‘And you, John, I tried to kill you. Can you forgive me?’
‘I told you, darling, you weren’t responsible.’
‘Am I really all right now? Am I really better?’
‘Yes, of course you are. And I’ll help you forget, Casey. I promise I’ll help you forget.’
It would take a long time to heal the wound she’d inflicted upon herself, but he knew she was strong enough to get over it. Maybe the fact that Simmons’ motives were not entirely pure would help, or maybe it would make matters worse. There was no way of knowing. It would be up to Casey, and up to him to make up for part of that love she’d lost.
He talked to her quietly for a long time, the intensity of his words breaking through her barrier of regret, reaching, searching, until she began to respond with feelings other than self-pity. ‘What’s going to happen now?’ she finally asked.
‘They want me to go back into the fog for the mycoplasma.’
‘Why? Why you? Janet told me about the mutation and how it’s causing the madness. But who wants you to get it? And why does it have to be you?’
Briefly, he told her of the events that had passed, of the disasters, of his immunity, and the fact that she would now be immune. He told her of the disease, of its origin, of the blind foolishness that had freed it. He barely mentioned his experience that morning, not wanting to give her cause for even more concern, merely telling her he’d been unable to locate the source.
She listened in quiet horror, occasionally shaking her head in disbelief, the rising fear inside her only slightly quelled by the knowledge that she was presumably now immune.
They were interrupted by Janet Halstead who bustled into the room, a tight smile betraying her tiredness. ‘We still have a few more tests to make on Miss Simmons, John, and then I think she should get some rest. Your policeman is anxious to have a word with you, I believe.’
Holman kissed Casey and promised to return as soon as he was allowed. Casey wanted to tell him not to go back to the fog, to stay near by, to take her away as soon as she was strong enough, but she knew her words would be wasted. And she knew the lives of many others depended on him. Despite all the technological advances of science, it seemed survival still depended on the action of a man. One man.
Barrow was still waiting for him in the corridor outside. ‘They want you to go in again,’ he told Holman.
‘But what about the contraptions they set up to contain it?’
‘Didn’t work. The mutation itself just didn’t cross their paths. At the moment they’re still spraying the fog with calcium chloride, hundreds of tons of it, and it seems to be receding. They want you out there and ready to go in when they’ve dispersed it as much as they can.’
‘What about the wind? Has it dropped?’
‘It’s not as bad as it was.’
‘All right. Since I have no choice, I’ll choose to try again.’
The helicopter flew them to a point east of Haslemere where they were met by Hermann Ryker, William Douglas-Glyne and Lieutenant-General Sir Keith Macklen. The men were standing among a group of vehicles that held a high vantage point overlooking the surrounding countryside. Holman was impressed by the constant stream of light aircraft that flew over the distant cloud of fog which looked even more ominous in the evening gloom.
Douglas-Glyne strode towards him, his hand outstretched. ‘Valiant effort this morning, Mr Holman,’ he said, grasping Holman’s hand.
Holman grinned wryly at the insincerity of the words. ‘Sorry I couldn’t pull it off,’ he said.
‘Not to worry. Better luck next time, eh?’
Sir Keith Macklen joined them and said bluntly, ‘You have to try again. It’s absolutely vital that you bring us back some of the bloody stuff.’
‘Yes,’ said Douglas-Glyne. ‘We sent two volunteers in a couple of hours ago out of desperation. They were well protected with suits and used an army scout vehicle to go in. We lost radio contact with them about an hour ago.’
‘So it’s up to you now,’ said Sir Keith.
‘Gentlemen,’ broke in Professor Ryker’s voice as he walked over at a leisurely pace, ‘there is nothing Mr Holman can do for the moment. We do not want to stop the spraying now that it seems to be taking effect and Mr Holman could hardly walk into such a heavy concentration of calcium chloride. Unfortunately, we have not dispersed the fog as much as I thought we would and it will be dark shortly which would make his task even more hazardous.’
‘But there are thousands of lives at stake,’ said Sir Keith gruffly.
