Thirst (Thirst Series)

by Guy N Smith

  ‘But, father …’ had been the boy's one token resistance.

  ‘Nobuts about it.’ Thomas Wilkes had hooked his fingers into the pockets of his much strained waistcoat, his military-type moustache seeming to bristle at the mere suggestion that his son might have other ideas. ‘You can't refuse this golden opportunity, the start which my influence alone will give you. A managership by the time you're thirty …’

  Benny was now seven years beyond that target, and still cashiering. A failure. He knew this only too well. His father reminded him of it almost daily, and the ridicule which was showered upon him from management level was far worse than that of his schoolmasters; turning him into a recluse, a zombie which travelled to and from the city daily, shunning companionship in all its forms. There had been that one ray of hope, a last-ditch stand when even the routine of selling bathroom requisites had offered new horizons. Exciting ones. Now that too was gone.

  Automatically he checked his till, and prepared for the day's business. It required no mental effort at all these days. Such were the functionings of the robot. Sensitive hands which counted notes and coin, knowing by the very feel whether the amount was correct or not, sorting, bundling, the mind dulled to everything round about, polite conversation being answered with either a nod or a grunt.

  Eventually it was the end of the day, time for the return bus journey, being forced to stand on the swaying lower deck, rubbing shoulders with people who lived, talked, laughed. Benny Wilkes hadn't laughed for three years now, not since Walter Priest, the sardonic chief cashier, had collapsed suddenly with a coronary thrombosis, sprawling in agony on the floor behind the mahogany counter. He had died in Benny's arms, and Benny had laughed quietly to himself. He had laughed at the funeral too, but not since …

  … Benny's mother was a long-suffering woman, also. She had survived the banking ordeal, dominated by her husband, and watching her son shun the affection which she offered him. She hated banking too - the social life which had been demanded of her, the false impressions which she had been forced to create for her husband's benefit. Yet, like her son, she had not protested.

  Mealtimes were always fraught with tension. Every course was flavoured with banking, liberally sprinkled by Thomas Wilkes as he recalled his many memories (usually the same ones over and over again), and constantly offered advice.

  ‘I cannot for the life of me understand why you have not progressed beyond cashiering after twenty years in the bank.’ This damp Monday evening was no different from any other throughout the years. ‘Correction. I do knowwhy, although I fail to understand it. Anybody who cannot pass their Institute of Bankers examinations is either lazy or a fool!’ He paused just long enough for the significance of his words to sink in, before continuing. ‘I refuse to believe that I have produced a fool. Banking is in your blood, Benjamin. You are most certainly lazy, though. However, it is not too late. Put aside those useless crime novels which can only serve to deprave your mind, and take up your textbooks again. Only then can you hope to avert complete degradation!’

  Benny munched methodically on the remnants of the cold Sunday joint. He made no retort. He never had done. He even kept a set of textbooks in his room for the sake of appearances. His mother just mumbled some incoherent agreement. Everybody agreed with Thomas Wilkes. He was a law unto himself …

  … No man is lonelier than when he is in bed without a woman. In the darkness his fears and worries are increased a hundredfold: daily incidents become major issues. He can also give way to his feelings. A strong man can sob, a weak man can curse and rave. Benny did neither. For once, he reviewed the position in a logical frame of mind. Returning to his schooldays, he pinpointed his own weaknesses, analysed them, and eventually arrived at a definite conclusion. His findings were nothing new. Everything revolved around his father's dominance. Without Wilkes Senior's overbearing influence on his life, somehow, somewhere, he would have been successful by now. Even in the most menial job he could have reigned in heaven, instead of, as he was, serving in hell! Twenty wasted years, and all he had gleaned out of life was a mere glimmering of an insight into banking. It was too late to learn another profession now. That interview had only served to illustrate how well society could manage without him. If he died on the morrow, it would be as if he had never been. None would remember him, for few knew him: a machine which counted money, cashed cheques, and refused to converse with its fellows.

