He put his hands to his face, dragging his fingers down his cheeks.
‘I still don’t see...’
‘No, you wouldn’t. I...again I protested. But by this time the work could have continued without me - or so I told myself, to justify what I did. And it was hideous. The first man we treated tore his eyes out. Obviously not a trait desirable in a soldier. We corrected that. We tested their aggression by putting them in a cage together.’ He closed his eyes, remembering what he had seen in those cages. ‘To find the proper balance, you see. They did not want these...ghouls, they call them...they did not want them to be so ferocious that they killed. That would have defeated their purpose...’
‘And that purpose was?’
Elston ignored me. He continued, ‘Like rabid dogs...that was the desirable condition...wounding and then leaving the victim alive, so that he, in turn, would become...one of them. The madness would spread by geometrical progression. I say madness, I might say bestiality...there is no term for them, really. Ghouls - they call them ghouls -they caused them to be created and then call them that. They are not cannibals, yet they would eat human flesh as any other...nor necrophagics, although they would devour a corpse...quite casually, these mindless things would devour...themselves.’ He paused for a few moments, head cocked as though listening for the echo of his words from amongst the vials and beakers. ‘But this is no more than a side-effect of their condition. They might just as well eat nothing and starve to death. A side effect, just as their fear of water. I could have removed that inhibition, of course. It was deemed wise to let it remain - a way to control them, surrounding them by water, confining them; useful on this island and later, in other places...’
‘What places, Doctor?’
Again he ignored me. ‘Well, it was done. I had regulated their fury to the proper degree. That fury was contagious. In the initial instance, when the disease is induced by injection, the time period between treatment and the onset of the violence can be regulated - that is, knowing the subject’s weight and metabolism, I can regulate the dosage, leaving the disease like a slow fuse within him. But when it is transmitted directly from man to man, with the disease at full virulence in the host, it will take effect within hours in the victim. This was just as they wished it; it suited their scheme.’
‘But what was that scheme?’ I asked.
He looked at me, his fingers still dragging at his cheeks, drawing the flesh down.
‘Their plan, Harland,’ he said. ‘Their plan was ... to infect enemy prisoners of war!’
I saw it then. My flesh crawled.
‘They would be treated to go berserk in, say, a month’s time. Then allowed to escape, or be dealt in an exchange of prisoners, with the abomination smouldering in them. You can imagine the results. They laughed, those men...my masters...they laughed, thinking of a plague of ghouls behind the enemy lines. It would be most effective. The carriers would no doubt be killed, but not before inflicting wounds which would, in turn, create a second wave of monsters.’
‘My God,’ I whispered. ‘The cold calculation...’
‘Think of the panic, the confusion, the horror, when the enemy troops...and then the civilians...began to go berserk in ever-increasing numbers. By the time they realised what was causing it, if they ever did, it would be too late. The enemy army would be demoralised, if not destroyed. Perhaps the nation, itself...destroyed as surely as the minds of the infected. Then it would be a simple matter of quarantining the enemy country or holding the battle lines firm and waiting for the self-destruction. Such was their plan. They were greatly pleased with it. ..’
‘It could escalate ... to what proportions? Where would it stop?’
‘We had to predict that. The...ghouls...would not survive for long. They cannot take care of themselves, they neglect the normal bodily needs. Those not killed outright would die, in due course, of accident, starvation, dehydration. But to say how long it would take...’ He shrugged.
I heard a gun go off from somewhere without the compound.
‘I guess we’ll find that out now,’ I said
Elston said, ‘What?’ and then he understood and said, ‘Why, yes; so we shall...’ Incredibly, there was a spark of scientific interest in his eyes...interest detached from guilt and regret. I turned and walked away and I don’t think he even noticed. His motives in summoning me had been laudable, but he was yet a scientist interested in his work. The horror of it all. . .well, as Elston might have put it: that was a side-effect, no more. He had talked into me, as if I were a recording device and now, to him, I was switched off. I think, of the two, I respected Larsen more.
* * * *
I wandered the corridors for awhile. There was a great deal of activity, both naval and civilian types rushing about; no one paid me any notice. From time to time I heard gunfire. Presently I returned to the whitewashed room. The guard was no longer on the door. I went in and sat down behind the table. A few minutes later Larsen came in.
‘Where in hell have you been?’ he asked.
‘I took a walk. I don’t suppose there was anything wrong in that, was there? Or am I under restraint?’
‘What’s eating you, Harland?’
‘There is no antidote.’
‘Oh. How did you ... oh, it doesn’t matter. Yes, we’re killing them. What else can we do? We have no facilities to lock up so many, even if we wanted to. Can’t lock them up together, you know. Anyhow, it’s best for them. Wouldn’t you wish to be killed, if the alternative was...becoming one of them?’
