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immune to diseases which would destroy mankind today and these throwbacks are
just the same. Immune to anything we can give them because their body cells
will resist everything. Evolution is the only answer, civilisation will have
to start all over again! In a million years' time they'll be finding skeletons
and scratching their heads, wondering how the hell civilisation reached its
peak and went back again. I'm wondering whether those who have escaped can
survive, even the bastards who started all this. We will be the ones without
body resistance, diseases developing which modern medicine has never come
across.'
'I see.' Brian Newman nodded. 'As a matter of fact that occurred to me but I
kept it to myself.'
'We'll have to do just that. There's no point in panicking everybody and if
we're right there's not a goddamn thing you or I or anybody else can do about
it. In the meantime we just keep on working, hoping. And if you're a praying
man, pray.'
Reports came in slowly over the next few days. The Continent had suffered
badly, West Germany, France and Italy in chaos. Switzerland seemed to have
fared better than most due to government legislation that all new houses had
to be fitted with fall-out shelters. No warning except that strange and
terrible things were befalling the French and Italians so the Swiss had dived
for cover.
Nothing at all from the eastern-bloc countries. No communications. They might
have been wiped out, they might be lurking safely below ground. There was no
way of telling. The Kremlin was silent.
Rankine studied the large-scale maps in the operations room. The number of
pins was increasing hourly, most of them red ones. The majority of survivors
in remote rural parts had no way of contacting the authorities, probably did
not even realise that anybody except themselves had survived. They would be
fighting their own battles, rabbits living in warrens, isolated pockets of
sanity until madness prevailed.
Fires were going unchecked, raging through towns and cities. The injured
suffered and died agonising deaths because there was nobody to help them. But
there was a pattern of behaviour amongst the new semi-human race. Like rats
leaving doomed ships, they fled the built-up areas. Buildings were foreign to
their nature, their in-born fear of anything beyond their basic understanding
driving them out to the few wild places that remained in Britain.
The first step of a new evolution was beginning.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JACKIE QUINN followed where the man she knew as Kuz led. Through the night,
along a main road, not knowing what it was or why it was there, making detours
when they approached a village or hamlet.
In their wake came some twenty or thirty men and women, some of whom had
started the journey with them from First Terrace, others they had picked up on
the way. From the mists of time civilisation has always bowed to leaders,
sought the security of another's decisions. And Kuz was one of those leaders.
They travelled at a fast walking pace, not slowing, not showing any signs of
tiredness, and when dawn came they saw the rolling range of hills beyond. Kuz
changed direction slightly, heading towards those bracken-covered slopes, and
Jackie sensed the eagerness of the others, experienced the feeling herself;
that of a traveller returning from a very long journey, weary, but on sighting
his home in the distance is at once refreshed, hastening his arrival, that
last mile seemingly ten, a mirage that you thought you would never reach.
The hills were home, nobody questioned that as they followed a narrow winding
track through the new growth of bracken and heather. The sun climbed higher,
beat down on them with a sadistic mercilessness, clouds of black flies
swarming, settling on the thick hair of the travellers. Bees hunted
relentlessly for pollen, and once a single grouse whirred up from beneath
their feet, planed down the long slope and alighted when it thought it was
safe.
They were high up now, 1,500 feet at least, below them the long valley with
its wide main road littered with crashed and abandoned vehicles, a set of
traffic lights that winked red, amber and green reflections in the bright
sunlight as though they carried on working in defiance of everything around
them. Moving dots signified people, others returning to the wild after a foray
into the brick and concrete jungles of an unknown world, not knowing why they
had been there in the first place.
Kuz had smelled the stream, then heard the trickling of clear fresh water,
tearing his way through a thick barrier of brambles to reach it, throwing
himself down full-length on the shallow bank and slurping noisily. The others
followed, would have done so whether they were thirsty or not because it was
expected of them. Animals at a watering hole, all else forgotten.
Suddenly Kuz sprang to his feet, roared at them, his squat features black with
fury. They cowered, understood, whimpered their apologies. Two cut away,
walked up a small grassy mound and shaded their eyes in every direction whilst
the remainder returned to their interrupted drink. Their leader's message was
only too clear: a guard must be mounted at all times so that they were not
surprised by a lurking enemy.
Kuz rose and they all rose, shaking the water from themselves, their hair
glistening with droplets. Then they were moving on. There was to be no
respite.
Once they came upon another bunch of their own kind, the two groups regarding
one another suspiciously from a distance of twenty yards. There was no
exchange of greetings, just hostile stares and a mute agreement to go their
own ways.
The climb was becoming much steeper now, Jackie felt her leg muscles beginning
to pull but the idea of resting was dismissed; so long as Kuz kept going so
would she. Travelling on all-fours for the last hundred yards or so, grabbing
tussocks of coarse grass to pull themselves up by. And then they saw the
caves.
The place had once been a human habitation, dwelling places chipped out of the
overhanging rock face on the eastern side of the hill, sheltered from the
prevailing winds. Lichen and moss grew on the stone, feverfew sprouted from
the stony ground. There were a dozen caverns at least, large and small, dark
shady places that yawned back into the hillside, cramped spaces by modern
standards but roomy enough to live in if you didn't have many possessions.
Kuz had already chosen the largest cave, one on the right set fifteen feet or
so from the others. He leaped to his feet, shambled towards it, Jackie still
following. None of the others disputed his choice for he was their leader.
They squabbled over the other caves, a blow was struck and then they set about
preparing their new homes.
Jackie squatted on the floor watching Kuz's every movement with amazement. He
was accustomed, obviously, to a nomad existence, clearing the floor space,
hurling loose rocks outside. He grunted, pointed to a low shelf at the rear;
this was to be their bed. Rest, woman, for the journey has been a tiring one.
He went outside, returned with an armful of dry, dead wood and piled it just
inside the entrance. Fire was a good servant but a bad master; Kuz would be
the master. Two pieces of what appeared to be stone were rubbed together,
sparking; rubbed harder. Within seconds some of the smaller twigs were glowing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]