The Fog

by James Herbert

  Holman turned and fled. Away from the bus, away from the crowd, away from the dead bodies, away from the vehicle. Into the fog.

  He heard a cry from behind and knew they were following. His legs hurt and still felt unsteady as a result of the crash, but he refused to succumb for if he stopped running, he would have to kill again. And then they would kill him.

  From nowhere, a car appeared, screeching to a halt in front of him, pitching him forward on to the bonnet although it hadn’t actually hit him; it was the momentum of his own pace that had sent him sprawling. The car was an old Ford Anglia, rusty with age but obviously still having some life in it. Holman rolled off the bonnet and ran round to the driver’s door. He yanked it open and was about to haul its occupant out when the startled man said: ‘Please let me go. I’ve got to get away from these lunatics!’

  Holman hesitated and then bent forward to get a closer look at the man behind the wheel. He appeared to be in his early forties, fairly well dressed and most important of all, his eyes, although frightened, did not appear to have the glazed look that was a symptom of the disease. He looked up at Holman, a pleading expression on his face and said, again, ‘PIease let me go.’

  ‘Get over!’ Holman commanded, pushing his way in, using his weight to get the trembling man into the passenger seat. He revved up the engine and engaged first gear, pulling the door shut as the car shot forward. He was just in time, for outstretched hands clutched at the windows but were knocked aside by the sudden jerk of the car. A figure ran into their path and was sent spinning back into the road. He swerved to avoid another and skidded violently when he was confronted with the overturned Devastation Vehicle. The Anglia did a screeching U-turn, mounted the kerb on one side of the road and sped on along the broad pavement for fifty yards or so, leaving it with a resounding thump only when Holman saw he would not get through the gap ahead caused by a concrete street light and its neighbouring wall. When he considered he was far enough from the pursuing crowd, he reduced speed, afraid that he might run into another vehicle in the fog. He became aware he was still holding the revolver in one hand and the man he had pushed roughly into the passenger seat was staring at it apprehensively. He shoved it back into its holster and heard the man breathe a sigh of relief.

  ‘You’re not the same as the rest, are you?’ the man asked nervously.

  Holman took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at him. He was backed away as far as he could get against the door, one hand on the dashboard, the other holding on to the back of his seat to steady himself. He looked white and frightened.

  ‘As the rest?’ Holman asked cautiously.

  ‘You know, not mad. Everyone’s gone mad. It’s the fog. Please tell me you’re not, you’re okay. Like me.’

  Was it possible? Holman stole another quick glance at the man; was it possible the disease hadn’t affected him? He seemed normal enough. Scared, his eyes were frightened, but he seemed rational under the circumstances.

  ‘I’m sane,’ Holman said, but wondering if he still was. Could anyone remain sane after all he’d been through?

  The man smiled. ‘Thank God for that,’ he said ‘I’ve been living through a bad dream. I thought I was the only one left. You’ve no idea what I’ve been through.’ He rubbed a hand across his eyes that were becoming moist with self-pity. ‘My – my wife tried to kill me. We were having breakfast; we didn’t realize what the fog was, what it meant. I don’t know why, we just didn’t associate it with the fog we’d heard about, the Bournemouth fog. I looked up and she was just sitting there, staring at me, a sort of smile on her face. I asked her what she was smiling about and she didn’t answer. Just smiled even more. Her eyes – her eyes were different somehow. Wide. Not really seeing.’ He began to sob quietly. ‘It was horrible,’ he said brokenly. Taking a deep breath, he continued: ‘She got up from the table and walked around it until she was behind me. I didn’t know she’d picked up the bread-knife. I turned around to ask her what was wrong and saw her bringing the knife down. I – I was lucky: it caught my shoulder and the blade snapped. It was only then I realized what was happening. The fog. I realized it was the fog! I jumped up and we struggled. I didn’t want to hurt her but, God, she was so strong. She, she’s only a tiny thing, my wife, you know, but suddenly, she was so strong. She pushed me back across the table and we fought there, over the breakfast things, until we rolled off on to the floor. She cracked her head, knocked herself out. I didn’t know what to do.’ His body began to shake and once more he had to stop talking until he had calmed himself.

