The Flood

by John Creasey

  Eve rushed at Faversham.

  He pushed at her savagely, and she fell in front of her father. Davos didn’t appear to see her. Woburn, grinding his teeth and making himself stay here and do nothing, saw the pink, benign countenance change. Davos was more satyr than man; all the veneer of charm was gone.

  He had a gun, which looked like an ordinary automatic, and fired through the glass.

  He fired again a second later.

  Adam had disappeared. Eve was getting up, unsteadily; there was a trickle of blood at her lips. Faversham was in the courtyard, running and shouting. So was the stocky man. Other men appeared, most of them in uniform.

  Eve turned on Woburn.

  “Go and help him, go and do something!” Her voice had the screech of hysteria, her eyes the glitter of absolute despair.

  He grabbed her arm.

  “They don’t suspect me, they mustn’t suspect me! I’ve got everything I need, if I can get away tonight—”

  He didn’t finish, but wondered almost in agony whether, in her present state of mind, she would understand what he meant. She seemed to, and relaxed. Davos was getting out of the window. There was at least five other men out there, and the one thing Woburn felt sure about was that no one thought there was the slightest risk of trouble from him.

  He climbed through the window.

  It was still broad daylight, and he could see the men crowding towards a door in a wall some fifty yards away. The door was open. Beyond was the compound, the cages, the animals, living two by two. Out of sight, there was Adam Reed, with a dozen men close behind him. He didn’t have a chance, no one could have.

  The men disappeared.

  Now Woburn was also running.

  He didn’t know whether Eve was behind him; he couldn’t hear her, but the noise beyond the door was loud enough to drown most nearby sounds. His own breathing was loud and painful. He reached the door and thrust his way through. At first all he saw were the trees, some of the cages and, nearer the wall, the pasture where in the morning so many animals had grazed.

  Now he saw only a few scuttling away from Adam, who was close to the wall. He was going to try to climb it. He was going—

  He leapt for the lowest branch of the tree where the panther had gone for sanctuary. Once up there, he would be out of sight, and would have a chance to reach the top of the wall.

  Woburn prayed.

  Adam clutched the branch and started to swing himself up. A dozen shots were fired. Some bullets must have hit him, but they didn’t slow him down. Only his legs were visible when the new sound and the new threat came a horror which would live with Woburn till the very day he died.

  Barney the keeper had opened the panther’s cage, and the black beast was already out.

  The keeper gave a queer, high-pitched whistle.

  The panther ran, with fixed and savage purpose. Then it leapt - and its great mouth opened, then snapped about Adam Reed’s leg.

  Adam had no chance from that moment on.

  There was a moment of desperate struggle, and on the ground a silence which affected even Davos and Faversham. Then, gradually, Adam came into sight, striking at the brute desperately but uselessly.

  He fell.

  The panther let him go, but leapt again before he could roll over.

  The ‘perfect man’ lay mauled and dead.

  Woburn knew that there was just a chance, now, to get away before they had recovered from the excitement; but he dared not leave in daylight, he must wait until dark.

  Davos and Faversham were in the drawing-room, a huge chamber of pale blue and wine red, one of great beauty, with gilt mirrors and Louis-Quinze furniture, all the air and graces, the brocades and the gilt, of a period so long forgotten that this seemed unreal. Now the lights were on. Woburn was pacing up and down the room, while Davos looked at him placidly, all rage gone, and Faversham stood stiffly, leaning backwards slightly and chin thrust out, as if he would like to stretch out a hand and stop Woburn that way.

  Two hours had passed.

  Daylight was fading into the afterglow, far out at sea.

  When Adam had been killed, Woburn had been taken up to his room and left there, with two of the uniformed men outside his door. He had not been allowed to talk to Eve, or to talk to anyone. He had tried to sound like a man driven almost to distraction by a situation that he didn’t understand, and they had treated him as they might a fractious child; but there had been no violence.

  Nothing suggested that they had found Lidgett’s body.

  Nothing suggested that they dreamt that in his pocket he carried the octi; and in his mind carried all the basic knowledge that Palfrey needed, except the places where the floods were to begin.

  He was over the surprise: that Adam Reed had been Palfrey’s man, who had had no chance to talk to him. He didn’t doubt that Adam had put a harmless liquid into the hypodermic syringe, instead of the truth drug. He didn’t ask himself how much Adam had learned and how much he had passed on to Palfrey. If he’d known about the malic acid or about the cyanide of potassium, wouldn’t he have said so?

  A footman had brought Woburn some sandwiches and coffee. He had started to nibble, and finally finished the lot. That was half an hour ago.

  He had argued with himself about the specimens; whether to keep them in his pocket or to hide them in his room. If he got a chance to get away, it might come unexpectedly, giving him no time to come upstairs. He kept them.

  He kept looking out of the window towards a sea lit now only by the stars. Now and again he could picture the farmhouse which was no longer there; and the village; and what could happen in the world. The enormous effort being made by the military to keep the octi back would be useless without the knowledge of the simple steps needed to drive them off; to make them wither and die.

