Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  Her face was framed in the window and her arm groped towards me, dripping blood where the glass had cut her. She was far more terrible than the men - somehow, she was still feminine and sensual, her painted lips drawn back as if smiling with lewd desire, her eyes rolling as if with passion, a mockery of what she had been; reaching out, it seemed she wished to fold me lovingly to her breast. I could not look away. Then she yielded, like a prostitute rejected; I did not go to her - she drifted away.

  On the floor, shards of broken glass glinted in the light.

  Within my body, my senses were shattered like the glass, cold splinters piercing my heart, sharp edges filing at the rim of my mind, jagged pieces rasping at my soul. I could almost hear fear grinding away at my guts. It was too much. The grinding horror wore away my humanity and polished my awareness to a smooth lump; I slipped into obfuscation. I did not move, I scarcely blinked. Things groped at the window and fondled the walls. And then the bars had double shadows. Dawn was at the window.

  * * * *

  Mary shivered into reality, as if coming into focus from distortion or changing dimensions by some time warp. Jerry stood up, stiffly. I found I could move. I could think once more. The night had ended.

  * * * *

  XXIII

  From the window, we saw a destroyer standing off beyond the harbour. My first thought, such was my state of mind, was that the navy intended to shell the town. But that was foolish and I smiled - although grimly - at myself. I did wonder what they planned, however. A destroyer was hardly necessary to quarantine fishing boats and motor cruisers. Some decision had probably been reached - been forced upon them once the first member of the patrols had been infected. Maybe it was only the one - the one we had seen - but we had no way of knowing, nor, I suppose, did they. It had taken that option from them. The search-and-destroy mission had automatically failed the moment a single member of the patrols became one of the enemy ... to continue the patrols was to risk spreading the horror into the compound itself. They weren’t likely to chance that. And it explained why the patrols had been withdrawn. But not what they intended to do.

  * * * *

  Sometime later a helicopter came in.

  It was a big one and it passed over us, heading towards the compound. It didn’t stay long. It vanished towards the west and then, half an hour later, a second ‘copter came in - or the first one returned. It followed the same pattern, landing within the compound and flying off a short time afterwards. I wondered if reinforcements were being brought in, or if the compound was evacuating? Jerry, wondering the same thing, tried to phone through to the compound, but even the switchboard failed to answer now. The phone rang hollow and dead, a forlorn sound, as if the telephone itself knew it was not to be answered and sounded its despair.

  Jerry slammed it down, cursing.

  A few seconds later, it rang.

  The sound startled us and we gaped stupidly at each other. Then Jerry snatched it up. ‘That’s right,’ he said, and at the same time I heard a loudspeaker blaring from somewhere in the streets behind us. Jerry said, ‘That’s right. Three of us. Right, we’ll be there at ten exactly. Well, sure...but look ... how do we tell if they’re ... all right? If we do find any others ... is there some way to tell?’ He listened, tight-lipped. ‘All right,’ he said. He put the phone down.

  ‘They’re evacuating us from the navy pier,’ he said.

  ‘Thank God,’ Mary whispered.

  ‘We’re to be there at ten o’clock, on the dot...and they won’t wait long.’ Then, anticipating my question, he said, ‘They didn’t say how we could tell...said that everyone would be checked by a doctor, at the pier.’

  ‘Then they have found a way!’ I said. ‘Maybe Elston’s damned autopsies proved fruitful.’

  Jerry nodded doubtfully.

  A van moved down the waterfront, going fast and not stopping. The loudspeaker sounded the message, the same message we had received over the telephone. I wondered if they were phoning every number in the town; I had an eerie echo of telephones ringing, unanswered, in empty houses; ringing in sequence up and down the streets, forlorn and futile. The van passed and I saw armed men holding their weapons ready at the windows; it turned up the cobbled streets and we heard the message repeated again and again as it wound through the town, making an effort to get through to anyone hiding there...anyone who could understand. The message was given in Spanish on every third broadcast. I was cheered greatly by this, by the knowledge that something had been determined, something was being done, authority was taking measures. I suppose, without actually admitting it, I had feared that the compound had been overrun and that we were on our own. The authorities were responsible for this horror we were in, yet it was still reassuring to know they continued to function.

  I said, ‘Well, thank heaven.’

  But Jerry said, ‘It might not be so easy.’

  He was at the window, looking out.

  He said, ‘Christ, they’re all over the place!’

