She followed him up. ‘Bleak’ was the right word for their room, she thought when she stepped inside: yellow ochre painted walls pitted with drawing-pin punctures among a scattering of adhesive-tape stains; uncovered floorboards; uncurtained windows and no lampshades.
‘Until they can salvage our files from Worth Hail, we’re working from scratch,’ Adrian commented as he dumped the stationery on a table near the window. ‘We’ve plenty of blank paper but nothing else. Not even a phone yet.’ i’ve just been with Derek Owen,’ she told him, still looking around. ‘He agrees with you about those two beetles you sent down, the ones from the school. Almost certainly females of the same species, he says.’
At least they’d found some furniture for the place, she thought. Old stuff, but still functional — desks, chairs, a cupboard, even a coat-stand. She put her briefcase on the largest of the desks and sat down, almost instinctively opening the top drawer to see what state it was in.
‘Urgh!’ she exclaimed, recoiling with horror. Her chair fell with a crash as she backed away. ‘Adrian…! Oh, God, are they everywhere?’
Several large beetles lay inside the desk drawer, apparently motionless, their colours — that enamel pink with the luxuriously deep green and patches of yellow — making them look particularly deadly. She could easily have put her hand in there without thinking, her flesh might have been lacerated by those pincer-claws, her blood..
‘Stand clear!’ Adrian was yelling at her, almost elbowing her aside.
In his hand was an aerosol spray. Every office was to be equipped with one, she recalled, as the pungent smell reached her nostrils, forcing her to retreat even farther. But it had no obvious effect. A beetle appeared on the top of the drawer, hauling itself up, unbothered by this attack on it. Adrian gave it an extra squirt, holding the nozzle less than a couple of inches away, but still it moved on.
‘The other drawers, Adrian,’ she heard herself almost sobbing. ‘There’ll be more in the other drawers Come away!’
Instead of getting clear, she was horrified to see him bend down to flick open the top drawer on the other side, but with too much force. The drawer shot out and then dropped on to his feet, though he kicked it away immediately.
Just in time, she thought. Her hand flew to her mouth to stop herself screaming as she saw more beetles emerging from it, scrambling out of the drawer, which was now on its side, like soldiers jumping down from the back of a lorry. They spread out across the floor in that familiar half-circle, cutting him off from any possibility of reaching the door.
‘Adrian!’ she shrieked, beside herself. ‘Walk over them! Use your spray!’
She picked up the nearest chair and began slamming it down on the beetles nearest to her, but it was no use. She killed three or four perhaps, and then the half-circle re-formed, still concentrating on Adrian and ignoring her.
Staring around desperately for some more effective weapon, she noticed the table on which Adrian had piled the new supply of stationery. She dashed behind it, swept the notepaper, internal envelopes and pads of official forms on to the floor, and tipped it over once, then again, until it lay upside down, crushing many of the beetles beneath it. Standing on it, she jumped up and down two or three times, adding her weight to it to make absolutely sure they were squashed to death.
‘Hurry!’ She grabbed his arm, dragging him towards the door. ‘Let’s get out while we can!’
But his legs gave way. She saw blood soaking through his clothes. A beetle emerged from his sleeve, its claws busy on his wrist. It was too late, she realised dully. Much too late.
Then everything was taken out of her hands. The door burst open and three or four other people rushed in, among them Simpkins and Bill Jenkins, shouting something at her as they aimed their aerosols at the remaining beetles regrouping around the edges of the upturned table.
‘So many of them still!’ she tried to warn them.
bier arms were seized and she felt herself being guided away. Adrian must be dead, she was convinced. No one could survive that number of beetles. No escaping from them, not any longer.
It was only then that she realised the truth. Up to that point she had always assumed they could be beaten, these bloodworm-beetles, that it was merely a question of finding the right poison and persuading the powers that be to use it on a large enough scale. When it came to war between the species, insects stood no chance against human beings, surely?
But now she knew that was not the case. She had been wrong from the very start. These bloodworm-beetles reproduced with such rapidity that humans stood no chance against them. Already they had spread in a few weeks from a derelict school to claim a large part of London for themselves. Why should they ever stop?
Oh no, they intended to go on, she could swear to that.
Intended? But that assumed a will-power. A mind. No, there couldn’t possibly be a mind; what she was witnessing was something far more terrifying. It was the instinctive, blind will to reproduce and seek food, a characteristic shared by all living creatures and one which could never be defeated.
A sudden roar of agony from the room snapped her out of her semi-trance, bringing her back to her senses. She was on the landing close to the bannister where they had left her before returning to help Adrian. But what was happening in there? Why all that shouting and screaming?
She forced herself to the doorway to look in. Surely there must be something she could do for them?
Adrian lay slumped on the bare floor, his body unnaturally twisted and beetles crawling over it like ants over spilled jam. Next to him, writhing in pain across the upturned table, was Simpkins, his face a mass of beetles busy with their incisor claws, the blood glistening. The others were trying to lift him, but already she could see beetles on their shoes.. their legs.. their jacket sleeves..
‘The idiots!’ she murmured to herself, shocked, indecisive, knowing that the only sensible course was to leave Simpkins to die, yet feeling she must help them somehow. ‘Oh, the idiots!’
Seizing a fallen aerosol can which lay near her feet, she went into the room, determined at least to save the two rescuers if she could.
The fish and chips in the police canteen were unappetising. Guy pushed his plate away half-finished and went up to the counter for another cup of tea. Evan and Derek Owen, who were sharing his table, had both chosen the minute steak and seemed to be experiencing difficulty cutting through it. For the moment they were in no great hurry. They had decided on their course of action. Now all they could do was wait until the superintendent, who was still in conference at Scotland Yard, rang through to give his permission.
Or to withhold it, Guy mused gloomily. He’d had enough experience of top brass in the past to realise that there was no stupidity of which they were not capable.
Their plan was simple enough. He went over it again in his mind, trying to spot the flaws but finding none. They would operate as a team, the three of them together, with himself in charge making the actual snatch, Evan backing him up with the metal bin in which the giant bloodworm was to be dumped, and Derek — a much older man — coming along mainly to observe how the bloodworms reacted. Derek had also devised a method of calming down any beetles that happened to be around, though Guy was doubtful whether it would really work.
That was the weak point, he knew. If it went badly wrong — if there were so many of the creatures that they were overwhelmed or their retreat cut off — none of them would get out alive.