He was right, I supposed; or less wrong. I nodded, or shrugged. Right and wrong could not be taken in chunks, demarcated like the light and shadow of that room.
He said, ‘We’re shooting them as we find them; it’s too late for anything else.’
‘Are you finding many?’
‘Too many.’
He leaned out into the corridor and said something. Then he stepped aside and two uniformed guards came in with a stretcher. There was a body on the stretcher, covered with a sheet; not moving. They slid the stretcher on the table and Larsen pulled the sheet down. I looked at a dead man’s face.
‘Recognise him? Was he in the Red Walls?’
I studied the face very carefully. In death, the man looked normal enough. But I had never seen him before.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive.’
‘You know what that means?’
‘Of course. The second stage has begun.’
‘So we no longer need your help, Harland. It was worth a try. I never really expected...’
‘How fast will it escalate?’
‘God knows. If every one of the men Jasper infected - except for the three we got in time - if they infect even two more ... I can’t say. I suppose it’s a matter of mathematics.’ He turned to the guards. ‘Take that away,’ he said, and they jumped forwards and lifted the stretcher. ‘Got to burn the bodies,’ he said, to me. ‘It can spread from a corpse. If a dog or a rat got at one of the bodies...the dead flesh still carries the change, you see. We learned that in the early experiments, before we were using human...volunteers. The catalyst, being chemical, doesn’t need a living host. It can lurk in dead tissue and be ingested...got to burn them. I wouldn’t even trust them to the worms.’ The strain was showing on Larsen. He looked even thinner than before, his eyes were bigger behind his spectacles and his close-cropped hair stuck up in clumps.
‘The worst part will be the women,’ he said.
I didn’t get that, for a moment; said, ‘There was only the one woman, the salad girl...’ but Larsen shook his head.
‘No, the others. These men have wives, girlfriends ... no bond of love will save them, if they are together when...’ He paled suddenly. ‘No, the worst part won’t be the women,’ he said.
‘What, then?’
‘The children,’ Larsen said.
And horror ran, like malaria, in my veins...
* * * *
XVI
Like demons in hell, the guards stood around the rim of the smouldering pit. They had dug the pit behind the laboratory, not far from the fence, and they were burning the corpses. The lab was equipped with an incinerator, but it was not large enough for the grisly task. As they had not anticipated needing cells for more than three at one time, so they had not figured on having to burn so many. The stench was appalling. I stood in the open back door of the building, staring out and smoking my pipe; fearful and wondering.
Black smoke, shot through with red flashes, billowed up from the pit. The sky was pale in the east, making the smoke seem blacker and thicker as it coiled up in ebony ropes and plumes, a Stygian cable anchored in the pit. I watched as two guards carried a corpse to the rim. They looked as if they stood at the doors to Hell, washed with the red glow. They threw the body into the inferno. A wave of increased heat struck me; sparks spun from the incandescent crater and threads of orange weaved through the writhing black funnel. One of the guards slapped at his thigh. A spark had struck him. And then they brushed their hands together, gazing down into the fiery pit for a moment before stepping away, workmen with a task well done. They might have been advertising beer on television ... a hard job done and now it’s time to relax with an ice cold...
Larsen stepped up beside me, his thin nostrils twitching.
‘Jesus,’ he said.
Then he grinned and said, ‘That pipe of yours sure does stink.’
I blinked at him, astounded, and then, suddenly, we were both laughing at his joke. It wasn’t forced laughter, we were honestly convulsed by his wit. He wrinkled his nose. Laughing, I said, ‘If we get a midget ghoul, you can stuff him in my briar,’ and Larsen howled with glee. I puffed away and the deep bowl of my pipe glowed and billowed in feeble imitation of the fiery pit.
Then, abruptly, we were not laughing.
It had been a strange impulse and only dimly grasped, yet I doubt I have ever laughed with such good humour as I did that night by the smouldering pit. . .
* * * *
I said, ‘How many?’
‘Nine,’ he told me. ‘Not counting the nurse.’
He rubbed his lean jaw. One side of his face seemed to have ignited in the seething glow; the other was as dark as the smoke, the muscles in his cheek twisting in turbulent coils - a stormy face in a volcanic dawn. I knew that my own face reflected the same disunion, cleft by the chiaroscuro of the flames. Like carnal mirrors, we reflected one another.
‘I don’t know if we should be encouraged or discouraged by the numbers,’ he said. ‘Don’t know what they signify. The more we get might mean the fewer left ... or it might mean we are simply drawing from a larger pool. . .’
‘I know. We don’t know how many men Jasper actually wounded, but even if only three or four got away...three could become nine ... or twelve...even with minimal numbers...’ Even as I spoke, I was aware that I was thinking strictly of numbers as a statistic; not of the men they represented. And that I had to. ‘...And then, the third stage...Thank God we’re on an island with a limited population.’