  I felt my throat constrict. I joined him at the window and the hair came up stiff on my neck. The loudspeaker seemed to have attracted the ghouls, to have played the catalyst that brought them out of lethargy, summoning them from their various places and bringing them to the waterfront. There must have been twenty of them. They came filtering out of the sidestreets and from the warehouses, moving in the wake of the van...some Pied Piper syndrome which Elston would have termed a side-effect, bringing them together. I recognised the bearded man from the Red Walls and, I think, two or three others from the initial infection. There were several women; one clutched a baby to her breast in a mockery of the maternal instinct. The baby was dead. They moved after the van and then, when it had vanished, milled about mindlessly. They did not attack one another. From time to time two or three of them, following their own paths, would come into contact - would bump or brush together - and then they would snap and slash at each other in a momentary bestial rage, but it was fleeting ferocity. An instant later they would wander apart again. They did not kill each other. Elston could be proud of the nicety with which he had regulated their instincts...

  * * * *

  At nine o’clock a landing craft came wallowing into the harbour and dropped its ramp alongside the navy pier. The pier was some distance down the front and it was hard to see just what was happening, but we saw men in blue uniforms splashing through the shallow water and others running along the pier. They all carried automatic weapons. They deployed in a crescent around the pier. Several men in white coats detached themselves from the crescent and moved forward. They were all on the seaward side of the link fence. A group of men in khaki came through the defensive lines, carrying strange, bulky objects. They moved quickly and, within minutes, those objects had been transformed into a tent-like affair of poles and canvas. It looked like the shield they put around a broken-legged racehorse on the track, before they shoot it - letting the animal linger longer in agony so the spectators will not have their delicate sensibilities offended. This structure was erected near the fence, on the perimeter of the armed crescent. As soon as it was up, the men in khaki hurried back to the dock. The men in white vanished behind the canvas.

  It was nine-thirty.

  The navy pier was only ten minutes away - walking.

  We were ready to go - waiting.

  While this activity was going on, the ghouls were still wandering along the docks. They showed little interest in the proceedings at the pier. They didn’t even look dangerous, somehow; demented, tormented, with the madness transfiguring their features, but not dangerous.

  Jerry said, ‘You know...it’s funny...you’d think it would be more horrible with that whole load of things out there, but it don’t seem as bad as it did with one - when Sally looked in the window. One thing, alone...’ He was looking out, squinting, tight lines drawn around his mouth. ‘Well, it ain’t like snakes, is what I mean,’ he said.

  Mary and I looked at him.

  I realised what he was d
oing - that he was just saying the first thing that came into his head, to hold our attention; to keep us from considering the gauntlet we soon must run.

  He said, ‘Now, you take your snakes. One snake, on his own ... he ain’t so scary. But you get a whole pit of snakes, all squirming together and wriggling about, that scares anybody. Now, you’d think that whole load of ghouls would be the same. But it ain’t.’ He paused. I thought he’d run dry, but he was just getting his words in order. He said, ‘I guess they’re more on the line of rats in a sack.’

  Mary and I looked at each other, then at Jerry. But he knew what he was saying.

  He said, ‘Knew a fella once, used to make his living plucking rats out of a burlap bag. That’s right. He’d go around the bars toting this big bag full of rats. He wasn’t welcomed in restaurants, but he’d go in bars. He’d have fifteen, twenty rats in there. Well, he’d let everyone look in the sack, they’d see all them rats squirming around, they’d get pretty edgy. Then this fella, he’d wager he could reach down in that sack with his bare hand and pluck a rat out. Well, nobody would believe him. He’d get plenty of takers on his bet. Then, sure enough, he’d reach in and grab him a rat and pluck it right out, all wriggling and squealing. Saw him do it a dozen times. Never the once did he get bit.’ Jerry looked at his hand, as if amazed that it had not been bitten. ‘So one time I’m having a drink with him, I ask him what the secret is. He’d had some drink, he tells me there’s no secret to it at all; he don’t know why they don’t bite him, they just don’t. But here’s the thing. He said that when he first started rat-plucking, he tried it with just one rat in the bag. Well, he got bit every time. But as long as there was more than one rat in there, he never got chawed. Now, that was the secret, although he didn’t see it as a secret. When there was a whole squirming mass of rats, they just didn’t bite. He could pluck them out one by one, fifteen, twenty in a row, never got nipped - but as soon as there was just one rat left in the sack, it bit him every time. Just something in the nature of rats in a sack. Well, you see what I mean...’

  He had spoken slowly and thoughtfully.

  It was nine-thirty-five.

  * * * *

  The canvas shelter on the pier was billowing like a sail and the men who’d gone in there wearing white coats came out looking like astronauts or deep sea divers. They were bundled into thick, protective clothing, heavy leather gauntlets and helmets with black glass visors. The visors were lifted and their faced showed white in the openings. These were obviously the men who would examine prospective evacuees - who would, I hoped, examine us.

  It was nine-forty and we were discussing whether we should walk steadily down the front, carefully avoiding the ghouls, or try to make it in one quick rush. We had already determined that we must make our approach down the waterfront, even though it was swarming with ghouls. The alternative was to sneak through the back streets and with narrow roads turning and intersecting that was too dangerous - we would have no warning if one of the things were lurking around a turning, in a doorway, in an alley. On the front we could, at least, see the danger.

