by Guy N Smith
He staggered to his feet, clutching at the open door for support. The stallion reared up, eyes rolling, pawing the air in its agony. It straightened, tottered, and then fell forward, both front hooves smashing down with devastating force on the skull of Herbie Whitcombe.
It was ten minutes before the police reached the accident. They waited impatiently, watching the suffering of the horses until the vet whom they had summoned arrived on the scene and humanely destroyed both Penny and Stango.
Chapter Four
Doctor Jenkinson always slept downstairs on the divan during his spasmodic weeks of night-duty. Lately he had been leaving the emergency duties to his younger, partners, but, nevertheless, there were still times when he had to take his turn. And by going upstairs to bed he invariably disturbed his wife on those occasions when it was necessary for him to turn out.
The telephone rang shortly after 3 A.M. and without even switching on the light he reached out and lifted the receiver from its cradle.
"Emergency doctor speaking."
"Doctor," it was a woman's voice, breathless, a note of panic. "It's me daughter. She's dying."
"Just let me have your name and address, and explain the symptoms, please." He always tried to appear calm, especially at night. Illnesses were magnified totally out of proportion by the average person after dark. Often the patient could be helped by a little common-sense advice, followed by a call the following morning.
Gladys Williams blurted out her name and address. "Me 'usband's with 'er now," she gulped. "Terrible pain 'er's in. Frothin' at the mouth and. . . and sorta . . . paralyzed!"
"Keep her warm," Patrick Jenkinson instructed, suddenly alert as he switched on the light with his free hand, and groped for his tie. "I'll be with you in a few minutes."
Less than ten minutes later, bag in hand, the tall doctor with grey hair stood by Shirley's bedside. There was a puzzled expression on his face, and he winced at the sight of the child. He spoke to her, but she did not appear to hear him. Her normally pretty face was a mask of pain, her eyes rolling, spittle frothing on her lips, and as he felt her damp forehead her teeth gnashed together. Her posture was unnatural, almost as though she was attempting to stretch every muscle in her body yet was unable to move any of them.
Jenkinson took a thermometer from his breast pocket, shook it, and placed it under the child's armpit beneath her sweat-soaked nightdress.
"What is it, doctor?" Walter Williams spoke gruffly, anxiously.
"It could be any one of a number of things," the doctor replied, not meeting the other's gaze. "How long has she been like this?"
" 'Er wasn't too good yesterday," Gladys Williams answered him. "But that was only to be expected."
"Why?"
" 'Er 'orses were killed. Both of 'em. A car ran into 'em night before last on the Cannock Road. Upset 'er somethin' awful."
"Oh, yes," Doctor Jenkinson stiffened. "I remember the incident." He did not add that he had been called to the scene of the accident to pronounce Herbie Whitcombe dead. This was no time to discuss such matters in detail.
" 'Er was just feelin' off-colour to start with. Complained of an 'eadache and was sick a couple o' times. Didn't want to eat. Then 'er complained 'er couldn't see properly. 'Ad trouble 'earin', too. We got 'er to bed, and then 'er started 'avin' these fits, goin' all stiff, shoutin' out . . . and when Walter 'ere tried to comfort 'er, 'er bit is 'and!"
"I see." Jenkinson removed the thermometer from beneath Shirley's arm, and stepped nearer to the light to read it. Somehow he managed to keep his expression impassive, yet his hand shook visibly as he returned the instrument to its case.
"I'm going to call an ambulance," he said as calmly as possible, moving towards the door and the telephone in the hall.
"It . . . it," Walter Williams stammered white-faced and shaking, "it ain't . . . rabies, is it?"
"No." Patrick Jenkinson forced a smile and shook his head. "I can assure you it's not rabies." Though what the hell it is, he mused as he dialed, God only knows. The initial symptoms are akin to those found in meningitis . . . but this paralysis had him beaten.
