As if Mary hadn’t said exactly the same thing weeks ago, Guy thought wearily, though few had listened to her then.
The reports of bloodworm incidents, several of them major disasters, came in with sickening regularity. Guy and Evan, usually accompanied by Derek, went to investigate a number of them on the spot, questioning witnesses and sometimes going into the buildings themselves. Slowly through the night a pattern did begin to emerge.
It was first noticed at London’s historic Guildhall, which had been booked by a City organisation for an important dinner at which the Lord Mayor was to speak. Having paid a hundred pounds a head for their tickets, most of the guests made it a point of honour to turn up, crisis or no crisis. A glittering occasion, it should have been. Everyone in evening dress, a fortune in diamonds around the ladies’ necks…
After the wining and dining, the Lord Mayor was announced. She rose to her feet and in that moment all present were startled by a loud fluttering, whispering sound above their heads. The beetles had emerged for their first flight.
No one recognised them as beetles; that point was important. Those with better eyesight than the rest reported seeing what appeared to be little round balls of hyperactive fluff. This was of course an optical illusion created by the rapid movement of their wings, and it led some people to imagine they must be moths.
On that occasion — it was the only one — very few beetles were tempted by the feast of rich humanity at the tables below them. As it happened, there had been complaints about the stuffy atmosphere in the Guildhall that evening and the top windows had been opened, which allowed the beetles to stream out into the fresh air.
However, the next stage in the pattern followed almost within seconds when, with a deafening series of cracks and groans, the entire building^hook and then collapsed on top of the assembled guests. Many were killed outright; most survivors found themselves buried beneath the rubble.
Then silence. Most mentioned that terrible silence and found it more frightening even than the ear-splitting sounds which preceded it, though no one was sure whether it last for seconds only or longer.
Gradually people’s voices were heard. Whimpering. Moaning. Calling for help.
Beetles crawled out of the dust to explore the ladies’ bare shoulders and deep necklines, and the men’s faces, their hands and wrists, their calves exposed through the tatters of their clothing.
The screaming turned to shrieks of terror as something else appeared from among the filth and rubble, something long and sinuous, a pale worm-like creature, which moved in that odd way, bunching itself up and then pushing purposefully forward as it searched for food. Human, food.
This was the third stage; the emergence of the giant bloodworms.
Yet perhaps there was a fourth stage too. It involved a coach-load of German tourists grimly determined to complete their sight-seeing schedule, come what may. St Paul’s Cathedra! was the last stop on their list, after which they expected to drive straight to Dover for the midnight boat. It was late, of course, but even the floodlit St Paul’s was impressive, their travel-leader told them.
The swarm of beetles which had escaped from the Guildhall via the upper windows was observed flying towards the cathedral by one witness. Briefly they were caught in the floodlighting; then circling lower, seeking the shadows, they alighted on the unfortunate tourists. Few lived long enough to describe the experience.
It wasn’t until the following morning that Guy heard about this incident in any detail. Too much else had been happening. The roof and part of the first floor of the National Gallery had fallen in, though only the night staff had been in the building at the time, so casualties were few. Both damage and casualties at the Palace of Westminster were considerably worse, particularly as the
House of Commons had been crowded at the time for the debate on the Emergency Powers Bill relating to the bloodworm crisis. A high number of MPs present lost their lives and others were reported missing. Two hospitals were also attacked, with more than three hundred dead and injured in both instances, some of them having only been admitted earlier that day to be treated for wounds received in other bloodworm incidents.
While many of the police had taken up Derek’s idea of carrying ethyl acetate sprays for their own protection, these were only effective at close quarters. For general rescue operations the fire brigade still favoured hi-expansion foam as the most rapid way of putting the maximum number of beetles and bloodworms out of action, but by midnight, with every machine out on the road, supplies began to ran low.
So many buildings were affected that the emergency services could no longer deal with every call, but had to pick and choose among them, concentrating on those where they felt they had a reasonable chance of saving lives. Fractured gas mains made the situation worse, and by morning more than twenty fires were still burning in various parts of London.
Guy and Evan drove towards Worth Road in the pale, sickly light of that dawn feeling that they had failed. Derek, too, sitting in the back seat, was staring morosely at the notes he had made of eye-witness accounts; for the past twenty minutes he had not spoken a word. Hundreds of people had died during that night and major London landmarks had been destroyed by these insects, yet a solution was as far away as ever.
‘Go past my road, would you, Evan?’ Guy requested. He was dead tired, drained out, his mouth dry; he felt perhaps he would never sleep again, he was so unnaturally wide-awake, as though drugged, i’d like to check if Dorothea and Kath are all right. Unless they’ve had the sense to get out of town.’
But the road was blocked. The fronts of several houses, including his own, had been blown out, leaving the sagging floors exposed. Their own bed — that ‘film star bed’ as they’d called it when Dorothea had picked it out in the shop — hung over the edge, still unmade, he noticed.
He left the car and went over to question a woman sitting patiently on some suitcases at the roadside. She wore a warm coat and had a scarf over her hair; from her appearance she might have been a refugee anywhere.
‘A gas explosion, they said,’ she explained indifferently, as if none of it really concerned her any longer. ‘Though before that we heard a terrible noise from one of those houses opposite. You lived there, didn’t you? Recognise you.’
‘Did you see my wife? Or Kath — our little girl? About eleven, long hair.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Saw nobody. My feller’s gone to fetch the car, then we’re leaving. ’What’s the point? London’s finished, innit?’
Guy climbed over the rabble to examine the houses more closely. As far as he could judge, it seemed to have been his neighbour’s place which the bloodworms had attacked, though there was no sign of them now.
‘Dorothea!’ he shouted as loud as he could. The sour dust lingered on the air and got into his throat. ‘Kath! Anybody in there?’
No answer came, of course; he hadn’t really expected one. The steps up to the front door were broken, but several big chunks of brickwork lay there. He managed to clamber over them into what was left of the hall. It was impossible to go any farther and he was turning to go when his foot kicked against the telephone-answering machine. Stooping down, he saw that it was still switched to take messages; he removed the cassette and slipped it in his pocket.
‘Anything?’ Evan asked when he returned to the car.
‘No sign of either of them. God knows where they’ve ended up.’
‘What about the house?’
‘A write-off. No infestation that I could see, but they were there all right. I could sense it. Somewhere among all that rubble.’