Her face was framed in the window and her arm groped towards me, dripping blood where the glass had cut her. She was far more terrible than the men — somehow, she was still feminine and sensual, her painted lips drawn back as if smiling with lewd desire, her eyes rolling as if with passion, a mockery of what she had been; reaching out, it seemed she wished to fold me lovingly to her breast. I could not look away. Then she yielded, like a prostitute rejected; I did not go to her — she drifted away.
On the floor, shards of broken glass glinted in the light.
Within my body, my senses were shattered like the glass, cold splinters piercing my heart, sharp edges filing at the rim of my mind, jagged pieces rasping at my soul. I could almost hear fear grinding away at my guts. It was too much. The grinding horror wore away my humanity and polished my awareness to a smooth lump; I slipped into obfuscation. I did not move, I scarcely blinked. Things groped at the window and fondled the walls. And then the bars had double shadows. Dawn was at the window.
Mary shivered into reality, as if coming into focus from distortion or changing dimensions by some time warp. Jerry stood up, stiffly. I found I could move. I could think once more. The night had ended.
From the window, we saw a destroyer standing off beyond the harbour. My first thought, such was my state of mind, was that the navy intended to shell the town. But that was foolish and I smiled — although grimly — at myself. I did wonder what they planned, however. A destroyer was hardly necessary to quarantine fishing boats and motor cruisers. Some decision had probably been reached — been forced upon them once the first member of the patrols had been infected. Maybe it was only the one — the one we had seen — but we had no way of knowing, nor, I suppose, did they. It had taken that option from them. The search-and-destroy mission had automatically failed the moment a single member of the patrols became one of the enemy… to continue the patrols was to risk spreading the horror into the compound itself. They weren’t likely to chance that. And it explained why the patrols had been withdrawn. But not what they intended to do.
Sometime later a helicopter came in.
It was a big one and it passed over us, heading towards the compound. It didn’t stay long. It vanished towards the west and then, half an hour later, a second ‘copter came in — or the first one returned. It followed the same pattern, landing within the compound and flying off a short time afterwards. I wondered if reinforcements were being brought in, or if the compound was evacuating? Jerry, wondering the same thing, tried to phone through to the compound, but even the switchboard failed to answer now. The phone rang hollow and dead, a forlorn sound, as if the telephone itself knew it was not to be answered and sounded its despair.
Jerry slammed it down, cursing.
A few seconds later, it rang.
The sound startled us and we gaped stupidly at each other. Then Jerry snatched it up. ‘That’s right,’ he said, and at the same time I heard a loudspeaker blaring from somewhere in the streets behind us. Jerry said, ‘That’s right. Three of us. Right, we’ll be there at ten exactly. Well, sure… but look… how do we tell if they’re… all right? If we do find any others… is there some way to tell?’ He listened, tight-lipped. ‘All right,’ he said. He put the phone down.
‘They’re evacuating us from the navy pier,’ he said.
‘Thank God,’ Mary whispered.
‘We’re to be there at ten o’clock, on the dot… and they won’t wait long.’ Then, anticipating my question, he said, ‘They didn’t say how we could tell… said that everyone would be checked by a doctor, at the pier.’
‘Then they have found a way!’ I said. ‘Maybe Elston’s damned autopsies proved fruitful.’
Jerry nodded doubtfully.
A van moved down the waterfront, going fast and not stopping. The loudspeaker sounded the message, the same message we had received over the telephone. I wondered if they were phoning every number in the town; I had an eerie echo of telephones ringing, unanswered, in empty houses; ringing in sequence up and down the streets, forlorn and futile. The van passed and I saw armed men holding their weapons ready at the windows; it turned up the cobbled streets and we heard the message repeated again and again as it wound through the town, making an effort to get through to anyone hiding there… anyone who could understand. The message was given in Spanish on every third broadcast. I was cheered greatly by this, by the knowledge that something had been determined, something was being done, authority was taking measures. I suppose, without actually admitting it, I had feared that the compound had been overrun and that we were on our own. The authorities were responsible for this horror we were in, yet it was still reassuring to know they continued to function.
I said, ‘Well, thank heaven.’
But Jerry said, ‘It might not be so easy.’
He was at the window, looking out.
He said, ‘Christ, they’re all over the place!’
I felt my throat constrict. I joined him at the window and the hair came up stiff on my neck. The loudspeaker seemed to have attracted the ghouls, to have played the catalyst that brought them out of lethargy, summoning them from their various places and bringing them to the waterfront. There must have been twenty of them. They came filtering out of the sidestreets and from the warehouses, moving in the wake of the van… some Pied Piper syndrome which Elston would have termed a side-effect, bringing them together. I recognised the bearded man from the Red Walls and, I think, two or three others from the initial infection. There were several women; one clutched a baby to her breast in a mockery of the maternal instinct. The baby was dead. They moved after the van and then, when it had vanished, milled about mindlessly. They did not attack one another. From time to time two or three of them, following their own paths, would come into contact — would bump or brush together — and then they would snap and slash at each other in a momentary bestial rage, but it was fleeting ferocity. An instant later they would wander apart again. They did not kill each other. Elston could be proud of the nicety with which he had regulated their instincts…
At nine o’clock a landing craft came wallowing into the harbour and dropped its ramp alongside the navy pier. The pier was some distance down the front and it was hard to see just what was happening, but we saw men in blue uniforms splashing through the shallow water and others running along the pier. They all carried automatic weapons. They deployed in a crescent around the pier. Several men in white coats detached themselves from the crescent and moved forward. They were all on the seaward side of the link fence. A group of men in khaki came through the defensive lines, carrying strange, bulky objects. They moved quickly and, within minutes, those objects had been transformed into a tent-like affair of poles and canvas. It looked like the shield they put around a broken-legged racehorse on the track, before they shoot it — letting the animal linger longer in agony so the spectators will not have their delicate sensibilities offended. This structure was erected near the fence, on the perimeter of the armed crescent. As soon as it was up, the men in khaki hurried back to the dock. The men in white vanished behind the canvas.
It was nine-thirty.
The navy pier was only ten minutes away — walking.
We were ready to go — waiting.
While this activity was going on, the ghouls were still wandering along the docks. They showed little interest in the proceedings at the pier. They didn’t even look dangerous, somehow; demented, tormented, with the madness transfiguring their features, but not dangerous.