Jenkinson travelled in the ambulance with Mr. and Mrs. Williams. Shirley lay still and stiff, eyes closed, and periodically the doctor checked her breathing. The faint movement of her chest was the only sign that she was alive. Within twenty minutes she was in the intensive care unit of Walsall General Hospital. Her parents remained anxiously in the waiting-room, and it seemed an eternity before they saw Dr Jenkinson coming down the long room towards them. The doctor's expression was grim and sorrowful, and the flame of hope which had remained alive in their hearts flickered and died. Some terrible, inexplicable illness had snatched their beloved daughter from their lives with the unexpectedness of a bolt of lightning.
It was exactly a week after the funeral that Walter Williams began to feel unwell. For a time he told nobody, assuming that it was just tiredness caused by a combination of grief and sleepless nights. Life had to go on although the summons he had received from the police for allowing the horses to wander on to the road did not make him feel any better.
"What's up?" Gladys regarded him through red-rimmed eyes. "What yer 'oldin' yer 'ead for, Walter?"
"I think I'm going to be sick." Walter replied, and only just made it to the bathroom in time. It was the thought of the autopsy, the dissecting and stitching of a pretty, innocent little girl. The final analysis, the moment of truth.
Walter was still heaving when he came back into the room. He was sweating, too, and shivering at the same time. The light seemed to have dimmed. Gladys was in shadow and he could not discern her features.
"You ought to go to bed," she said.
He looked at her, knew that she was speaking to him, but he could not hear her words.
"Yer what?" he forced the words out, but whether there was any sound he did not know.
"Walter? You're ill!"
His comprehension faded. He sensed himself at a disadvantage. His back and neck muscles were agony. This woman—he didn't know who she was—was advancing on him, hands outstretched. She was an enemy. He had to defend himself, and the best way to do that was to attack.
He stumbled towards her, using every ounce of physical and mental effort to force his limbs to respond. Gladys Williams was heavily built, but for her size she was surprisingly weak. He lurched against her, and she fell back against the table. His stiffening fingers found her flabby neck and closed around it, locking in a paralytic vice as they did so.
Her mouth was opening, but whether any sound came from it he could not tell. Her tongue was out, blue and swollen, her eyes bulged and rolled. Walter Williams could see no longer, yet it did not frighten him. He felt the woman struggling in his grasp for a time, but eventually she grew still. Then he became aware that he was losing balance, sliding, falling, taking her with him. They hit the floor and rolled over. She was on top of him, a crushing weight that restricted his breathing, the only bodily function of which he was now capable.
He lay there in a black void, his breathing becoming more shallow every minute, and eventually the trickle of spittle from his lips slowed and stopped altogether.
"Look at this." Professor Brian Newman thrust some newspaper clippings across the desk towards Haynes. "You can't ignore these. This is the consequence of our experiments with the bats."
"Nonsense," Professor Rickers spoke up moving from the window. "You're seeing things as you want to see 'em, Newman. You're a sensationalist—or maybe you're just trying to justify your own balls-ups and prove us wrong in the bargain."
"Read them," Newman snapped.
"I've read 'em," Haynes pushed the cuttings back. "Apart from the girl's death, and her father's, too, which are diagnosed as a type of meningitis—"
"Meningitis, buggery!" Newman's anger was rising.
"Maybe the horses and that guy in the car died from it, too," Rickers laughed.
"There's a tie-up. My theory is that this . . . this disease has an
indirect bearing on all four deaths, maybe the horses', too. We can't be sure."
"You're just wasting your time, Newman, and ours." Haynes said. He had not called the professor by his first name since the day when the bats had escaped from the laboratory. It wasn't that he was worried about them, he simply could not tolerate fools. And, in his estimation, Newman was an incompetent fool. Women and science did not mix.
"Let me tell you what happened as I see it!" Newman thumped the desk with his fist.
"Go on, then," Haynes released with a sigh, adjusting his spectacles. He glanced at Rickers, who had returned to the window and was staring out across Cannock Chase.