  It wasn't the first time that he had contemplated suicide. Only one thing had prevented him from carrying it out: he lacked the courage to do the deed. It would have been simplicity itself to take his father's shotgun out into the garden and, with both barrels wedged securely in his mouth, to pull the triggers. A split second of searing pain, and then it would all be over. Everlasting peace. He wouldn't even have to look upon the result of his handiwork. But still he knew that he could not do it.

  Therefore, suicide was pushed from his mind. Tonight he was logical, seeking a practical solution. He had to overcome his profession as well as the man whom he hated most in the world. There is a much hackneyed phrase thateven the worm will turn. This also applies to bank clerks who have reached the very end of physical and mental endurance. Once that last barrier has been broken …’

  Benny sat up in bed, his heart pounding madly. He was surprised. Never before had such a thought occurred to him. Revenge! It was said to be sweet, and with the very birth of his idea, a faint flickering of something which had eluded him throughout all his years of persecution flavoured his palate; he licked his lips.

  His logic ruled. It would have to be planned very, very carefully - striking at the most vital target in such a way that the utmost devastation would be inflicted upon … well, that needed an awful lot of thought, too …

  … It had taken Benny Wilkes a full month of solitary nights before he finally conceived a plan. When, eventually, he decided upon one, examined it in every detail, carried it out : in the depths of his mind, and surveyed the results, the simplicity of it all left him breathless. There was virtually nothing to it.

  He knew that he had to kill his father!

  Murder! He didn't like the word. It sounded dirty. An ‘unfortunate accident’, and then afterwards he would erase the details leading up to it from his mind. He would convince himself that itwas an accident. Nobody would be any the wiser then, not even himself.

  Nevertheless, it was necessary to go over those unsavoury details beforehand. The opportunity to kill Thomas Wilkes was there for the taking. Likewise, it had to happen away from home, somewhere where somebody else would clear up the mess, and the police would merely call round to convey the news of the tragedy. Benny knew that his mother wouldn't be as heartbroken as she would make out to be.

  Ithad to be a car accident. Furthermore, it had to happen on a Monday, simply because at the beginning of every week Thomas Wilkes took the car into the city to cash his weekly cheque, and to lunch at his club. He always went alone …

  … It took Benny another month to summon up the courage, and also to read up the mechanical knowledge of how to crash a car and yet make it seem a perfectly ordinary accident. It wasn't until he sneaked into the garage on that Sunday evening that he realised just how easy it was going to be. The rivets on the track rod of the old 1100 were rusted.

  His father was not one for having his car serviced regularly, possibly because he used it so rarely. A little pressure from a screwdriver was all that was needed. Not too much. Just enough to last for two or three miles.

  Benny was trembling when he got into bed that night. Not a new experience, by any means, but he could not remember when he had last been so excited. Perhaps it was the time when he was six, and his mother and father had taken him to the circus for the first time. A kind of pleasurable anticipation, like waking up in the middle of the night and knowing it was Christmas.

  That was how it was. He hardly slept a wink. When the alarm clock finally roused him from a fitful doze, his eyes were sunken and red rimmed. Yet t
here was new life in his veins as he rose, shaved, dressed, and breakfasted. He was first in the queue at the bus stop, summoning up a few ‘good mornings', much to the surprise of his fellow travellers …

  … That day, Thomas Wilkes was in a bad humour. Usually Monday was his best day, giving him a feeling of no longer being cut off from his beloved banking, and a chance to return to his old surroundings. Yet this morning he felt ill at ease. That was Benny's fault. He just could not understand his wastrel of a son. The fool had had a golden opportunity to progress in the business, and instead he had thrown it all away. It wasn't that the boy had no capabilities. It was simply that he was too lazy and complacent, preferring to lead a sheltered life at home. No ambition: what was needed was discipline. Tonight he would talk to his son, drop the soft approach, and try and hammer the true facts home to him. He would get tough for once!

  Slowly, Wilkes Senior backed the car out of the garage. He swung it out on to the road, taking an erratic course as he straightened out, and changed up to second gear. The steering felt unusually loose, and he made a mental note to call in at his garage in town and book a service. They might even have a look at it there and then. After all, hewas their ex-bank manager.