  ‘Take it easy,’ said Holman soothingly, feeling pity for the man. How many countless others had gone through the same thing that morning? How many loved ones had turned on one another, tried to kill, to maim the people that meant most to them? How many had killed themselves so far? Was this man lucky because the disease had not affected him or was he unlucky because he’d had to witness what had happened to his wife, to watch her go insane, to fight her to save his own life? ‘Don’t talk about it anymore,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to get you to a safe place.’

  The man looked up at Holman, his tears under control again. ‘No, I want to talk about it. You’re the only normal person I’ve spoken to. I tried to get help from others, but they’re all the same; they’re all mad. Why not us, why haven’t we gone mad? Why hasn’t it done anything to us?’

  Holman hesitated. Should he tell him the chances were that eventually the disease would destroy his brain cells and he, too, would become insane; that the time varied from person to person, that the parasite cells took longer to multiply in some than they did in others? Perhaps he could get him back to base in time for Janet Halstead to go to work on him. He was only one, one life, but at least it was something positive amongst all this carnage. The mission was scrapped now, there was nothing he could do on his own; perhaps he could come back in the other vehicle once they’d located the nucleus again, but in the meantime he could try to save this one life.

  Fortunately, he did not have to answer the man’s question, for he was talking again, reliving the horror of that morning. ‘I tied her up. I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid of her, afraid of my own wife. She came out of her daze as I was tying her. She didn’t struggle, didn’t say anything at first – just stared at me with those eyes. Those terrible eyes. I was afraid to look at them; they were so – so hate filled!’ He shook his head as though to erase the memory. ‘And then she began to speak. Such filth! I couldn’t believe it. I’d never known her even to swear before, but the filth, the obscenities that came from her! I couldn’t believe such thoughts could exist in someone, especially not her! She’s always been so good, so gentle. I couldn’t stand it; I couldn’t stand to listen to her, I couldn’t stand to look at her eyes! Oh God, I didn’t know what I should do!

  ‘I knew I had to get away, to get out of London, and I knew my only chance would be in the car, I didn’t know what it would be like out on the streets, but I knew I couldn’t stay there. The drive was terrible. I couldn’t go too fast in the fog. I was afraid of crashing, and the people that I saw . . . lunatics. Some were like vegetables; just standing by the roadside, not moving. I saw people crawling along the gutters. I saw some sitting in burning cars, others making love in the streets. One man I saw was stabbing himself; standing in a doorway stabbing his own body with a knife. Oh thank God I met you! I think I would have gone mad myself if I hadn’t. I got lost, you see. I didn’t know where I was going and things just seemed to be getting worse and worse.’

  ‘Did you make sure your wife was securely tied before you left her?’ asked Holman, still keeping a wary eye on the road ahead, knowing he would have to make a turn soon if he were to go in the right direction back towards the underground base. ‘Did you make sure she wouldn’t be able to harm herself?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t leave her,’ the man replied. ‘I couldn’t have left Louise. I love her too much to have left her there alone at the mercy of anyone who might break in. But it
was her eyes, you see, and the things she was saying. I couldn’t stand it. I had to stop her from looking at me like that and saying those horrible things. And I couldn’t leave her, not Louise, she’s too precious to me. So I brought her with me; she’s in the back. I stopped her saying those foul things and stopped her looking at me that way and put her in the back seat. There she is, my Louise, behind you, in the back.’

  Holman quickly glanced over his shoulder and found himself transfixed, the car moving ahead unguided, picking up speed as his foot involuntarily pressed down on the accelerator.

  On the back seat was slumped the bound figure of a woman, recognizable as a woman only by her clothes, for the body ended in a bloody stump at the neck. She had been decapitated.