"I reckon," Professor Newman began glancing at Haynes and then across at Rickers, "that the reason for those horses being loose on the road was that they had been upset by the bats. Unfortunately, out of the whole saga there is no one left alive to tell us what really happened. The girl and her father have both died as a result of some strange form of meningitis which is identical to that from which the bats were dying in my laboratory. Unfortunately the virus dies with the victim, and the only way in which its true form can be determined is to examine it in the body of a sufferer before death occurs. So far we haven't been afforded that opportunity. In the final stages, the disease brings on paralysis and madness. Williams attacked and strangled his wife before the paralysis claimed him. As for the bats, they just go crazy, flying blindly. They scared the horses out of the stables and the field on to the road. The driver of that car was just unfortunate—"
"He'd been drinking," Haynes interrupted.
"Maybe so, but that doesn't alter the fact that the horses were stampeding crazily down the road. And we must also face up to the fact that bats carrying this virus are loose in the countryside. I had hoped that those which escaped might die quickly without harming anybody or anything, but we must face the thought that some of them are carriers. They won't die from the disease themselves, but they'll pass it on to other bats, and I dread to think how far it will spread."
Rickers laughed harshly.
"You're crazy, Newman," he said. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again—the whole thing is preposterous. You made a balls-up of your experiments, a few bats died, and if your theories became known outside this Research Center half the population would be panicking."
"All right." Brian Newman stood up, shaking his head. "Have it your own way. But don't say I haven't warned you. Any time now those bats will start to mate. About forty per cent of those which are carriers could pass the virus on to their young, creating a new generation of carriers which won't die. A bat can live from four to twelve years, and during that time they'll be spreading this plague, breeding again. Seven weeks from now the whole thing could be totally out of control, and we won't be able to do a thing to stop it. The bubonic plague outbreaks of the Middle Ages will seem like head-colds by comparison."
"And supposing you're correct in your assumptions?" Haynes smiled in the manner of a tolerant uncle who has just listened to the fantasies of an infant nephew. "How do you propose halting the spread of this . . . this mutated meningitis virus?"
"That I can't say right now." Newman was tight-lipped. "Maybe I can find an antidote which neutralizes the poisons produced in the body by the germs, perhaps by taking a blood sample from a bat which has recovered from the disease and then injecting it into an infected one, though I must admit I don't foresee any survivors in this instance. We can try to determine the reasons for immunity in the case of the carriers. In any case I'll either have to try to recapture some of the escaped bats, or inject the virus into some more and start again from scratch."
"If you're going to do that," Haynes snapped, "then you do it in your own time. You were allocated one month for this meningitis experiment. You have already submitted a negative report and admitted failure. I can't allow you to waste any more time on it. There are far more important research matters to be attended to."
"O.K.," Newman retorted pausing in the doorway. "I'll do it in my own time. I take it you'll have no objections to my using the laboratory in the evenings and at weekends? Miss Wylie will assist me."
"Carry on." Haynes picked up a folder and beckoned to Rickers. "You can use the place, but don't go wasting our time."
As Brian Newman closed the door and walked down the corridor towards his own laboratory he could hear Haynes and Rickers laughing.
"Well?" Susan Wylie looked up as he entered the small lab. "What are their reactions?"
"Ridicule, naturally," Newman told her. He walked across to the open window and gazed out on the sunlit Cannock Chase. "What else could one expect from a guy like Rickers? And in the meantime, out there, there's a death force gathering which will sweep across this country like a swarm of locusts."
"What are we going to do?" she asked, laying a hand on his arm.
"Work like hell to try and find an antitoxin," he said. "I'd appreciate your help, but it won't be in the government's time, nor will there be any remuneration for evening work and weekends, and at the end of it all we may have absolutely nothing to show for our efforts."
"Of course I'll help you, Brian." she smiled. "You know that."
"Even after the way I treated you?"
"A leopard doesn't change his spots. I knew what you were like before I moved in to live with you. You'll probably do it again."
"Thanks," he murmured, and his lips went down to meet hers.
"Where do we start?" she breathed when they finally broke off that lingering kiss.