‘I may decide to evacuate,’ he said. He looked at me as if he wanted my advice. ‘If we can’t control the spread...but we’ll have to make damned sure none of the evacuees is infected. Some system of quarantine before boarding the boat. I’m not sure I want that responsibility, that decision...Well, it may be a moot point. They may not let us leave.’
‘If you do ... we do . . what about them? The...ghouls?’ The word had a bitter taste; I was appalled that I’d used it. ‘Will you just abandon them here?’
He looked at me with fire running down his profile.
‘That decision will come from higher up...and I’m just as glad of that.’ He rubbed his neck; his splayed fingers cast slender shadows and his hand glowed red; the heat rose and fell as if some terrible bellows pulsed in the pit.
‘It’s the ones who stayed in town that are hard to flush out...and have more opportunity to infect others,’ he said. His lips twisted the words out. ‘Most of the ones we got had come to the beach or inland. We’ve started a house-to-house search but the damnedest part is that we can’t tell who is infected and who isn’t until it takes effect.’
‘Are there no symptoms that show before?’
‘I asked Elston about that, a few minutes ago. None that he knows of. He’s ... a dedicated man. He begged me not to burn all the corpses ... to save a few for him to dissect.’
‘Maybe he hopes to find an antidote.’
‘That’s a charitable supposition,’ Larsen said.
He looked very human then, with his face inhumanly blazing in the glow. I wondered if he knew that Elston had written me. He knew who I was and maybe he’d known all along; maybe he, too, had wanted it stopped, wanting it helplessly from within the cage of his duty, the bureaucratic web that trapped his life. I felt the absolute helplessness of the man, the frustration; his life and his volition had been frozen in the ice of obedience, trapped as surely as a heart within a ribcage, a mind within a skull. I thought I might ask him - we had become friends, I think, in some twisted fashion - but as I was about to speak, gunfire sounded off to the side.
We both looked.
A man - a ghoul...the word asserted its rights in my mind...was running along the outside of the fence - not running as if frightened, for they knew no fear, but running as if he had started to run by pure chance and was too mindless to halt; running by inertia, as the planets run around the stars.
Three navy men in white uniforms were running after him, pausing to fire from time to time. They were hitting him. I saw blood spray out twice and once the impact of a bullet drove him to his knees, but he bounded up immediately and ran on. Immune to shock, he would run until the bullets broke his legs - and then he would crawl - until a shot pierced his heart or brain; he moved by descriptive law.
The fence took an outward turn just behind the pit. The ghoul ran into it. The three pursuers slowed and one went to his knees to take aim. Then the ghoul clenched his fist through the mesh of the fence and tore it open. I could hear the heavy metal snap. Beside me, Larsen snorted. The ghoul slid through the broken fence and bounded into the compound. The guards scattered back from the pit, darting silhouettes against the red glare and red-rimmed shadows against the smoke. The ghoul loped towards the inferno. He didn’t see the pit, or he disregarded it. He ran right up to the rim and past it - not falling, but running into the flames. A moment later he came up from the other side, clothing ablaze and flesh melting from his bones. He was climbing out. He slipped and slid back, then came crawling out again. His hair was burning. The three navy men were through the broken fence now and, standing side by side, like a firing squad, they shot into his body. They backed off, shooting. Blood sizzled like fat in a frying pan. Slowly the creature slipped back into the pit and did not emerge again.
One of the guards laughed.
‘Saves carrying that bugger,’ he said.
* * * *
I passed a hand across my eyes. I understood his jest, his coarse and callous attitude. God help me, I understood. It had been the same as laughing with Larsen at my pipe and I, too, had started to think of them as ghouls, to reason with the mentality of the Inquisition and to loathe them with instinctive fear and hatred that obscured all pity. This was primordial fear, a horror that should have been left behind when man evolved from the slime...and now rose up again to brutalise and numb the emotions, as contagious as any disease.
The fire flared and crackled merrily as it fed on this new kindling. I was sickened. I felt I could stay there no longer. I turned to Larsen. His face was like a stone idol with living eyes. Sparks swirled and darted through the night; he looked on his fiery celebration as helplessly as any worshipped god.
‘I’ll go back to town,’ I said.
Larsen looked at me; for a moment he didn’t seem to know who I was or why I was there.
‘If I may?’
‘You’re no prisoner, Har
land. No more than are we all. But you’ll be safer here.’
‘No, I’ll go.’
‘As you like. I can’t spare an escort.’
I hadn’t thought of that. Numbed by the horror, I had forgotten the danger.
Or it was danger too grim to register on the mind.
Larsen said, ‘I’ll check out a rifle for you, if you like.’
Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 73
