As he pulled away some of the waterweed he suddenly cursed. Then, grimacing, he pried the pincer of a crayfish from his little finger. Once he was free of the claw he sucked his finger, then said with a wry smile, 'Am I getting paranoid, David? Or is Mother Nature out to get us?' He dropped the crayfish into the basket. (The freshwater crustacean would no doubt wind up in the soup pot together with whatever else the cook could scavenge.) 'Oh, for a juicy steak. A heap of potato salad. Golden French-fries. Creamy mayonnaise. Crisp lettuce. Sweet tomatoes. A jug of ice-cold beer. How much-'
'Shh.' I held up my hand. 'Can you hear something?'
We stood for a moment, listening. I looked up along the river towards where the sound seemed to be coming from. All I could see was the silvery stretch of water between the banks. A flock of birds, disturbed by the sound, took to the air from a line of willows.
Gabriel's face hardened. 'Hell. Not again.'
The others moved back quickly from the water's edge. Men and women ran to collect their guns. Further along the bank the gun turret on the back of a Jumbo swivelled to point its twin machine guns upstream.
I listened to the note of the engine. It didn't sound as it should, but there was no mistaking it. 'Wait!' I shouted. 'Hold your fire!' I ran down to the water's edge to get a better look upstream.
Gabriel called out to me, 'David! Get yourself into a trench before the shooting starts.'
'No, those are aero engines. It's a plane.' What puzzled me, however, was that the note of the engines was all wrong. The plane wasn't flying but taxiing.
A moment later I got visual confirmation. From round a bend in the river came a big four-engined flying boat. The sleek lines of the formidable Boeing Clipper were instantly recognizable to me - which was hardly surprising since I'd slept underneath a handsome technicolour print of the aircraft for years as a child. The picture had been pinned to my bedroom wall.
The flying boat, engines roaring, its propellers blurring discs of silver, surged towards what remained of a jetty. The white vee of its wake washed up the river bank, almost reaching my feet.
Now the Foresters cheered the return of the craft.
With the arrival of its crew on dry land we learned that this was the only aircraft based at the camp to have survived the attack. By chance, several pilots had been chatting to a maintenance crew near the plane when the torpedo boats came storming upriver. With great presence of mind they'd leaped into the flying boat, started the engines and got away. The intention had been to make for the next military camp of the Foresters and return with reinforcements. That was until the pilot checked the fuel gauge, which told her that there was barely a splash of juice in the tanks. So after a hop of three miles she had brought the plane down into an offshoot of the river where, like us in the Jumbos, they had sat tight for a few days until they'd judged it safe to taxi the flying boat downstream to the camp once more.
Sam digested the news before speaking. 'Well, thanks to some quick thinking, we've got one aircraft intact. It strikes me that we need to do two things. First, fly pilots up to Columbus Pond to get hold of replacement aircraft. Second, we need to get word of the attack to headquarters. Central Command still don't know that we failed to bring the Christina girl out of New York.' He added a little sourly, 'I guess the top brass will be hopping mad about that. But…' He shrugged. 'Those are the fortunes of war.'
While the ground crew refuelled the surviving flying boat with whatever drops of fuel could be squeezed from sundry jerrycans I caught up with Sam Dymes. 'Sam,' I said, 'what's this Columbus Pond?'
'It's a lake about a hundred miles upstream. We keep aircraft in reserve up there.' He nodded at the blackened ruins around him. 'Just in case we were ever to suffer a situation like this one.'
'How many spare aircraft?'
'A good half-dozen, I'd say.'
'But you've only four pilots?'
'Go on.'
'Then it'd make sense if I went up there, too,' I told him. 'I can help out with some of the flying chores.'
He looked at me with his clear blue eyes. At that moment I sensed he was forming a different judgement about the man he'd first seen bleary-eyed and still cranky from his involuntary trip from New York to this Southern backwater. 'So… you're offering to help us?'
'Yes. Why not?'
'It's just that… well, let me tell you what I'm thinking now, David… I'm thinking this is a crucial time… I guess you might say a pivotal moment in our relationship. More precisely, in your relationship with us - the Foresters.'