  The traffic was building up by the time he was three miles from the city centre. He cursed and considered changing his weekly routine. Tuesdays were always quieter. But he was a creature of habit.

  The traffic began to thin out again. Then he saw the Clearway ahead of him. Two miles of fast motoring and he would be there. He pressed his foot down almost to the floorboards, and the car answered him with a sudden surge forward.

  Three lanes. He moved into the outer one. No central reservation, just a few feet of red tarmacadam separating him from the oncoming traffic. It had been raining during the night and the spray from the lorry immediately in front was quickly obliterating his vision. He switched on the windscreen wipers. That only smeared it, and made it worse. He pressed the washer button. Damnation! Empty. He made another mental note to check it once a week. That was a job that Benjamin could do. The idle fellow never even touched the car except on the rare occasions when he wanted to use it.

  Something was wrong. It was some seconds before Thomas Wilkes realised it, and by then it was too late. The car was swerving and swaying from side to side, and he seemed to have no control over it whatsoever. Horns were blowing, lights flashing and then his front bumper hit the rear of that lorry which, for some reason, was slowing down.

  A bang like the report of a twelve-bore shotgun, and the steering wheel was spinning helplessly in the ex-banker's hands. He screamed in terror as he saw the red tarmac beneath the wheels, and then he was spinning like a child's top in the fast lane on the opposite side.

  Mercifully his heart gave out about a second before the oncoming articulated lorry ploughed relentlessly into the 1100 - crushing it as effectively as a corporation refuse cart would pulp up an empty carton - jack-knifing, and then slewing into the path of another stream of speeding cars.

  A multi pile-up. Cars were strewn across the Clearway. People trapped in their vehicles were screaming, cursing. In the centre, a flattened sheet of metal bearing little resemblance to any known make of motor vehicle; whilst from beneath it, a steady, oozing pool of scarlet fluid seeped.

  Within three minutes the warning sirens and flashing blue lights announced the arrival of police and ambulances.

  A carrion crow, which had also chosen Monday as the day or its visit into urban territory, spotted something amongst the wreckage. A white cylinder of flesh and bone, one end torn and bleeding: a severed finger.

  It swooped, secured its prey, and made off, away from the appetising scent of carnage.

  Within minutes hundreds of northbound cars were wrecked. Drivers at the rear of the huge pile-up were determined not to be trapped in Birmingham. Many could have braked safely and waited in their cars. Instead they resorted to panic action, swerving on to the opposite lanes, attempting to dodge the few oncoming vehicles.

  A crazy dodgem course - death being the penalty for bad luck or bad judgement. A family of four in their Vauxhall saloon was ruthlessly pushed into the path of a furniture van by a battered Mercedes. The Vauxhall, wedged beneath the front bumper of the heavy vehicles, became part of a lethal plough, gathering two Minis and an old Hillman Imp up with it, finally being crushed into a mangled heap against a solid stonework pillar.

  Finally the battlefield was at a standstill, the screaming of the wounded and dying coming from every direction. People staggered amongst the wreckage, dazed and bleeding. A youth with two severed legs, the blood pumping from the raw stumps, begged for water. His pleas went unheeded. A glassy-eyed woman in her late thirties clutched the headless body of her baby to her bosom, sitting with her back against the remains of the car in which lay the mangled corpse of her husband. She droned nursery rhymes to the dead infant, seemingly unaware of its fate, oblivious of the blood which saturated her blouse.

  Men raged and cursed, drivers blaming each other, some resorting to blows. Police and ambulance sirens wailed in the distance, but there was no way in which the injured could be reached except on foot.

  A red and white police patrol car was parked on one of the intersecting bridges, two uniformed officers looking down over the parapet, faces white with shock at what they saw.

  ‘Jesus Christ Almighty!’ the one muttered. ‘How the hell d'you sort this lot out, Joe?’