  ‘I couldn’t leave her, you see,’ the man went on, ‘and I couldn’t stand the things she was saying and the way she was looking so I used a saw. It was terribly messy, I must say. The kitchen was in a terrible state and I had to change my clothes. And, you know, she kept talking even while I was doing it, but she had to stop in the end.’ His voice grew sad. ‘But I couldn’t stop her eyes looking at me like that, even when the head came right off. She just kept glaring at me that lunatic way. Look, she still does.’

  He reached behind him, half kneeling on his seat, stretching for something that lay on the floor at the back. He brought his hand up again, his face looking seriously into Holman’s. ‘Look,’ he said.

  He held the blood-dripping head by the hair, pushing it towards Holman’s face. He was right – the eyes were still staring.

  A cry of horror escaped from Holman’s lips as he backed away, the hairs on his body stiffening, the vertebrae of his spine seeming to contract and lock together. He thrashed out with his hand knocking the disembodied head aside, causing the car to swerve violently across the road. His fight to control it gave his mind a brief respite from the shock it had just received.

  The man beside him was astonished that Holman had smashed his wife’s head aside. ‘Don’t do that to Louise, you bastard!’ he shouted, placing it gently on his lap. He reached behind him again, careful not to dislodge the head between his legs, and this time, his hand came up with a bloodstained saw. ‘I’ll kill you!’ he screamed. ‘You’re the same as all the rest!’

  He tried to bring the sharp-toothed blade down on the back of Holman’s neck, but the car bumped over a kerb, mounting a narrow pavement which ran along the centre of the broad road, knocking him back against the door on his side, the saw falling harmlessly against Holman’s shoulder blades. Even as he tried to control the car’s skid when it thumped down on to the other lane of the road, Holman struck out with his fist at the figure beside him, catching the man on the side of the jaw. His foot was jammed down hard on the brake pedal and the tyres burnt into the road, struggling for a grip. He thought the car was bound to smash into a building on the other side of the road, but to his surprise and relief he found the way clear, there was a side road dead ahead. The road dipped and the car skidded down its incline, finally stopping broadside across it, the sudden jolt throwing the man forward against the windscreen. Before he had a chance to recover, Holman had leaned across his back and pushed the door catch down and shoved the door open. Still in one motion, he pushed the man’s rising figure out of the car and into the road, raising his foot and using it to clear the man’s legs. His efforts were helped because the car was slightly angled on the slope of the road, and the man’s body easily fell forward. Holman saw the woman’s head, with its ghastly staring eyes, begin a slow roll down the incline.

  Not bothering to pull the door shut again, he restarted the stalled engine and swung the car round, heading down the slope, narrowly missing the head that had come to rest in the middle of the road. He corrected his turn and held the car steady, the door on his other side swinging shut with the momentum. He didn’t want to stop; he didn’t want to think. He just wanted to get away.

  A black hole opened up ahead of him and he suddenly found himself swallowed up by darkness. Once again, his foot hit the brakes, and the car screeched to a halt. He looked around in panic but could see only blackness ahead and to his sides. He remembered the decapitated body behind him and turned swiftly as though to assure himself that it was still lying prone. Grey light flowed in from a high square arch about thirty yards back and he saw that the body had slumped to the floor behind the front seats. He looked up again at the light and then he realized what had happened. He had driven into a tunnel! He should have realized it instantly, but because of circumstances, everything that happened seemed abnormal.

  A tunnel! And suddenly it came to him which tunnel.

  ‘The Blackwall Tunnel,’ he said aloud. It had to be; they’d been driving in that direction, into the City, through Aldgate, down Commercial Road towards Poplar. The road he had just driven down must have been a ramp leading into the tunnel from the main road. The long winding tunnel stretched beneath the Thames to the south side of London, cutting out miles of snarled-up roads for motorists who would otherwise have had to use distant bridges. There were two tunnels in fact, running parallel to one another but completely separated; the old, built in the 1890s, and the new, completed in the late 1960s, one for the northbound traffic, the other for southbound. Holman was in the old tunnel, used for access to the north. He would use it himself now and get back to Westminster by following the river along its southern side. For a full minute he debated whether to go back to his flat, collect Casey, and get the hell out of London, but he finally dismissed the thought because he knew really there was no choice.