‘Precisely. That is why Mr Holman is so valuable to us. We cannot take unnecessary risks with his life – particularly now we know there are definitely two lunatics wandering around out there.’
‘But we don’t know that—’
‘Yes we do!’ Ryker said angrily. ‘It was on your insistence, Sir Keith, that they went in. I advised against it, I told you what would happen. I will not allow Mr Holman to risk his life because of your misjudgement! He means too much to the whole operation.’
‘But we can’t just stand by and do nothing,’ Douglas-Glyne fumed.
‘We are not doing nothing. We will spray the fog all night, for as long as our supplies last. By early morning it should have depleted enough for us to see the actual mycoplasma – if it is still visible without its protective mist. In the meantime, Mr Holman, I suggest you try to sleep and we’ll call you when the time is right.’
Once again, Holman found Barrow shaking him into reluctant consciousness in the early hours of the following morning. He had watched the fog for hours the previous night as the fleet of cars and army vehicles had slowly trundled after it like a funeral procession searching for a graveyard, and had finally fallen into a heavy, dreamless sleep in the back of the car he was travelling in, woken only once when shouts of alarm had passed down the convoy. The bodies of the two scientists who had gone into the fog earlier had been found; the signs indicated that they had killed each other with the guns they had carried for protection against attacks from any individuals who had not escaped the fog. Sleep had recaptured him almost immediately, but it had been filled with grotesque figures which his eyes were somehow never able to focus on.
He was confused at Barrow’s statement and had to ask him to repeat it, rubbing his eyes in an effort to become fully awake.
‘I said the fog has gone,’ said Barrow slowly, emphasizing each word. ‘It’s disappeared.’
17
Corporal Wilcox cursed as he slid down the steep incline in the dark. The damp grass increased the speed of his descent and an unseen root caught his foot, spinning his body at an awkward angle. He heard the hoots of laughter from the two soldiers who had watched his uncontrolled progress from above as he came to an abrupt halt at the foot of the embankment.
‘I’ll bloody murder you two!’ he shouted up at them as he crawled forward to retrieve his fallen torch. He shone it towards the two grinning figures. ‘Now get down ’ere, the pair of you!’
‘Comin’, Corp,’ they replied in unison and with a shout, they jumped together, switching off their torches as they did so.
He heard their crashing, giggling descent, swinging his beam away from them so they would be in complete darkness. Let the mad fuckers break their necks, he grumbled to himself.
They arrived at his feet and he had to jump back hastily to avoid being knocked over by their kicking legs. They lay on their backs, breathing hard and grinning up at him.
‘Come on, get up,’ he ordered gruffly. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you two. You’re like a couple of gigglin’ fairies on a night out.’
‘Sorry, Eddie,’ the smaller of the two apologized with a smirk, ‘but my friend Bernard’ – he over-emphasized the ’ard’ – ‘always gets this way when it’s past his bedtime.’
‘It’s Corporal to you, Evans,’ said Wilcox, his dislike for the little Cockney and his Mancunian companion evident in his tone. The pair of them were a constant thorn in his
flesh, always taking the piss, but never quite overstepping the mark so he could put them on a charge – or belt one of them. They didn’t even have to say anything, their stupid mocking faces were enough to make him feel a cunt.
They picked themselves up, brushing themselves down and groaning at imagined bruises.
‘What we coom down ’ere for anyway, Corp?’ asked Private Buswell, his droning accent a further irritant to Wilcox. ‘It’s only a bloomin’ railway track.’
‘Orders are that every square inch of ground is to be covered!’ the Corporal snapped, swinging his torch along the lines that were no longer silver but dull and rusty.
‘Anyway, it’s gone, innit?’ Evans stated disgustedly. ‘I mean, we been lookin’ for two bleedin’ days now!’
‘They think it’s gone. We’re lookin’ to make sure.’
‘Yeah, but that spray stuff cleared it, didn’t it?’ insisted Evans.
‘I told you, they think so.’
‘Well, they couldn’t ’ave just lost it, could they?’ drawled Buswell.
‘No, but it was funny ’ow it just vanished,’ said Wilcox. ‘I mean, they’d been sprayin’ it all day and the stuff was workin’, but all of a sudden, it wasn’t there anymore. The thing in the middle, I mean.’