'I'm not sure I follow. I thought you could use some help to-'
'Yes, and I'm very grateful… thankful, too, that providence brought us another experienced pilot. But what I'm going to ask you, David, is this: are you joining us?'
I saw how Sam's mind had been working. He'd reached the stage where he needed me to express my allegiance to the Foresters and all that went with it: a commitment to help them, and a clear rejection of the Torrence regime.
'Yes,' I told him firmly. 'I am an ally, there's no doubt in my mind about that.'
'And Kerris Baedekker?'
'What about Kerris?'
'She's not only a citizen of our enemy's regime, she's also his daughter.' He watched my face. 'And she and you were romantically attached.'
'And I bitterly regret that she's still in New York. But my allegiances are to you and to my own community on the Isle of Wight. I don't doubt for a moment that our two peoples will be allies in the short term and the best of friends and trading partners in the long term.'
'Well said.' Sam allowed his face to break into a slow smile. 'David Masen. I'd be honoured if you would shake me by the hand.'
So I shook his hand.
'OK,' he said. 'I suggest you grab a quick coffee. We're flying out of here in half an hour.'
CHAPTER THIRTY
COLUMBUS POND
WITHIN thirty minutes we were airborne. Our flying boat was a combination mail, freight and passenger craft. Sam, Gabriel and I sat in a fair degree of comfort in the midship cabin while the surplus aircrew grabbed some well-deserved shut-eye in the sleeping berths aft.
After taking off downstream the plane doubled back over our camp. What had for a while become my whole world now revealed itself as little more than a small clearing containing a few black smudges marking the positions of burned-out buildings.
The plain droned higher into the sky. The sun shone steadily. Below us the river described a thick snaking line of silver to a distant ocean. There were no towns to see, even though I knew there must have been some down there once. In the intervening years, territory so painfully won by humanity had been reclaimed by nature. Now vines, trees, bushes, thistles and vast seas of nettle had drawn a green shroud over roads, railway lines and cities. And, no doubt, that triffid army of occupation would have its sentinels posted down there.
After sitting on the ground for the last few days it was a pleasure to settle into the armchair comfort of the cabin seats.
Following a lengthy contemplation of this land now devoid of human beings Sam Dymes said, 'That's going to take some reclaiming. It'll keep our children and their children busy for a long time to come.'
'At least you're an optimist, Sam,' commented Gabriel. 'You see a time when we can start kicking those damn triffids out.'
'Sure, I'm an optimist. After all, what would be the point of struggling on, working and planning and fighting, if I didn't believe we were making any progress?' He grimaced. 'Why, if I thought otherwise, I'd open that door across there and step into the wide blue yonder.'
We talked for a while, mainly about what we saw unfolding beneath us on the plain, including what looked like a glimpse of a vast factory complex now engulfed by a lake. Blocked drainage ditches would mean a return to old water levels before any land reclamation. On those lowlands we could plainly see the remains of factories, schools and houses showing as oblong islets set in an expanse of water.
The plane flew on. I gazed out
at the silver wings shining in the sunlight. Four massive sixteen-hundred-horsepower engines carried us effortlessly through the air. We could cruise comfortably at two hundred miles per hour at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Flying solo, this machine could get me home to the Isle of Wight in fifteen hours. For a while I ran through more calculations in my head. I was still pondering the logistics of such a flight when the plane glided in to land.
A perfect touchdown. My professional pilot's eye noted the angle that the flying boat's belly kissed the water, sending out a plume of spray at either side of the craft. Instantly the note of the engines dropped as the pilot closed the throttle. The plane coasted along, slowing gradually.
For a moment I thought we'd landed on an ordinary lake, even though it did boast the decidedly funny name (considering its prodigious size) of Columbus Pond. I soon saw, however, that it was one of the 'new' lakes formed by the failure of the artificial drainage systems. The flying boat taxied slowly across the water towards what could only have been the brick tower of a church rising some twenty or so feet above the surface. The top half of the clock showed above the lake. Its hands had stopped at ten to two. To the right-hand side of the tower a few rotting roof timbers jutted out of the water to mark the remains of the main body of the church.