  Before he made his way back, there was one thing he would have to do: get rid of the grotesque figure on the floor behind him. He opened the side door and got out, pulling the driving seat forward so he could reach the body, the old car being a two-door model. He could have switched the car’s headlights on to give him more light, but he had no desire to see too clearly what he was doing; the dim light from the opening further back would suffice for his purposes. He groped around until he found the tied ankles and gave the body a tug, finding it surprisingly light as it came out smoothly. He avoided touching anything but the woman’s ankles; the thought of coming in contact with her headless shoulders made him feel nauseous. He pulled the body to the side of the tunnel then straightened up and wiped his hands down the sides of his jacket to rid himself of the feel of her cold flesh. Looking down into the depths of the tunnel as he did so, he was forced to blink his eyes to clear them.

  Was it his imagination, or was it lighter down there? The underground passage was filled with fog but much less than there was above ground so his vision was not seriously hindered, and his eyes had become fairly accustomed to the gloom. He was sure, there was light coming from ahead, from around a bend, but it couldn’t be daylight, for the exit would be at least a quarter of a mile away on the other side of the river and there were more bends that would diminish any daylight coming from that source. The only other possibility was that there was another car down there with its headlights full on. Before he drove any further into the tunnel, he would have to investigate; he was reluctant to run into more trouble again. Cautiously, quietly, he began to walk down the tunnel towards the eerie light.

  It grew brighter at his approach, a strange yellowish light, reminding him of the light he’d come across before, in Winchester. The familiar dread crept through him again; he began to suspect the source of the light. His heart seemed to be pounding almost painfully as he neared the bend and he had to take short, shallow breaths to combat the acrid smell that was growing stronger. He kept close to the wall, one hand touching its rough surface with every step he took, and then he was at the first curve of the tunnel.

  The bend was casual, not sharp, and there was no need to go to its apex to see what lay beyond. The whole tunnel further ahead was filled with the glow, the strange incandescence peculiar to the mutated mycoplasma. He had found it! Now he knew why the instruments of the helicopter above had lost it: it had literally gone to gro
und, slunk into a hole beneath the ground almost as though it remembered the hole it had been buried in for so many years. Could it be possible? Had it actually sought shelter like an animal searching for a lair? No, it was too ridiculous. And yet he had found it lurking inside the cathedral, and they had lost it once before. Could it really have drifted accidentally into these enclosures, into these man-made shelters?

  He stood gazing into its hypnotic shine for several minutes, leaning back against the tunnel’s wall, suddenly realizing he was actually resisting walking towards it, that it seemed to be pulling him forward, that a small part of his mind was urging him to envelop his body in the glow, but the fact that he had become conscious of its mesmeric influence made him back away. He felt certain his immunity would not hold if he were to enter the mycoplasma in its strongest form.

  As soon as it was out of vision, the magnetic pull on his mind was broken and suddenly he wasn’t sure if it had been his imagination or not. He hurried back towards the car, his brain racing with new thoughts and, by the time he had reached the car, an idea had formed in his mind.

  He jumped into the Anglia, switched on the engine and, without turning on its lights, he began to reverse it towards the entrance. Looking over his shoulder through the rear window, he saw a shadowy figure silhouetted in the cloudy entrance and, as he drew nearer, he saw it was the man he’d thrown from the car. In his arms he cradled the head of his dead wife.

  21

  Holman crouched in the dark interior of the shop away from the eyes of the groups of lunatics roaming the streets, but positioned so that he could see the overturned Devastation Vehicle lying in the middle of the road. The fog seemed much clearer now, although there were still thick pockets of it drifting through and the very air seemed to carry the yellow tinge to it. Holman had taken extreme care in driving back to the vehicle for everything depended on his reaching the radio; he needed help from the base if he were to carry out his plan. And certain materials.