"Well, before I begin injecting a fresh lot of bats and creating another strain of lethal paralysis," he replied, "I think a look around those stables where the Williams family kept their horses wouldn't go amiss. No doubt that was where the escaped bats took up residence to begin with, though possibly they've moved on elsewhere by now. I have no doubt in my own mind that both Williams and his daughter caught the paralysis from them, and if the devils are still hiding out there then it could be the most dangerous place on earth at this very moment. In that case I think it would be better if I went alone."
"No!" Her eyes blazed with determination. "We're in this together, Brian, and I'm going with you. Just try and stop me! We created this horror together, and I'm prepared to share the risks involved in trying to stop it."
"All right," he conceded, nodding. "But as a precaution we'd better wear some kind of protective clothing. Rubber gloves and mesh face masks may not be totally effective, but at least they'll help. We don't need to wait for dark. We'll go up this evening, about an hour before dusk."
Brian Newman left his car at the bottom of the muddy track, and together they walked in the direction of the Wooden Stables. Susan Wylie wore jeans to protect her bare legs, and their faces were both covered by netting masks of the variety used by duck-shooters, while latex rubber gloves shielded their hands.
The sun was dipping slowly in the cloudless western sky behind them, as though reluctant to relinquish its heat to the cool of darkness.
"It hasn't rained for a month now." Susan said. "I heard on the radio that a drought has been officially declared."
"Nothing's acting naturally these days." The professor sighed. "It's as if Nature herself has had enough of everything and wants to wipe us all out and start again."
"Don't say that." Susan shivered, then added, "What a damp, derelict place this is!"
Clouds of midges hovered beneath the trees, and as they rounded a bend which brought them into view of the stables, they surprised a couple of feeding rats which darted into the sanctuary of the gloomy, derelict buildings.
"Ugh!" Susan grimaced. "Just the sort of place for the bats to hide out. They'd be well at home with all the rats and mice. By the way, d'you think rodents are capable of carrying the virus?"
"I don't know," Newman replied. He paused before the entrance, almost reluctant to go in. "But I guess we'll find out before very long. Now, follow me, and let's take a look inside."
The Wooden Stables were dark an
d forbidding, the sunlight filtering in through gaping holes in the roof and penetrating the shadows, and they stood just inside the doorway for a few moments whilst then- eyesight adjusted to the gloom.
The first thing they noticed was the smell, a pungent, decaying odour.
"God, what a stink!" Susan wrinkled her nose beneath her mask.
"Something's decomposing." Newman walked towards an opening in the brick partition which separated the building into two halves. The floor was a mass of saturated straw and rubble, broken slates, fallen bricks, and heaps of horse dung. His foot kicked against something, a tiny body that rolled over, half decomposed, barely recognizable. It might have been a dead mouse but for the membrane of skin attached to it, a frail wing that had somehow outlasted the carcass.
"Look," he said, pointing to the ground. "That's one of 'em. And there's another, lodged on that shelf. Let's take a more thorough look."
He produced a flashlight from his pocket, and by its light they uncovered another twenty small corpses, some more rotted than others. The professor directed the light up into the rafters but there was no sign of life, only unbroken cobwebs stretching between the beams.
"Well, they're not here now," he muttered. "And from the way these corpses have rotted I reckon they've been gone for some time. Of course, the weather's been abnormally warm for the time of year, but I'd say the bats haven't used this place for a fortnight."
"Maybe . . . maybe they've all died and . . . that's the end of it," Susan suggested, trying to sound convincing.
"I wish I could agree with you." Newman switched off his torch and they went back outside. "But I'm afraid we can only wait and see. There's twenty-five thousand acres of Cannock Chase, and they could be just anywhere on it. Maybe even further afield. We know for a fact that this virus can be passed on to human beings, even if Haynes and Rickers pooh-pooh the idea. So all we can do is work like hell in an attempt to find an antidote, and await any further outbreaks. I'm afraid, though, that before very long Rickers is going to have to eat his words."