‘Now, Mr Parker,’ the sergeant expostulated. ‘I don’t think this is going to help us at all.’
‘You’re right, it isn’t. They don’t normally bite through thick clothing, or rubber boots, or that sort of thing. Not in my experience. And keep gloves on if you’re anywhere near them. I’d like to see where these cows were killed, so let’s start there. I imagine it was somewhere near a stream or a pond?’
‘That’s right,’ the sergeant confirmed.
‘I’ll take some equipment with me, but…’ He left the rest unsaid, his fear that the worms might really have started a spring offensive as Angus suggested, that they might find not five, ten or twenty, but hundreds of them. What then?
Fran came downstairs again. She’d changed into Helen’s jeans and sweater; Matt pointed out her gumboots. It hurt him seeing her in Helen’s clothes, and she realized it. She touched his arm and looked into his face, as if trying to say something. He nodded unhappily; it had been his own suggestion after all.
Outside, the sky was pale and slightly streaked with cloud. The tree-tops were thick with birds; on any normal morning he’d have stopped to comment on the dawn chorus, but this time the shrill twittering jarred his nerves. As though they were singing in triumph, he thought; reminding him that human beings were in a minority on this planet.
‘I’ll drive first and you follow behind,’ the sergeant was saying. ‘Don’t wander off on your own. And Doctor Davies, I don’t think we need detain you any — Oh Christ, look at that!’ His voice dropped almost to a whisper.
As the early morning sun rose above the crown of the hill its rays caught the supple, multi-coloured worms which had gathered around Matt’s car. There must have been at least thirty, some curled in the high grass of the rough lane, others stretched along the parallel strips of exposed soil which had been hardened and worn bald by the tyres. One was draped like an ornate figure 6 over the boot of the car, with its head guarding the lock. Another, shifting position every few seconds, displayed itself on the roof.
They stopped dead. ‘It’s beautiful!’ Fran breathed.
For a few seconds Matt’s hatred dissipated. No existing film stock could capture those colours. Their scales broke up the light, heightening the natural luminescence of their skins.
‘You’ll have to do something,’ Doctor Davies was burbling, his voice strained with fear. He clutched his bag in his right hand like a weapon, his knuckles whitening. With his left hand he nervously brushed some of his long hair back from his face. ‘We can’t stay here all day. We must get away.’
A few worms moved, aware of the presence of human beings. They raised themselves, arching their heads as they swayed. Perhaps they were merely taking pleasure in the warm sunlight; or perhaps they were co-ordinating their attack.
‘Oh, yes,’ Matt agreed. ‘What d’you suggest?’
‘You’re the man with all the experience,’ the sergeant commented steadily. ‘They’re mostly gathered round your car, so if we risk trying to reach mine and…’ He stopped.
‘Give them what they’re after.’ Fran sounded strange — not afraid, but as though she’d just discovered something about the worms she’d not understood before. ‘They want the skin samples.’ She paused. ‘Or you.’
Matt’s anger flooded back. Maybe it was something about her face, white and drawn after their sleepless night. Or the fact she was wearing Helen’s brown, polo-neck sweater. He looked at her, seeing Helen. The worms were trying to get at him through his own weak spot, he was convinced — his emotional tangle, Helen-Fran. He flushed hot with fury.
‘The sergeant’s right.’ He drew on his gauntlets. ‘You all keep back while I deal with them. Who else?’
The worms watched him, almost warning him that they could predict what he was about to do. He hated everything about them — the threatening way they slithered through the grass towards their victims, their tiny eyes, those beautiful, evil skins, the deadly jaws with their sharp teeth.
The only weapons he’d brought from the cottage were a heavy walking-stick and his sheath-knife. They’d be sufficient. He waded in among them.
Two or three worms wriggled out of the way as he approached; once he’d passed them, though, they closed in again behind him. He was completely surrounded.
Swinging his stick viciously at the nearest, he heard the skull crack. His right arm rose and fell rhythmically, like a reaper with a sickle. The worms snapped back at him, crowding around his legs. He ignored them. This time he was not hunting skins; he was killing with cold deliberation.
A worm slid over his foot and he tried to stamp on it, almost losing his balance. He’d only to fall, he knew, even stumble back against the car, for them to be able to reach his face.
Something moved up his leg, curling around it. At the same time the worm on the boot lid launched itself at him, twining about his right forearm.
‘Stay calm,’ he muttered to himself; fear gripped him. ‘Never panic…’
In his left hand he grasped the sheath-knife. It was razor-sharp, honed every day. The worm on his arm tightened its coils. It was already raising its head to strike at his face when he slipped the point of the blade into its throat.
A sudden hiss. The rippling body slackened and he shook it off.
The worm on his leg dodged the blade twice, then caught it between its teeth, holding on like a vice. As Matt pulled it clear, the sharp edge cut into the corners of its mouth. Something gave way — maybe the blade had entered the brain — the coils loosened and it fell.
Another worm slithered lazily across the top of the car, dropped down on to the carcase and began to eat it.
Breathing heavily, as much from shock as from his exertions, Matt heard something behind him and swung around. Fran had joined him. She’d armed herself with a spade and was ferociously chopping down on any worm that approached. Grimly he renewed his own attack, laying about him with the heavy stick, till suddenly he realized they’d won.
They must have killed between fifteen and twenty altogether. Those that remained were too busy feeding on the bodies of their fallen comrades to show any further interest in Matt or Fran. They were gulping down great mouthfuls of flesh. Two had been cut in half by the spade; in each case they ate their own shorn tails.
Matt brought his stick down hard on the heads of three more, spattering them across the ground. Fran decapitated others, grinning with joy as each head fell.
‘Intelligent?’ Matt cried with scorn, whacking at yet another one. ‘Rhys must be off his rocker if he thinks these are intelligent. They’re just asking to be killed.’
‘Are they?’
Something in her voice made him glance at her sharply. Her face glowed with the effort, all traces of tiredness gone. But what had she meant?
Near her feet was another worm. She slammed her spade down at its head, but missed and severed its tail. Once again it twisted back on itself to investigate and then began to swallow the amputated section.
Fran shuddered as she watched it.
But it wasn’t until afterwards in the car — he was following the sergeant to the farm — that she revealed what was on her mind.
‘Don’t you see, Matt?’ she pleaded with him anxiously. ‘They eat their own dead every time, and their own tails, as if they’re afraid of samples of their flesh falling into the wrong hands.’
‘Or simply hungry.’ He was remembering that later in the morning he’d have to face Jenny. What could he say to her? She would accuse him, hurt, and he’d be able to deny nothing. If he hadn’t gone to London with Fran, Helen might still be alive.
‘Another thing,’ Fran was insisting, ‘it was the skins brought them to our car in the first place. They wanted them back. To eat them. Don’t you see what that means?’