘Ah, it’s a hard thing you ask, but you are right.’

  ‘Then from tomorrow I think each of us should hold a morning inspection. Every man, woman, and child should be present; and if any are sick they should be given rations, but they must go. Is that agreed?’

  ‘Yes, it shall be as you say; and may the Lord have mercy upon us all.’

  A quarter of an hour later Gregory took his leave, and with a puzzled look upon his careworn face, the ageing fighter of many battles in the good cause of a fair wage for a fair day’s labour, watched his retreating figure as, lean and panther-like, his shoulders curiously hunched, he swung away into the distance.

  On his homeward journey Gregory encountered two incidents which seemed to bear out his gloomy prophecy. First a dead horse lying at the roadside. Obviously the poor beast had recently been hamstrung, and from its still steaming haunches neat strips of flesh had been removed, while from the bracken a hundred yards away a thin spiral of smoke ascended. He did not doubt that certain very hungry persons were there gleefully awaiting an impromptu meal. The second might have proved his undoing had he been less well prepared. Three men with gaunt, strained faces, from which the eyes bulged large and unnaturally bright, leapt from the bushes at a turning in the lane and set upon him with silent animal ferocity. He felled the first with his loaded crop and flinging himself back against the bank covered the others with his automatic. They fell into a miserable whining about their ravenous hunger, and in a sudden access of pity he flung them the emergency lunch which he had carried with him to Hollesley; yet, turning from them as they fought for the parcel in the road, his clear intellect, rejecting compromise, told him that he would have done them a better service had he put a bullet through their brains.

  The sentry at Veronica’s newly-erected notice board reported, when Gregory reached it, that he had had a trying day. On one occasion he had actually had to fire his rifle over the heads of a party of intruders before he could scare them away; so on the last mile into Shingle Street, Gregory resolved that his guards should be trebled, and two men apiece from his new Labour Colony levies set to support each of his armed sentries. It was evidently no longer safe to leave them in such isolated positions on their own.

  That night at dinner Gregory told them of his conversation with Merrilees and his agreement to shelter the population of the Labour Colony if they were attacked, but Kenyon shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I can’t see what either of you are worrying about,’ he declared. ‘We may have to deal with a few poor starving wretches that any well-fed man who is callous enough could drive off with a stick, but the refugees from the great centres aren’t organised, so what earthly harm can they do to us?’

  ‘No, but those who survive soon will be,’ Gregory prophesied grimly. ‘The strong men are probably forming Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils now, and to keep the life in their bodies they’ll take anything they can lay their hands on before we’re through. I haven’t thrown up these entrenchments to keep off tramps and de
relicts, but an organised attack upon a definite source of supply. Our only hope then will be to make it so hot for them that they will leave us alone and go for easier game until they settle down, with an enormously reduced population, to new conditions. Then we may be able to make a deal with whatever powers there may be.’

  Silas laughed suddenly. ‘You’ll be a Kommissar-General before we’re through.’

  ‘Well!’ Gregory smiled back at him, ‘I’ve no rooted objection to Kommissars providing I’m one myself. Care for a stroll, Veronica?’

  She smothered a fake yawn. ‘Why not, O reincarnated Vicar of Bray.’

  ‘You think I change coats too quickly, eh?’ he asked directly they were outside.

  She laughed. ‘My dear, if only some of papa’s old cronies could see you in your present get-up!’

  ‘They’re probably all dead by now, so what’s it matter?’

  ‘Not two hoots in hell, General, dear. If you choose to become an acrobat and get yourself up in tights, it’s all the same to me.’

  ‘You’re no fool, are you?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘No dearie, I certainly am not.’

  ‘This way.’ He suddenly pulled her arm and turned inland behind the houses. ‘The surf makes so much noise you can’t hear yourself speak; and the shingle’s hellish hard to sit on.’

  ‘So we’re about to sit are we?’

  ‘Yes, unless you prefer to go back to the pub; I should not dream of protesting against your decision.’

  ‘And you’re no fool either, are you?’

  ‘Yes; if I’d had any sense I’d have shot another half-dozen of those bloody mutineers, then we’d be running south from the Azores by now.’

  ‘Don’t kick yourself unnecessarily. You put up a pretty marvellous one-man show.’

  ‘Not too bad, but I ought to have done better. How’s this?’ Gregory pointed to a gently-sloping grassy bank.

  ‘I’ve seen worse in my career of crime.’ Veronica stooped to sit down.

  ‘Half a minute, it may be damp,’ he warned her as he slipped off his tunic and spread it out for her to sit on.

  Thank you, Sir Walter; but what about you?’

  ‘I shan’t die that way,’ he laughed, and pulled her down beside him.

  ‘You’re a strange bird, aren’t you?’ she said after a moment.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am, but so are you for that matter.’

  ‘Touchée—and birds of a feather!’

  That’s about it, but honestly I should go mad if you weren’t in this party.’

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘No, I mean that.’

  ‘Tra-la-la! so you say.’

  ‘It’s a fact, but I wonder why it is that women always see the main issue of a thing so much clearer than the average man. Kenyon can’t chuck off his stupid public-schoolboy morality, Silas is so damn soft-hearted he thinks I’m a devil from hell; Thompson and the troops still believe me to be a Brigadier so “theirs not to reason why”; Andrews is only interested in the welfare of his people, and good old Rudd follows me blindly, never pausing to think at all. Not one of them really appreciates that although I could clear out on my own tomorrow I’m staying here to fight their battle as well as my own. You’re the only one in the whole party who may protest at times but, given a reason, understands and approves my actions.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s because woman always consider the man so much more important than the principle.’

  ‘That’s about it; and in this instance I’m the man, aren’t I?’