Moored incongruously to the church tower, an old riverboat of some antique vintage bobbed, complete with an array of rear paddle blades. Moored to that were a pair of barges and what appeared to be a timber raft held afloat by several dozen oil drums. Then, in a line beyond that, sat three large flying boats, comparable in size to the one we'd just arrived in. There were also several floatplanes of more modest dimensions.
Our crew quickly opened the aircraft's doors. Then, as the plane nosed its way closer to the raft, they leaped onto the boards where they moored the plane expertly. With a splutter its engines died.
We stepped out onto the raft boards to be greeted by an eerie silence. Thin sunlight danced on the water. There was no movement from the old paddle steamer that served as the crew's quarters. A slight ripple on the lake caused a bell to chime somewhere nearby. The dreary tolling rolled across the water to be swallowed by the vast emptiness that surrounded us. It spoke of desolation. A dead sound that induced shivers.
Gabriel looked grim. 'What, no welcome party?' The emptiness robbed his voice of its usual depth.
Sam's puzzled blue eyes regarded the assortment of vessels moored to the church tower. 'Now, that's odd. There should be a team of seven manning this depot. Where the heck has everyone got to?'
By this time the others had disembarked from our aircraft to stand with the same bewildered air on the raft.
Sam cupped his hands around his mouth. 'Hello! Anyone there?' That greedy void swallowed his call. 'Hello!'
No reply. Even the sound of the bell petered out, leaving only a cold, goblin silence.
'Oh no.' Sam murmured the words. He'd sensed something ominous. 'Oh no, oh no, oh no.'
A swirl of water rocked the raft gently, setting off an array of wet sucking sounds that came from somewhere beneath it. Sam walked to a gangplank that ran across to the nearest barge. There he paused, touched his lips to caution us to silence and drew his revolver.
Water swirled, and again the greedy sucking sound came from the underside of the raft. The chiming of the bell started again, too - a hollow, ghostly sound that rolled across the water. This time I saw that it came from a red-painted bell fixed to a kind of gallows set beside the gangplank. Painted on a sign beneath it were the words: Ring me, then run like bell. Clearly an alarm system for the depot crew.
Gingerly making his way up the gangplank, Sam signalled us to follow. Now I noticed a few clues that did suggest something had gone seriously wrong. An axe had been driven into a timber guard rail. A shattered china mug lay on the deck of the barge. This was one of the workshops where mechanics serviced the aircraft engines. One engine lay partly stripped. A spanner rested on the fuel-pump casing as if the mechanic had only this moment taken a cigarette break. Elsewhere there were signs of violence alongside those of a normal working day. In the workshop stood a coffee cup half full of the now stale beverage, while near the guard rail glittering lines on the steel deck suggested that someone had attacked it with an axe, scoring gashes in the metal.
'Hell,' Sam grunted. 'What in damnation happened here?'
'Torrence's men.' Gabriel stood with his automatic at the ready.
'I can't see how. They don't have the planes to fly in. We're twenty miles from the nearest navigable river with an outlet direct to the open sea. Even if they'd learned where this place was, they'd have had to haul small boats for miles overland through triffid country before they could reach this place out on the lake.' Mystified, he shook his head. 'It doesn't add up.'
Gabriel picked up a rifle. 'Someone used this as a club. Look, the stock's all busted.' He checked the magazine. 'But it's fully loaded.'
'Probably jammed.'
Gabriel pointed the muzzle out across the lake and pulled the trigger. The report rang in my ears. Once more the sound died without the ghost of an echo.
'Perfect,' he said. 'You have a gun full of ammo that's in working order. So why use it as a club?'
'And there are no spent cartridge cases on the deck,' I commented. 'There's been a fight, but not a shooting fight.'
We moved from one linked barge to the other. Soon we reached the paddle steamer moored to the church tower. Close up, it towered over me, boasting two storeys of cabins with wide promenade decks and ornamental ironworks. This had once been quite a Southern Belle among riverboats, luxuriously transporting millionaire gamblers along the rivers. Once the decks must have been awash with music and laughter, maybe along with the odd contretemps over a game of poker or the favours of an aristocratic femme fatale. Now it had become a ghost ship.