‘Yeah, well, what is it then, this thing in the middle? It’s supposed to be a bug, innit?’ Evans asked, switching on his own torch, pointing it at the sky to see how far its beam travelled.
‘The disease, that’s what it is. They want to make sure that’s gone an’ all.’
‘Yeah, well I don’t fancy findin’ it.’
‘Don’t worry, we don’t have to go near it,’ Wilcox reassured him, then added disdainfully, ‘Anyway, you two bleeders are potty enough. It wouldn’t have any effect on you.’
‘Quite right, Corp,’ grinned Evans, ‘me and Bernard are right nutters, so I’d watch us close seeing as we’ve got bullets for our rifles.’
‘Yeah, Corp,’ said Buswell, his smiling expression turning into one of puzzlement, ‘why’ve we got ammunition?’
‘Just in case, Buswell, just in case we run into real lunatics.’
‘You don’t mean we’d ’ave to shoot them?’
‘If we found the glow and ran into any trouble that might prevent us reportin’ its location, then we’re to use our own discretion, of course.’
‘Ooh, makes me feel all cold,’ shivered Evans. ‘Come on, let’s ’ave a fag.’
‘Always the fuckin’ same, you two. It’s me who cops it if the Sarge finds us. He’s around ’ere somewhere,’ Wilcox moaned.
‘Nah, he’s a long way off. Let’s walk up a bit, find a nice secluded spot.’
Corporal Wilcox stepped into the centre of the lines and began to walk forward, playing his torch along the sleepers ahead of him. The other two fell in behind him, Evans whistling an off-key tune.
‘Ere! We not gonna’ get run down, are we?’ He broke off his whistling to ask the question.
‘Don’t be bloody daft. This is a disused track. You can see by the grass it hasn’t been used for years. And look at the rust on the lines.’
‘Just checkin’, Corp.’
Wilcox heard Buswell’s snigger from behind and snorted with weary annoyance. ‘Why the hell do I always get roped in with you two piss artists?’
They marched on to the accompaniment of Evans’s tuneless whistle, searching the steep embankment on either side with their torches.
‘How coom it glows then, this stuff?’ asked Buswell after a while.
‘Radiation, innit?’ Evans told him.
‘Who said it was radiation?’ Wilcox stopped and turned to look at him.
‘Stands to reason, dunnit?’ The amusement never left his eyes. ‘It glows, so they tell us. It eats away people’s brains. It’s driftin’ around the country at its leisure and they can’t stop it. All adds up.’
‘Yeah, well how would radiation come from the sea?’ asked the Corporal belligerently.
‘Oh gawd! You don’t believe that do you?’ said Evans, his turn to be disgusted. ‘They rely on pricks like you to believe the stories they put out.’
‘Watch it, Evans, or you’ll be on a charge.’
‘All right, Corp, don’t get nasty. Come on, let’s keep going.’
They continued marching, Evans expounding on his theory. ‘You see, they’ve done it, the scientists. They’ve ’ad an accident at one of their atomic power plants and now they’re doin’ a cover-up. This bloody fog, in actual fact, is a bloody radiation cloud, right, Bernard?’
‘Right, Professor.’
‘That earthquake, the other day. Now what d’you think that was?’
‘An earthquake,’ said Buswell brightly.
‘Oh, shut up, turd-brain. That, Corp, was an underground explosion. And for all we know, it was an atomic explosion. And for all we know, that’s where this radiation came from.’ He nodded his head in appreciation of his own theory.
‘You do talk rubbish, Evans,’ said Wilcox, his attention now directed at the black shape looming ahead of them.
‘Yeah,’ muttered Evans under his breath, ‘and it’s silly sods like you that never learn.’
Wilcox stopped abruptly again, causing Evans to bump into him, and Buswell to bump into Evans.
‘There’s a tunnel up ahead,’ he told them.
‘Right, let’s ’ave a fag now then,’ said Evans, already unbuttoning his tunic.