  It was half past ten when the door opened.

  He turned round sharply, his hands clenching. He wasn’t surprised to see Davos and Faversham. He called desperately on all his wits; and on his courage.

  “Mr. Woburn—” Davos began, quite calmly.

  “What the hell do you mean by keeping me prisoner?” shouted Woburn. “What kind of brutes are you? You murdered Reed, that was the most cold-blooded thing I’ve ever seen. And what’s this madness about flooding the world? You must be crazy if you think anyone will believe you. Why, I—”

  “Mr. Woburn,” Davos interrupted, “shouting and behaving like a lunatic won’t help you. Try to behave like a man with a reasonable intelligence.” The reproof was uttered in the tone of an exasperated schoolmaster. “I have actually brought you some good news. Instead of being condemned to die, in fact, to drown, as you were until you came here, you will have a chance to live. In fact—” he paused, to look up and down with those mild little eyes which not long ago had seemed to burn with malignance. “In fact you have an opportunity which has never been vouchsafed to man before. You may not be aware of it, but it had been my intention that my daughter Eve should be mated to Adam. A good, clear intelligence on the one hand, and perfect bodily fitness on the other. A simple matter of eugenics. The intention was the very simple one, of starting a new and perfect race. This part of Europe was selected because culture and civilisation have developed more here than anywhere else. Some other bases for the new world have been founded in Switzerland, France, Austria - in fact in many places. A small body of men and women who, like me, have been sickened by the degradation of mankind, who see no hope through ordinary politics and economics, have been carefully selected, trained and made ready. A few of these will mate, after the floods; most belong to what we might call a new race of eunuchs, who will watch over the progenitors of the new world. They have it in their power to create the octi in such myriads that the world will have no defence against it. The floods will be the one method of destruction.

  “You have seen what happens when the octi get loose,” Davos went on,” and when I tell you that new world cultural cells exist everywhere, so that a completely new civi
lisation will be created out of the ruin of the old, I am sure you will take me at my word.”

  When he stopped, the silence seemed to shriek at Woburn. Men, women, old and young; children; the gay and the eager, the good and the bad, all human-kind seemed to be shrieking at him - and he could not shut his ears to them, or to this old man’s gentle voice.

  “If you do not believe me,” Davos said, “I shall let you hear proof.” He nodded to Faversham, who had not spoken, but now marched the box he was carrying on to a table. It was a small portable radio. He opened it and twiddled the knobs, quite as matter-of-fact as Davos.

  The sound of music floated into the air.

  “In essence, the situation is this,” Davos went on quite rationally. “The world began with water. Life came out of the sea. Through millions of years of evolution, man has been evolved. Man became the most treacherous and the most imperfect of all the animals. In my youth I was forced to accept that, it was always my dream to create a perfect race. I could not see how it could begin. I was quite sure that it could only be done by a kind of recreation. I wondered if science, so miraculously developed, could help me to develop in decades what had taken millions of years, and if the development of man from the earliest organism stage - if you like, from plankton - could be controlled so that we could be rid of its imperfections.”

  Music; there was a waltz by Johann Strauss, light, gay.

  Words: “Gradually a more practical scheme became apparent,” went on Davos, “the simple one of selecting perfect animals, wild, domestic and human, and permitting them to survive in an otherwise empty world. The action of the octi on the great land masses would be considerable, of course. Europe, Asia, the Americas, Australasia - in fact all the inhabited continents, would change considerably. Some mountain ranges would inevitably collapse, and new ones be formed. The shape of continents, the shape and the depths of oceans, will inevitably be altered; but here there will be an island on which everything can grow and live and thrive and mate and reproduce their species. It will all be done under careful supervision, with my trained helpers.”

  Davos stopped.

  Music; and then a deeper voice, from a million miles away.

  “You have been listening to the Largo String Quartette”

  . . . “I had been quite confident that Adam Reed would be a suitable male human,” said Davos, “and the fact that he was not of the highest intelligence did not greatly matter; I have to mould intelligences, of course. However, you know what happened to Adam Reed.

  “And now, obviously, I must find someone to take his place.”

  Davos smiled, almost deprecatingly.

  Even then Woburn couldn’t believe that Davos meant it.

  The other, distant voice said: “ This is the B.B.C. Home Service, here is a News Summary.” Cough; and then louder, startling Woburn; Faversham had turned the volume up. “One of the greatest floods in the history of Northern Europe has caused great damage and destruction on the East Coast of England, parts of Scotland, and the coast of Holland, in the past few hours. There was no prior warning of the waves which, assuming alarming proportions, smashed and capsized shipping, in the North Sea, and then engulfed great areas of the flat land in East Anglia, the Thames Estuary, Lincolnshire Fen district, and Yorkshire. It is not yet known how many people lost their lives, but many East Coast towns were filled with holiday-makers, and it is feared that—”

  Faversham switched off.

  Woburn could not have felt colder had his blood been turned to ice.