Cabin doors creaked with each ripple of the lake. Uneaten meals had dried and stuck to plates in the mess room. A kettle had boiled dry on a stove and the bottom had melted out. Beds lay neatly made.
'Whoever attacked the depot must have come during the day,' I said. 'The beds weren't occupied. And unless I'm very much mistaken that looks like lunch on the plates, rather than breakfast.'
'I agree.' Sam looked as if a bad taste had filled his mouth. 'But there are no bodies. No bloodstains. Yet they were alerted to the attack and had time to fight back.'
'And they chose to fight with axes. They wielded rifles like clubs, even though the guns were loaded.'
We searched the riverboat from top to bottom. No sign of the men. Or, for that matter, an attacker. I reported this to Sam as he stood at the ornate deck rail, gazing down at the water between the church tower and the hulk of the riverboat. Down there I fancied I could see the skeleton of a truck below the water, its dead headlights staring like eye sockets in skull. Flood waters must have carried it there years ago, hard up against the church. Now it lay rotting. Long strands of bright green weed streaked the water like hanks of goblin hair.
Sam lit a cigarette. 'OK, David. I give in. What's gone wrong with the world? How come it's gone so topsy-turvy?' Grim-faced, he drew on the cigarette. 'How come thirty years ago folks saw green lights in the sky, lights that sent them blind? How did we get overrun by a bunch of shuffling plants with goofy leaves? And why doesn't the sun shine like it used to? And in God's name how do a bunch of grown men suddenly vanish like they've been spirited away by phantoms?' He looked at me. 'Tell me you've got the answers to those questions, David, and you'll make me one hell of a happy man.'
As much as I wished that I could help Sam in this way, I regretfully told him the truth: I had no answers.
He threw the cigarette into the water where it died with a hiss. 'Well, that makes two of us, David. I tell you something. I wish I were home with my wife and family right now. Then I wouldn't have to wake up every day and be confronted with another mystery bigger than the last. I'd be able to enjoy a lie-in Sunday mornings, with a pot of coffee and the newspa
pers and a good woman by my side.' For a few seconds his gaze was distant. He wasn't seeing the drowned church, or this ghost ship we stood on. It only lasted a moment, then his eyes came back into focus. He took a deep breath. 'OK. We better file all this-' he gestured towards the deserted vessels, '-under Marie Celeste and leave it at that.'
If only it could have been so easy.
For the next hour or so we went about the chores necessary to ready the flying boats for the flight back to the camp. Support crew pumped aviation fuel into empty tanks, checked oil levels and wiring, untied restraining cables. Pilots, myself included, settled into flight cabins to run instrumentation checks.
Sam watched for a while, a little out of his depth. Eventually he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted from the riverboat. 'Coffee's on. It'll be ready in ten minutes.'
Certainly whoever had abducted the depot crew hadn't even touched the food stores. By the time we assembled on the deck of the riverboat Sam had set out jugs of wonderful hot coffee and a canister of oatmeal biscuits. 'You might as well tuck in,' he told us, his expression sombre. 'Something tells me the original crew aren't coming back.'
One of the pilots appeared on deck to tell Sam he needed to fly out now if he was to reach HQ before dark.
'OK… look, here's my report and a letter to the boss. Ask her if she can let you have a reply and my new orders by tomorrow morning.'
After the pilot headed off in the direction of his plane Sam lit another cigarette. Then he addressed us all, as if some facts had been weighing on his mind. 'You know we had a complement of exactly one hundred men and women at the camp. Thirty were either killed or captured during the raid. And there's still half a dozen with wounds that are going to keep them hospitalized for a time yet. How do you replace good people like that?' He shrugged. He wasn't expecting an answer. These wasn't one. I knew that, in all, the population of the Foresters in their scattered communities numbered no more than a hundred and fifty thousand. That meagre population was already overstretched simply feeding and clothing itself, not to mention expending precious resources on the never-ending job of culling triffid armies and repairing hundreds of miles of anti-triffid fence. Gabriel chewed thoughtfully on a biscuit. 'From what I can see the Boss is going to have to strip personnel out of the other camps to make up our numbers again.'