‘You’ll get me shot, you two,’ grumbled the Corporal, the other two interpreting his remark for one of assent. They squatted just inside the entrance to the tunnel, away from the searching eyes of the other soldiers that were heavily concentrated in the surrounding area.
Evans shielded the flare from his match with a cupped hand, lighting Buswell’s cigarette first and then his own. ‘Oh, sorry, Corp,’ he apologized insincerely, offering the light towards Wilcox.
Wilcox ignored him and huffily lit his cigarette with his own matches. He sat on the rail opposite the two privates.
‘All right, know-all,’ he said acidly to Evans, ‘tell me something: if this thing we’re lookin’ for is radiation, why can’t they find it with detectors?’ He leaned forward, a smile of satisfaction on his face.
‘Because, my old fruit, they’ve already got rid of it,’ said Evans returning the smile smugly.
‘What, with a bloody spray?’ Wilcox sat upright, shaking his head at the private’s stupidity.
‘That’s right. We don’t know what the spray was, do we? They said it was to clear the fog, but what they really meant was it was to clear the radiation.’
‘Gawd ’elp us,’ sighed Wilcox, looking towards the roof of the tunnel.
‘No, no,’ Evans insisted. ‘We don’t know, do we? We don’t know what they’ve invented. Stands to reason they’d ’ave thought of something to get rid of radiation. They’ve ’ad enough time to.’
Wilcox snorted again and Buswell sniggered.
‘We’re the cannon fodder, mate,’ Evans went on. ‘They’ve sent us in to make sure it ’as cleared up.’
‘Without detectors?’
‘Without detectors. They don’t want people to know it’s radiation, do they?’
‘Christ!’ Wilcox gave up. Evans’s absurd logic had been a source of irritation and frustration to him for a long time now, but sometimes it became unbearable. ‘I’m gonna ’ave a quick look up the tunnel then we’ll be on our way.’ He could have sent either of the two men but couldn’t face the protests as to why they shouldn’t and besides, he felt the need to be away from them even if it was only for a few seconds.
Bloody misfits, he cursed inwardly, as he trudged down into the blackness. They hadn’t joined the army for a career as he had. They’d joined because they wanted an easy life – free food, free lodgings, and someone else to make the decisions for them. The Professionals! The Shirkers was more like it. Any chance they had to get out of doing their job, they’d grab at it. They’d got him into enough trouble in the
past, these two, that’s why he wasn’t a sergeant yet. You’d think after six bloody years he’d have made sergeant! He’d been in line for it this year until these two monkeys had latched on to him. Why him? What was so fascinating about him that they had to make themselves a nuisance around him? The time they’d got him pissed in Germany while they were on guard duty. They’d started off by persuading him to have just a quick one, then another, then another, till he didn’t care any more and had got so drunk he spewed up over the NCO’s shiny boots when he’d come round on his inspection.
He’d almost got court-martialled over that: it was only the fact that the NCO was being returned to England the next day and didn’t want to hang around for the trial that got him off. But he’d been made to pay for it in other ways.
Then there was the ‘nice, clean, little tart’ they’d introduced him to in Hamburg. She even had a medical certificate to prove she was clean. He’d got the pox from her and the British army frowned on soldiers who get the pox, even though it happened all the time.
In Northern Ireland, they’d taken him to a ‘friendly little social club’, not far from the barracks and where they’d been well received so long as they were in civvies. The three of them had nearly ‘well received’ bullets in the backs of their heads on that occasion. It was only his prompt action of hurling a chair through the window, the three soldiers quickly following it, that had saved their lives. Evans had laid out the bitch who had invited them with a bottle before he’d leapt through, and that had cost him a glancing bullet on the side of his arse. It was a pity it hadn’t gone right up it! The army hadn’t been too pleased about that little episode either.
He supposed he’d been lucky, considering. The incidents – there were many more of them – were never quite enough to cause drastic action against him, but they all served to keep him down at his present rank.
The trouble was, he fell for it every time. They either smarmed their way round him or offered him a challenge. And he always gave in or rose to the bait. He always had to prove he was one of the boys. Christ, this was a long tunnel!