  But to run or walk...

  Mary summed that up.

  She said, ‘I don’t think I could walk,’ and we knew what she meant. We decided to run. It might not be the safest policy, for quick movement might well draw their attention, just as the loudspeaker in the van had attracted them to it, but we doubted our nerve - doubted we could walk through that terrible throng. I felt my heart might explode if I denied my impulse to run ... to maintain a moderate pace while my heart and brain screamed for the primordial solution, the flight that instinct demanded.

  * * * *

  At nine-forty-five a van roared down to the gates.

  The back opened and men jumped out, some in uniform and some in civilian clothing. The men in protective clothing opened the gates and the men from the van rushed through. The driver moved the van some ten yards down the barrier, then jumped out and ran back to the gates. A second van arrived, then a third. The occupants all passed through the gates and rushed directly out to the landing craft. There was no examination and I figured that must have already been done, at the laboratory. Examination at the pier was for us and any others who had remained in the town. I watched carefully but saw neither Elston nor Larsen. I figured they had left in the helicopters.

  Then it was time for us to leave.

  * * * *

  We went out the door fast, Jerry first and Mary next and I brought up the rear, shamefully close upon her heels. We went straight across the front to the fence, wanting that barrier on one side of our course. We passed within six feet of a ghoul. He turned stiffly, watching us, but did not offer pursuit. Two others took tentative steps towards us but, in doing so, they brushed against one another. They snarled in silence and snapped. Then we were running along the line of the fence and, for all our fear, it was easy. We made it to the gates with no more trouble than our labouring lungs and jangling nerves could claim.

  We were not the first there.

  Half a dozen others had come from the nearer streets of the town, joining at the fence, warily regarding one another. The gate was closed again and the men in protective suits had their visors down. Sunlight reflected from the black glass, glinting like stars in the void. They were faceless behind the glass, alien and inhuman. We drew up, panting, beside the others. Jerry spoke to a man he recognised. Three or four others came dashing from the streets, running hard. One was a woman, sobbing hysterically.

  From behind his visor, one of the examiners said, ‘All right. You’ll come through one at a time. Go behind the canvas and take your clothing off. Take everything off.’ He paused at the gate. ‘The rest step back. Move it!’

  Someone pushed the hysterical woman forward.

  The visored man opened the gate and let her through. The men in blue uniforms had their automatic weapons trained on the rest of us. Two of them, standing apart from the line, held their guns on the woman. The visored man closed the gates again and the woman went behind the canvas. Two men in protective clothing followed her in.

  Suddenly I felt like laughing...laughing wildly.

  I realised that the canvas had not been erected to house some delicate instrument that could detect the latent disease but simply for the sake of modesty ... so that we could undress in privacy! Modesty in the face of this horror! So was authority bound within their dimensions.

  Then a darker realisation followed.

  I knew we had hoped for too much from these saviours. They had found no way to detect the disease, they simply intended to examine us, naked, looking for any recent wound or break in the skin through which the disease might have got into our bodies.

  I didn’t, at first and with my mind jumping madly, see how this would affect us.

  The woman emerged from behind the canvas and was directed to the pier. She moved on, stumbling and sobbing. She looked back once. The gate opened again and a man passed through. Jerry took a step forward and the guns all trained on him.

  He stopped dead, raising his hands to shoulder-height.

  ‘There’s another woman here,’ he said. ‘For crissake let her go through next!’

  The man at the gate nodded. Sunlight ran like black fire up his helmet.

  None of the ghouls had come any distance towards us, they were still milling about back by the jail.

  Jerry took Mary gently by the shoulder and pushed her towards the gates, then stepped back. She looked at him over her shoulder, trying to smile, as she moved forwards. The faceless man had his hand on the gate, ready to open it the moment the preceding man had been cleared behind the canvas.

  Abruptly, he stiffened.

  The instant he stiffened, I saw the reason...and tumultuous horror spun through my guts.

  He had seen the bandage on her leg.

  ‘Remove that,’ he said.

  Mary looked puzzled and Jerry hadn’t yet understood. He still had his hands raised.

  Mary said, ‘What do you m
ean?’ and the visored man said, ‘The bandage.’

  ‘What? Oh ... no, that’s all right. I cut myself the other day, it’s not...what you think...’ She had started speaking easily, as if confident the explanation would suffice, but her words trailed off weakly. The man with the black glass face was rigid. I knew that his features, behind the visor, would be as hard and as cold as the glass itself.

  Mary bent down and pulled the bandage from her leg. The cut was red and ugly-looking. The man stared at her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘What the hell?’ Jerry shouted.

  The guns were trained on him from behind the fence and his hands were still raised, as if he’d thrown them up in amazement.

  ‘They...won’t. ..’ I whispered.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the faceless man said. ‘There’s no point in examining you further, miss. No one with an open wound can leave.’