The basement corridor was empty. Only the footprints left by the police’s rubber-soled boots on the polished floor reminded her that she was not alone in the building. Then, as she approached the narrow staircase — servants’ stairs in the old days — she heard a long-drawn-out bellow of anguish, probably coming from the area. It was followed by the clattering and banging of something heavy falling down the stairs. Not till it got to the bottom did she see what it was — the fire extinguisher.
Every instinct screamed to her to turn and run, to get out while there was still a chance. She stood there quivering with anxiety, biting her lip until it hurt, not able to make op her mind what to do.
‘Some scientist, you!’ she told herself scornfully. Disjointed memories flashed through her mind and they were so vivid, she almost cried out. Wasn’t this why she’d had to drop out of medical school — cowardice? Hadn’t she fainted at her first sight, even, of the severed human arm they had expected her to dissect? But she couldn’t go on through her whole life like this, could she?
Could she?
That afternoon, going into the house where those poor people had died, she had felt no qualms at all; but then the pest-control people had gone in first, hadn’t they? And she’d not been on her own, but part of a team.
But the police were still here, weren’t they? Doubtfully she looked down at the fallen fire extinguisher, and a sick feeling in her stomach told her what had almost certainly happened.
She placed a foot on the first stair… then the next… and one more… and…
‘No, it’s too late to go. back now/ she muttered, gripping the camera firmly. But she couldn’t help wondering at the sudden quietness at the top of the stairs. No voices, nor any of those strange groans and cracks she had heard earlier. ‘I need the photos,’ she added as she forced herself to go on. ‘I need the evidence.’
She reached the main floor, and a low moan of sheer terror escaped from her iips. The rains of the staircase and the public reception area were shocking enough in themselves; far worse was the vision of those horrifying serpents feeding on the tom bodies of the policemen who had brought her here only fifteen minutes ago. Four of them, she counted, though it was no longer possible to identify-their faces.
‘Right!
The sight of the carnage strengthened her, giving her a renewed sense of determination. She brought up the camera, adjusted the short, stubby zoom lens to give a sharp, close picture of the two snakes feeding on the body of the dead sergeant — recognisable only from the stripes on his tunic sleeve — and pressed the trigger button.
But they weren’t snakes at all, her mind told her feverishly as she went on to take one picture after another. The sharp image of them in the viewfinder of the SLR camera revealed exacdy what they must be. Apart from their size, they were identical with the tiny woodworm which had eaten into Tony’s hand at the workshop that morning.
Only this time they were flushed pink, gorged on the blood of their victims.
At the first lightning flashes from the camera they had reared up, proof — if she’d needed any — that they were not blind. Now they began to squirm across the floor towards her, six of them altogether, moving purposefully as if nothing could stop them. She could feel the tension building up inside her and longed to let everything go in one hysterical scream; instead, she disciplined herself to take one more picture, wide-angle, backing down a couple of steps to get them all in, before leaving the camera to swing from the leather strap around her neck while she groped in the shoulder bag for the ether bottle.
Struggling to get the rubber bung out — it was firmly wedged in the neck — she went down a couple more steps. The giant, blood-hungry worms came closer, wriggling forward very slowly now, but never pausing. What if she made a quick dash for it down the stairs while they were still sluggish? Should she risk it?
No.
No, she knew that sluggishness would drop away from them like a sloughed off skin. They would be after her the moment she turned her back, trapping her on the narrow staircase. She had only one chance; if she couldn’t open the ether bottle she’d have to break it.
That meant going back up those four steps, with the worms getting closer every second. Biting her lip, trying to keep a grip, she forced herself to do it. As she reached the top, the worms began to rear up expectantly, a dark fluid slobbering from their mouths as if in anticipation.
She raised her arm and, with all the strength she could summon up, smashed the bottle against the hard parquet flooring. A second later she was stumbling down the stairs as fast as she could, without waiting to find out how successful she’d been. The glass had at least cracked, she was sure of that; she’d heard the sound, and the whiff of ether had been unmistakable, but that was all she knew.
Somehow she got to the bottom of the stairs without falling and blindly ran along the basement corridor towards the outer door, slamming it shut the moment she was outside and hastily attempting to lock it.
As if — she told herself bitterly when her panic had again subsided — as if a mere wooden door, however thick, could stop those things coming through if they chose.
The sirens wailed urgently through the darkness but then abruptly cut out as the ambulance and fire tender entered the drive, followed by a police Rover. The sleek superintendent had come along in person, she saw, as the men got out with a slamming of doors and their heavy voices broke the eerie silence at last; she felt a quick surge of disappointment that Evan was not among them. At that moment she could have done with his steady, common-sense voice to reassure her.
‘Where’s Sergeant Taylor?’ the superintendent was demanding. ‘See if you can find him, somebody. He should be here.’
‘Your sergeant is dead,’ she announced bitterly. ‘They're all dead in there.’ She described the scene she had just left.
‘Who are you?’ He eyed her camera. ‘Press?’
‘I work here.’
‘Mary Armstrong, sir,’ one of the constables intervened. ‘Public Health Department. Sergeant Taylor was on his way to pick her up when he left the station.’
‘Very well, Miss Armstrong. Tell me exactly what we’re to expect when we go inside.’
Mary tried to persuade him against sending men into the building, but he refused to listen to reason, commenting only that ‘the men know their duty’ — whatever that might mean. To her knowledge, at least four were already dead and three missing, but that argument cut no ice with him. He questioned her in detail about the damage in the reception area and whether or not the main entrance was blocked, then went into conference with the fire brigade officer about the best way to tackle the problem. Her report about the giant worms or ‘snakes’ he merely pooh-poohed. ‘Pure hysteria,’ she overheard him saying.
The Indian WPC and the constable called Bill were also cross-examined* but they had been watching the back of Worth Hall most of the time and had no very clear idea of what had been going on.
A young fireman, obviously very worried, took Marv by the arm and spoke to her confidentially. ‘You mentioned beetles, is that right? And… snakes?’
‘They look like snakes, but they’re not. They’re more.. well, they resemble worms, only very much bigger.’ ‘That’s what I heard.’
She glanced at him sharply. ‘Heard?’
‘We’re from Hammersmith,’ he explained with a wave of his arm towards the fire tender. ‘Don’t know what’s up, but you’ve got crews from all over Greater London in this borough tonight. Real bloody disaster area this is. First it was the disco, jammed fill! of people, and the ceiling collapsed on top of the poor sods. Then there’s a fire at that pub opposite the tube station — some talk of beetles being seen there as well — not to mention the coach-load of OAPs involved in that multiple crash on the main road. I tel! you, lady, that radio’s on the whole time in my cab, and it hasn’t stopped all the way here, not once,’