‘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…
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. ’