  Davos went on, very mildly:

  “It is beginning, you see. In a few days, at most a few weeks, it will be finished. Here and at our other bases we shall begin, in a kind of new Garden of Eden, a life for mankind which can be as perfect as the previous life has been imperfect, where enmity and bitterness, jealousy and greed, will be forgotten. Gradually we shall reach a goal where the lion will lie down with the lamb, where man and woman can live together in perfect amity, and where the beasts of the jungle shall be tame.

  “You understand me, Woburn, don’t you?

  “You understand why we had built such great hopes on Adam Reed, and—” he gave that little deprecatory smile again, and spread his hands. “And I am sure you understand why it was so fortunate that you came here when you did. I feel that it is a matter of benign providence, a clear sign that I had in fact chosen wrongly, and that I was given the opportunity to repair a most grievous mistake.

  “And you, Mr. Woburn?

  “You may now become the father of a new world.”

  Of course, he was mad.

  And the devilry had started.

  In Woburn’s mind there was only one refrain:

  “How can I get away?”

  The others went out, leaving him alone.

  19

  Woburn reached the window of his room and saw the guards, watching him. He turned round and walked to the foot of the bed, turned and went back to the window. To and fro, to and fro. A radio was on, although it was long after midnight; subdued music, with a funereal note, was played most of the time, or the sharp tuning signal of the station. Woburn was hardly aware of it. He was still fully dressed. The plastic containers were still in his pocket. If he could get out, even if he could only send a message, a miracle might yet be brought about.

  There were men outside this door; the others outside the window. Armed men. They were not armed with lethal weapons, but with the gas-pistols; if he tried to get away and was caught, he would be gassed, would lose control of his muscles, hear Davos or Faversham talking to him, patting his head, reproaching him - much as the keeper, Barney, had dealt with the panther. First, make him helpless; then talk to him, work on him, turn his mind as well as his body to putty.

  To and fro.

  Father of a new world.

  Eve. Eve!

  To and fro.

  Sometimes he would see Adam Reed being hauled down from the tree, and being mauled. It made him grit his teeth as if he, not Adam, were in fact the victim. He knew what the man had suffered, what he must have suffered; flesh torn, nerves jagged, death near - and yet Adam hadn’t shouted, hadn’t screamed, hadn’t pleaded or begged for mercy. All he had done was to fight, and fighting, had died.

  Now he, Robert Woburn, was the one hope. Thirty seconds on a telephone would conceivably save millions.

  Where were the octi burrowing and multiplying?

  Faversham knew, and so did Davos. There must be a list, a record. In that small room off the laboratory? Had they discovered Lidgett’s body? Would they suspect him, when they did? Had they a way of identifying fingerprints? If they had, he couldn’t last two minutes as the father of the new world.

  Hideous, shaking, grotesque thought.

  Eve!

  The radio gave a sharp pip-pip-pip of sound, and then papers rustled, and a man spoke. This was the B.B.C. Light Programme, flatly and unemotionally. Woburn paused, and looked at the radio.

  “As listeners will already have heard, the Light Programme will remain on the air throughout the night, broadcasting the latest flood position at half-hourly intervals, and special announcements may be made from time to time. All listeners whose homes are less than twenty feet above sea level are advised to have at least one member of the family on radio duty during the night, as special announcements of evacuation plans may affect them. It is important to remember that this applies to inland as well as coastal areas.”

  Woburn winced. Inland?

  “Pip-pip-pip.

  “The time is now two o’clock, Greenwich mean time, three o’clock, British summer time. The great floods which have already engulfed many thousands of square miles of Great Britain and Europe show no signs of abating. Many coastal areas, especially those on the North Sea, have been completely inundated, and the loss of life is feared to be extremely heavy. Emergency plans to evacuate the civilian population from all of these districts have already been announced, and all civil and military transport has been mobilised. Full detail
s will be given at the end of this special news broadcast.

  “Pip-pip-pip.

  “This is the B.B.C. Light Programme.

  “Convoys of troops have been and are being rushed from various parts of Great Britain to the disaster areas, where a State of Emergency has been proclaimed. The military vehicles will be used to take survivors to higher ground. All river areas are to be evacuated. It is understood that the Prime Minister is making a personal tour of the disaster areas while this broadcast is being made. He has already announced that plans for relief of the extensive scale required have been put in hand, military, civil authorities and voluntary organisations all being called upon to help.

  “Pip-pip-pip.”

  There was more. Woburn didn’t listen, yet could understand all that had happened; could picture it happening. Mammoth waves; that was how it would appear to anyone who did not know what it was. Wreckage and ruin - and it could come from just a few octi bases.

  There was a break in the announcer’s voice; then an edge of excitement. Woburn found himself looking at the radio again.

  “A message has just come in from Los Angeles, saying that waves of gigantic proportions have swept over the coast of southern California, engulfing an area of thousands of square miles. Great loss of life is feared.”

  And Woburn was locked in here, with horror in his mind, a great fear, and just one obsession. How could he make Davos or Faversham talk? If there was a way to do that there must be a way to escape. He kept arguing with himself, inventing possibilities, refusing to believe that there was no hope at all.