  ‘You don't,’ the older sergeant replied, turning away. ‘Nobody could. Not on this scale. You just leave it to sort itself out, and then you go in and pick up the bits and pieces.’

  Fires were blazing everywhere. Petrol tanks exploded with the frequency of shotgun reports at a clay pigeon shoot.

  And those still able to walk knew only that they had to leave a city of plague. Like a pilgrimage of zombies people climbed from their cars and staggered northwards. A few paused to slake their burning thirst from the pools of rainwater which had formed on the sides of the road. Those with oozing, spreading ulcers bathed their itching limbs in the cooling liquid before rejoining the ranks of the death marchers.

  Chapter 7

  Ron Blythe stood in the hallway of the deserted semi-detached house. The sharp pungent death smell still lingered.

  He knew in his heart that Cathy was dead. Wherever she was, even with the most up-to-date medical treatment, she could not possibly have survived this long. Where was Simon? Not that Ron really cared. Possibly his brother was still at the hospital. Maybe he was wandering the streets, caught up in the mindless, terror-stricken crowds. Or even a victim of the poison himself. It did not really matter.

  Ron Blythe made himself a cup of coffee and went into the front room to drink it. The water could well contain Weedspray. He grimaced. So bloody what? You had to die sometime. And everybody else seemed to be doing just that right now, all over the place: Ham's Hall; Elmdon Airport; the Clearway; in the streets. And basicallyhe was responsible. He had helped to develop the weedkiller. Granted, others would have completed it if he hadn't. Buthe had finalised it. There was no getting away from that fact.

  He took a long swig at the hot coffee, felt it burning his throat. If this was, indeed, a cup of poison, then justice was truly poetic.

  He finished his drink and put his cup down. Outside, the street was deserted - a neat little suburban backwater. He stared out through the window. It might have been early on a Sunday morning. Empty milk bottles on doorsteps, curtains closed. Desolation. Everybody had gone somewhere - anywhere, in an attempt to get away from the full horrors.

  Ron Blythe had already tried the telephone. Nothing but screaming engaged pips. All the lines were jammed. Probably even a 999 call would go unanswered. He stood there chewing on an unfilled pipe. A few minutes earlier he had listened to a news bulletin on the transistor radio in the kitchen. The city of Birmingham was virtually cut off. Road, rail, and air transport was all at a standstill. Troops surrounded the boundaries in a complete circle which incorp
orated Sutton Coldfield to the north, Solihull in the south east, Bromsgrove, and was completed at Dudley, severing the Black Country. There was no way out without a special pass, and at the moment those were non-existent.

  Blythe knew that he couldn't escape even if he had wanted to. It was nothing but damned foolishness on his part coming here to his brother-in-law's house in Erdington. Logically, there was nothing to be gained. A whim on his part, confirmation of Cathy's death, a vain hope that she might still be alive. Either way, he could do nothing. And now he had to get back to the city centre, to join up with the newly formed action committee.

  The Action committee had been formed on direct orders from Downing Street. It had virtually been in existence and operating since it was feared that the Weedspray had reached Birmingham. The water authority, Croxley, Broadhurst, himself: now the ranks had been swelled by senior Army officers, a Wing Commander from the RAF, and a couple of research chemists whose only knowledge of weedkiller was from killing a few docks in their gardens with sodium chlorate.

  Doubtless, Blythe reflected, the Press were going to town on the situation, although no newspapers were being printed or sold in Birmingham. The offices of theMail, in Colmore Circus, were as deserted as other business premises. It was the national dailies who would cash in with their lurid accounts of the suffering in the Midlands.

  Suddenly he heard somebody in the hall; soft footsteps and heavy breathing. He remembered that he had left the front door open, and cursed as he tensed to meet the intruder. A looter, perhaps, or someone in the last stages of Weedspray poisoning, seeking somewhere to die in peace like a wounded animal.

  A shadow fell across the doorway of the living room.

  ‘What the … Ron!’ The newcomer leaned on the doorpost for support, his well filled face pallid and drawn, expensive suit muddy and torn, fair curly hair awry.