  ‘Your grammar, my sweet, is appalling.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘Not a nickel in hell!’

  ‘Good for you; are you comfy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad of that because I now propose to kiss you.’

  ‘Well,’ she turned her face up to his in the moonlight. ‘I’m glad of that because it will intrigue me to see if you are as great a lover as you are a leader of men.’

  19

  Death in the Cards

  The first ten days at Shingle Street had seen the transformation of that quiet hamlet into a pulsing centre of strange and seemingly unconnected activities: the second saw them take form and cohesion. Regular convoys were proceeding between the village and the Labour Colony. The small fishing fleet was organised on Naval lines the men electing, at Gregory’s suggestion, the most experienced among themselves as Commander and Lieutenant. They ordered sailings in accordance with weather and tide, while Petty Officer Sims augmented the flotilla by supervising repairs to boats that had long been out of service. The majority of farm carts, now no longer needed, were knocked to pieces, and from the material a jagged but stout palisade erected behind the village under the lee of the houses. Into the compartments of this great corral the live stock were herded, safe from the rigours of the coming winter or the depredations of desperate men who might slip past the sentries under cover of the night.

  The fortifications were now almost completed and a long line of breastworks linked the Martello Tower on the south with Silas’s redoubt to the north, screening the whole village and the stockaded enclosure upon the landward side. Gregory well knew the weakness of his defence to be his limited armaments. Only thirteen men with rifles had survived the debacle of the Shark, and his pistol and those of Silas, Kenyon, Sims and Rudd would be of little use except at close range. He still had his three Lewis guns, however, and leaving those in charge of picked troops, passed on the rifles to some of the ex-service men in his Labour Colony levy. He had also acquired eight shotguns and several hundred cartridges on his forays into the interior, and formed a special squad to bring these into action if an attack was pressed to within the limits of their range, so he hoped to be able to put up a performance which would lead an enemy to think that the garrison was far stronger than it was in fact.

  However, he placed his confidence far more in rendering the place almost impossible of approach, and for that purpose raked the village from end to end for suitable material. Wireless aerials, now silent and therefore useless, flagstaffs, wood fencing, iron palings, obsolete fishing-nets. Every box, barrel, and wicker basket in the place, to be filled with shingle and inserted in the breastworks. Old potato-sacks and tarpaulins were filled with earth, and he even demolished several shreds to utilise their corrugated iron roofing for revetments.

  Entrenchments were dug and emplacements thrown up, fields of fire cleared for the Lewis guns and these rendered doubly difficult of approach by a hundred ingenious devices. Tangles of wire and netting, pieces of board with long nails driven through them and scattered broadcast in the long grass to stab the feet of running men, and lines of pits with pointed stakes set upright in them, but cunningly concealed by rushes and dried turf.

  Veronica meanwhile, slim and boyish in her borrowed overalls, worked at her mending in the August sunshine, or, when she could, sneaked off to sun-bathe in a sheltered dip of the beach that she had found, continuing in the evenings her dual flirtation.

  She felt that she liked the big American the better of the two; he never pestered her, but placid, smiling, efficient, always seemed to be at her side when wanted, and as she grew to know him better she came to appreciate more and more the immense and kindly tolerance of his simple straightforward nature. He was widely travelled, deeply read, a distinguished amateur of music and at some time or other he seemed to have met nearly all the really important people who had influenced events, a month—no, it seemed to her a year—ten years ago, in that other, now so distant and orderly, existence. Yet he seldom spoke of the influence he had wielded and only little by little did she become aware of his vast interests.

  Gregory on the other hand treated her in a fashion she would have resented from any other man. He forced her to fulfil her daily quota of the mending that she so detested, as ruthlessly as he made his soldiers dig; stalked off to bed immediately after dinner when he felt that way inclined, hardly troubling to throw her a casual ‘good night’, yet such was
his magnetism that when he uttered an abrupt ‘Come on—let’s walk,’ her resistance seemed to crumple and with a half-guilty, half-defiant glance at Silas she would gaily respond ‘Why not?’ and accompany him to the grassy bank behind the stockade. He was as great a lover as he was a leader of men, when he chose to devote himself to her. His crisp intellect was a continual delight and he confided in her alone, often days in advance, every new plan as he devised it for their better security and comfort. He knew too, instinctively it seemed, just when to caress her and when to refrain; so that his passion never irked her, and she began to crave the deft touches of his masterful hands. She wondered sometimes what would have happened if they had met in normal times and felt, that if he had insisted on it, she might quite well have abandoned Grosvenor Square for Gloucester Road.

  Some nights he would neither go to bed nor make love to her, but set off alone on long tramps, penetrating far inland and often not returning until dawn. No one else was allowed outside the fortifications on any pretext, so their news of the outer world was confined to such rumours as he chose to pass on to them after these solitary expeditions. However, he spoke little of them, except to state that conditions in the interior were growing more and more terrible and the roving population desperate to a primitive degree, until at the end of the third week of their stay he told them that he had good reason to believe that a Communist Government had been established in London.

  ‘What effect is that likely to have on us?’ Kenyon inquired.

  ‘The disruption has been too great for it to have any at the moment,’ Gregory replied slowly; ‘and it is doubtful if it can last for more than a week or two. If the old order couldn’t feed the people how can the Communists? Yet it is the danger that I have feared all along. Similar groups may gain control in places like Ipswich, and while they last they will endeavour to secure any sources of supply which are left for their own maintenance, regardless of the remainder of the people. Our state of plenty here must be known for miles around by now, and it is to protect us from a proper organised attack that I have thrown up all these defences, my automatic and a loaded crop would have been good enough to scare off anything short of a multitude without arms.’